Should we solar panel the Sahara desert? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34987467 <comment><USER2> We should not be covering any wilderness (even a relatively barren wilderness like the Sahara) with solar panels until every inch of roof in the developed world is covered in solar panels. There's a ridiculous amount of flat open surface that is just wasted space right now, and not only is the space going to waste but the energy consumers exist _right underneath_ that wasted roof space.

<comment><USER3> That's a silly notion.

I've lived in many places (Seattle, Edinburgh) where a solar panel is only useful about 25% of the year due to clouds, or the simple fact of being so far north. We don't all live in Southern California.

The Sahara presents an environment with lots of sunlight, little clouds, and nothing else being developed there. And it doesn't need to be solar panels- solar farms based on collectors reflecting to a central tower are what is being cited in the article. We can't do that in most developed areas, because it takes up a lot of space- deserts are mostly empty, perfect for that.

In short, it would make far more economic sense to build solar panels in the Sahara and lose 50% of the power to transmission loss piping it all to Scotland than it ever would to put the same solar infrastructure into Edinburgh (or many other cities in the world).

<comment><USER4> Solar panels still work in cloudy weather, though the efficiency is reduced. Transmission losses are huge over long distances, plus you would have the added problem of securing the panels and transmission lines against sabotage -- and the Sahara isn't exactly the most politically stable part of the world.

<comment><USER5> _Transmission losses are huge over long distances_

I found this document from ABB, [http://www02.abb.com/global/abbzh/abbzh250.nsf/0/2adcc78ab7f...](http://www02.abb.com/global/abbzh/abbzh250.nsf/0/2adcc78ab7f0f967c12574c00046478a/$file/HVDC+-+efficiency+and+reliability.pdf), they know a thing or two about power transmission. They claim:

       A 2,000-km long HVDC line rated at 800 kilovolts
       loses about 5 percent of the electricity it
       carries to heat, while an equivalent AC line
       would lose twice that amount, or about 10 percent.

I wouldn't call either of those losses "huge". There are of course additional losses in converters or transformers. Still, that's darn good, better than I would have guessed.

 _plus you would have the added problem..._

Those are fair points, I think much more significant than the transmission losses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yes, capture energy there.

But don't make electricity, make hydrocarbons using the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_proces...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_process)

Ship water and coal, and return with mixed hydrocarbons, then distribute them all over the world. You thermalize (rather than electrolyze) the water to get hydrogen, then react it with the carbon from the coal.

Build a large pipeline to the nearest port to transport the material rather than trucking it.

The leftover oxygen can be sold, or more likely just released.

Since hydrogen releases much more energy (per atom) than carbon when burned, and since since hydrogen outnumbers the carbon in the final product, this will greatly reduce CO2 emissions, even though it's not completely zero.

Capturing heat from the sun is much easier and cheaper than electricity.

<comment><USER7> Forget the coal, make methanol from water and co2.

<comment><USER8> What ars is saying that he wants to take the complex and partially-saturated hydrocarbons in coal and turn them into a hydrogen-satured hydrocarbon. (Most coal has a lot of double-bonds and loops within the carbon, in addition to a hydroxyl groups.) Since energy is released every time you break a bond, you'll have more bonds to break in the end product, but with the _same amount_ of carbon, so you're keeping emissions constant while adding energy.

Regardless, it would be interesting to start with CO2 rather than coal. But can it be sucked up from the atmosphere efficiently and in mass quantities?

<comment><USER9> Well, trees have been doing it for a long time. Where do you think the carbon in the trees comes from? :)

<comment><USER10> Trees do lots of cool things that we don't know how to do. That's true of biological life in general. Heck, the lightest insulation for outdoor clothing is still feathers.

<comment><USER7> Aerogel is lighter than feathers and more insulating. There was a kickstarter this year for a jacket using aerogel as an insulator.

[http://www.orosapparel.com/pages/technology](http://www.orosapparel.com/pages/technology)

<comment><USER10> True. It's pretty exciting tech, although apparently it's not very comfortable or easy to work into clothing and gear. It seems pretty promising for very extreme conditions though, like climbing Everest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The sahara could be a source of endless solar energy. But for the obvious political and technical considerations Europe probably first should look into installing large solar plants in Spain, Italy and Greece. Not only would it support the economies of those countries, but it would be very easy to connect those solar farms to the European grid. Also it would give a nice daytime distribution of the power as Spain and Greece are at the western and eastern borders of the European Union.

</comment><comment><USER12> A distributed system of solar arrays intelligently placed on top of every building in the world, back-feeding into the grid or powering on-site batteries (Tesla Powerwall, etc.).

Or massive array in one geographical region susceptible to natural disasters, politics, or terrorism.

I'll take the distributed system.

<comment><USER13> There are benefits to both.

You can't use a distributed system for, say, Aluminum smelting, which requires tons of electric power.

If the idea suggested in the article is implemented, the Sahara could be turned into a "powerhouse" and an invaluable economic resource to the rest of the world. Integration of this system into the global economy would entail tremendous changes to both the world's interest and understanding of Northern Africa.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Solar panels on the sort of scale being discussed here would, once you consider the logistics of maintenance, basically be a small (or large) town that also has a huge number of solar panels.

Running a company town devoted to solar panel maintenance in the middle of the Sshara wouldn't be impossible, but it's a lot harder than just plunking down a one-time infrastructure investment.

<comment><USER15> Lets face it, if oil was discovered there, the infrastructure to drill and process it would appear. Is processing solar energy any more difficult?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> >> "I think the only reason to pursue [solar panels in the Sahara] would be if it were a stopgap measure in which the long-term goal would be to reduce consumption of energy and to change our lifestyles to be more sustainable, so that subsequent generations don't have to deal with as many problems as we're going to leave them."

I hear this logic a lot and disagree. Finding more sensible and environmental ways to produce electricity needs to be the goal because we cannot be more sustainable. Mankind thrives on energy. I think the past 263 years (since Franklin's kite experiment) have shown us electricity is a way of progressing. We need power to run things. Where that power comes from is the difficult part. Unless another form of energy is found that can be used to work everyday devices from phones, to computers, to lights, not sure how we get away from electricity and only continuing to increase its consumption.

As for paneling the desert - The massive solar arrays in the Mojave desert outside of Vegas show that the sun can be used effectively, but the cost to produce the materials and impact on desert flora/fauna that go into the arrays are just as bad for the environment. The material cost alone in terms of environmental impact make it a laughable endeavor in terms of "environmental" concern.

<comment><USER17> I don't like her analogy in which she compares solar panels to smokestacks. As she points out, smokestacks were not a complete solution to air pollution because they merely moved the problem somewhere else. Solar panels are in no way comparable in that respect. The analogy only works if you consider energy production to be itself a problem.

<comment><USER18> She could simply be trying to say that nothing is ever free. Conservation of energy dictates you need energy to produce energy, no matter the tricks you use to get energy there is always a cost even if it is not immediately apparent.

<comment><USER13> I think this line of reasoning just confuses the argument being made. The law of conservation of energy and the idiom that "nothing is free" are not the same. I believe the argument being made was that resource extraction and manufacturing for the machinery required for generating renewable energy causes as much damage to the environment as using non-renewable sources of energy. Im not sure if that is true, but I don't have the research to support either way. I do think that with more adoption and development of renewable energy, the extraction processes themselves could be made more environment- friendly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What about water usage? At scale, doesn't it take a significant amount of water (for a desert) to clean the dust off the panels?

<comment><USER20> Brushes are fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> So the technology is already there, but we can't/won't implement this because of politics? What a shame!

<comment><USER22> When there's enough money to be made in it, private industry will just make it happen. We're not quite there yet, but it seems likely to happen as prices for solar keep falling. Politics don't have to enter into it, but government involvement has the potential to speed up the process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> What to do with the resulting electric energy?

(1) Smelt iron or aluminum?

(2) Split H2O into O2 and H2 and use the H2 for fuel.

(3) Convert water and coal to gasoline.

(4) Desalinate and/or purify water and use the water for humans food and drink, bathing, washing, swimming, lawns, greenhouse agriculture, or just to _make the desert bloom_?

(5) Heat salt to store the energy, and then run water through tubes in the hot salt to generate high pressure steam to drive steam turbines and, then, electric generators and, then, transmit the power across the Mediterranean to Europe and sell it?

Uses (1)-(4) have the advantages that get just to use the power while the sun is shining and don't have to store the power for nighttime use or transmit the electric power long distances. Would have to transmit the hydrogen or gasoline for those options.

In the words of the skeptical mayor's wife in the movie _The Music Man_ , "I'm reticent. Yes, I'm reticent."

Why? The idea is not nearly new. So, I do have to suspect that a good engineering-economic analysis would show that we would need progress in:

(1) Keeping desert sand off the solar panels.

(2) In case want to use the electric energy to make hydrocarbons, a good source of coal near the desert.

(3) Energy storage.

(4) Superconductivity for the transmission lines across the Mediterranean.

Might be able to pay for it if the world can agree on some huge _carbon taxes_.

Nukes might be be cheaper.

Might keep in mind that the spot, wholesale cost of electric power in the US has been under $0.01 per KWH and the full cost, say, ballpark $0.06. So, the cost to a consumer of 10, 12, 22 or so cents per KWH is mostly for distribution, not generation. But the panels in the desert handle only the generation part, do nothing for the short distance distribution costs where the consumers are and make the long distance distribution, e.g., across the Mediterranean, more expensive.

Also on the money side, might want to keep in mind that the major oil sources in the Mideast pump oil for less than $1 per barrel. That price is tough to compete with.

Right, might be shipping the power to France which is doing quite well with nukes.

