Jason Calacanis: "Blogging Is Dead" & Why "Stupid People Shouldn't Write" - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/jason_calcanis_blogging_is_dead_why_stupid_people.php <comment><USER2> Jason Calacanis runs a search spam generator (Mahalo.com) that pushes over- SEO'd content ranging in quality from mediocre to bad. (...something he has denied and outright lied about in public - <http://www.seobook.com/black-hat- seo-case-study>)

His opinion on web content, and web content quality, carries little to no water with me. This is like Uwe Boll saying that movie making is dead and stupid people should stop making movies.

</comment><comment><USER3> Come on, let's be serious here for a moment.

<http://www.mahalo.com/immanuel-kant/> . Half of the page is full with stupid Google AddWords (no, I don't want to purchase a credit when I'm reading about Kant, you stupid Google). The other half is filled with trivia (I don't care how many miles he walked per day), and the last 5% is passable information probably copied from wikipedia.

The reason I went to that page is that I'm finally trying to read Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason", and me being the stupid that I am of course that I don't understand anything in it. This is why when someone mentioned that they're "experts" and that they know what they're writing I tried to take advantage and become a less stupid person. I failed.

<comment><USER4> > Half of the page is full with stupid Google AddWords

Not trying to justify Mahalo actions here, but what you just mentioned is a big failure on Google's side. When you add an adsense unit to a web page is with the goal of displaying "contextually related" ads. This is what Google promotes, but it doesn't deliver in most cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This seems to smack of shameless self promotion by Calacanis. He tries to discredit other sources of information and try to promote his website (mahalo.com). But any blog etc.. to get any readership you have to have some kind of draw or gimmick to get readership (or even actual content)

<comment><USER6> 'Shameless self-promotion' is both (a) what Mr. Calacanis _does_ and (b) an essential skill for entrepreneurs in general. So I'm actually not willing to ding him for that - he is doing something very normal in two senses.

<comment><USER7> when "shameless self promotion" leads many smart people to think you're a dick then that's not an essential skill for entrepreneurs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Expertise" is relative, of course, depending on how much value someone might extract from it versus the value they might extract from other sources ostensibly covering the same topic. It also depends on context.

And I'd argue that static content by experts isn't going to be sufficient in the world we're headed to. Eventually, nearly all the knowledge in every known domain will be accessible to almost anyone. In such a world, the expert's value is only partially based on the quality or depth of his knowledge; it's rooted more deeply in his ability to synthesize the existing knowledge rapidly and innovatively, or to generate new knowledge. (Having a massive library is almost less important than knowing which shelf holds the book you're looking for at any given time, and in this sense, domain/subject expertise will still be highly valuable). Domain experts won't disappear, because acquiring mastery of a subject involves countless hours of practice or study. But as far as the consumer web is concerned, "expertise" is going to become a fuzzy and highly relative target.

If anything, I think the future of blogging (if not publishing altogether) will shift intellectual capital away from "experts" and toward innovators and creators: people who aren't just treasure troves of knowledge, but who can apply that knowledge in fascinating and creative ways.

Perhaps I'm quibbling over the semantics of the word "expert." But it's a word we should quibble over, because it's been a buzzword for quite some time now, and no two people seem to agree on what it means to them. That, in and of itself, is very interesting.

<comment><USER9> _In such a world, the expert's value is only partially based on the quality or depth of his knowledge_

That's not even remotely likely, and I think that's easy to prove. Go to any bookstore and pick up a graduate level text on biology, or maths, or whatever. You have all the knowledge right there in your hands! Now read a page, do you understand it, can you apply it? Probably not. There is a lot more to most fields than just an "API reference".

<comment><USER8> With all due respect, I think you plucked one of my lines out of a healthy bit of surrounding context -- much of which is in total agreement with you here. I never said that domain expertise was going to be replaced or made obsolete simply by having the raw information available to anyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think he's just running with a very narrow definition of 'blogging'.

Blogging is WordPress, Blogspot, Tumblr, LiveJournal, Twitter, Facebook and any other number of mediums that lists posts of any length in reevrse chronological order, be it for profit, fun, to educate or raise awareness.

Just because it's not all techies cranking out 10 paragraph quality posts anymore doesn't mean it's dead. It's evolved.

</comment><comment><USER11> _"There needs to be a better system for tuning down the stupid people and tuning up the smart people."_

It's amusing that he used this image while criticizing other people's writing and intelligence. Does he mean that stupid people are sharp and smart people are flat? Or does he mean that smart people need some adjustments before they can perform at their best? I know what he was searching for, but if you're going to be a snob about writing, you'd better come prepared to express yourself gracefully.

</comment><comment><USER12> Jason's point is valid no matter your opinion of Mahalo. Reputation may soon be the most important determinant of the value of content, as opposed to social indicators and in tandem with interest- or location-based relevance. We already do this manually today. When I access Google News, I choose specific news sources over others based on my understanding of their reputation for accuracy and thoroughness.

</comment><comment><USER13> Writing is a useful skill.. Stupid people who write may become less stupid., although having read the comments on such sites as Huffington post, I dont hold a great deal of hope. But I say let them write. However, I would like to see an IQ setting on my browser, so I could filter out any post with an apparent IQ of less than, say, 130.

</comment><comment><USER14> So only "elite" people should write then? Sometimes I wonder if there's something truly wrong with Calcanis.

</comment><comment> saint-loup Any headline including "X is dead" is even more likely to be wrong than one ending with an exclamation mark.

</comment><comment><USER15> typical link bait...bait the bloggers, so they write a scathing response...in the process linking to Calcanis and Mahalo.

</comment><comment><USER16> Calacanis is a stupid person, so he shouldn't write.</comment>


San Francisco Rail System Hacker Hacked - <AUTHOR> https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/11/san-francisco-rail-system-hacker-hacked/ <comment><USER2> This guy's OpSec was pretty bad. I'm not entirely surprised, but I am surprised it took this long for it to bite him.</comment>


Ask HN: Plausibility of an idea to limit the spread of Covid-19 - <AUTHOR> The challenge of the current COVID-19 pandemic is well-known.
Could a voluntary user-tracking app help reduce the R0 level of the COVID-19 virus?
One of the main challenges with this virus is that carriers of the virus become infectious well before they show symptoms. Consequently, they pass on the infection before they can be isolated.
Apps such as Google Maps already track users' movements to a high level of precision. A similar app could be created that tracked users' movements and notified people they had interacted with if they got infected.
It would work like this:

  - Users' movements are tracked

  - Upon developing a fever (etc.) the user notifies the app

  - The app checks their movements during the estimated period they could have been infectious

  - Every other user who was in their presence for X minutes gets notified and requested to isolate themselves

  - Recursively check those users' movements to see if they may have passed on the virus
 Disadvantages I can think of off the top of my head:

  - Requires simultaneous voluntary use by a large proportion of a regional population

  - Possibility of false positives by bad actors (would an occasional false positive be so bad)?

  - Requires some minimal altruism by the user (they won't be helped directly)
 <comment><USER2> Bob flies from Ireland to Cheltenham in the UK to visit the Cheltenham Gold Cup. While there he mixes with about 60,000 other visitors to the races, along with the 100,000 or so residents of Cheltenham.

Who gets traced?

[https://twitter.com/carolvorders/status/1237653282761383937?...](https://twitter.com/carolvorders/status/1237653282761383937?s=20)

<comment><AUTHOR> I think those gatherings are a thing of the past in most countries.

But in practice I don't think you'd have that many notifications (there's not that many people you'd stand next to for, say, 5 minutes within 1 metre) and they could all be true positives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I know of a couple who bought a clock radio connected to the emergency weather system. When a notice went out, the radio would turn on so you could hear it. They thought it would be useful, as they lived in in a tornado area, and would like a warning if they were asleep.

Problem is, it wasn't that localized. It would wake them for alerts that were 100 miles away, and which didn't affect them.

They stopped using the alarm.

In general, people won't use a service like what you describe unless it's really actionable. And I don't think this system has a high false positive rate (and high false negative rate) so there isn't good actionable information beyond what general precautions (social distancing, good hand hygiene, etc.) offer.

\- What percentage of people get fevers from other reasons? That is, even without bad actors, people are going to report fevers, and those might overwhelm the actual positives.

\- How close does your infection model (X minutes within distance Y) match the actual infection mechanism and rate? I suspect it isn't that good, and will include many people who aren't infected.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the thoughts on this.

> What percentage of people get fevers from other reasons?

