Lessons Learned from YouTube's $300M Hole - <AUTHOR> http://edwardspoonhands.com/post/46305605617/lessons-learned-from-youtubes-300m-hole <comment><USER2> Completely unrelated: 13 paragraphs, 4 of which are single simple sentences, and the longest of them is 72 words, qualifies an apology for "wall of text" now?

This makes both very sad and very angry.

<comment><USER3> This was posted on Tumblr, which is generally known for its short attention span, and the blogger has a large contingent of younger fans, who may not be interested in reading about Youtube and would prefer to continue viewing cute cat gifs.

That being said, I didn't realize that YouTube was funding original channels! I'm reminded of the talk Dan Harmon (creator of the television series "Community") gave regarding the death of television/the Internet as a new platform for stories [1]. The majority of people already consume television shows on the internet, I'd love to see a larger shift towards an internet-only tv series model.

[1] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=e...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ej_aFOnT04g)

<comment><USER4> That's never easy, though. Just like newspapers before it, TV show creators will discover that internet advertising doesn't attract anywhere near the premiums of TV advertising.

So you have to find alternative revenue streams, which isn't always easy.

<comment><USER5> I've wondered for a while if the price for television advertising was/is inflated due to the fact that there's no way to track its impact. Web advertisements usually pay per click these days, which at least measures _some_ kind of engagement, and yet advertisers apparently pay significantly less for it in aggregate than they do television advertising, which seems backward to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Quality matters everywhere, quality matters on T.V. and online. 300 million is like the budget of a handful of popular T.V. shows. Game of Thrones has a budget of about 60 million a season, House of Cards cost about 100 million. 300 million spread across hundreds of channels is not going to give you the best of T.V. The T.V. networks make big bets on a smaller number of shows. Time Warner alone has over a billion dollar budget for their content. It's really high risk, high reward for them and I don't think it is something Google is ready to stomach. The budget would have been better spent on more educational programming, which T.V. channels offer very little of. Educational programming is popular on Youtube and other sites.

<comment><USER7> Most of the channels were educational or news or other special interest, not sitcom, drama, etc.

I think the issue is just cost -- high-end TV is $250k-3mm/hr . Low-quality TV costs something like $30k/hr of finished product. High-end web is $1-4k/hr. Amateur is $100-400.

You can produce much more niche content if you need only $1k/hr to produce it. Niche reduces the cost per hour for the same quality, too -- I'd rather see dmor or sama or garry talking about startups for 15 minutes vs. Morgan Freeman. Non-talent costs really can be dramatically reduced in a non-union world, especially one where the principals are compensated through equity or other non-cash, for the same final quality. And, if something is niche, I'll watch it even if the editing, sound, video, etc. aren't quite up to the same level.

<comment><USER6> -> Most of the channels were educational or news or other special interest...

There was a lot of news and special interest but throwing Educational programming into the mix is not factually correct.

I have two list, one from 2011 and one recent. Both show an emphasis on Entertainment and Extracurricular programming.

Recent: <http://www.youtube.com/yt/advertise/original-channels.html>

From 2011: [http://www.tubefilter.com/2011/10/28/youtube-original- channe...](http://www.tubefilter.com/2011/10/28/youtube-original-channels/)

Not too many pure educational programming plays. Certainly not the majority.

->Non-talent costs really can be dramatically reduced in a non-union world...

Producing content is like anything else you have to make, a lot of times you get what you pay. I've worked with a lot of new workers, the good ones rise to professional level pretty fast and they won't work for equity/portfolio for too long. I think Youtube has gone as far as it can go with cheap content, which is pretty good. Now they are experimenting.

<comment><USER7> Ah, great list.

I would consider a lot of the science/food/tech/automotive stuff as "educational entertainment" to the extent that the Hitler Channel and other cable tv programming is educational. But there is not a single thing there I'd personally watch.

(The only YouTube content I love, personally, is Hickok45, MrColionNoir, etc., and cat videos. I'd love curated high quality cat videos. I'll probably get some cats and a 4K RED or Canon just to have an excuse to produce this.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> To me the message here is: it's all about content.

And a lot of people underestimate this. A beautiful website without good content is worth nothing (well maybe it's worth inspiration for designers). A newspaper without content is worth gossip and sensation.

That's why some blogs are better than high profile newspapers and that's why some home made Youtube movies provide more information (and are thus better) than big money productions.

<comment><USER9> It was really the exact opposite of that. The thesis was exactly that, it's all about the content, so get the best content creators in the world. It turned out to be all about the medium, and there are still only a few people who know what do in the medium of online video.

<comment><USER8> Maybe I read it wrong, but to me it sounded like: we got the best content creators, but they only could make beautiful content. All the amateurs were creating the best content.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Never thought I would see Hank Green on the front page of HN but hey there's a first time for everything!

Hank has a great point, YouTube is all about quality content! They need to invest in people that know how YouTube works not Hollywood. It takes a fresh and open perspective to understand a YouTube audience. I'm 19 and I've been making videos since the age of 15 and you learn so much about interaction and branding but you never forget that you're just some guy talking to a camera...WHICH IS PRETTY RELATABLE! I'm sorry I think I went on a random rant.