Then once carbon taxes start to take hold, people might watch

'The Great Global Warming Swindle'

at

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Mx0_8YEtg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Mx0_8YEtg)

and discover the evidence that CO2, methane, etc. from human activities has nothing at all to do with the climate or temperature of earth and, instead, changes in those two are driven by changes in the activity level of the sun, the sun spots, the solar wind, the blocking of cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere, the rate of formation of water droplets, the rate of H2O cloud formation, and, thus, the cooling effect of clouds.

Then people will object to carbon taxes.

Net, it appears that while the Watts of solar energy per 1000 square miles of desert are astoundingly high, for what people in the population centers want in electric power, motor fuel, clean water, etc., that desert solar power is just not very valuable.

</comment><comment><USER24> The Media always seem to frame questions like this wrong. The question to ask is, "Why shouldn't we solar panel the Sahara Desert?" And once that question is answered we get started.

<comment><USER25> Well, the industry asked the question and then left the DESERTEC consortium.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> who's going to dust the sand off the panels, with what energy though?

<comment><USER27> Sounds like a do-able job for robots, perhaps evolved from windshield wipers.</comment></comment>


Most startups have the wrong idea of UX - <AUTHOR> http://52weeksofux.com/post/890289075/startuxs

<comment><USER2> Nothing in that article seems to me to represent the role a UX Designer should take.

She seems more interested in making strategic business decisions than designing the UX.</comment>


How to Improve the User Experience with "Objective-Based Design" - <AUTHOR> http://www.dtelepathy.com/blog/philosophy/objective-based-design-creative-approach-to-solving-business-challenge

<comment><USER2> Great read. Pretty straightforward & local way to address challenges.</comment>


MLB jersey maker will shift to masks and gowns - <AUTHOR> https://www.nj.com/coronavirus/2020/03/to-fight-coronavirus-mlb-jersey-maker-will-shift-to-masks-and-gowns-pinstripes-included.html <comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. I hope they prove useful: Their efficacy is probably unknown, although likely better than scarves or old tshirts-- I think the weave on that Jersey material is pretty tight.</comment>


Google Pagerank is gone - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/intl/de/toolbar/ie/index.html <comment><AUTHOR> 1.5 years ago Google announced that Toolbar Pagerank is dead and it just happened today. To check for yourself, download Google Toolbar.

Background: [http://searchengineland.com/google-toolbar-pagerank- finally-...](http://searchengineland.com/google-toolbar-pagerank-finally- officially-dead-205277)</comment>


Larry Ellison Buys Most of Lanai - <AUTHOR> http://hawaii.gov/gov/newsroom/press-releases/governor-statement-on-lanai-sale <comment><USER2> He just wouldn't be a _proper_ Bond villain without a volcanic island lair.

<comment><USER3> I should point out that, although Lanai was formed millions of years ago by a volcano, there aren't actually any active volcanoes on that island. The only active ones are on the Big Island (also known as Hawaii).

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_Hawaiian_volcanoes>

<comment><USER4> There's always someone coming in with facts that ruins the wonderful ideas. I'm going to pretend it is an active volcano and Larry Ellison is actually Hank Scorpio.

<comment><USER5> Larry Ellison is not a good enough boss to be Hank Scorpio.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> From an environmental perspective, a single landowner like this, who isn't going to put it to intensive development or use, is probably the best thing which could happen to a place like Lanai, other than becoming a park or nature preserve of some sort.

<comment><USER7> What kind of assurances do we have that he won't develop it?

Seems like the ONLY assurance is to have it under the state or federal park program.

Note that this was not public land -- it had been owned by the Hawaiian Pineapple Company and then Castle & Cooke, so this is not a public to private ownership transfer.

Wikipedia has the details: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanai>

<comment><USER8> I live in California, US and I keep seeing news paper articles warning each year that our State Government is short on cash and considering sale of State Land...

I also read of the added costs of cleanup after the latest meth-lab/pot-farm bust finds terrible accumulated waste and in some cases, caustic chemicals left behind... Illegal operations have little incentive to be kind to the land.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why is Ellison the only billionaire that does the type of things that kids say when they say:

> You know what I'd do if I had a billion dollars....

<comment><USER10> Because he's kind of immature, like a kid.

<comment><USER11> Why is wanting to have his own Island immature?

<comment><USER12> Only giants own islands

<comment><USER13> None of us should be land owners. Stewards maybe. Unless there's enough to go round.

<comment><USER14> The fact that there isn't enough to go round is why we _do_ have land ownership. See also: Tragedy of the Commons, et bloody cetera.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The guy he bought it from, who was once homeless and destitute: <http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_H._Murdock#section_1>

<comment><USER16> What a great American dream story. How tragic the death of most of his children, I'd bet he'd trade the $B to change that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I once read that Ellison had very little wealth outside of his Oracle holdings. In fact, that he had borrowed against his stock in order to make the vast majority of his enormous purchases. Does that mean there will be one hell of a fire sale in Hawaii should Oracle hit the skids? And what sort of mind must one have to borrow upwards of a billion dollars rather than just sell some shares?

<comment><USER18> It's a common financial strategy among the fabulously-wealthy. Selling shares would incur all kinds of taxes, but he can get a line of credit with a reasonable interest rate quite easily, pay no income taxes, and actually deduct the interest he pays from his taxes. So he carries a lot of debt but it's all backed by assets and paying the interest is tolerable.

Yes, if that's what he's doing, then in the event that his assets utterly evaporate he'll be in a spot of bother. But it's a pretty well-trod path, and probably some non-trivial portion of his assets are quite stable and reliable and not terribly volatile. I won't pretend to know the precise details of his situation, but living off a line of credit isn't at all uncommon and perhaps isn't even unreasonable (from the perspective of financial self-interest alone) for a person in his position.

<comment><USER17> Funny, though - Were I in his position, I'd just sell the stock, pay the taxes and own whatever it was I wanted to own. Perhaps that says something about why I am not in his position.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Here's the web cache:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:hawaii....](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:hawaii.gov/gov/newsroom/press- releases/governor-statement-on-lanai-sale&hl=de&prmd=imvns&strip=1)

<comment><USER20> This is all it really says:

HONOLULU – Landowner Castle & Cooke has filed a transfer application with the Public Utilities Commission. Castle & Cooke owns 98 percent of the island's 141 square miles. The buyer is Lawrence Ellison, co-founder and chief executive officer of Oracle Corporation.

Governor Neil Abercrombie today released the following statement: "It is my understanding that Mr. Ellison has had a long standing interest in Lana'i. His passion for nature, particularly the ocean is well known specifically in the realm of America's Cup sailing. He is also a businessman whose record of community involvement in medical research and education causes is equally notable.

"We look forward to welcoming Mr. Ellison in the near future."

<comment><USER21> Anyone know who owns the remaining 2% and whether this places any restrictions on what Larry can and can't do with the island?

<comment><USER22> It looks like there is a town on the island. I would guess that he doesn't own that land.

<comment><USER23> I wonder if it would be legal for him to erect a 20' high electric fence (with barbed wire on top) around the lands of the town, so they can't get out on his property.

<comment><USER24> I would imagine that there is an easement agreement of some sort on the island for residents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Lanai also happens to be the island where Bill Gates got married. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lana%27i#Tourism>

<comment><USER20> A new business venture for Ellison, perhaps?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Lets be honest, if you'd just lost a very public scrap with Google wouldn't you want to buy yourself something nice to take your mind off it?

</comment><comment><USER26> This one: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanai>

<comment><USER27> <http://goo.gl/maps/wHTS> \- Google Maps

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> What?! NO FAIR. Nobody told me it was for sale!

<comment> excuse-me Well for a mere $75m you can have a Canadian one [http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british- columbia/story/2012/06...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british- columbia/story/2012/06/05/bc-island-for-sale.html)

Not quite as hot or sunny but the scenery is nicer and you are surrounded by Canadians!

<comment><USER29> The seller, Craig McCaw just spent $35m on a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO[1] and his ex-wife lives a couple streets over from me.

[1] [http://www.autoblog.com/2012/06/02/1962-ferrari-250-gto- made...](http://www.autoblog.com/2012/06/02/1962-ferrari-250-gto-made-for- stirling-moss-becomes-worlds-most/)

<comment><USER30> Nice car, awful colour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> In other news.. Oracle increases licensing fees to charge per mhz.

<comment><USER32> Just so long as he promises to film a video montage of him enjoying it and presents it to us during a keynote at OpenWorld/JavaOne, like he does with his yacht.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> _Mr. Ellison [...] is also a businessman whose record of community involvement in medical research and education causes is equally notable._

Hear, hear.

<comment><USER34> What exactly does "community involvement in medical research" mean?

<comment><USER35> As much as i would like to say it means he performs experiments on orphans in a super villain like way, i'm pretty sure they're referring to this <http://www.ellisonfoundation.org/>

And actually, the orphan thing is more of a reddit joke. I'm sure Mr. Ellison is a pretty amazing guy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Why the hell is it even for sale?

<comment><USER37> Almost all the property on the island was acquired by Dole as a pineapple plantation back in Ye Olden Days when it was easy for Dole to do that sort of thing (1920s), and somehow the property has never gotten broken up in the decades since then, so Ellison just bought it from the til-now-current owner, who owns it via a chain of purchases from Dole and subsidiaries.

<comment><USER36> Thanks for the explanation. This is a vivid demonstration of wealth concentration writ large, maybe it will wake people up.

<comment><USER38> Wealth concentration isn't inherently bad. In fact I'm sure Ellison will not abuse it dramatically.

<comment><USER39> Sure it is. If we have an economy of ten people, it is _inherently bad_ for one person to control 100% of the wealth while 9 people starve to death. That is, in fact, _inherently bad_.

To put it another way, we know that the marginal utility of wealth decreases as wealth increases. Therefore under the standard principle of greatest good for the greatest number, social good is maximized when wealth is evenly distributed.