Interesting. Other infectious diseases (flu/colds) seem to be going down in countries with lockdowns so this may not be such a big issue.

> \- How close does your infection model (X minutes within distance Y) match > the actual infection mechanism and rate? I suspect it isn't that good, and > will include many people who aren't infected.

I pitched this idea to a leading epidemiologist and he thought the mechanism would work.

<comment><USER3> [https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm) says (of the current US flu season): "CDC estimates that so far this season there have been at least 36 million flu illnesses, 370,000 hospitalizations and 22,000 deaths from flu."

If 50% of the 36 million flu illnesses had a fever, and the flu season is 23 weeks long (the records start in 201940), and the flu lasts for one week, then that's over 750,000 people each week with a fever, on average.

That number far outweighs the current numbers for people with COVID-19 symptoms, so gives a large false-negative signal _in the current situation_.

As the number of cases increase, the signal-to-noise ratio changes. But at some point, specialized per-person notification is no better than general advice to the entire population.

You mention that the numbers for flu/colds "seem to be going down in countries with lockdowns."

FWIW, it's also going down in the US without lockdowns. That's because we are approaching the end of the flu season. See the CDC chart just under the text "In the most recent three weeks, influenza A viruses are the most commonly reported influenza viruses in all age groups." in my earlier link.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, interesting. It might be the case that the app would only be useful once the levels of infection increase, or perhaps the app would only instruct the user to send an alert when they had developed a fever + dry cough, which seems more typical of this virus.

> But at some point, specialized per-person notification is no better than > general advice to the entire population.

I take your point, but I think targetted "you have had a good chance of being exposed" is far more likely to result in action than "minimise contact with other people if possible".

A preprint of a paper which looks like has similar ideas but some more formal modelling: [https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.08.20032946v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.08.20032946v1)

<comment><USER3> I looked at that paper but it gave no indication of how the app was supposed to implement algorithmic contact tracing. I think it assume that that method would always be better than the current system? If so, there's no presented evidence that that's true.

I also can't figure out why you and are are downvoted for our low-key discussion in a days-old posting, so I've up-voted you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think they have an app like that in China, although I think people in western countries would probably not be that willing to use it, for privacy concerns, and it would probably also violate GDPR.

<comment><AUTHOR> Surely privacy concerns are secondary under the current outbreak? And would GDPR be so important if a user opted out?</comment></comment>


Directed Edge sees a post-search web where recommendations rule - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/06/yc-funded-directed-edge-sees-a-post-search-web-where-recommendations-rule/?awesm=tcrn.ch_3QZh&utm_campaign=techcrunch&utm_medium=tcrn.ch-twitter&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_content=twitter-publisher-main

<comment><USER2> "We can take data sets with millions and millions of data points and figure out what's related to a given item in a few milliseconds. Most recommendations engines pre-compute stuff rather than generating the recommendations in real- time like we do"

I've been looking into recommendation algorithms recently (started with the excellent book "Programming Collective Intelligence"), and this sounds lightyears ahead of the way we currently do things. I suppose you could take one of the algorithms that requires pre-computing and throw resources at it, but it seems like they are talking about something new.

Since I'm just getting started, I'd like to find some academic (or blog-faux- academic) articles on whatever recent advances behind recommendations without the need for precomputing. Anyone know where to look?

<comment><USER3> There is no magic. I don't know what Directed Edge are doing, but simpler Amazon-style recommendations (people who bought X also bought...) doesn't need to precompute anything if you choose your data structures properly: get a list of things people bought along with X, count them (or actually store them counted), optionally normalize for general popularity, sort in decreasing order, show top results.

I'd love to hear something from wheels though.

<comment><USER4> Amazon's algorithms are simpler than our own (at least as far as I can tell) and most recommendation engines use some sort of embedding to reduce the dimensionality of the problem.

Amazon's related products do in fact seem to be, or very near to, a simple counting structure. Our ranking algorithm builds a large subgraph around an item and then does a few passes with a couple different ranking schemes to try to figure out the hot items within that subgraph, prunes "noisy" connections (i.e. links that are "hot", but don't actually pack much semantic meaning) and then tries to scale things so that the results returned aren't simply those with the largest overlap, but those that are most relevant within that subgraph relative to the larger graph. In that sense, it has some similarities to web-search algorithms.

In user-visible terms, that means that our results are often less obvious than Amazon's recommendations -- for a long time we called that the "tell me something I don't know" problem. It's no good to do a search for "Miles Davis" and have "Jazz" com back as a related item. If you know about Miles Davis, you already know about Jazz.

<comment><USER5> Do you have any kind of results that demonstrate how accurate your recommendations are? I checked your site but couldn't find anything

<comment><USER4> You mean examples or metrics?

If you mean examples, you can see our algorithm applied to link structure analysis on the related pages here:

<http://pedia.directededge.com/>

If you mean metrics, the only one that I find really meaningful is a feedback loop to see what users are in fact interacting with, and we'll have something in place for that shortly. Synthetic metrics on recommendations quality don't really impress me because they ignore that recommendation algorithms are solving an human-computer interaction problem as much as they're solving a k-nearest-neighbors problem. I've got another article in the pipe on some of the interesting problems of ranking on real data, but it keeps getting pushed back since there's you know, a lot to do at the moment. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Directed Edge truly believes that we're about to see a shift on the web away from search and towards recommendations."

The difference is somewhat arbitrary when you think about it. When I Google, I'm asking it to recommend me stuff related to what I'm looking for. Google is nothing but the world's best recommendation engine.

There are about 1,000 sites that could use good recommendation technology to enhance their profits though, so I like this company's monetization chances. Easy elevator pitch too: recommendations as a service.

<comment><USER4> It's a continuum, as hinted below, but the results are pretty different in the polar cases. I'll fall back to my Miles Davis example.

Searching for "Miles Davis" returns 10 pages about Miles Davis. Hitting our engine with Wikipedia data for Miles Davis gives you John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, Canonball Aderly, and so on.

<http://www.directededge.com/?Miles%20Davis>

The search end of the spectrum is about finding something you're looking for -- recommendations are about discovering things you didn't know about.

The two meet in the middle with "personalized search". If I type "python" into a search engine, do I want snakes or code? You can probably figure that out based on what I've done in the past.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, and that's awesome, and I think will totally converge with the type of search we have today. Imagine you type "Miles Davis" in Bing (which I'm using because they'd be more likely to experiment with altering the dominant paradigm than Google) and they show you a column of pages on the left about Miles and the stuff you're showing on the right. That'd be bad ass.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wow, congrats to wheels & co for the TC hit and YC - I don't think anyone knew about that!

</comment><comment><USER8> Hacker News user "Wheels" is a founder - congrats on the write up.

Didn't realize you were YC funded

</comment><comment><USER9> Question:

Greg Linden, who worked on Amazon.com's recommendation engine, has referred to what he calls the "harry potter problem". To quote from his blog:

'...this calculation would seem to suffer from what we used to call the "Harry Potter problem", so-called because everyone who buys any book, even books like Applied Cryptography, probably also has bought Harry Potter. Not compensating for that issue almost certainly would reduce the effectiveness of the recommendations, especially since the recommendations from the two clustering methods likely also would have a tendency toward popular items.'

How did you compensate for this problem? Do you simply ignore vertices in the graph that have a large degree?

Or, are you using non-linear weighting functions, such as a perceptron's sigmoid function?

With regard to Wikipedia, almost everyone who has edited an article has also edited the article on Bill Clinton. So, if you are using the edit-history metadata to compute recommendations, you would have to compensate for the "Bill Clinton problem".

</comment><comment><USER10> I have been following the "reccomendation algos as a service" for about 2 years now. This definetely seems interesting but a side opportunity could be to do aggregator/optimizer of recco algos for merchant/publishers similar to what Rubicon Project/Pubmatic does on aggregating/optimizing ad networks.

The reccoAlgo aggregatot would take all the various recco algo services such as DirectedEdge, Aggregate Knowledge, Loomia, Minekey, Persai (now dead) and many others and keep running tests (similar to the netflix prize) and whatever is better is given more airtime on suggesting related products/pages for retailers/publishers. The compensation model would work on a percentage of revenue for additional clicks/purchases on the suggestions.

</comment><comment><USER11> "....we've gone from having a graph-store to having a proper graph database..."

A graph database and a "triple store" in semantic technologies are essentially the same thing. This company makes some very aggressive claims that allegrograph, Jena, Oracle (with Spatial), sesame and others (including the korean arm of my current company) have also made. Typically, such claims fail to live up to the marketing. I wonder how this solution compares to these traditional triple stores?