MY POINT: YouTube always should be supporting their original content creators, not trying to help all these new companies become big and successful. There is a reason I watch TV and a reason I watch YouTube. I don't need both on one platform. Alright, done.

<comment><USER11> > _YouTube is all about quality content_

As generalisations go, I feel this one falls between sweeping and wildly optimistic.

99.9% of the stuff on youtube is utter bilge. I find a lot of useful resources; but thanks to the magic of social media I get to see the titles of a lot of LOOK AT THIS KITTEN and OMG CAR CRASH videos too.

<comment><USER10> I feel ya but when I meant quality content I should've been more specific. Hank and John Green have been making awesome quality content for YouTube whether it be the Lizzie Bennet Diaries or Crash Course or the Brain Scoop. This example also includes Philip Defranco who created SourceFed and many more content creators working on their shows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Who is this guy?

I'm trying to find other stuff he's done but I can't find his Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, anything...

Tumblr does frustrate me...

<comment><USER13> <http://youtube.com/vlogbrothers>

<http://youtube.com/crashcourse>

<http://youtube.com/scishow>

<http://twitter.com/hankgreen>

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

(In addition to that, he's also my employer, but that might not be relevant to you)

<comment><USER12> Thanks Sam. While not directly relevant, your employment is probably how you can afford to answer the questions of social-media-know-nothings like myself on the internet.

Tumblr frustrates me because I'm not 'in the stream' so to speak. The whole thing seems to be designed to just whisk you away to more Tumblrs. That could be great, but when you arrive at a page and have no clue who penned the words you're looking at or where you can go to find more of their work... it borders on infuriating.

Anyway, the reason I asked is I liked the post and found it tangentially relevant to a project I'm working on with a friend. Gave me a new way of thinking about a few things. So again, Thank You.

<comment><USER13> Yeah Tumblr can be silly. I've been into Tumblr for a while, and prior to about 6 months ago it was nearly impossible to find the original source of something without trawling through pages of "notes".

Some people put links to twitter/other social networks on their blogs but since probably >99% of the visitors to Hank's blog will get there from somewhere else in his network (Twitter, Youtube or any one of our number of community sites).

So yeah, don't feel to bad, Tumblr confuses even those of us who consider ourselves "social-media competent"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _Online video isn't about how good it looks, it's about how good it is. People who make online video are much better at making online video than people who make TV shows_

When people go to youtube the bar is set quite low, they don't expect the same as when they watch a show from a well established TV network that has a brand to protect and pristine "quality" to portray. That would be a good reason of whey this type of funding did not work out.

</comment><comment><USER15> i can't imagine Google expected to recoup that capital. i would guess they want YouTube to become TV - all of it. there is a lot of money in TV advertising. it's a company-doubling oppertunity. and they might need TV- quality production to get there. my last start-up was aquired by a major media company. i would guess $5M was the smallest amount of money they could get them to pay attention to.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is an essential quote:

"Please, let the advertisers figure out for themselves how to tackle this very new medium instead of trying to shape the medium to meet their needs."

Forgetting the rest of the article, I think this point is really salient to the way lots of valuable web services are evolving right now.

</comment><comment><USER17> Related note, I tried to sell Hank scishow.com sometime last year but was told they had no cash before we'd even got to discussing figures. I would have thought they'd be pulling in decent revenues across the network

<comment><USER18> he refers to the funding as an "advance" that he doesn't expect to earn out for three years - i'm guessing that means he's not pulling in any revenue from youtube, as they've already paid him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> _YouTube is a young company, it does not need to convert 100% of its value to dollars. Please, let the advertisers figure out for themselves how to tackle this very new medium instead of trying to shape the medium to meet their needs._

Yeah but there's no Youtube, it was sold to Google, a 14-15 year old and publicly traded company. As for advertisers and ads, Google is an ad agency so they'll probably not going to take your advice.

<comment><USER20> Actually, YouTube is fairly independent within Google. And Google is more of a software company with an internal ad agency.

<comment><USER11> It's pretty clear from their income statements going back to the invention of AdWords and AdSense that Google is an advertising company that dabbles in software on the side.

2010:

\- Advertising Revenue: $28.2B

\- Other Revenue: $1B

2011:

\- Advertising Revenue: $36.5B

\- Other Revenue: $1.3B

2012 (unaudited):

\- Advertising Revenue: $43.6B

\- Other Revenue: $2.3B

Travel allll the way back to 2001, the earliest figures Google has published. Guess what the revenue split looks like? Yep: still an advertising company.

2001:

\- Advertising Revenue: $66.9M

\- Other Revenue: $19.4M

If anything has changed it's that Google has steadily become _more_ of an advertising company.

Like Newscorp, the stuff you _think_ they do (search/services vs news/commentary) is not actually what they get _paid_ to do. Both Google and Newscorp make their money by using getting people to look at ads.