<comment><USER40> The marginal utility of _consuming_ wealth for one's personal use diminishes, but empirically that is not what the wealthiest people do. They give their wealth away in intelligently measured ways. It's quite possible that giving 10 million random middle-class Americans more of Bill Gates' money would do less good than Bill Gates has done with it trying to solve the whole malaria problem.

<comment><USER41> So all wealthy people are Bill Gates now? Even in the US that's laughable. Start to venture into the rest of the world, and it's a pretty ridiculous notion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Something's wrong when one man can buy up a sizable portion of an entire state. Also, Larry Ellison is stealing the ancestral homelands of the Native Hawaiian people. This sale should be blocked, and the land re-distributed among the people of Hawaii. AT very least, sold to hundreds of buyers, not one. This is just one more example of cannibalistic unbridled capitalism at its finest, devouring all that it can because it can. Mr. Ellison, give the land back to the rightful owners of Hawaii, the aboriginal peoples there. It's not yours.

</comment><comment><USER43> When I was in Hawaii back in February, one of the cabbies thought it was going to be Bill Gates who might buy it because he had gotten married there.

That's a damn shame.

</comment><comment><USER44> Would this mean that he becomes the "ruler" of the island. I don't see it mentioned on the wikipedia page, does the island have any form of government or do the residents control everything? That also raises the question can he remove people from the island? I would assume that the condition of the sale means that people can't just be evicted/deported (not sure the correct term here) but maybe not.

<comment><USER14> He just owns some land. The fact that the land happens to be on an island doesn't make it any different to the position of any other landholder.

He doesn't even have his own county -- the land is in Maui County.

<comment><USER45> Technically Maui is both a city (the whole island) and county (Maui, Lanai, Molokai, Kahoolawe)

and no, I didn't put the okina(s) in. Fuck that noise.

<comment><USER46> you know it was more work to type "and no, I didn't put the okina(s) in. Fuck that noise." than to put the okina(s) in, right?

<comment><USER14> Perhaps, but he wouldn't have had a chance to protest about the stupid ongoing attempt to incorporate a pointless, one-use extra character into the English language.

The Hawaiian language has never had a written form apart from the English alphabet, so why they think they can go round sticking new characters into it is beyond me. I already know how to pronounce "Hawaii", you don't need a freaking apostrophe in there to remind me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Could he technically start a new country? XD

<comment><USER38> Historically, secession from the union is frowned upon. See: the bloodiest war in US history. On the other hand, my former employer Dean Kamen did jokingly found his own country on North Dumpling Island and signed a non-aggression pact. He seceded when he was denied a permit to build a wind turbine. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Dumpling_Island>

<comment><USER48> That's pretty interesting. I'm curious: If he founded his own country, why did he need a permit?

Edit: Oh, right.

<comment><USER49> Seceding from a country and seceding from a city seem like two different things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I would love to own the other 2%.

</comment><comment><USER51> How much did he buy it for? I'd think a couple billion, at least.

<comment><USER14> Another article says that the asking price had been previously reported as between 0.5 and 0.6 billion.

Let's keep this in perspective. It may have a nice view, but it's only ninety thousand acres. That wouldn't even put him in the top hundred landholders in the US.

Fun fact: Nicole Kidman's family owns twenty-two million acres of land.

<comment><USER50> Interestingly, this report shows that 90,000 acres would put him in the running for top 100 landowners in the US.

[http://188.8.131.52/documents/property_pdfs/Top100Landowne...](http://188.8.131.52/documents/property_pdfs/Top100Landowners.pdf)

The list Jeff Bezos as #27 with 290,000 acres. Huh.

<comment><USER40> The list is by acreage and not value, though. Which makes Bezos' position on the list pretty funny, since the neighborhood Amazon is based in--South Lake Union--is owned by Paul Allen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands Looks like he now has a place to swim with the dolphins and Marc Benioff now.

</comment><comment><USER52> Good compensation reward after losing the trial with Google, I guess.

</comment><comment><USER53> Current owner retains right to build a wind farm to power Oahu through an undersea cable:

[http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2012/06/20/...](http://www.sfgate.com/cgi- bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2012/06/20/national/a193724D96.DTL)

</comment><comment> excuse-me Ellison is buying his own volcano island?

Watch out if he installs a monorail and buys a white cat !

<comment><USER54> It's the beard, isn't it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I thought HN is a site for news which are interesting for hacker and computer fanatics. Turned out that information, which would better fit in a boulevard magazin, are also published here.

</comment><comment><USER13> Who has land rights to a brand new volcanic island?

</comment><comment><USER56> I don't care what people think Ellison has accomplished, no one should get to have their own island when we have so many starving homeless people.

Its amazing to me that its so easy for people to justify that.

Larry Ellison is a crook, an asshole, and a liability to the technology community.

Oracle is a scam. But then again, so are most things in this so-called 'civilization'.</comment>


Scientists discover 'Farout,' the most distant solar system object ever seen - <AUTHOR> https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/scientists-discover-farout-most-distant-solar-system-object-ever-seen-ncna949131 <comment><USER2> Rename it Notsofarout already, since you will have to a in couple of years anyways!</comment>


"Fake News" dataset on Kaggle - <AUTHOR> https://www.kaggle.com/mrisdal/fake-news <comment><USER2> This data was collected using a recently developed tool called the BS Detector [0] which aims to automatically classify fake news. As the labels have not been validated by humans, I question how much utility this will have for developing additional fake news detection systems. Any model trained on this data is really just learning the parameters of the BS Detector, not ground truth fake news.

[0] [https://github.com/selfagency/bs- detector](https://github.com/selfagency/bs-detector)

<comment><USER3> Classify? I'd expect classification to be able to detect whether something is fake or not regardless of the source. Meanwhile this tool is nothing more than just a simple lookup of sites that the author deemed to be biased or fake.

None of these are backed up with any proof regarding the claim that these sites provide "fake news" \- most of these doesn't even have a reason on why these sites are there. If the author cannot provide a reason for these sites to be there then for what reason should I trust the author?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It includes Breitbart and Drudge Report as fake. Those sites may have a bias you disagree with but no more so than, say, The Daily Kos or Mother Jones.

Can anyone identify any left-of-centre site urls in the list

<comment><USER5> Breitbart's ex-editor-at-large quit because they "shaped the company into Trump's personal Pravda, to the extent that he abandoned and undercut his own reporter, Breitbart News' Michelle Fields, in order to protect Trump's bully campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, who allegedly assaulted Michelle."

Did anything like that happen at the sites you name?

<comment><USER6> Yes.

At the NYT: "By and large, talented reporters scrambled to match stories with what internally was often called "the narrative." We were occasionally asked to map a narrative for our various beats a year in advance, square the plan with editors, then generate stories that fit the pre-designated line."

[http://deadline.com/2016/11/shocked-by-trump-new-york- times-...](http://deadline.com/2016/11/shocked-by-trump-new-york-times-finds- time-for-soul-searching-1201852490/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> ronpaulinstitute.org is listed as fake news? How did they determine what was fake or not?

<comment><USER7> Just a list of domains compiled by a guy. If you want to know more about the level of thinking behind the list of domains, this[1] page linked from the BS detector readme gives the general idea.

I would say it's the product of a very earnest idealist who thinks he has solved the problem because he hasn't spent enough time thinking about the problem to understand the ways in which it is non-trivial.

[https://www.inverse.com/article/23781-bs-detector- facebook-f...](https://www.inverse.com/article/23781-bs-detector-facebook- fake-news-daniel-sieradski)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The dataset doesn't contain the article URLs which makes further analysis harder. With the URLs you could look at who is linking to the article or website and use that as an indication of authority.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm livid about the abundant existence and spread of 'fake news' and the inability people have to fact-check, but, I also want to play devil's advocate here.

1) This data set mostly relies on a data-set called the "BS Detector" which describes itself as "[a] hastily assembled...proof of concept...[that] searches all links on a given webpage for references to unreliable sources, checking against a manually compiled list of domains...[to] address the proliferation of fake news". While I agree with their choices in sites, the concept of manual curation deciding the legitimacy of news is horrifying and something that we hoped the internet would move us away from.

2) We run into this problem where we want places like Facebook to censor 'fake news'. But, I imagine most of us can agree that as autonomous moral agents, we'd never want out access to information censored. Rather we'd want the tools to make an informed decision ourselves. In accepting that, you'd have to extend that same right of autonomy to other individuals no matter how 'wrong' you think they may be.

A) We can't manually curate legitimacy list. As that leads to more abuse, and let's face it people who read fake news wouldn't trust your list anyway.

B) We can't let tech companies filter out websites based on their interpretation that leads to more bias especially politically.

C) We can't let crowd-sourced intelligence do it without being locked into the tyranny of the majority, which as we've seen, spreads fake news.

In a time when traditional news agencies are hurting for views, lost in the digital noise and often slower to respond to breaking news than niche outlets, we can't simply give them the benefit of the doubt either. (That would also enshrine them as some sort of news aristocracy which emerging outlets and voices couldn't compete with).

It seems rather than try and interpret the news as fake based on the piece/site itself, we need to take a step back and look and how on the consumption platform (browser, news channel, social media) you can display relevant facts to people.

[Unsubstantiated claim warning] I imagine most credible journalists have at one time another cited an irrefutable fact. A raw figure from a report, a percent by which a poll was won, or the weight of the Eiffel Tower. It seems that with data sets like WikiData and Firebase (old dump, not the new mobile platform) we would be able to locate claims of fact within the writings of journalists and outlets and compare those against the irrefutable fact.

If a journalist or outlet has a number of facts that are incorrectly stated well outside a margin of error, a little pop-up displays those to the user letting them decide how to interpret that.

I know we want to label things as 'Fake' or 'Manipulative' media, and I do think it should be a criminal offense to _knowingly_ publish false information outside the protections of entertainment/satire/art etc. But, no matter how we spin it, categorizing media is more destructive than it is helpful.