</comment><comment><USER12> Are there any objective measurement of the quality of recommendations across various recommendation systems?

<comment><USER3> There is more than one, depending on the problem and what exactly do you want to improve. For example RMSE is the measurement used for the Netflix Prize.

<comment><USER4> I really liked Greg's commentary on RMSE -- summed up my thoughts better than I could:

[http://glinden.blogspot.com/2009/03/what-is-good- recommendat...](http://glinden.blogspot.com/2009/03/what-is-good- recommendation-algorithm.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Also congrats for DirectedEdge for doing the animation without flash on the front page. Nice!

<comment><USER4> You can actually search in the little bar there for any wikipedia article to show related stuff, and as kind of a little easter egg, you can specify a starting page via the query string, e.g.

<http://www.directededge.com/?Y%20Combinator>

<comment><USER14> This little wikipedia search bar is hiding nodes from the graph most of the time. It bothers me a little.

<comment><USER4> We tried a few combinations -- and may try some yet. If it was further right it threw off the balance of the layout. If it was up at the top it drew too much attention to itself. We tried messing with the z-index on hover too, but that looked funky.

<comment><USER14> I thought it would be nice if the user could drag it around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> cool, have you thought about entering it in any online recommendation contests? ( like netflix or the github one )</comment>


Google Fiber Was Doomed from the Start - <AUTHOR> https://backchannel.com/google-fiber-was-doomed-from-the-start-a5cdfacdd7f2#.rhxzu4r91 <comment><USER2> _The only business model for fiber that will work to produce the competition, low prices, and world-class data transport we need — certainly in urban areas — is to get local governments involved in overseeing basic, street grid-like "dark" (passive, unlit with electronics) fiber available at a set, wholesale price to a zillion retail providers of access and services_

That's an interesting assertion, but not supported by any evidence that I can see. And OTOH, there is direct contradictory evidence suggesting that there _is_ another viable business model for building this kind of infrastructure: non-profit member-owned cooperatives. The same kind that provide telephone, cable and electric service all over the country[1].

Note that I'm not saying that cooperatives are a panacea, but their existence is evidence that other options are available. And before somebody screams "but aren't they all subsidized by the government", I would argue that if the kind long-term stable returns that the author of TFA speaks of are really available, then there's no reason to think that a coop couldn't get a loan (or equity investment) from private institutions.

My guess is that the biggest thing preventing this kind of thing from happening more often is exactly the amount of red-tape and government regulation involved.

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

<comment><USER3> >non-profit member-owned cooperatives

some might call that government

<comment><USER2> Maybe the differences are subtle, but there are differences. That said, I've long been a proponent of shifting more and more services from "the state" per- se to these kinds of cooperatives. But I'm a government hating libertarian, so...

<comment><USER3> once all your services are shifted to the cooperatives, the red tape of all the different cooperatives will annoy you and you will hate those =)

<comment><USER4> Then you just use Gubernetes(tm) to organize your micro governments and all your troubles go away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One trouble with fiber is that most people (who have cable) think the cable service they have is "good enough" in terms of performance, but they'd rather pay less for it. In fact, fiber is not that much better than cable, particularly when you factor in that TCP can't move a gigabit per second across the public internet anyway. And particularly when you consider that DOCSIS 3.1 is pretty fast and that cablelabs is working on filling in the gaps such as Full Duplex transmission.

In much of Telco land, however, the problem is that fiber already has competition in the way that your phone company sees it. In my area, a double play costs about $90 a month for 2 Mbps internet. Google Fiber costs less than that, maybe people in my area "should" pay a little more because it costs more to provide, but I can't see it going much past $110 a month (what cable internet would cost for 25x better performance if they ever build out in my valley.) It's not that a fiber service could not be profitable, but it is not a rational decision for a company that can make huge profits by doing nothing.

Another problem is that there is always some new technology that is going to "solve" the problem in the sweet by-in-by so that communities don't show the moral fibre to do the right thing. Google's Willy Wonka approach to fiber optics was one of the first of these, but next it is baloons, then it is WiMax, then it is drones, then it is 4G, then it is 5G, then it is large satellite constellations (if those get built, Elon Musk won't have to bother sending astronauts to the space stations and can head straight for Mars or the Moon because the space station gets shredded by space junk.)

<comment><USER2> _One trouble with fiber is that most people (who have cable) think the cable service they have is "good enough" in terms of performance_

So wait.. if the customer is satisfied with the service they're receiving (eg, it's "fast enough") then exactly what problem are we trying to solve? The article talks about an "urgent demand" for faster home Internet, but I'm honestly not seeing it. My cable service (from TWC) _is_ "fast enough" to the point that I don't even think about it. I have no idea what bandwidth I have, but I can't recall any time that I felt limited by it.

Would I take 1Gbps (or higher) home service? Sure, I guess. Do I _need_ it? I don't see any reason to say that I do.

Edit: To be fair, I don't live in a rural area. So yes, it is possible that people in rural areas face a more urgent need for higher bandwidth than I do. That said, I grew up in a rural area and when I go home to visit, my friends and family all seem pretty happy with the Internet service they have. So even some rural areas seem to be getting at least a respectable level of service.

<comment><USER6> You're supposed to want "fiber" because it's intrinsically better and shiny and faster. People who write these pieces always assume that we should want "fiber" regardless of what it costs to build, or whether there is demand for it, or how it will improve our lives. The private sector has not found "fiber" to be profitable, so for some reason government should do it because it's inherently good. It never occurs to these "fiber" proponents that maybe "fiber" is not profitable because it's not necessary.

America's wireless operators plow billions into capital investment, because there's market demand for it. That's the future. "Fiber" inspires geek fetishes because it's fast. Non-geeks on the other hand are using their phones to watch video and don't care about the alleged goodness of "fiber". After all, if they did care, FiOS would be expanding and Google would add more Fiber cities.

Government investment in FTTH is a twenty-first century boondoggle waiting to happen. It's nowhere near my list of beneficial things government could do if it wants to start plowing billions of dollars into capital investment.

<comment><USER7> There have been numerous studies done on the economic benefits to having broadly deployed, super fast wired Internet. The results are always the same: the economic benefits are dramatically underwhelming. It's true in Romania, Netherlands, Latvia and it's just as true in Kansas City [1]. Finland has had among the fastest Internet speeds for years - they've been stuck in a decade long near-depression economically and could hardly be further away from being in a tech boom from their high average access speeds. So where is the evidence to support the societal benefit of going from good speeds, to extremely high speeds? I've seen no evidence for it over the last decade anywhere on the planet.

 _For now_ , it turns out anything beyond ~50 to ~100mbps, is practically useless for consumers in delivering a big leap in productivity or quality of life. That has been the case for a decade (despite the propaganda in favor of spending a trillion dollars so everyone can have 1gbps tomorrow). South Korea for example has had among the fastest wired Internet speeds on the planet for a long time, it hasn't turned them into the next economic juggernaut in any regard (GDP per capita lower than Puerto Rico).

[1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-02-28/why- it-s-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-02-28/why-it-s-so-hard- to-build-the-next-silicon-valley)

<comment><USER8> Romania switched to fiber for economic reasons. People were stealing and selling copper wires.

Optic cables don't have equivalent black market.

Source: Romanian I worked with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> From what I understood, Fiber wasn't a long term solution for Google. I think they anticipated that they could kick a American infrastructural movement into gear if they gave the other ISPs a real reason to compete.

I don't know if this is Google's response to those ISPs taking a different approach than they wanted, or if this is symptomatic of the company changing overall. Judging by the other ISP's marketing campaigns, competition doesn't seem to be the real message. That's a whole other can of worms.

I would venture to guess that given older company's paths, that it's the latter, and the problem is that they don't want to take big gambles like that; play a more conservative game.

It could also be a number of other factors. Maybe Google thinks Trump is looking to make good on infrastructural promises. It would be prudent of Google to capitalize on that momentum rather than spend their own resources.

<comment><USER10> Also possible Google and SpaceX are teaming up. That constellation isn't going to manage or sell itself and Google put $1 billion into SpaceX two years ago.

<comment><USER11> What does that have to do with Google Fiber?

<comment><USER12> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_satellite_constellation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_satellite_constellation)

The idea is by sticking with LEO satellites vs geosynchronous the ping stays reasonable (~700 miles ~= 9ms vs ~22,236 miles ~= 279ms ping ping) and the bandwidth is much higher than traditional satellite internet. Further you don't need any effort aiming a dish thus vastly reducing installation issues.