<comment><USER21> The vast majority of employees at Google work on stuff unrelated to AdWords and AdSense, they work on technology, and get paid to do it and are not told to come up with new ideas for showing more ads. A tiny minority of people rake in money on ads, which frees up the vast majority of engineers to work on other stuff. AdWords and AdSense scale, they simply don't need an army of employees to maintain them, Google doesn't need 15,000 employees all working on ad serving.

Like the vast vast vast majority of all consumer facing internet businesses ever created since the dawn of the Web, Google was created to do something: Search, without any clear business plan about how to make money. Most Web businesses do not charge end user fees, they are founded to get users, and either make money from ads, or get acquired by those that do.

Facebook: Ads. Twitter: Ads. Yahoo: Ads. New York Times? Ads. You really think the journalists at the New York Times view themselves as working at an advertising company because that's the only way they can get paid? You think it's accurate to describe the New York Times as an Ad Agency?

Much rarer do we see people saying "Facebook is just an ad company" in forums, this charge is always lobbed at Google, which says to me that there's some intellectual dishonesty going on, people with an axe to grind.

Google spent nearly $7 billion on R&D in 2013. Most of this spending is targeted not at ads, but in trying to develop other lines of business with diversified revenue sources. Larry Page is not an idiot, he sees that relying on ads for 97% of your revenue is a risky proposition. It just turns out to be a hard problem to get people to pay for content now, even on mobile you can see prices being driven down to free + freemium. Unless Google wants to be an Enterprise company like Oracle (a market where people have a proven track record of throwing money at stuff), it's at the mercy of what people are willing to do, and as shown over and over again, people like get stuff for free if paid for by others (ads).

Even for HBO and some other channels, the majority of media people consume, even that on "for pay" cable TV is still funded by commercial ads. You take a TV show which has a $2 million per episode budget, and you need a atleast 2 million people per week to pay $1. Now, how likely is that when many shows can't even command an audience of 1 million free viewers.

<comment><USER19> The number of employees on each department, even if you knew it, is totally irrelevant.

NY Times is a newspaper and totally different from Google which has Adsense, Doubleclick and Adwords. Google essentially controls online advertising and 95+% of their revenue is from....ads! Now with Google going 100% pay-to-play on eCommerce and transactional keywords it's even more of an ad company (milking the search goodwill.) You can call them whatever you want of course

<comment><USER22> What percent of NYT revenue is from ads?

<comment><USER19> "What percent of NYT revenue is from ads?"

Wrong question! What % of the world's advertising does NYT control, online, offline or mobile? What advertising tools does NYT offer? What is the ratio of ads vs content on money topics on NYT?

<comment><USER21> Before, it was "all that matters is how you are paid", now it's "let's finely slice the details of this, so as to exonerate everyone else, but still try to make Google a whipping boy." The axe needs more grinding.

<comment><USER19> _Before, it was "all that matters is how you are paid"_

Said who? How about looking at what the company focuses on? Before seeing content on Google I see a billion million gazillion ads, often looking similar to organic results. A while back ads were on the page to pay the bills but now they are the main content, by design. Shopping also is 100% ads. So what company is Google again? Oh, yeah, trying to send the users to the best site asap. My @ss.

<comment><USER21> Hyperbole is unbecoming. Google's mission is to organize the world's information, to give you the best answer to questions, not to send you to "the best site". Sometimes the best answer is a site, sometimes it isn't. Very few users want a search engine that sends them to a linkfarm or another search engine, they want answers in the fewest number of steps. If I ask what the weather is, I want a temperature and immediate forecast, I don't want to have to click through to Weather.com and initiate another 2 dozen HTTP requests for extra resources to get the answer, especially for mobile. I'll click through to another site if I want an extended 5 or 10 day forecast, or I want something beyond factual data.

Since Knowledge Graph was introduced, there are now millions of queries that don't even show any ads at all. For example, I search for "Hawaii" on Google (just did it in an incognito window), and I get a Knowledge Graph card and zero ads. I do it on Bing and I get travel ads for Alaskaair.

<comment><USER19> _Since Knowledge Graph was introduced, there are now millions of queries that don't even show any ads at all. For example, I search for "Hawaii" on Google (just did it in an incognito window), and I get a Knowledge Graph card and zero ads. I do it on Bing and I get travel ads for Alaskaair._

Your anecdotal evidence is worth nothing, we know the number of ad clicks because Google reports them each quarter. And they are rising by double digits quarter after quarter. So many more people are thinking that an ad is the best answer. Surprise, huh?

<comment><USER21> The number of ad clicks can indeed rise even as the number of ads shown declines due to better ad targeting. Your reasoning has been consistently flawed in most of the threads.