We need to find ways to put the educated decision back in the hands of moral agents who are struggling to find facts in an overwhelming sea of noise.

<comment><USER7> > it should be a criminal offense to knowingly publish false information > outside the protections of entertainment/satire/art etc.

That is a rather dangerous idea.

<comment><USER9> I can see elements of danger if improperly used, but, from my point of view it is no more dangerous than libel laws or any other law which requires explicitly "knowing" what one is doing.

A law like that is dangerous only if the burden of proof is on the journalist. Which in our modern society _should_ never be the case. I admit, sadly there seems to many cases now where innocent until proven guilty isn't as strongly held.

It is tremendously hard to prove that someone 'knew' the information they were publishing was false (outside of an explicit confession or conversation) and it absolutely should be hard. But, such a law may make people who are in it for the money at least give pause.

I can't think of a case where if it isn't fiction, satire, humor, commentary etc etc, and you know it to be false information that you choose to spread as fact, that you aren't doing so with malicious intent to harm others or to personally benefit from the exploitation of others? The social contract of society exists primarily for protection from such actions, and its tool of protection is the law.

If there are cases you can think of where that wouldn't be malicious or exploitative I'm really interested. While I still hold true on the idea that the most important thing with fake news is to empower people to make their own autonomous and informed decisions, I'd quite like to be wrong about criminalizing the spread of false information - as I am a fan of as few laws as possible to get the job done (as long as the job is done well.)

<comment><USER10> Probably-not-hypothetical case:

Tensions rise with Russia over Ukraine/Syria/Baltics/Eastern Europe/etc. The Pentagon draws up contingency plans for responding to an armed conflict in any one of those areas.

When questioned by a reporter, the White House responds "We have no plans to go to war with Russia."

Should the White House Press Secretary go to jail?

I sympathize with the information-libertarian position that holds that all information should be free, truthful, & accessible to everyone. But there's a really big pragmatic problem in that when individual soundbites are pulled out and shared, they lose context. People don't understand the circumstances behind the facts, and they bring all of their own prejudices and emotions along. Oftentimes, reporting the truth brings about a _worse outcome_ (in some cases, a disastrous outcome) than lying to the public.

It's not just the government either - corporations, institutions, and individuals lie all the time too, and often for good reasons. I was a Google employee when the Nexus line was under development, and I knew that the official press statement of "We are not and have no plans to develop a phone" was false. The reason for it was that if news of the Nexus line leaked, it would've jeopardized supplier relationships such that there _wouldn 't_ be a phone. In some cases you can actually get into logical paradoxes where a statement is true only if everyone believes that it is false and vice versa.

<comment><USER9> I can entirely concede the case for secrecy in these situations.

Obviously, my statement is not a full proposal for a specific law, but rather a starting point. There is certainly a level of nuance (as there is with all laws), but, I think it comes down to the difference between publishing content you know to be false for matters of personal gain, manipulation, malice, etc.

To be a practical law it would need some sort of clause akin to separate the 'actus rea' from the 'mens rea' as well as the impact.

Consider cases in libel. The 'actus rea' (the actual act of committing libel) and saying something defamatory about someone that you believe to be true, is different than the libel which has the 'mens rea' (forethought of the action) in which you made claims you knew to be false but did so for a negative impact against someone else.

The 'actus rea' alone is often swept under the rug with a slap on the wrist, unless the plaintiff proves substantial damages from the act itself. That qualifier can make it a criminal act even without the 'mens rea'.

I agree, there is a lot of nuance to tease out in such a legal concept. My retort to the other commentator was more that if you are going to say something is a bad idea, you have to put forth why and not just put forth rhetoric!

But, once again, I wholeheartedly agree with your examples. I couldn't call for a law that compels the truth. Just something that prevents false publication with the intent to deceive people that it is real for the purposes of malice or ill-gotten self-gain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd like to see a dataset like this that includes email forwards, e.g. from Snopes.

</comment><comment><USER12> nice! the digital equivalent of safe spaces. perfect for when I want to only hear opinions that conform to my own.</comment>


Bar in NY raises drinking age to 25 because young people are 'too annoying' - <AUTHOR> http://www.pressunion.org/popular-bar-brooklyn-raises-drinking-age-25-young-people-annoying/ <comment><USER3> I can understand the desire to curb the rowdy behavior, but I'm not sure I agree with the methodology of banning everyone in a certain demographic. If the common characteristic of the rowdy people were race instead of age, would it be okay to ban everyone of that race from drinking after a certain time?

<comment><USER4> Private entrepreneurs should be able to do whatever they want. I don't go to bars but I might visit one with a 30+ limit.

<comment><USER3> I guess I'd have to disagree here. I think that there definitely should be some restrictions on who you can ban from patronizing your business (such as forbidding businesses from banning racial minorities or homosexuals); I'm just not sure whether I think something like limiting based on age (outside of enforcing the legal drinking age).

I'll try another thought experiment which is a bit more similar to the real- life situation: do you think that private entrepreneurs should be able to ban people _over_ a certain age, e.g. everyone above 50?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Maybe a name change - as much as I like the name Phil's Crummy Corner - <USER2> something snobbier might help.

And take it from me -- 50somethings have as much trouble holding their liquor as 20somethings.</comment>


BashBooster – simple provisioning, bash only, requires nothing - <AUTHOR> http://www.bashbooster.net/ <comment><USER2> I used Ansible and got up and running in 2 days. But for whatever reason, I decided bash was better because it was more portable, had fewer dependencies and frankly, how hard could it be to write bash routines to download files, unpack them, install packages, etc. Besides, bash skills are more transferrable.

After 3 weeks or labouring and using FSS with a fully working system, I dropped it all and went back to Ansible. I don't regret the time spent because I picked up a lot of transferrable skills from command line utilities and bash.

There are simple things like downloading a file which BashBooster gets wrong. If the file already exists, it should not abort, it should resume download or compare file sizes to ensure that the previous download didn't terminate abruptly. Basically, this and other idempotency issues need to be dealt with very carefully. Even simple things like "mkdir -p foo" instead of just "mkdir foo".

Once you get past idempotency you will most likely run into performance issues and then into project velocity.

If you really must use Bash Scripts, I would suggest using them via Ansible's Shell + Command modules. This will allow you to lean on Ansible until your Bash scripts can catch up. It will also give you Ansible's inventory management features.

<comment><USER3> > how hard could it be to write bash routines to download files, unpack them, > install packages, etc.

I haven't used Gentoo for a long time but wasn't part of it's package system a nice little DSL for writing scripts that would "download files, unpack them, install packages, etc".

<comment><USER4> Yep, on a full Gentoo environment one can make their own "ebuilds" which do all kinds of awesome things - I've got packages for web-app deploys and other fun things. Its python+bash

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A similar project designed for complex docker builds designed by me :)

[http://ianmiell.github.io/shutit/](http://ianmiell.github.io/shutit/)

[https://github.com/ianmiell/shutit](https://github.com/ianmiell/shutit)

Used extensively within our corp for container builds, but easily repurposed for straightforward shell provisioning. Bash within a build-friendly python framework.

I talk about it more here:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVUPmmUU3yY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVUPmmUU3yY)

tho slightly out of date.

Some blogging on it here:

[http://zwischenzugs.wordpress.com/](http://zwischenzugs.wordpress.com/)

</comment><comment><USER6> This reminds me of fucking_shell_scripts[1] but this looks a lot simpler and less angry. I love the idea of truly having no dependencies, since I thought f_s_s was actually written in Bash but turns out to be written in Ruby. BashBooster on the other hand just relies on Bash (no gems, no Ruby) and looks easy to set up. I will definitely be trying it out.

[1]: [https://github.com/brandonhilkert/fucking_shell_scripts](https://github.com/brandonhilkert/fucking_shell_scripts)

EDIT: BashBooster says it's developed to be used with Vagrant, whereas f_s_s is stand-alone. So it doesn't _quite_ require nothing.

<comment><USER6> Just noticed that it's using BitBucket to host the source code. Really wish the author chose GitHub instead, since network effect is a real thing and this will definitely make it harder for people like me to contribute back, not having a BB account nor willing to make one just to support a one-off project. Plus I just feel more comfortable navigating GitHub projects.

<comment><USER7> This comment may come off as overly angry but.. why the hell?!

In the time it took you to type your comment, you could have had a BB account registered, and in the time it takes to reply to my comment, you could have installed your SSH keys and had the same basic workflow set up.

People's unwillingness to explore alternatives for the most superficial of reasons are how monopolies are started and perpetuated.

Some day, Github is going to be acquired or taken over by advertisers or something, life is going to start sucking, and people will put up with it for the same reason they put up with Facebook.

<comment><USER8> The point was that network effect is real. And it's has nothing to do with the difficulty of opening an account. It's about discovery of open source projects. Try this: enter bitbucket.org, where's the search?

<comment><USER9> We're all on the same network, it's called the Internet. That's why we're talking about this project here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> That's a very peculiar way to do unit testing, comparing the output of the whole test instead of specific asserts.

How would you compare this with something like Shunit2[1]?

I can see someone missing some error confirmations by being careless when producing the output or testing things in isolation.

But I can also see how this could be more likely to catch some side effects (stupid example: unclosed terminal escapes) in combined output.

I was looking for a nice testing tool for my bash migration tool[2], and while the `assert` way is well known, I like writing bash because it's bare and requires discipline and yours seems survivalist enough.

[1]: [https://code.google.com/p/shunit2/](https://code.google.com/p/shunit2/) [2]: [https://github.com/zenoamaro/rash](https://github.com/zenoamaro/rash)

<comment><USER11> I've seen it on many places to test shell scripts.

For example: in the same bash interpreter source code. See files using the '.right' extenion [0].

I think it's a flexible approach, compared to using things as shunit, or TAP producers.