<comment><USER13> Tech companies and entrepreneurs have been pitching LEO satellites for internet delivery for a very long time. Even Bill Gates had a kick at this can.

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

It's interesting to me that our cities and their governance are so awful - with their limited voter participation, poor cost control, class warfare politics, crazy fringe political advocacy, and unreasonable franchise agreements - that going into space is considered easy compared to working with city governments to get fibre in the ground.

<comment><USER12> SpaceX is looking at much lower costs to LEO which very much changes this equation. They charge around $2,500 per pound right now, but with reusable rockets there internal costs may be under 1,000$/lb. Putting up ~1,400 * 600lb * 1,000$/lb is less than 1 billion dollars to get into space. Worst case they are looking at ~3 billion in launch costs which is hardly an issue for world wide infrastructure.

Now, the costs of these satellites and receiver's will make or break this idea. But, it's surprisingly viable even if they only cover the continental US to start.

PS: Iridium NEXT ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_satellite_constellatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_satellite_constellation)) is aiming for some data bandwidth. Though presumably at very high costs.

<comment><USER13> _Now, the costs of these satellites and receiver 's will make or break this idea. But, it's surprisingly viable even if they only cover the continental US to start_

They also have to get radio spectrum for the uplink everywhere they operate. Have a good look through the history of Iridium (Iridium PREVIOUS?) and all of the unexpected costs Motorola ran into building and maintaining a satellite fleet.

<comment><USER14> I can see a situation where the USG would want this constellation to exist.

If you go to the middle east and many third world countries much of the Internet is still satellite. If a particular country wanted a way to insure that they still had access to most of the world's internet traffic (as economies grow and infrastructure is built) they might prefer a constellation of LEO sats capable of carrying the entire planet's traffic in a point to point fashion owned by a US based company who is very reliant on the USG for most of its other business.

<comment><USER13> _I can see a situation where the USG would want this constellation to exist._

But would they want this to exist enough to pay for any of it or have a hand in maintaining it? Beyond how much they already are by awarding SpaceX government and NASA launch contracts?

And all because muni government sucks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > The only business model for fiber that will work to produce the competition, > low prices, and world-class data transport we need — certainly in urban > areas — is to get local governments involved in overseeing basic, street > grid-like "dark" (passive, unlit with electronics) fiber available at a set, > wholesale price to a zillion retail providers of access and services. > There's plenty of patient capital sloshing around the US that would be > attracted to the steady, reliable returns this kind of investment will > return. That investment could be made in the form of private lending or > government bonds; the important element is that the resulting basic network > be a wholesale facility that any retail actor can use at a reasonable, fair > cost.

Google Fiber had promised to operate an open access network[1], but they apparently changed their mind before they launched.

[1] [https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/think-big-with- gig-o...](https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/think-big-with-gig-our- experimental.html)

</comment><comment><USER16> If you live in San Francisco, sign-up for Sonic Fiber. Even if Sonic hasn't reached your neighborhood (or city) yet, sign up now because it helps them with financial planning of their build out. If you can't sign up because Sonic has no existing plans for your neighborhood or city, call Sonic and demand to sign up.

I just got Sonic fiber service a few months ago, and it's been great. I had signed up nearly a year prior, as soon as my neighborhood could register, and I'm glad I did.

Sonic is persevering and succeeding. And profiting, apparently, at only $40/month! They're besting Comcast and AT&T without the whinging and excuse making. Not that they don't gripe about the bureaucracy and NIMBY-erected barriers, but they're committed. And they should be supported; not simply to be socially conscious, but because they deliver. The more [prospective] customers they have the more quickly they can build out.

If you don't know the backstory in San Francisco--both AT&T and Sonic spent years working with the City on fiber plans. At some point AT&T decided that if they weren't going to have a monopoly, they'd rather sabotage things by dragging things out in the hopes that Sonic would bleed cash and exit the market. The big hold up, IIRC, was NIMBY opposition to street-level cabinets. Also, Sonic was hoping for permits for micro-trenching. The city refused to permit micro-trenching, and AFAIK the cabinet issue still hasn't been fully resolved. But as best I can tell, Sonic decided to make lemonade from lemons, got permission to hang fiber from utility poles, and began building out a network in the Western half of the city (i.e. the parts with utility poles instead of underground conduits). Instead of making excuses or going home with their ball like the big guys tend to do, they've pushed forward as best they could.

<comment><USER17> So is there hope for the eastern half of the city?

<comment><USER16> Not unless the city changes its tune on micro-trenching. It's not financially viable to dig up the street just to lay fiber for the last segment. At least, not for a small company like Sonic.

Some supervisors have recently proffered (again) plans for the city to lay fiber underground. Unrelated, there are also plans to move the existing aboveground utilities in the outer neighborhoods below ground. Both sound like a colossal waste of money unless paired with required work like sewer replacement. In any event, like the sewer work I can't see how the timeline would be any less than a decade or two. (If you Google news articles discussing plans to move utilities underground you can find cost estimates. Spoiler: it's unfathomably expensive!)

Aside from micro-trenching, I think the best hope would be FTTN/FTTC. But the holdup there are the NIMBYs worried about larger utility cabinets on sidewalks. And because AT&T isn't keen on competing with Sonic, who would also benefit from newer cabinets, they've put that work on the back burner. Like Comcast I think AT&T has decided to opportunistically improve their network. So, for example, I'm sure all those new buildings in SOMA are getting fiber. But if you're in an older neighborhood, theoretically they may never come; not with FTTH or FTTN.

There's an epic, multi-year thread discussing all of these San Francisco issues.

      https://forums.sonic.net/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=1085

(Probably best to go to the last page and work backwards.) The CEO regularly answers questions there. But Sonic tries to keep secret from AT&T and Comcast the details of their expansion plans. You may not be able to get any answers to the most important question, especially if you're not in the Sunset or Richmond.

<comment><USER17> Thanks for the summary. I had found that forum thread, but have no desire to read 100+ pages.

<comment><USER16> The same questions tend to be asked repeatedly. If you read the last two dozen pages or so you've basically read the whole thing, especially regarding the more recent developments.

Every month or so last year I went back to that thread and could literally track Sonic's progress westward in the Outer Richmond, starting from the central office at Geary Blvd & 9th Ave. In fact, IIRC that's how news broke about the Richmond build out; people reported in that thread suspicious Sonic activity at the central office and nearby.

Also, if you read the CEO's, Dane's, comments, you begin to get a sense of the regulatory landscape they're treading. I think among the 2014-2015 posts, mostly discussing the Sunset, are some good posts from Dane explaining delays related to cabinet installation, including AT&T's behavior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Fiber has operating margins of 99%. Yes there's a big upfront cost. But it recoups quickly and becomes pure profit. Goldman Sachs estimated the cost to wire the whole country at a mere $140 billion [1].

Apple has $230 billion cash on hand. Microsoft has $100 billion. Alphabet has $73 billion. There's no shortage of capital to start with metropolitan areas.

The issue isn't up front costs or capital. The issue is politics and rent seeking incumbents.

Hopefully the more competitive mobile marketplace and 5G will free us from the tyranny of Comcast.

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-it-would-cost- google...](http://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-it-would-cost-google-to- build-a-cable-network-2012-12)

<comment><USER19> If it's so profitable, why don't the rent-seeking incumbents like Verizon and AT&T deploy more fiber?

<comment><USER20> Because it's even more profitable for them to not deploy fiber, so that their political allies can continue to use the need to "encourage additional investment in broadband" as an excuse for policies that mostly serve to give them more money without increasing service.

If there wasn't an access problem, you couldn't blame the access problem on policy limitations holding back the big providers.

<comment><USER6> Ok. So then why isn't Google doing it?

<comment><USER20> Because lobbying for more favorable regulation that makes your existing service more profitable under the premise that it will encourage you to add new service you have no intention of adding is only profitable for major existing incumbents, which Google _isn 't_ in the relevant space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "We're systematically leaving behind minorities.."

That makes no sense unless we are suggesting that minorities are different in their ability to get internet service. The rest of the sentence uses "poor people" \-- which could be accurate, but implying minorities by virtue of being minorities are less able to get internet access is patently racist. Socio-economics does have an influence but being a minority is not in itself a factor. Most rural Americans are white and they are more likely to be "left behind" than a minority living in Jersey City with access to FIOS -- if you adjust for income.