<comment><USER19> _The number of ad clicks can indeed rise even as the number of ads shown declines due to better ad targeting._

So users are finding more and more of their answers in ads? Good thing Google controls both ads and 'content.' And anecdotally the number of ads has increased immensely on transactional keywords, especially after Page. Content is buried by them. [http://www.zoekmachine-marketing-blog.com/wp- content/uploads...](http://www.zoekmachine-marketing-blog.com/wp- content/uploads/2011/12/Google-Adwords-HD-Monitor-637x650.jpg)

 _Your reasoning has been consistently flawed in most of the threads._

whatever you say. By the way, if you work at Google you should state so, quite a few Googlers have that habit. I suspect you are, given the stock answer you gave for the "best answer." If you work for Google, I don't blame you, It's hard to defend the same practices you and your bosses railed against just 2-3 years ago.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Layoffs mean more than lost wages for H-1B visa holders - <AUTHOR> http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_11593500 <comment><USER2> As someone who has gone through the immigration hoops, I've always been terrified of exactly this happening.

At some point, as with patent law and so many other laws that apply to tech, the "implementation" of immigration law hasn't done the best job of achieving the "intent". Surely, telling people to "get the hell out" when they've been valuable contributors, isn't in the best interests of the country?

<comment><USER3> As others have said, a degree certificate from a US university should come with a green card stapled to it.</comment></comment>


Business & Beer, OpenCoffee (Founders meetups in Berlin) - <AUTHOR>

There are two meetups this week in Berlin for founders.  I'm going to try to be at both.  Drop me a line if you'll be at either.
Today:  http://www.fu-berlin.de/wirtschaft/profund/angebote/gruendertreffen/index.html
Friday:  http://www.deutsche-startups.de/veranstaltungen/52/ <comment><USER2> I'll sit this one out, since I'm more interested in code than in startups. I'll likely pop into the Ubuntu release party in C-base on saturday, though. Anyone else planning to be there?

[http://www.ubuntu-berlin.de/hardy-heron- releaseparty_26.4.20...](http://www.ubuntu-berlin.de/hardy-heron- releaseparty_26.4.2008_c-base)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd like to be there, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to get away from coding on the weekend.

<comment><AUTHOR> Didn't make it to Open Coffee (kept working until about 6:00 a.m. and couldn't pull off the 2-hour turn-around), but a friend of mine is DJ-ing at the party at 22:30, so there's a good chance that I'll drop in for a bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hi Wheeler. Will be there! (On Friday, that is.) Yay...

Never been there before though I pondered many times. German "startup scene" mostly not my cup of tea. But if they make it to Hacker News (via you), might be worth a shot.

<comment><USER4> I think there will be exactly the german startup scene as you expect it to be... - not many (no?) hackers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, if dualogy and I are there we'll have at least two. ;-)

My real name is Scott and my picture is in the links in my profile, just find me when you're there.

<comment><USER4> If I only would have a bike ride of 15 minutes I would probably come ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> For anybody still tracking this:

The event was pretty decent. There were a mix of programmers and business folk, free beer and food. I'm almost certain that I'll go back next time.</comment>


Haiku R1/beta2 has been released - <AUTHOR> https://www.haiku-os.org/news/2020-06-09_haiku_r1_beta2/ <comment><USER3> I'm glad to see Haiku is still making progress!

I really enjoy the visual style of Haiku. The look-n-feel of it seems better to me than any other UI I've seen, and I say that as someone who never used BeOS, so it's not the nostalgia talking.

It would be really cool if Haiku was able to get to a state were it's usable as a daily driver. I think having an OS and interface more focused on a single user at a graphical terminal rather than a multi-user system with graphics tacked on would be positive.

BeFS also has some really great ideas that aren't replicated in other more modern FSes, namely it includes database-like functionality that enables some really neat features via a standardized interface, rather than hiding them away in vendor-specific file formats. If you're interested, Practical File System Design[0] uses beFS as it's example filesystem (and it's also a really good book in general).

0 - [https://www.amazon.com/Practical-System-Design-Dominic- Giamp...](https://www.amazon.com/Practical-System-Design-Dominic- Giampaolo/dp/1558604979)

<comment><USER4> I also like the look of Haiku/BeOS, but to me it looks a lot like Apple Platinum from Mac OS 8 and 9: [https://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/10/39579b3...](https://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/10/39579b3ce39de8d4e8e2b489a2a93880-780x585.jpg).

I'm curious what you like about it. I personally miss a lot of design things that have fallen out of style.

On Windows, it feels like everything is blindingly white/soft grey with no texture or borders to help my eyes focus. Transparency is used without regard for its utility. Instead of using borders, they use space which ends up wasting a lot of screen real-estate. The differentiation between active and background window is very subtle.

macOS has many of the same issues. Scroll bars aren't shown unless you're scrolling. You can change this behavior, but still. Background windows are hard to differentiate from foreground windows. Transparency is used for seemingly no reason.

That said, macOS does offer better design queues than Windows 10. The macOS finder will use a slightly different color for the left panel than the main work area. Windows 10 uses the same white for both areas drawing focus as if they're equal. Buttons in macOS have a very subtle bump out to show that they're buttons vs just being completely flat. There are usually small borders between things.