The main advantage of using shunit (or TAP producers too), I think is to re- use available tools (at least in the case of TAP producers), and the possible familiarity of new contributors with the syntax.

Personally I avoid test libraries that use traps and eval, and bash code can become so complex, that I thing there is not a single testing library (Written in bash) that could work with all my code base.

As soon as you start using advanced features (shell options, traps, code tracing features, readonly stuff, filedescriptors, etc) most assumptions become wrong.

Anyway, the most hard part of test complex shell programs (specially those related to system administration), is to test functionality.

It's easy (and even not useful) to assert that 'myecho 1' will print '1' and return 0.

But things become hard to test when you want to see if a partition routine works well with +2TB disks, if a netfilter ruleset is resilient to attacks (unknown by the author), if a program is safe to unexpected (by the programmer) input, if a backup restore will not break production...

Fun to see this on hackernews front page. One of my pet projects is just the same, but not being inspired by chef.

[0] [http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/bash.git/tree/tests](http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/bash.git/tree/tests)

<comment><USER12> It's funny you mentioned the exact problems I'm trying to solve.

For the tests, I'm writing my own xUnit tool [1]. It doesn't use any fancy stuff, runs on set -euf, it's tested by itself and works on every POSIX-like shell that I could find (bash, dash, zsh, (m|pd)ksh, yash, posh, even busybox) and many different versions and OSs.

On the functional side, I've decided that I need to test using virtual machines. The test matrix tool that can spawn and test on them is almost ready [2], it already tests the library itself and exports the matrix configuration to Travis.

Very early stuff though and doesn't even touch problems like partition routines you mentioned, but overall I'm happy with the results, considering everything runs under 70Kb of code.

[1] [https://github.com/Mosai/workshop/blob/master/doc/posit.md](https://github.com/Mosai/workshop/blob/master/doc/posit.md)

[2] [https://github.com/Mosai/workshop/blob/master/test/matrix.sh](https://github.com/Mosai/workshop/blob/master/test/matrix.sh)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm not really in charge of managing companies infrastructure, so it doesn't stand so important for me, but every time I run across talking about all these provisioning tools, I'm taken aback by how many of them are there. Ansible, Puppet, Chef, now this BashBooster. All of them written in different languages, having different syntax and all doing basically the same thing — the same thing I'm using a couple of bash-scripts for when I need to set up another server or VM!

Yet all projects are alive yet, so there probably is some difference which makes all tools applicable. So it makes me feel uncomfortable asking this obviously nonsensical question, but: is there some one tool I should chose if I want to get away from the stone age of using bash scripts for provisioning?

<comment><USER5> Depends what you're trying to do. If you're a programmer and your use case is simple, then a few bash scripts are fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Ansible is a great alternative to Chef/Puppet etc. Agentless and runs over ssh.

<comment><USER15> Depends on your usecase / scale of deployment. Chef/Puppet being pull oriented and having a central server to query for data are often usable where Ansible is not an good alternative. (the ssh and agentless part make it a worse option)

For simple standing up of a new box though - sure, any of them will do.

<comment><USER16> You can set up Ansible to do pull if you really want to and you can there are other solutions for doing dynamic inventory, gathering facts, or storing data on other services.

<comment><USER15> You can set up Ansible to automatically refresh repository and run scripts locally. That's only a small bit of what chef/puppet offer. And sure, there are add-ons to cover other bits one by one. But that's different from the system offering centralised inventory and automated pull of code/data on its own - otherwise you could just as well say "you can set up bash to do pull if you really want to and there are other solutions for ...". But it's just not the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Yet it's a Mercurial repo. Not a big deal and I have nothing against Mercurial, but something that's marketed with "no dependencies" would be better off if it was on Git - way more accessible.

<comment><USER13> Actually, you can just download zipped project directory on bitbucket. And it sure won't have less dependencies if "dependency" will be git instead of mercurial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The number of attempts to fix provisioning is overwhelming. Shows that chef/puppet aren't cutting it, and neither are the smaller alternatives.

<comment><USER5> We need to use it in combination with phoenix deployments. Moving target builds are doomed to failure:

[https://zwischenzugs.wordpress.com/2014/06/07/phoenix- deploy...](https://zwischenzugs.wordpress.com/2014/06/07/phoenix-deployment- with-docker-and-shutit/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I build a similar library that does exactly this and have used it internally for a couple of years. The approach complements ansible quite nicely. For simple setups it is easier to read and modify. It is also less learning curve for the other developers.

</comment><comment><USER20> I recently started using bork[1] which is a bash-based DSL with a similar philosophy. Folks interested in BashBooster should also check it out.

[1]: [https://github.com/mattly/bork](https://github.com/mattly/bork)

</comment><comment><USER21> Same sort of thing that I've been deploying everything with. [http://github.com/AndrewVos/garrison](http://github.com/AndrewVos/garrison)

</comment><comment><USER22> Something similar from visionmedia (written in go): [https://github.com/visionmedia/stack](https://github.com/visionmedia/stack)

</comment><comment><USER23> This isn't very abstracted from running the commands directly. For example the package management differs for yum and apt. I do appreciate simplicity though.

</comment><comment><USER24> Reminds me of my POSIX shell configuration management thingy: [http://git.uggedal.com/conf](http://git.uggedal.com/conf)

</comment><comment><USER25> I've thought about doing similar things in the past (I like the idea of deploying with bash/extended-bash) - great to see this!

</comment><comment><USER26> I looked at the code for bb-sync(). I just used cp and touch. Would be cool if it checked for rsync and used it.

</comment><comment><USER27> Nice toolkit, will be using, thanks!</comment>


Scooter startup Bird is seeking a $2B valuation - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/scooter-startup-bird-is-seeking-a-2-billion-valuation-1528813078-11187061-2a49-440c-a2e6-65e74faad5ec.html <comment><USER3> As an investor who has looked at this space a little bit + talked to other investors who have backed some of these companies, it seems like:

\- the economics of scooters are great (very quick payback periods for the scooters). At a few bucks per ride and maybe a dozen rides per day, it doesn't take that long to pay off a $300 or $500 scooter.

\- most people that try scooters seem to really enjoy riding them.

\- an individual scooter doesn't last super long and needs to be serviced a lot and then replaced.

As an investor, the main thing I'm stuck on is what the moats could be in this business. Brand is a potential moat, but the two biggest companies in this space already have good brands so that's not helpful for me as a seed investor. And I'm not sure if brand would be enough for people to walk an extra block or two if there are closer scooters nearby.

People talk about network effects, but I am skeptical. First those network effects are local. Second, it doesn't take _that_ much money to blanket a city with scooters and break the network effect. My napkin math for SF is that it would cost <$1.5m to put a scooter on every other block ([https://twitter.com/lpolovets/status/992503477149450240](https://twitter.com/lpolovets/status/992503477149450240)). If that's accurate, then it's not going to be a big barrier against any well- funded company.

Maybe one moat could be scooter durability. If your scooters are 2x more rugged, then your margins and economics are a lot better, and you can use the additional profits to outspend your competitors on customer acquisition. We'll probably find out what moats do (or don't) exist here over the next few years.

<comment><USER4> The dockless approach doesn't work. People rightfully hate the race-to-the- bottom that leads to bikes/scooters being dumped everywhere. Once you accept the dockless approach doesn't work there's three interesting possibilities:

1) The city picks a winner. This could be done fairly by auctioning off a five year contract or it could be done via corruption. Either way the scooter companies should be taking the millions they've raised and greasing officials.

2) Establish a market for docks. There's an interesting opportunity here in that scooter "stations" don't need to be the sort of big official stations that have beeen deployed for bikes where each station holds 30+ bikes. You could imagine a lot of small business, stores, etc. offering to host small stations that hold 4-5 scooters on their own private property. The scooter companies would then either race to lease as many of these stations as possible or would be forced to pay each time a scooter of theirs gets docked at the station. The winner is the company that owns the most stations. That's a real moat and the stations become real assets.

3) The simplest solution is probably to just to give people scooters. Let people "lease" a scooter and trade in these "leased" scooters at any time 24/7\. Trade ins need not be a big centralized, complicated thing; you could imagine something like a scooter delivery service. In <20 minutes an Uber shows up and drops off a new scooter and collects an old one. Don't charge people if the scooter is stolen or breaks but do charge people if their scooter is left on the sidewalk and gets seized by the city. Then it would be up to individuals to make sure their scooter doesn't get left on public property. Scooters are so small -- and only getting smaller and more portable -- that you could imagine that most people won't mind stashing them under their desk/in their office.

All three of these possibilities btw lead to a single winner. At the end of the day, like with most transportation plays, you're looking at powerful economies of scale where the big guys only get bigger. It's a market to invest in if you think you can pick the winner cuz that winner probably will take all.

<comment><USER5> I don't think the docked approach works well either, because the heavyweight docks are never close enough to where you want them to be.

It's really just a parking problem. We don't want another cable company / taxis v2 and 'pick' a winner with horrible service. You mandate that these things need to be locked to something and most of the problem resolves itself.

Businesses that want it to be easier to shop where they are will install bike racks. The city will fund new bike racks with scooter permits. You could even allow scooter companies to install and pay for new bike racks themselves as they probably understand demand dynamics far better than random cities. If the scooter companies install the racks, you just have to say they can be used by everyone and are owned by the city.

We don't need heavy duty docking systems that are exclusionary to one docking company. A simple cheap metal bike rack that everyone can use will be plenty enough and more economically efficient.

You can also detect if the renter rider puts the scooter in the right area or if someone is screwing with the scooters after the fact with accelerometers. You could even detect if they are in a tipped over state or not.

<comment><USER6>
      You can also detect if... someone is screwing with the scooters after the fact with accelerometers

How does that help you? You can't _do_ anything about it.