</comment><comment><USER22> >> But although the cost of fiber — the glass itself — has fallen through the floor, and the gear needed to deliver signals over fiber has gotten cheaper over time, 80 percent or more of the cost of installing fiber is labor.

Surely Google must've known that though. The article seems to say they're just not making money fast enough and that's because of labor, and that cost won't drop, but that seems like a totally obvious thing they would've known about, doesn't it?

<comment><USER23> Yeah. Everything I've read it's because they've lost the lobbying war with incumbents.

Incumbents (in those locations they are pausing) used their lobbyists, political connections, right of ways, existing contracts, etc. To block, delay and vastly increase the time and costs for Google. Driving Google to go wireless.

[edit] here in Austin (where they didn't lose the lobbying war) it's full steam ahead. They have been continually spreading across city. Dug trenches at coworker's house last week.

<comment><USER24> > Everything I've read it's because they've lost the lobbying war with > incumbents.

Like what? There have been some lobbying skirmishes. But where was the big lobbying war they lost that prevented them from bringing Fiber to New York, Philly, SF, Chicago, DC, LA, or pretty much any major city?

And what about all the cities begging Google for fiber? Why didn't Google take LA up on its bid to build fiber? [http://venturebeat.com/2013/11/06/los- angeles-wants-to-bring...](http://venturebeat.com/2013/11/06/los-angeles- wants-to-bring-free-fiber-internet-to-every-resident-without-paying-for-it)? Or Baltimore? [https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2013/08/snubb...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2013/08/snubbed-by-google-fiber-mad-at-comcast-baltimore-seeks-its- own-fiber).

<comment><USER25> Because the existing cities are enough of a proxy war with the incumbents? Louisville's OTMR lawsuit involves AT&T and Spectrum (Charter/Time Warner). Nashville's involves AT&T and Comcast. That's a big majority of the incumbents right there covered by just two cities on the Google Fiber interest map, in already relatively low regulated states.

<comment><USER24> I think the lawsuits are kinda stupid, but saying they amount to a "proxy war" is ridiculous. Any infrastructure deployment will involve lawsuits to resolve competing rights to physical property. It's not like the incumbents are invoking some secret "we are guaranteed a monopoly in Louisville/Nashville" law. These are boring lawsuits about whether Google can touch/move AT&T/Spectrum's property while deploying its own infrastructure.

Verizon/AT&T/TMO/Sprint somehow manage to build cell networks despite dealing with _hundreds_ of lawsuits in connection with cell tower siting. It's naive to assert that it's these two lawsuits stopping Google from building a service it would otherwise build.

<comment><USER25> I used "proxy war" very intentionally. A) Proxy: Google isn't even fighting these particular lawsuits directly, the cities themselves are. B) War: These examples are the first two off the top of my head out of many. As you point out there are hundreds of "boring lawsuits" involved in this process. There are many battles in a war, these are two of them as examples of the war between Google and incumbents.

In a war, you pick your theaters and you pick your battles. The question was "Why isn't Google Fiber fighting in theaters of war that are practically begging for it when they are already spread thin across a number of theaters?" and the answer I'm pointing to is probably "Because they are trying to pick their theaters/battles." Whether or not you think these example lawsuits are stupid is beside that core point of "Because they are trying to pick their theaters/battles."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I really cannot believe anyone actually though that Google was serious about bringing fiber to a huge area. They cherry picked cheap and easy areas to install. Their purpose was to light a fire under the existing telcos in order to protect their core business which relies on the internet. They never wanted to be in the ISP business, ads are way more profitable.

Digging up the ground or putting wires on the poles is very difficult, and costs a ton of money. This can be improved with regulation and removal of onerous regulation, but it is still the case now.

You have companies like Comcast which are the most loathed in the USA and you would think someone would certainly want to compete in a tremendous industry against a hated competitor. It is just too much to get started. The only real solution is to have the lines built and maintained by the government, and providers can lease them to provide service.

</comment><comment><USER27> Google Fiber suffered the same fate that many other pet projects do at Google.

Google got bored when it wasn't as easy as a few steps, and just dumped the project. Also the whole needing "customer service" thing doesn't fit with the Google life either.

It was a nice gesture, but if they had put forth any actual effort into it they would have had an actual rollout in the market.

<comment><USER28> It's still in operation and, as others have mentioned, the support was very responsive and friendly. So why exactly are you complaining again?

[https://fiber.google.com/about/](https://fiber.google.com/about/)

[https://fiber.google.com/newcities/#viewcities](https://fiber.google.com/newcities/#viewcities)

<comment><USER29> Right? I've got Google Fiber in my house and it's awesome. The hardware is solid, installation was fast. It's cheap and more reliable than my last TWC service was...

Not to mention when I called to cancel my TWC service the "retention specialist" straight up told me blatant indefensible lies to try and retain me.

I'm never going to give TWC another dime.

<comment><USER30> TWC is one of the most dishonest companies I've ever dealt with. I second the fact about lying...absolutely hate that company, couldn't believe how I went through one year of their "service".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I know this post is old now... but here are some pictures of how Google left my neighborhood. It's been 8 months since they started construction, doesn't seem like they are done and we are told, "A cleanup crew will be by shortly..." We've been told that for 3+ months now.

Snapped these while walking my dogs... these only represent a small sample of the boxes on my street...

[http://imgur.com/a/Al39Z](http://imgur.com/a/Al39Z)

The work seems very sloppy... boxes not level in the lawns (means we forever can't use a lawn mower and have to bust out our edgers to trim around it), not enough dirt used, the wrong grass / sod planted (planting the wrong kind of grass is basically planting noxious weeds in a person's lawn... it's a huge pain to fix), sprinkler systems left broken (wastes water / kills the entire lawn if not fixed quickly)...

PS: Imgur is a fickle bitch this morning. Been slowly trying to add captions but it keeps spitting out errors.

</comment><comment><USER32> I had a lecturer in a class on infrastructure policy at (German) university who was an ICT exec and always said that the first rule of the business was "Wer gräbt, verliert." (you dig, you lose).

</comment><comment><USER33> Does anyone know what's going on with Google fiber in Atlanta ? Did they kill it midway, or will they still cover Atlanta ? Don't see much activity on their site.

<comment><USER34> Seems like they are focusing on multi-family condos/apartments. I don't see much activity either - they started in a few residential neighborhoods intown but growth has stalled.

It's incredibly frustrating - I don't even care if it's the same price (or more) than Comcast. I just want options. Would gladly pay good money for a reliable fast connection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I remembered the story how Google created a 411 service that would connect to their search product. Microsoft scrambled to make something similar. At some point, Google discontinued it. The reason? By then, They had collected a lot of voice samples for training their voice recognition system. (And likely, it was easier to support a smartphone app than to support a call-in service).

When I was reading about Google Cloud Spanner, something struck me. Google Cloud Spanner was able to do what it does, not because of atomic clocks, but because Google has super-reliable private fiber that connects their data centers together. And I started wondering -- what was the hidden purpose of Google Fiber -- aside from stirring up the consumer broadband market?

<comment><USER36> > what was the hidden purpose of Google Fiber -- aside from stirring up the > consumer broadband market?

Isn't it obvious? So they can collect information about you at the packet level. There's only so much information you can get from people visiting your web properties or using your browser. When customers use your pipe, now you can track _everything_.

<comment><USER19> Thanks to HTTPS everywhere, not really.

<comment><USER36> You're not looking at it the right way.

HTTPS still lets you know which sites you're visiting (Hostname has to be unencrypted).

But there's more than just web traffic. Say you like to play on your PS4 every night at 6. Now Google knows that. Run your own SSH server, OpenVPN, and mail server? Google knows that, and has profiled you as a "developer". And so on. Think big, man.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> "... rural stories of telcos cutting off even crappy DSL service any time anyone stops a subscription; realtors are tearing their hair out trying to ensure that some narrow drip of data will be available to a new buyer of a home..."

I've seen this with my own eyes. When my wife's grandmother sold her house on 10 acres in west Georgia just outside of Carrollton (which is a biggish small town), she had to transfer her AT&T account along with her phone number of 30+ years to the buyer just so that they could keep internet service running. This is the kind of place where your cell phone signal drops to nothing as you turn onto the dirt road a mile from the house.

</comment><comment><USER38> I wonder about using last-mile wireless as a way to distribute fiber internet. Something like a fiber-connected wireless hub that provides service to customers within a quarter-mile. At a density of 10000 households per square mile (pretty high) your service area is about 0.15 square miles and you need 1.5 Tbps bandwidth or so in the air around a hub for 1 Gbps service to the household. Feasible? It's a stretch, but I assumed a very high density of customers and I think many people would be happy with 100 Mbps.