Take this screenshot: [https://thehacktoday.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/10/screensh...](https://thehacktoday.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/10/screenshot-folder.png). There's no border between the back/forward/up buttons and the content below. Everything is the same white. Clickable items have no real indication that they're buttons. macOS: [https://icdn2.digitaltrends.com/image/digitaltrends/import-m...](https://icdn2.digitaltrends.com/image/digitaltrends/import- music-in-macos-catalina-finder-1.jpg). You can see more clear demarcations. Buttons clearly stick out a little, the left panel is a different color with a tiny border, the title bar is a different color with a gradient, etc.

Haiku's design harkens back to a day when we demarcated things. Haiku's active windows are yellow while background windows are grey ([https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Haiku_OS...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Haiku_OS.png)). This makes it instantly clear what is the top window. There are borders on everything and a subtle beveled effect.

Is that the kind of stuff that you like about Haiku's UI? Is it something els?

<comment><USER5> I agree with all your points. But worth pointing out that BeOS predates Mac OS 8 and 9. Not sure if there's a line of influence between the two, but uthere's definitely a 1990s 'demarcated' design; not just with colour but with simple visual elements.

And attention to physical placement. Windows 95 made a strange choice when it placed the 'close' button next to minimize/maximize, making it entirely possible to close-by-accident. OS X then strangely threw away the classic Mac positioning and adopted something like Windows, and made this worse by choosing in its first versions to make the function of the buttons unclear until the mouse moved over them.

I really enjoyed Sun's "OpenLook" design back in the day: [http://toastytech.com/guis/ow2default.png](http://toastytech.com/guis/ow2default.png)

Minimalist while not being spartan or unclear.Skeuomorphism but not overdone.

<comment><USER3> While we're talking about cool old UIs, I'll also point out IRIX 4dwm[0] (google image search "IRIX 4dwm" for more examples). It's far before my time, but based on the screenshots out there on the 'net it seems like a pretty good UI for it's time period.

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

<comment><USER5> That's just Motif isn't it?

Well, I guess it's a custom shell for Motif.

<comment><USER3> That, and a custom set of applications which might have been written in Motif. There have definitely been better UIs since then, but for it's time I it seems pretty impressive.

<comment><USER5> It's very much a shame that licensing on Motif was so restrictive. At a time when Unix desperately needed a standardized toolkit, the wrong moves were made, and fragmentation was the result.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting to see this isn't another linux distribution, but a _real_ OS.

Some of the software ported to this OS [0] (some not on this list but looking at their repo [1] ):

LibreOffice

Krita

Telegram

Jetbrains (PyCharm, ItelliJ)

Rust, Node.JS, Python, Java 12

Qt Creator

Arduino

Obviously there's more in their repo, looking promising though. (Try find your favourite software in there!)

[0] [https://www.haiku-os.org/get-haiku/r1beta2/release- notes#mor...](https://www.haiku-os.org/get-haiku/r1beta2/release-notes#more- ported-software)

[1] [https://depot.haiku-os.org](https://depot.haiku-os.org)

<comment><USER7> Though IMO this misses the point of the OS which is the deep integration and fast UI the native APIs allow that these cross platform applications (and any application ported to Haiku through Qt and Java) ignore. There is no real reason to use Haiku over some Linux desktop (you can even make XFCE look kinda similar to Haiku/BeOS if you want) if the applications you use do not take advantage of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> As a Haiku developer (and user, naturally!) I have to disagree. Obviously native software would be preferred, just as it is on macOS, but I am pretty sure that macOS users will tell you that they still prefer macOS, even if they are using Firefox, or JetBrains, or Inkscape, etc., yes?

The Linux desktop is a horribly fragmented and fragile ecosystem. Haiku lacks a lot of features the Linux kernel has, but the overall system architecture and design is significantly cleaner and less fundamentally fragile.

<comment><USER7> I never implied that the Haiku developers would dislike these applications, so i'm not sure you being a Haiku developer has anything to do with your disagreement.

And yes, macOS users probably also tell you that they prefer macOS, though note that they also are often _very_ loud about preferring software that takes advantage of their OS' features because this is why they use that OS.

The thing is, macOS has a much richer selection of software than Haiku has (and most likely, ever have) so macOS users at least can fall back to those. But if all you are going to use on Haiku is ported software that ignores native APIs then what is the point of using an OS with less hardware support and features?

The Linux desktop being fragmented doesn't mean much - your Qt application ported to Haiku will also work on KDE perfectly fine and chances are even if you limit your software selection to Qt-only applications, you'll still have more applications to work with. Though that fragmentation is really a poor description since there are standards you can rely on, like X11 - sure someone might be using Gnome or XFCE or Window Maker or i3 or whatever as their desktop, but applications do not target those environments, they target a lower level of the stack that is shared among these and making an application on XFCE doesn't mean it'll only run under XFCE.

So yeah, it might look fragmented, but unless you are some custom support worker that tries to navigate someone through the UI via phone, that isn't much of an issue in practice (and "in practice" is the important bit here because the reasons i've seen people put forth for having Qt/Java applications ported to Haiku and ignore Haiku's own APIs are all about practicality - <USER2> ignores the elephant in the room which is that if you care about practicality using Haiku in the first place wouldn't be a good choice anyway).