<comment><USER5> It's how you attribute parking tickets. If you can tell the renter did the action, then you can pass the ticket to them, which incentives them to keep it upright. It also lets you put them back up with workers:

[https://www.limebike.com/blog/new-tech-helping-lime-keep- bik...](https://www.limebike.com/blog/new-tech-helping-lime-keep-bikes- electric-scooters-upright)

Also by locking the devices the likelihood of them falling or being in the way is low.

<comment><USER6>
      If you can tell the renter did the action

But you can't, without onboard video, anyway. Anybody wanting to steal or vandalize a scooter won't do so on one for which they are (or just were) an active renter.

      by locking the devices the likelihood of them falling or being in the way is low

I don't get that at all. All locking does is prevents unpaid usage as a scooter; it doesn't prevent theft, vandalism, or bad acts with it (e.g. piling a bunch of them in the CEO's driveway as a protest).

<comment><USER5> But why as a renter would you want to only vandalize / steal the scooter that you just used, vs just stealing / vandalizing the hundreds of other scooters out there? It lets the companies collect statistics on who is more likely the doing the bad behavior, careless customers or random assholes?

The biggest complaint with these scooters is they are in the middle of the right of the public right of way and laying down on the street in an inefficient manner.

If they are locked to something, they would be outside of the right of way since lock points tend to be on the edges of sidewalks. If you put the lock on the correct point on the scooter, it will be fairly difficult to knock them over, vs the light tap you need today.

Locking also reduces the instances of impulsive bad acts, since now you need some sort of specialized power machinery to remove the items. And barriers to impulsiveness is a big factor in reducing crime. Did you know for example crime tends to happen more at the bottom of a hill vs the top of a hill? Because people don't want to walk up hills because it's extra effort.

On top of that, nobody has been complaining about personal bike ownership, which today follows a model of being locked to things.

JUMP bikes in SF for example follows this model, has been around before the scooter boom. I haven't heard a single complaint about them other than positive complaints such as 'why aren't there more?', and 'why are they restricted to an area?' The scooters on the other hand have had a bunch of negative complaints.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In the spirit of dumping potentially dangerous clutter on the streets and leaving it up to the cities to pay for the cleanup, I'm now taking seed money for my "handgun as a service" business.

I'm going to blanket key areas with handguns that you can unlock with an GPS- enabled app. Once you're done using them ($1 per minute and $20 per-bullet, with "surge" pricing in active-shooter situations), just leave them anywhere in the city for the next user/child to stumble across.

Anyone want to fund me?

<comment><USER8> > In the spirit of dumping potentially dangerous clutter on the streets and > leaving it up to the cities to pay for the cleanup ...

In the same spirit, I was thinking of starting a car rental service. :)

<comment><USER7> >In the same spirit, I was thinking of starting a car rental service. :)

Good! Car rental services pay taxes for each vehicle they sell and an (implied) per-mile tax from gas taxes. They are also banned from sidewalks.

<comment><USER9> Bikes and scooters are banned from sidewalks in a lot of places too, but it doesn't seem to take.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> After 160 hours spent operating as a "charger" in SF, for both Bird and Lime, this space is interesting. Here's my "back of the napkin math":

$300 - vehicle cost (based on alibaba Xiaomi m365 estimates)

$8 - average fare (unknown)

3 - rides per day (based on 90k rides in the first 30 days)

$12 - daily cost of charging per vehicle

1% - daily fleet loss (might be closer to 2%)

1% - daily maintenance required (might be closer to 2%)

After 100 days: 0 vehicles remaining

Current return on capital: -8%

Dynamic areas of the unit economics:

\- Increase number of fares per vehicle (increased battery life)

\- Increased average fare (increase pricing)

\- Decrease vehicle charging cost (current rate could be cut by about 65% to maintain competitive hourly compensation for type of work)

\- Decrease loss rate by implementing some sort of lock- tethering system

<comment><USER11> I don't know about the accuracy of your numbers, but the fleet loss at least is wrong.

1% daily fleet loss would leave 36 - 37 vehicles remaining after 100 days.

<comment><USER12> Day 1->99% Day 2->98% Day 3->97% Day 100->0%

<comment><USER13> That's not how it works. (1-1%)^100=37%

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Lime just dumped 140 scooters in Santa Barbara and they immediately got impounded. The city is going to charge them a $100 fine for each scooter. I'm assuming that's a drop in the bucket compared to their revenue and the cost of working out adoption specifics with local government.

<comment><USER15> Could have avoided that by just asking for permission first.

<comment><USER16> Sometimes it's easier to ask for forgiveness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Let's see if Softbank chooses a winner in the scooter market - I wouldn't be surprised if they came in with a ~$500M investment in Bird or one of its competitors.

<comment><USER18> or both.

<comment><USER17> I'm no expert, but - from what I've read - Softbank comes in and offers the dominant player a huge amount of money for a bigger chunk of equity than you were expecting to give up. It scares away all of the other investors, who withdraw their offers and leave Softbank as the only offer. If you turn down Softbank, they go to your biggest competitor and make basically the same offer. That amount of cash doesn't guarantee a winner, but it gives one company room for a lot more mistakes, and no other VC will back other players with the same amount of cash.

So, back to your comment - "or both" \- my interpretation is that Softbank wants to create an uneven playing field. Whereas, at the seed level, it's ok to spray and pray because expected returns are so much greater.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Dean Kamen must be sitting out on his private island asking himself "WTF???".

<comment><USER20> Wow, the Segway Minilite is only $300. [https://www.amazon.com/Segway- miniLITE-Balancing-Transporter...](https://www.amazon.com/Segway-miniLITE- Balancing-Transporter- Integrated/dp/B074CYX5PT/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1513714136&sr=8-3&keywords=segway+miniLITE)

Fill the sidewalks with these and you could have your own startup!

<comment><USER21> doh, i'm over the max payload.

<comment><USER22> 220lbs is a surprisingly low payload... Depending on height it's not at all difficult for even a healthy person to be that weight, let alone someone that lifts or is a bit chubby.

I wonder what kind of wiggle room there is?

<comment><USER23> Hmm, I don't know a lot of healthy people who weight over 220 lbs.

<comment><USER24> I have plenty of athletic friends who are at least 6 feet tall and weigh more than 220.

<comment><USER25> As one person I worked with in the health area BMI isn't that helpful when it comes to large guys 6 2 and up who do sports - the example they gave was the props in a premiership rugby team.

<comment><USER26> Yeah, BMI is not always relevant if you ignore the body fat percentage.

<comment><USER27> I'm 6ft, Have a 32" waist and a BMI of 26.5 (making me 'overweight').

BMI is terrible except as a very quick "You really shouldn't be 35 on the BMI scale" sanity check.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I don't get it. If scooters are so great, then why doesn't everyone just buy their own? Seem much simpler than checking them in and out of special built bike racks.

<comment><USER29> This is really bad logic. This is the same thing as saying, "If cars are really that great, then why doesn't everyone buy their own? Seems much simpler than using Lyft"

<comment><USER30> Almost everyone does, though.

<comment><USER7> >Almost everyone does, though.

Not in London (or, indeed, much of the UK). Not in Manhattan. Not any city where parking can take 20 minutes to find and costs $30+ a day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> There's almost no clearer indication that the speed of business is quickening at an amazing pace. In the scooter world, the land grab is on, and everyone is looking at ride sharing as the obvious analog, which means raise a lot of money, expand to new cities, and earn market share... quickly.

Whether a couple (or all) of these companies flame out remains to be seen, and is probably likely. But there's also likely to be a winner in this category. And the winner is likely to be worth a lot of money. These companies likely don't "deserve" their valuations based on current metrics like revenue, but the market potential is huge, the growth is high, and the capital requirements are large... so investors seem more than willing to make bets.

<comment><USER32> This sounds exactly like the ridesharing model. Drown the market in money, kill off your competitors by undercutting on price, then jack up prices to make a business.

The problem, like ridesharing, is once you start raising prices, you just lost all of your customers to a new competitor that hasn't spent all of their money.

I don't see how this model can possibly work. The barrier to switching is almost 0 to the user - you can already see that by looking at the Uber & Lyft tags on every car you get in. Installing another app isn't as hard as swapping insurance providers or mobile platforms.

<comment><USER33> >then jack up prices to make a business

Of course this hasn't happened in the rideshare market yet - it's cheaper than ever before. I've found Uber Express prices to be almost unbelievably cheap recently.

Seems like there's at least some non-zero chance that these prices remain low until autonomous vehicles make them permanent and sustainable.

<comment><USER34> UberX prices have done nothing but increase in San Francisco for years. The minimum fare went from $5 to $7, the service fee from $1.35 to $2.20, etc.

<comment><USER35> > UberX prices have done nothing but increase in San Francisco for years

So, like everything else in SF then.

<comment><USER22> ....yes

Also in the world...

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Loved BIRD when they first started here in San Jose but now they're painfully slow (~12mph) while Lime has managed to keep top speed around 20mph.

BIRD has an edge in terms of availability but I find myself taking one to find a Lime.

<comment><USER37> I played around with the scooters in San Jose during WWDC last week, and I have to say that I preferred the Bird ones. While the Lime ones did have a faster top speed, they were also slower to accelerate. When driving on the sidewalks there's a lot of slowing down, so getting back up to speed quickly is more important in my opinion. Plus ~12mph is fast enough IMO, it feels dangerous to go much faster than that.

<comment><USER38> Why are you driving on the sidewalks? Please stop doing that!

<comment><USER37> With a top speed of ~12mph, the scooters are way too slow for the road. It's much safer on the sidewalks. The sidewalks in downtown San Jose are also quite wide, so there's plenty of room for pedestrians and scooters to share.

<comment><USER38> I'm going about that my speed on my bicycle, much of the time. "Too slow for the road" has a meaning on the interstate highway. Someone who says that about city streets needs to go back to driver's ed. It's fine that the speed limit is 35mph. If you can drive that and safely pass slower traffic, do so. If you can't, slow down!