</comment><comment><USER39> I'm willing to bet the real catalyst to ISP competition will be LEO satellite constellations like the one SpaceX has mentioned they're working on. Much better ping, cheaper/faster than wiring up entire cities and having to dig through streets. This could actually become a huge source of revenue for them to fund their mars initiative. Imagine once several companies do that, you could pick whichever ISP you want and just have them mail you a receiver to put outside your window.

<comment><USER40> Latency: Average 888 ms

Pass!

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

<comment><USER41> SpaceX plans to have satellites at 1,100 kilometers (680 mi) altitude unlike previous attempts / current offerings. Latency would be closer to 25-35 ms.

[0] [https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2016/11/space...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2016/11/spacex-plans-worldwide-satellite-internet-with-low-latency- gigabit-speed/)

<comment><USER40> I'd take that to get out from under xfinity!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I live in Austin and the rollout in my neighborhood has been a debacle. Dumpster fire from the get go. I can only imagine the mountain of money Google has dumped into Google Fiber at this point.

They started work back in August, marking gas and water pipes. 8 months later (today), I'd say less than 50% of the homes have service hooked up... they still have holes in some people's yards, clear evidence of broken sprinkler lines, and they still have a lot of cleanup left to do.

Every step has been painful. As a homeowner, Google is really miserable to deal with -- opting to punt the responsibility for managing the project to various contractors at each stage. Nobody from Google actually ever replies to issues. Nobody from Google ever actually walks the neighborhood to make sure the job is done correctly.

Round 1... first dig... they went through and dug holes for boxes in our yards. Destroyed a lot of sprinklers. Left it sit in my yard for a month with a big sheet of plywood over the hold... and no movement. Killed large areas of my lawn and flower beds not being able to water them.

Round 2... digging in the street... they dug a small channel in the street, and managed to cut a number of my neighbors water lines or water return lines. For a week some people had to stay in hotels because they had no water / no drainage in their homes. I was lucky, this didn't happen to me but did happen to my next door neighbor.

Round 3... putting the box in the front lawn... It was clear the work was being done by the lowest bidder. Boxes put in crooked, not flush with the lawn, so you couldn't drive a lawn mower over them after. They sent a repair crew around to fix lawns up... they used the wrong grass types, and they put sprinklers back random places... for me they broke 2 sprinklers heads but only put one back... and put it back so it could only really water my driveway. Also they "fixed" the sprinklers with electrical tape joining the PVC and it just broke the moment you turned the system on... more signs they were just using the lowest bidders for the work. Cost me an entire weekend to fix it all up again. (Still my lawn has the wrong grass growing in, looks like shit...)

Round 4... the line from the box to the house... another lowest bidder job. The guy putting it in put in hated sprinklers. That's the only explanation. He broke out 25 feet of line, 5 sprinkler heads -- he had to know he was breaking pipes, if you dig with a shovel you can feel the difference between dirt and digging into a PVC pipe. He also broke a bunch of pavers and just sort of tossed the pieces next to a tree; would have taken him less energy to lift them up. Finally, there were some cut pieces of pipe, some wires... broken pavers... he just tossed them into my flower beds.

Round 5... installation in the home. Was probably the least painful, but still far from professional. Having a contractor wear little boot covers is pretty common... the guy even showed up with them when he first came in, but at some point he just stopped putting them on and tracked mud all over my house. Then he moved my TV stand and left it in the middle of the room. (That's minor, easy to fix.)

So here's what happened when you call Google...

1) Nothing. You don't hear back, you don't get an email. You're like, "Well, I don't... they don't care... what do I do?"

2) Then some random contractor calls you to tell you that they got your message, but it wasn't their fault. They assure you they will talk to the contractor who was responsible and give you his number so you can follow up. When you call the number they give you, they clearly never followed up as it's his first time hearing from you and have you to re-tell / re-send the photos to the new guy's email.

3) Then you get the run around. "Oh, we're sending a crew to fix it all once we are done... may be a few weeks, sit tight." You wait... phone tag, and finally you just say, "Fuck it, I guess I'll eat the cost of fixing this myself." (I was fortunate enough to finally -- after about 30 emails / calls with photos of every step -- to get a refund check for the damages to cover my out of pocket expenses. But when my neighbors asked for the same treatment, they were told, "Sorry it's not in our budget to reimburse people who don't want to wait for our crews to do the repairs.")

It's been such a shit show.

And at the end of the day... I haven't seen speeds over 420 down, 80 up. I was getting 290 down from Time Warner. Can't say it's a noticeable improvement for anything. Not at all worth the hassle we went through to get this.

<comment><USER42> As someone also in Austin with G.Fiber, an opposing anecdote:

They were in and out of the neighborhood probably a month, month and half. Filled in the holes and reseeded where they dug up lawns. Patched up the street pretty well too. It was uneventful.

The contracted out installer couldn't understand I didn't want the Google Fiber box, so I had to figure out how to do that myself. That was my only issue.

P.S. If you're only getting 420 down, you might be CPU limited on network hardware. I know my router is around that speed (an option I have enabled disables hardware acceleration). 420 is fast enough such that I don't care about upgrading it.

<comment><USER31> Glad you had a good experience! I'm in Circle C, and I know that my friends in condos downtown said it seemed pretty painless for them. I was so excited to get this and be able to cancel Time Warner... Maybe in a year I'll be happy with it, but it's been a huge hassle dealing with the construction for as long as we have.

<comment><USER42> Yeah, hopefully. I'm right over in Maple Run, so I'm surprised you've had so many problems comparatively.

I'm glad I haven't had to get support from Google, that's for sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Well here in metro Atlanta, if you can call being thirty miles or more out still being in metro we have fiber from AT&T. I live in hickville as some would call it, yet the county which is not of the bigger counties in this area has a lot of fiber.

The costs must be horrible, when going through the subdivisions near me they had people digging up lawns, guiding pipe under roads/drives, the whole nine yards. Props to them for not destroying my lawn as they only dug to get the pipe pushing contraption in and went as far as they could.

Now from I could tell AT&T moved because they did not want to have to ride another companies fiber. So unless fiber goes utility like electricity, water, and gas, its going to be who can invest first which isn't conducive to getting fiber deployed because they will certainly only go where density is high

</comment><comment><USER24> The idea that there is tons of private capital sloshing around wanting to invest in municipal fiber is ridiculous. Baltimore and LA have been soliciting bidders for years to build such networks without success.

<comment><USER44> I think the author is saying there are municipal bond investors who would finance the deal (via the municipality) were there successful responses to the bids you reference.

<comment><USER6> Exactly. There are always willing lenders when the borrower has the sovereign power to tax so it can repay the debt. But apparently there are fewer willing investors who are willing to sink money into something that apparently is of little use and that, therefore, puts their capital at substantial risk.

What the FTTH proponents really want is a huge subsidy for an investment whose payoff is questionable, especially in an era when 4G LTE blankets the countryside and wireless operators are yet again selling "unlimited" data. Yeah, "unlimited" has limits...but wireless is improving, yet despite that, people want government to plow billions into laying wires to people's houses. Google tried it and it's apparently not profitable, so let's have government toss money into this sinkhole.

<comment><USER45> Where's the subsidy? These projects are usually paid for through usage fees, not taxation.

There is a _lot_ of money that will only invest in Triple-A rated bonds. Local governments have the scale, return-on-investment horizon, and political willpower that private ventures lack.

The funding is easier to secure at lower cost because the investment is less risky. It's not a risk-free venture, but (worst case scenario) everyone has to pay double the projected cost and we end up with the standard Comcast bill. I would prefer to send that money to my local government than to Comcast for perpetuity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Can someone tell me what the point of fiber is exactly? What use is it when pretty much every server rate limits its connection to you to below your cable throughout anyway? What difference would the user see?

<comment><USER47> It's useful when you have multiple streams in a household. In my 3 person household, a typical evening might have my son on Youtube, my wife and I streaming a TV show (sometimes 2 shows if we can't agree on what to watch) and light web surfing on our personal devices if the show isn't one that demands full attention. That all adds up. I've got 50/50 service and it's fine. 4K streaming would make it not so fine however.

<comment><USER46> How are (say) the 100-200 Mbps connections provided through regular cable not sufficient for this? And is all this fight really over being able to stream 3+ different 4k video streams? It seems like such a niche and low priority first world problem that if these are really the concerns I'm almost glad they're not being addressed. Is there really no other better use case people are fighting for here?