<comment><USER8> Being a developer (and a user as they acknowledge), they have relatively deep experience with the system and the benefits of "native" vs. ported apps. Because of that, they have a reasonable basis of knowledge in order to dispute your statement about the suitability of Haiku for someone using those apps, or the benefits of using those apps on Haiku.

<comment><USER7> They may have (i don't know) but they didn't dispute anything, they just said that they disagree and the rest was about what macOS users would probably say and something about how Linux is more fragmented and how in theory Haiku is better but neither of those had anything to do with what i wrote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Those curious for more may wish to see also:

2018 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18099127](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18099127)

2017 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15973918](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15973918)

2016 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12566056](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12566056)

2013 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5564766](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5564766)

2012 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4123941](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4123941)

2010 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1334827](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1334827)

2009 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=820844](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=820844)

Sundry: [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=comments%3E0%20haiku- os.org&sort=byDate&type=story)

</comment><comment><USER10> I've tried Haiku a few times and liked it, but it feels like the beta label has been around forever and is not doing them any favors. It's 2020, you're not publishing software as a big-box release in stores, just cut a release already and then keep iterating!

From Wikipedia:

 _It wasn 't until September, 2009 that Haiku reached its first milestone with the release of Haiku R1/Alpha 1. Then in November, 2012 the R1/Alpha 4.1 was released, while work continued on nightly builds.[8] On September 28, 2018, the Haiku R1/Beta 1 was released.[9] On June 9, 2020, Haiku R1/Beta 2 was released._

Almost 11 years and it's still not out of beta?!

<comment><AUTHOR> What can I say? We have extremely stringent quality standards ;)

The "beta" label signified that we had implemented all the features we thought mandatory for R1. Of course there are new ones in this release (like HiDPI support or the NVMe driver) because we still want to use Haiku on contemporary hardware, so changes still get made. But largely we are more oriented towards stabilization and "usability", i.e. fixing bugs or minor enhancements that get in the way of actually using Haiku.

But it's also the case that we do not get a massive amount of work done every month; probably around or less than a "man-month" between the dozen or two developers.

<comment><USER11> ReactOS is still in alpha after 22 years. I guess their standards are even higher.

<comment><USER12> To be fair windows does keep introducing new API. BeOS has been "stable" for some time now

<comment><USER11> IIRC the goal was to be _driver-compatible_ (with Windows Server 2003).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The actual R1/Beta 2 release notes provide more details on what's in this release [0]:

[0] [https://www.haiku-os.org/get-haiku/r1beta2/release- notes/](https://www.haiku-os.org/get-haiku/r1beta2/release-notes/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Hidden gem of the Haiku project is the "Learning to Code in C++" tutorials.

[https://www.haiku-os.org/development/](https://www.haiku-os.org/development/)

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm amazed! On a whim, I tried installing it to my old ASUS EEE 7" netbook. Everything seems to work! Haiku just breathed new life into that old device.

<comment><USER16> I tried the last major beta release on my 701 4G, but couldn't get it to work, I think due to the minimum screen resolution requirements. I'll try again with this one - some people on the Haiku community forums reported success with their 7" netbooks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Congrats to the Haiku team! I recently started testing it out, hoping to contribute soon, and it's pretty neat. I last played with it 10 years ago, and it feels a lot more solid today. Really looking forward to what's in store for R2 when R1 is released!

</comment><comment><USER18> I used BeOS for a couple years in the 1990s as my exclusive OS. It had all the software I needed at the time. I especially liked the feature where you could clone your whole working system to another drive or partition, live. That actually saved me on a couple occasions, I would perform a weekly backup of my whole live system to a secondary drive.

It's so nice to see this project making great progress.

</comment><comment> yjftsjthsd-h By complete coincidence, today was the day that I finally decided to try Haiku on a spare laptop... and it just worked. Battery's recognized, display's running at full resolution (no VESA or whatever), wifi worked without issue. I'm typing this comment in WebPositive:) This is actually pretty great.

</comment><comment><USER19> Haiku lags and will lag main stream operating systems regarding drivers for hardware. But if they could make it run in Raspberry Pis, with one set of hardware it would be awesome. A light weight operating system on a light weight computer.

RPi's could be the killer "app" for Haiku.

<comment><AUTHOR> Honestly the main way we lag right now is missing sleep support (nobody has attempted it) and 3D acceleration.

Otherwise, Haiku runs on modern hardware just fine. I have a custom build from this year under my desk with an AMD Ryzen 7 3700X (8c16t), an NVMe drive, and Haiku boots off the NVMe and runs great with all 16 threads. It even can connect to the internet via the WiFi card on the motherboard.

<comment><USER20> I'm curious. I've long suspected hardware compatibility would get easier as everything moves into the same package as the CPU.

Have things been playing out that way?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sort of. Things like USB, which past 1.0 has only one controller per generation, released the current controller design in 2010 with the first chipsets on the market in 2011. So that at least is less of a moving target than it once was.