<comment><USER39> Perhaps the argument amounts to "driving a scooter on the road makes me feel unsafe, and I'd rather make others (pedestrians) unsafe to make myself feel safer." Seems typically selfish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> They hit a big setback here in Nashville. People are leaving these things all over the place. The city is looking to regulate these types of devices. Please, Bird, don't pull another Uber. This is not an existing market to be disrupted. Work with the municipalities to get a working framework in place so we will all be better off.

<comment><USER41> As far as I can tell, it is exactly the Uber "I do what I want and fuck you" model. It's really disheartening to see startups still cargo culting that.

I honestly didn't have a big issue with powered scooters until they turned into VC-funded litter all over my city. They were clearly in the category of "experimental vehicle", like e-bikes, the tourist GoCar things, Segways, and whatever those one-wheeled feet-wrapping things are called. They were small in number, their users were responsible participants in traffic, and it was interesting to see where they went to. And I'm a big fan of the Go Bike bike sharing program, which worked closely with the city to integrate well into the urban environment.

But suddenly, a few different startups seemed to believe that they could turn the sidewalks into their place of business, turning a lot of untrained goofs loose with a powered vehicle. Even if I were chill about the probably-illegal taking of public space for private profit (and I'm not), the sudden rise in dangerous idiots on the streets is a big deal for me.

Now my general feeling with these clowns is "Oh, fuck me? No, _fuck you_." I'm generally very pro-entrepreneur, but if my city bans these clowns, I will shed no tears. Let them serve as a warning to future overly entitled entrepreneurs.

<comment><USER42> I think absolutely the opposite: this is a hugely positive disruption in North American cities. Car-centric urban design is such a disastrous problem in so many ways: land use, pollution, cost and so on, that we need massive and immediate disruption that's not going to happen from government fast enough.

The amount of land used and traffic problems caused by these scooters is _nothing_ compared to how much public space is dedicated to moving and storing cars for personal use and is a actually a massive improvement. Additionally, if you've seen their actual use patterns in cities like Washington D.C., because of their dock-less nature and ease-of-payment they are being used by lower-income populations that don't use bike share or other similarly centrally planned options.

Scooters are hugely benign civil disobedience that are helping with what is probably the biggest problems in the world: pollution from personal transportation, whether carbon or localized exhaust. I am cheering them on completely and hope to see more similar disruptions that help the world and make investors rich.

<comment><USER41> Car-centric urban design certainly needs a change. I haven't owned a car in 20 years, and would love to see improvement. But I don't think you can have "massive and immediate disruption" to urban design. It's literally set in concrete. And as I said, I'm all for people trying out scooters.

That scooter-spam startups are a smaller problem compared to cars does not make the problems not exist. It especially does not remove the problem of entrepreneurs shifting negative externalities of their business models on to anybody who doesn't protest loudly enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> NA cities have never built high quality separated bike lane infrastructure to make it all that safe to ride a bike or scooter on the road.

What happens when someone riding one of these gets killed by a driver?

<comment><USER44> Bikes are in a no-mans land because of speed differences -- they're too slow to go on the road, and too fast to safely mix with pedestrians on sidewalks.

I personally prefer dockless bikes over scooters, but I will admit that scooters are safer because of their lower top speed. This makes it reasonable to mix scooters with pedestrian traffic provided that the sidewalk is wide enough.

The key to making bike/scooter-sharing work is to make the infrastructure cheap, incremental, and easy. Google ran into the same problems with GBikes blocking ADA ramps and front doors that cities are seeing with scooters. One big thing that helped was converting a few parking spaces into bike parking (literally just green paint and a few signs), and putting friendly "don't block ADA parking or ramps" signs up.

If you want to prevent "deaths from drivers", the highest impact thing would be to work on self-driving cars (join the great engineers at Waymo, Cruise, or even Uber).

<comment><USER45> > This makes it reasonable to mix scooters with pedestrian traffic provided > that the sidewalk is wide enough.

Respectfully, please no no no no no. People were riding scooters on the sidewalk all over San Francisco and it definitely did not feel safe to be a pedestrian. In my opinion (no data, just individual experience), no city that I've ever visited has typical sidewalks that are wide enough to mix walking traffic with ~10mph, not very maneuverable, wheeled vehicles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> At what point is a scooter considered abandoned property? What's preventing me from just taking the scooter off the street and hoarding them?

<comment><USER47> Do you just take cars that haven't been driven in a week? Why would a scooter be any different?

<comment><USER5> Mostly because a car is too heavy :p

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> With these startups it seems the only barrier to entry is money. Who ever can raise more can buy more scooters.

Risky however if cities ban them and/or roll out their own.

<comment><USER30> That would be myopic - scooters are more city friendly - almost zero pollution and waste less energy. Instead they should expand the bike lanes everywhere. One serious advantage of scooters over bikes is that you don't arrive full of sweat at your destination.

<comment><USER48> If you're adding a motor to the scooter, you may as well add one to the bicycle and have better handling and a higher speed.

<comment><USER49> That's effectively what Jump Bikes are. I took one last week in SF and they go about 30 miles an hour with very little effort. They aren't fully electric though, just electric assist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> What's the moat for a company like this? Seems like nearly no network effect.

<comment><USER51> Possible moats:

1\. the cost of having and maintaining a fleet of scooters 2\. the network of flexible staff charging scooters 3\. proprietary battery packs 4\. the network of flexible staff moving the scooters to better locations 5\. exclusive access to a scooter with a performance profile that the rest of the market cannot match (think tesla). x. contractual moat

1) will not stop startups with access to funding from entering the market. Providing service will require a fleet of these lite EVs and as the economics becomes obvious, the companies will merge (so they share overhead costs) until there are only one or two fleets.

2) Is very short term, because eventually the companies will figure out that they can get their users to charge the scooters themselves - by literally bringing their own battery pack (it's pretty portable - <USER2> [https://electricscooterparts.com/batteries.html](https://electricscooterparts.com/batteries.html)) to the scooter and plugging their battery in. The scooters will validate the powersource to ensure it's safe and that will be the end of the "paying random people to charge scooters" business.

3) They can't even charge for proprietary battery packs and use that sunk cost as a moat, because with VC money, competitors will just give away their own proprietary battery packs. Maybe the switching cost will be the time it takes to receive your free battery pack in the mail, but you'd just order a free one from each competitor in your area, so this is an insignificant moat.

4) Is also relatively short term: They will also eventually tell users where they are allowed to leave the scooters, and charge people who don't comply. They may frame it as a discount, but.... In the end the hard work will be outsourced to customers, which means there will really not be lock in. Any leftover work will eventually be done by professionals, or maybe by a smaller network of people moving scooters, if they are cheaper.

5) This is the best moat, but it's similar to the moat iphone used to have. They will need patents and to basically be on the forefront of the industry, forever. Boosted Boards is likely to wind up occupying this position, though they are likely to not directly operate their scooter rental product, but instead sell the scooters in an exclusive agreement to a particular company that turns around and wins the market with lower costs and higher reliability. Boosted would use their monopoly position to extract as much profit from that partner as is possible while allowing the partner to still be cheaper than getting and maintaining other scooters. Eventually their partner will try to clone their product and get it cheaper elsewhere, unless Boosted's patent game is very strong.

x) I think there's another possible moat. A particular service provider may be able to force users to agree that they only use their own boards in order to have access to lower marginal cost. Users may get a discount for not having the competitor's app on their phone. Alternatively, a provider might allow users to buy like $500 credit up front for a significant discount to achieve similar impact.

<comment><USER52> Scooters have actually been getting slower, not faster. Bird has been replacing 15mph models with 12mph in Santa Monica. These are no doubt cheaper, but also elicit less complaints from pedestrians and helps please the city council - who already hates them and is ordering them to remove 2/3 of their scooters.

As for battery packs. There is no way that will happen. Riding a short term over-priced rental scooter instead of walking or taking a bus or owning a cheap crappy bike is a luxury. The only people you could convince to charge the scooters for you carrying around battery packs is poor people and they aren't the target market. People here say they are into "Birding" meaning they go around bars on birds at night socializing. That's the sort of customer they have. They aren't going to carry battery packs around for the company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> There has been sudden glut of articles about scooter startups here on HN and elsewhere. And I am scratching my head trying to understand what exactly is the end game plan here? If self driving cars and Uber etc succeed then all commuting will be through cars, how will these scooters fit in that picture?

<comment><USER54> Lots of folks think self-driving cars are just replacing one problem with another. (A car, after all, is a really a moving room; but we don't want to move rooms, we want to move people.)

[http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/05/technology/bikes-disrupt- car...](http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/05/technology/bikes-disrupt- cars/index.html)

<comment><USER55> Although electric scooters aren't a great replacement for self-driving cars in a lot of places that aren't California.

<comment><USER5> You can bike in london and seattle too. Even in snowy canada.

<comment><USER55> Bikes have bigger wheels than scooters.. Try an electric scooter in a few inches of slush ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> As a frequent Uber user who just purchased an ebike, I don't think I would have been interested in a service like this.

E-bikes/scooters are no where near as expensive as a car. No insurance or gas payment and the maintenance cost is nothing like that of a car.

E-bikes/scooters also don't require a specialized parking space.

E-bikes/scooters can be charged from home.

These are some of the reasons why owning an E-bike/scooter is much easier than owning a car and therefore fewer people will be interested in a pay-per-use service.

</comment><comment><USER57> I wonder how much they are buying those scooters from Xiaomi.

<comment><USER58> me too. On ebay, a m365 costs about $500 and takes a month to arrive.

<comment><USER59> Only because the vc money is buying all this Chinese scrap metal! Price in bulk via PO is $225.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Two issues worth mentioning IMO:

\- daily loss rate could escalate as thieves get better & friends join in.