<comment><USER48> DOCSIS has a very difficult time providing 100+ Mib/s connections. It's really only possible when the distance to the cabinet is less than 1 km and the number of clients served by that cabinet is less than 50. This is why cable companies are able to offer 300 Mib/s connections in urban areas that have a cabinet for every block, but struggle to deliver 50 Mib/s connections in suburbs where a whole neighborhood must share a single cabinet. The cost of installing enough cabinets to give everyone 100+ Mib/s rapidly approaches the cost of fiber-to-the-premises as population density drops.

There is also the issue of the asynchronous nature of DOCSIS. Cable companies must make a trade-off between upstream and downstream bandwith, and tend to assume that people value downstream much more. This is why you see hilarious allocations like 300 Mib/s down and only 5 Mib/s up.

<comment><USER49> Agreed. My 100MBit down DOCSIS connection has only 7MBit up provisioned and the ACKs for 100MBit takes 2MBits of that 7 (and whatever traffic shaping box the cable co uses has horrible queuing behavior if you transit more than 6.6 for more than a few minutes, so I have it rate-limited at 6.5MBits on my router). So if I have a 100MBit download running, I actually only have 4.5MBit upload capacity free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Williams communications ran fiber inside old gas/oil pipelines. [0]

Somebody somewhere will have to touch every household for some other reason and will piggyback fiber. An excuse for the last mile won't be for the last mile but for some other reason. Probably some hardware install or new gadget.

[0] [https://www.google.com/amp/m.newsok.com/article/2330222/amp](https://www.google.com/amp/m.newsok.com/article/2330222/amp)

</comment><comment><USER51> > _And the only thing that will make those wireless connections competitive is > firm public control over conduits and poles so as to ensure no monopolist > bosses us around._

Seems like an oversimplification. City government workers are _also_ perfectly capable of _bossing us around._

If it's not a greedy monopoly (e.g. Time Warner Cable) defending its own interests, it will probably be an equally greedy collection of city workers and local politicians defending _their_ own interests.

</comment><comment><USER52> My need for fibre diminished after I started needing some combination of a VPN and Tor whenever I browsed political, sensitive or related content on the Internet. (I don't imagine this is a common phenomenon.)

</comment><comment><USER53> "So far, no one has cracked the nut of getting extremely high-capacity wireless signals reliably through walls and doors"

Yes, they have. Maybe not fiber speeds.

The problem here is that people value freedom at zero but value entertainment (or even just big numbers on an advertisement) at non-zero.

That's the thing that bothers me about monopoly talk. It's no longer that some company owns all the critical infrastrucutre or all the production of critical goods. We are talking about a monopoly on exyraordinarily high speed internet which is really only used for entertainment.

<comment><USER54> > We are talking about a monopoly on exyraordinarily high speed internet which > is really only used for entertainment.

And online banking, and school, and working from home, and stock trading, and and and and....

<comment><USER53> I can work from home on my 4g wireless connection with no problem.

<comment><USER55> Video conferencing? Downloading large files (IDE and various other software updates, VM images)?

I mean you don't need that stuff every day. But you need it often enough that it's a PITA not to have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Oh Google Fiber. Greenville, SC wanted you to come here so bad.

[https://sites.google.com/a/wearefeelinglucky.com/greenville/...](https://sites.google.com/a/wearefeelinglucky.com/greenville/home)

</comment><comment><USER57> Otherwise known as, "Why Americans Can't Have Nice Things".

</comment><comment><USER58> Trying to solve political problems with market offerings is going to be looked at as variously crime / terrorism. Case in point: Uber

</comment><comment><USER59> I wish there was a good account of the early days of broadcast television when ABC/CBS/NBC was really innovating technically in broadcasting and transmission before they became just as delivery systems.

I could then compare it to what's happening with Google as they shift from doing amazing things (e.g., make search before figuring out adwords) to only doing things that deliver ads better.

Google Fiber will allow for untold future revenue streams if figured out. But it seems like Alphabet is giving up because it's hard and uncertain, while Adwords keeps minting easier money.

If Google truly drops fiber it means they are truly just ad and not tech. Similarly if they ever drop Android (since it doesn't make them money).

<comment><USER60> Google makes a ton of money off of Android.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-21/google-s-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-21/google- s-android-generates-31-billion-revenue-oracle-says-ijor8hvt)

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I was under the impression that it was never meant to succeed as a business, it was merely a proof of concept. That despite the lobbying and stalling tactics of national ISPs, progress could still be made to improve infrastructure despite the incessant arguments to the contrary.</comment>


Show HN: ISBN Data as a Service - <AUTHOR> https://www.gigadb.com/

<comment><USER2> What's the value add of this service vs other free ones? I can think of two really complete, and really free services: Product Advertising API[1] and ISBNdb[2]. In fact with Product Advertising API from AWS you can make money. Display all of the details from AWS on your page/app and then provide a handy link (with or without pictures) to buy the book.

The best I can see is that the product might reduce bandwidth usage because you're providing scant information per request. At the same time, that's increasing HTTP requests and all of their headers, so maybe it's a wash?

[1]- [http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSECommerceService/latest/DG/CHA...](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSECommerceService/latest/DG/CHAP_Intro_AAWS.html) [2]- [http://isbndb.com/api/v2/docs](http://isbndb.com/api/v2/docs)</comment>


The Robots Are Coming - <AUTHOR> http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n05/john-lanchester/the-robots-are-coming?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=3705&hq_e=el&hq_m=3639916&hq_l=5&hq_v=eeda11b87a

<comment><USER3> The article has this to say about Google Translate's improvements in accuracy:

"Translate has hoovered up gigantic quantities of parallel texts into its database. A particularly fertile source of these useful things, apparently, is the European Union's set of official publications, which are translated into all Community languages."

The first thing I thought was "what happens when the EU starts outsourcing its translations to Google Translate?"

Is this the future of machine learning? The learning algorithms start by mining a corpus of human output. Once they get good enough, they replace the majority of humans that generated the corpus. We then enter an echo chamber of machines largely feeding off their own output. Consequently, improvement of the machines stagnates, but the machines are still doing a good enough job to keep humans out of a job. We then have a future of "good enough that the cost of improvements can't be justified, but bad enough to be irritating"?

Humans have a sense of pride in their work, and will strive to improve for their own edification, even when the cost outweighs the benefit, or they have been told not to. A machine will just continue to deliver the level of service that the committee in charge tells it to.

Edit: fixed spelling

<comment><USER4> > Humans have a sense of pride in their work, and will strive to improve...

Including the humans who make machine translation algorithms.

<comment><USER3> My point is that those new algorithms need something to learn from, and the humans that used to do the job are no longer in the game. The original corpus could be reused, but then performance will be bounded by that corpus. If better algorithms are trained on the output of worse algorithms, presumably they just emulate the performance of the worse algorithm. Where do the better algorithms get their input from, if a large scale human effort no longer exists?

<comment><USER4> But why would every translator stop working or creating new works just because machines can do the job too? I don't think computer written novels will mean people stop telling stories.

Translation is an interpretation of the best phrase to use, and has a subjective element. Imagine trying to translate jokes - it depends on your sense of humor too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article was fantastically well written and comprehensive. Worth reading if you're interested at all in the topic of automation and its potential effects on the future of employment.

The narrative that machines will "eat" all the jobs leaving the mass of humanity unemployed is an easy to understand story, but it hasn't ever come to pass and probably won't for reasons that don't need to be detailed in this comment. The nobel laureate Robert Solow compared it to worrying about the earth being struck by an asteroid. Possible, even worth consideration, but highly unlikely.

The idea that machines will dominate labor to the point where a few rich people gain all the profits from labor and the rest of us are left jobless and effectively under their control is equally unlikely. A gem from the article:

 _" Capital isn't just winning against labour: there's no contest. If it were a boxing match, the referee would stop the fight."_

Income inequality is probably the biggest problem facing our society today. But it can only go so far. If the majority of people don't have jobs, no one will be able to pay for new iphones or driverless car service fees. Even B2B companies depend on B2C customers for revenue at some point in the chain. The basic, common sense economics of the world dictate that there are limits to inequality. The idea that machines will create a truly dystopian scenario is still the realm of science fiction, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't take steps to address the problem.