But, I mean, NVMe follows on SATA much like SATA followed on IDE, so on that front things are not so different. And for WiFi, there is not a common device interface for that, so each new generation of hardware from each manufacturer requires a large chunk of new driver code. Haiku reuses FreeBSD's WiFi drivers and 802.11 layer, but as you can see, they are having a hard time keeping up (only recently was one developer hired part-time to work on it, I believe.)

So, it's kind of a wash, really -- on x86 commodity PC hardware, that is. Part of the reason Haiku on ARM still has not taken off is how wildly diverse that ecosystem is, especially how much of a moving target it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> How does Haiku's accessibility story look like? Any plans for a screen reader?

Blind user here, I would like to try this out and see what all this fuss is about, but I think I can't. Can someone explain what's so great about Haiku's UI?

<comment><AUTHOR> (Haiku developer here.) The way the UI is structured, creating a screen reader would not be too difficult, and I think one of our developers attempted it at one point, but it was certainly never finished and is not usable right now. Sorry :(

Beyond the spirit of and compatibility with BeOS, Haiku's advantages are being full-fledged desktop operating system developed by a single team as a single unit (that is, unlike Linux or the BSDs where the kernel, window manager, GUI toolkit, application suite, etc. are developed by separate teams and combined by yet other groups); and also our occasionally unique approach to systems design and implementation (for instance, the Haiku package manager is based around a union mount of block-compressed filesystem images.)

The UI itself is reminiscent of 1990s UIs (gradients, bevels, more saturated colors), with a modern feel (modern fonts, antialiasing, etc.) The window borders are not rectangular, but are instead yellow "tabs" which are only as wide as their text is, and so windows from separate applications can be "stacked" and used as a unit, like tabs within applications.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Interesting— two showstoppers for me fixed since Beta 1. USB 3 is now much better supported including as boot devices, and NVMe drives are now also supported. I might just be able to at least boot and see this! Judging by this, the traction actually sounds decent. Wait - what? It's 10+ years old. Yes, but that was just two major improvements out of several, and during 20 months.

</comment><comment><USER23> Haiku has a really lovely smooth "90s-style" graphical interface. Always responsive whether you run it locally or (as I more often do) run it in a VM.

</comment><comment><USER24> The ideals of Haiku are great but is anyone using it consistently? If they are what workflows benefit from Haiku's feature set?

I understand the theoretical benefits. I'm curious if anyone is actually using Haiku features in some non-trivial way, e.g.

> Database-like file system (BFS) with support for indexed metadata

A filesystem with indexed metadata sounds great but who is actually using it and how?

I tried to search for comments with the obvious phrases but all I found was this comment from 10 years ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1335692](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1335692).

<comment><USER25> > A filesystem with indexed metadata sounds great but who is actually using it > and how?

One of my first sour experiences with NTFS was the horror involved in learning how to find which files have changed since some given time in a directory. I expected a SQL-ish interface but...omg. omg.

The reason for tracking changes in files was for hot loading art assets into a running program.

<comment><USER24> Yup, filesystems in general should have a database/SQL interface. I'm currently using CouchDB and Apache Tika to index and search my files. It works but there is no way people who are not programmers would enjoy using such a system. It's extremely inelegant and requires constant context switching and I'd much rather be using an operating system that had all this functionality as part of the filesystem interface.

<comment><USER26> > Yup, filesystems in general should have a database/SQL interface

That's basically what FILESTREAM is in SQL Server if you squint.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It has one of (together with QNX Photon) the most beautiful widget look-and- feels I've ever seen. Can I have similar for Qt, Gtk and/or Windows?

</comment><comment><USER28> It has been a long long time since I gave Haiku a look. It is getting there. Setup on KVM took less than a minute. Looking nice. Networking seems a little slow when loading web pages, otherwise looks good. I miss WebPositive.

<comment><USER29> WebPositive is included.

<comment><USER28> Yes. I know. I am posting from it right now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Legends of BeOS's fast multimedia handling still lives on and I wonder if Haiku has some sort of edge today when it comes to playing multimedia or recording music?

<comment><USER31> It was bonkers. I could barely play two videos simultaneously on my Pentium in Windows 9x, but I could play four simultaneously on the same box booted into BeOS. The OS was small and fast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I tried haiku back in 2011, it was a fun 2 hour then I forgot about it. Since that short experience, every other year news find me that it reached a new milestone.

It does sound like fun to write a new os... but this project is at least 10 years old. How and why did it survive and reached beta? Why does it still exist?

What practical applications does this OS has (or will have) over the commonly knowns?

<comment><USER33> Why do people work on old cars? For the love of it.

<comment><USER34> So you are saying Haiku is a hobby project with no goal of being um... "production"? Are you sure that people building it feel the same way?

<comment><USER33> Considering it's a small set of developers who all work part time re- implementing an OS from the 90s that failed when it was a commercial entity fully staffed, it's hard to imagine that they're super serious about it being a "production" OS.