\- personal injury - you're encouraging people to ride scooter without a helmet.

</comment><comment><USER61> That's an insanely fast rise in valuation.

</comment><comment><USER62> How does one actually invest into these startups? Are there requirements? It doesn't look like google is much help here.

<comment><USER63> By being a partner at an established venture capital firm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> From the article:

> This would be just weeks after it raised $150 million at a $1 billion > valuation, and only three months after raising at a $300 million valuation. > Venture capitalists have never before participated in such a rapid and > rocketing price spike.

</comment><comment><USER65> Undervalued 100%

<comment><USER61> what makes you say that?</comment></comment>


Watching Solidity events using web3.js - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@theMadKing/watching-solidity-events-the-right-way-d3d0a30bdc4d <comment><AUTHOR> For newbie Ethereum developers. Capturing events being emitted from smart contracts serves as a core technique for majority of DApp use cases. Unless you can observe and act upon signals from outside, most applications aren't possible. This article is therefore a short guide on how to capture contract events without the hassle of searching for through the docs.</comment>


The Daredevil of Niagara Falls (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-daredevil-of-niagara-falls-110492884/ <comment><USER2> There's quite a few folks who deserve the title "daredevil of niagra falls."

[https://www.niagarafallslive.com/daredevils_of_niagara_falls...](https://www.niagarafallslive.com/daredevils_of_niagara_falls.htm)

Curiously, Blondin went before everybody mentioned in that link; and OP doesn't mention the others.

</comment><comment><USER3> A good opportunity is here to rep my favourite band, with a relevant song: Daredevil, by the Tragically Hip.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9K1EnQeAviU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9K1EnQeAviU)</comment>


Ripley: Project management tool for G Suite - steph-newton https://ripleyhq.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> I know your app gives some assurances, but I really can't agree to these permissions:

This will allow Ripley to:

See, edit, create, and delete all of your Google Drive files

See and download your contacts

See, edit, share, and permanently delete all the calendars you can access using Google Calendar

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I understand this is a lot to ask, unfortunately the way Google auth scopes work this is the minimum we can ask for.

Ripley helps manage permissions on your docs so G Drive edit is needed.

Ripley suggestions contacts you may want to add to your boards so contacts is needed.

Ripley posts events to your calendar for tasks in Ripley so calendar edits is needed.

I wish we had more granular ways to request only the exact permissions we needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think that any tech business or any business in general should AVOID completely put their "nervous system" (IT) on someone else computer, especially someone else that have deep automated analysis capabilities and big financial power.

I know that in actual IT status that's the simplest way for many, I know it may also pay off well in the short term and perhaps in the mid term also. But in the long run is a really awful idea.

Personally I have my workflow around org-mode and Emacs, I build it in spare time a feature upon another and it's far superior, simple, lighter, effective etc than any other system I found precooked by some web/modern business-like software.

When I ditch GMail for a personal mail, forget webmails entirely I discover a far superior world, when I ditch modern classic personal accounting software for ledger I again discover a far superior experience. It take time, of course, but it take time when you have it and what you learn pay of for life.

</comment><comment><USER2> Hi HN!

I'm Ed, one of the creators of Ripley.

These days organizations on G Suite create thousands of documents every month. Team members have to keep track of all these documents, tasks and changes. It is too easy to let an email about a task or a key change in language slip through the cracks.

That's why we thought, wouldn't it be great if you didn't have to keep track of that yourself, the same way you can keep track of tasks and key information on Trello or Asana, but without having to constantly copy and paste between G Suite and your tool?

After 1 year of hard work and 3 months of beta testing, we are ready to introduce Ripley: The #1 project management tool for G Suite. What Ripley does, is let you pull in files and folders into your team's Ripley workspaces within Google Drive. Ripley will look for changes to the files or tasks assigned to team members and bring them into the workspace.

Please let me know your thougts.

<comment><USER4> Just a small thing, and totally just my own thoughts here that very well may not align with others, but the "email sign up" type part of your site.... I felt the message "no thanks I'm an introvert" & "go away" came off as passive aggressive rather than fun & playful which I assume you were aiming for.

<comment><USER5> They should add another button to indicate sensitivity to such passive aggressive buttons. It should redirect to disney.com.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Seems cool but this is the exact type of product from Google I would worry about getting sunset. Maybe it's the first product announcement that I would actually not demo because of the constant droning about shuttered systems in use by millions of people. There might be an sla or lifecycle disclosure that is different from my perception but you know what they say about perception!?

Concerns aside I like the idea of building this on top of the document management system/repository. I often feel like task mgmt and pm tools do a poor job of managing documents and files at scale. A good example of this is Basecamp. It's a great tool for simple small projects but when it comes to multi stakeholder teams and long running projects the file mgmt side suffered.

Good job on the product. I hope Google can fix the perception problem.

<comment><USER2> Hi social-quotient, I understand your feeling, I've been spending the last month moving back to Gmail after hearing Inbox will be sunset. This will not happen to Ripley.

And thank you for identifying the problem between purely pm software and then purely storage software. Once you hit a real scale it can quickly become unmanageable.

We originally developed Ripley to help us manage all the spec documents our clients were sending us and then changing regularly. At one or two it was manageable, yet to check each doc for changes or to rely on clients sending us messages or comments became unworkable very quickly.

Ripley manages that by understanding the underlying doc is not just a URL. It's a google drive file with a rich API Ripley can interact with.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What threats are present with SELinux, AES, etc? - <AUTHOR> Forgive the general lack of knowledge about security and cryptography. I had previously operated under the assumption that NSA developed systems for security were pretty sound for business use. Is there any evidence of backdoors or other existential threats to security by using these systems? <comment><USER2> The NSA may have developed SELinux... but it's in the mainstream Linux kernel.

This means:

1) It has had review by members outside of the NSA before inclusion into the kernel.

2) The source is available for anyone to view.

3) You can audit the source right now! :)

Because of this, one can reason that there is very low probability for a "NSA backdoor". Having said that, you can audit the source to make sure.

The same can be said for certain implementations of AES such as that found in OpenSSL. I can't vouch for the specific algorithms involved being secure however, so I'll leave that to someone specialized in cryptology :)

SELinux is only as secure as the access policies in place on your system and only certain distributions (like Fedora) actually distribute SELinux policies.</comment>


Linus on Witcher 2 Bug: "Sorry we broke this, will be fixed" - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/KillaW0lf04/The-Witcher-2-Issues/issues/89#issuecomment-70857835

<comment><USER2> Was expecting.

"Don't write crap code!"</comment>


Review my startup: ironlogin.com - <AUTHOR>

Site: http://www.ironlogin.com
Hey folks,
I've just released IronLogin Lite. It's a free introductory product that replaces browser password popups with skinable in-page login dialogs.  Once the user is logged in each page contains a skinable bar at the top with a custom message, the user's name and a logout link.
The Lite version is free and the Pro version which is in development will be for sale.  The Lite version works for 1 site with 1 password file (same format as the htpasswd file).  Pro will work for multiple sites via a single admin with its own custom database, your database, LDAP, AD, or Radius backend and allow you to specify fine grained access control by url, mimetype, extension, etc.
The main use case for IronLogin is to secure existing applications that don't offer the access control that you need and to provide a single signon interface for multiple apps in an Intranet.
Let me know what you think.  Thanks. <comment><USER2> The first thing that came to mind is that it's waaaaay too wordy for the front page of a product you're trying to sell.

"Automatically adds authentication bar with username and logout link to all protected html pages"

Could be changed to:

"Adds login bar to all of your website's pages"

(It's implied that since this is helping me do something, it'd better be doing this automatically.)

The three lines about API, SOAP & REST could be summarized in one line:

"Multiple interfaces & authentication methods (API, SOAP, REST)"

etc.

Plus, I'm not sure whether you want to announce stuff still in development, cf. Osbourne Effect: <http://is.gd/2Q0x9> .

I'd remove the "Lite", call that your base version, and when you're ready, announce the Pro EnterPrise Solution Version ;)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here is the url since I forgot the main text doesn't link:

<http://www.ironlogin.com/></comment>


Picnicmob brings like-minded people together at public parks - <AUTHOR> http://www.picnicmob.org/

<comment><USER2> I really like the idea, although the number of questions is possibly too long. I think the sweet spot is probably around 20 questions. _shrug_

</comment><comment><USER3> I think you could use a self-organizing map (SOM), too.

Frikkin' awesome idea, anyway. We're at the /beginning/ of what we can do when information and its processing is ubiquitous.

</comment><comment><USER4> I rolled my eyes when I saw there were 30 questions, but I actually found them interesting and engaging (helped by the cool graphic design.) That being said, I'd prefer if there were an option to just answer 20 questions and then import my Facebook profile to answer the rest.

</comment><comment><USER5> Too many questions, and why on earth do your users care that you use SIMULATED ANNEALING? I've actually used SIMULATED ANNEALING (for graph layout) and I don't even care.

<comment><USER5> Again amusing that people disagree, and think that a questionairre which allows for "WhatSpace? WhoBook?" should advertise algorithm selection on a splash page.</comment></comment>


LeftoverSwap: Airbnb for Leftovers - <AUTHOR> http://leftoverswap.com/ <comment><USER2> funny-ish. I mean - this is clearly not real - I guess it's a snarky response to the criticism that "some of this generations best minds" are being wasted on creating apps to share pictures of our food with each other.</comment>


The Engineer and the Artist - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mathgladiator.com/2011/05/engineer-and-artist.html

<comment><USER2> Fwiw, I'm a programmer and not attracted to artists. I think art is fine if you want to do it, but it can be hard to make a living that way. I also don't think going to college for art is a great idea, because that major doesn't help you pay back the loans. Now if you can go for free that's another story

Also, programming can often be art. Think of Quine programs.</comment>