Finally, I loved this quote:

"Robert Gordon, an American economist who in 2012 published a provocative and compelling paper called 'Is US Economic Growth Over?' in which he contrasted the impact of computing and information technology with the effect of the second industrial revolution, between 1875 and 1900, which brought _electric lightbulbs_ and the _electric power station_ , the internal combustion engine, the telephone, radio, _recorded music_ and _cinema_."

Worth noting that four of those seven inventions were created by one man. Not relevant to the topic of automation, just truly freaking amazing.

<comment><USER6> > ... and probably won't for reasons that don't need to be detailed in this > comment...

i would _really_ appreciate if you could sketch your thoughts on this. thanks !

<comment><USER5> Only because you have so much karma...

Automation won't destroy jobs because technology and society change faster than automation can keep up. Think of all the job titles that didn't exist 30 years ago (social media marketer, seo specialist, etc). By the time those are automated away, they will be replaced another set of jobs that we can't even conceive of. It's tempting to think that it's different this time, but it probably isn't.

Secondly, the number of jobs and job titles is entirely arbitrary. We often think of the world as though there are a fixed number of jobs and once machines take them all then we're out of luck. But there is no limit or constraint of any kind on what a human can be hired to do. If you've ever worked at a growing startup you'll understand the impact of Parkinson's Law: Work expands to fill the time and resources allotted. In practice, companies tend to use the savings from automation to hire more people. And they should, it usually turns out to be a smart investment in human capital.

Ultimately, very few managers will say "I have enough people working for me and I don't need to hire anyone else". Those words have been uttered maybe 5 times in all of human history, including when I typed them just now. People like hiring, and the numbers just don't support the hypothesis of technology destroying jobs. The US unemployment rate now is similar to what it was in 1920. Despite automation in factories, Ford employs a similar number of people now to what it did in 1970, albeit no longer in factory jobs. If the advance of technology was truly putting people out of work, don't you think it would be evident by now?

<comment><USER7> _Think of all the job titles that didn 't exist 30 years ago (social media marketer, seo specialist, etc_

I like that you picked those two because they happen to be two that are already disappearing.

Search engines have been fighting SEO for years. And they have pretty much won. SEO was a hot industry just a few years ago, and is already disappearing.

And social media specialization of marketing and PR was taken on by very young people and thought to be a special skill, until recently. But already businesses have figured out that there is nothing special about it. And every marketer is expected to be a social media expert. It's not creating more new jobs, it's just adding those skills to existing jobs.

 _It 's tempting to think that it's different this time, but it probably isn't._

I am sorry, but to me that argument sounds just like the future will be the same as the past. It's not exactly wrong, it's just an intellectually lazy argument to make.

Just one example of this time it's different is the income split between labor and capital. Historically it had been fixed at 70/30\. This is across all industries, and all nations, since the industrial revolution. But now labor's share is down to just 62%. And that's happening in places like China and Mexico too, so it can't be simply due to offshoring. Source: [http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and- economics/21588900...](http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and- economics/21588900-all-around-world-labour-losing-out-capital-labour-pains)

 _Secondly, the number of jobs and job titles is entirely arbitrary._

That's not at all true. Automation has always created unemployment. There was no such thing as 3rd world before the industrial revolution. The economies of countries like China and India, which realized on a lot of textile production, collapsed when the industrial revolution took off in the UK. The UK exported both goods and unemployment. And what we call the 3rd world was brought into existence. We are seeing a very similar process today with Germany and the Southern belt of the EU. Germany too is exporting both its product and its unemployment.

 _If the advance of technology was truly putting people out of work, don 't you think it would be evident by now?_

Yes, I do. But I don't think we'd see the unemployment rate go up. I am sure we'll first see labor's share of income drop, and wages should stagnate. Which is quite similar to what we are indeed seeing right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> These articles always exaggerate the disruptive potential of technology, the pace of change and the consequences, particularly ignoring the concept of wealth creation (the reference to Piketty was telling).

For example: I've been to China and Japan countless times in the last decade. On my last trip to both, I finally had Google Translate on my phone. The difference it made in communication - particularly in Japan - was phenomenal. Both ways - both in scanning local characters with the camera and getting an instant translation (you lose the fun of the restaurant roulette, but you no longer end up with mapo tofu by accident), and in communicating with the other side by typing your English meaning and showing the translation. I had a 20 minute conversation near Chengdu with our hotel manager, she would type her side into Translate, wait for the slow internet to send it over, we'd read, reply... we both wrote each other a long thank you letter before leaving!

What is relevant about this example: the job of "translator for tourist" has been created, not automated. Before I had Translate, I made do with sign language and the few words hastily scribbled or learnt before a trip. I didn't hire a local to walk me around and talk to everybody. Conversely, I take the MRT in Singapore because it's 80 cents a trip. If an automated taxi comes along for $2, I might take it, but doing the same trip for $10 is not something I'm interested in. This is added productivity for me, just as the flying shuttle enormously increased the quality of life of hundreds of thousands of housewives in the 18th century, instead of creating the "mass domestic unrest from idleness" allegedly feared by the ruling class.

Another point missing from the conversation is manager laziness. In my experience as a DBA/data person, most companies do not care about automating away their reporting function (amongst other things). I've seen people doing "manual joins" (yes, that's a manual lookup then copy paste each value one by one) as late as last year, in both tiny "modern" tech startups and enormous corporations with several hundred thousand employees; for the latter, 50MB files were "big data". Today, you can run a DWH for a fairly large business with an employee working part time, provided he knows what he's doing - <USER2> AWS and modern tools like Postgres, it's incredibly easy to be high level - but few companies do it. Maybe it's today's relatively permissive high capital low opportunity environment, which tolerates very low IRR.

</comment><comment><USER9> Why it's different this time: computers are so cheap and so general-purpose.

For decades, there have been many jobs that could be automated, but weren't, because the machinery wasn't cost-effective. It might have to be custom- engineered for the job, and if you didn't have the volume, it didn't pay. An automated hamburger outlet was built in the 1960s by AMF. There are machines for almost every picking job in agriculture, but much picking is still done by hand. There are still hand car washes.

Now, if a computer can do it, the computer will be far, far cheaper than a human doing it. The computer can also provide 24/7 operation, and, even better, once one computer knows how to do something, a million computers can be doing it tomorrow. Deployment is very fast in this area.

The list of things humans can do and machines can't keeps getting shorter. That's not going to reverse. But what gets checked off next? More desk jobs.

Actual physical robots are still rather inept. That's getting better, but progress is slow. What makes robots work? Money. For decades, robotics R&D was under 100 people in the US, mostly at CMU, MIT, and Stanford. Then came the DARPA Grand Challenge, when DARPA told the universities to get results or robotics funding would be cut off. Suddenly entire CS departments were devoted to automatic driving. After that success, DARPA tried throwing money at Boston Dynamics. It took about $125 million to get the fieldable version of BigDog working. Now Google is in the game, spending who knows how much.

A key point in robotics, and AI generally, is that there's now enough known that spending money gets results. There was a false dawn in the 1980s; look up the Fifth Generation project and the NASA Flight Telerobotic Servicer, notable failures. This time, though, many of the old ideas work, powered by four or five orders of magnitude more compute power, and lead to new ideas which also work.

Advanced robotics right now is about at the Xerox Alto level - there are impressive prototypes that work, but they're not cost-effective yet. Robotics has not yet had its Apple II or IBM PC. (The Roomba is too dumb. The Dyson robot vacuum, though...) It's going to take a while to break through the cost barrier, even once the smarts are there.

The implication for jobs is that manual labor is, in the near term, less at risk than intellectual labor. If your job is to do something where the inputs and outputs are through phone or computer, be afraid.

</comment><comment><USER10> Fantastically written article. I found the most interesting question near the end. I've never been a proponent of socialism, but in a world where work can be filled by the push of a key by unquestioning automata, could it become viable?

</comment><comment><USER11> Google uses machine learning in emails, basic AI. Robots exist now. The concerning factor is when these 3 industries merge:

\- iOT \- Robots \- Artificial Intelligence

Jobs, yes, lots of jobs will be lost. Experts predict that everything will be done by robots in the future: Medical, Education, Factory Work, Law etc.

I'd expect virtual companies like Occulus Rift, will be come the next thing, when job opportunities diminish.

</comment><comment><USER12> The torrent of money and talent going in to self-driving cars seems to be only increasing. One of the strong points of this smart and level-headed article is pointing out how disruptive this will be, and how fast the disruption can come. I'm aware that there will be a lot of benefits, but the problem is, they are not distributed evenly. Some people will lose.</comment>