<comment><USER35> A couple quick comments:

(1) While Be, Inc., failed, it's debatable whether it failed because the OS wasn't good enough. It was certainly being used in commercial production in certain places already -- not just by hobbyists. Steinberg was selling a BeOS version of their (very high-grade and expensive!) audio production system, Nuendo, and I actually _saw_ Level Control Systems' CueStation, an "audio automation system" for Broadway-grade live performance systems, running on BeOS in the wild -- it was running the control booth of Cirque de Soleil's permanent installation at Disney World. BeOS was doing _shockingly_ well in attracting commercial applications in 1997-1999 given its tiny user base -- what they were failing at was attracting hardware companies to ship pre- installed systems. Be's management was dead set on the idea that "steady and slow growth as a niche OS" just wouldn't do, and they needed to either be the next Apple or die trying. And, when they punted on desktop BeOS in favor of a custom version for what turned out to be the absolutely imaginary market for internet appliances, they pretty much chose "die trying."

(2) I think it depends on what you mean by "production". I mean, it's probably never going to be competing with Linux servers. But is it possible it could be competitive with Linux as a desktop OS? Maybe. A few years ago I wouldn't have been that optimistic, but they've done a tremendous job with ports.

<comment><USER36> > what they were failing at was attracting hardware companies to ship pre- > installed systems.

Microsoft told hardware manufacturers that if they ship machines with BeOS they would charge them more for Windows licenses.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20131109045719/http://www.intern...](https://web.archive.org/web/20131109045719/http://www.internetnews.com/ent- news/print.php/3073811/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Window stacking is one of the best features of Haiku. Gnome should consider useful features like this to improve the user experience.

<comment><USER38> If they implement it, then it would be a hamburger menu.

<comment><USER37> Its all three vertical dots and/or gear icon now. Only place I can see the hamburger menu is Firefox.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I just saw that it has guile and Emacs. Together with Firefox that means 99% of my computer usage is covered.

<comment><USER40> WebPositive and/or Qupzilla/Falkon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I remember folks who would wax nostalgic about BeOS, and claim it trounced Unix & Windows when it came to performance. Could anyone speak to the technical strengths / interesting aspects of this OS?

<comment><USER42> I think most of the perceived performance was a result of pervasive multi threading, which was novel at the time.

For example, I remember being able to simultaneously play 5-6 mp3 files, load a web page, play an mpeg video, and browse the local file system while having complete UI responsiveness and no audible/visual glitches. This was pretty much unheard of at the time, especially on modest consumer hardware (pentium 2 ~350mhz IIRC)

<comment><USER31> Yeah that pretty much sums it up. The OS ran circles around pretty much any other OS you had running on the same hardware.

I remember the OS installing in a crazy short amount of time.

<comment><USER43> It booted in ~10 seconds on my Pentium II 266 system, which was a VERY BIG DEAL back then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> It reminds me (maybe just for me) old Amiga OS called "Workbench". I mean I like this.

</comment><comment><USER45> I would love a faithful replication of the BeOS/Haiku desktop on Linux.

<comment><AUTHOR> People have tried it before, but all those projects are now defunct. Ultimately it winds up being "just another Linux desktop environment", or even a mere reskin of another DE. The kind of deep system integration that is possible when the entire system is developed as one project is extremely difficult, if not actually impossible, to do in the Linux ecosystem.

<comment><USER46> Crazy idea: Have you ever thought of porting your desktop environment to Genode? ( [https://genode.org/](https://genode.org/) ) And fully integrating their Sculpt into it? I mean, on Amd64 you are already binary incompatible, so that wouldn't count as an argument against it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Someone suggested it (but then, the community is large enough that all far- fetched-but-not-impossible ideas have probably been mentioned at one point or another :)).

I don't really know what the differences between porting Haiku's userland to that or to Linux would be. Everyone loves to make arguments about how microkernels are so great and all, but there still isn't a major operating system or distribution with a significant number of everyday users on one. Plus, all of our same philosophical objections to using the Linux (or any other kernel) as the basis for Haiku would still apply.

<comment><USER47> Also some one started it with HoG (Haiku on Genode) [https://discuss.haiku- os.org/t/genode-and-haiku/8384](https://discuss.haiku-os.org/t/genode-and- haiku/8384)

<comment><USER46> Phew! Not so crazy I am...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I get (I think) how this is different from a Linux desktop, being developed in entirety as a single project, instead of being split into a kernel, and user- space distro, and fragmented apps on top of that, but ... is there a tl;dr on how this compares to (say) FreeBSD, which is another "kernel + user-space in one package" thing?

<comment><AUTHOR> FreeBSD still runs X11 and a bunch of other applications on top of it to get a working desktop, and the result is ... even less pleasant than the Linux desktop, according to some reviews: [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/04/not-actually- linux-d...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/04/not-actually-linux-distro- review-freebsd-12-1-release/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> So..... Why would Jane the User pick Haiku OS over, say, Ubuntu?

<comment><USER49> Because she really wants something fringe and not really Unix. I'd be surprised if there was any user or developer that didn't do Haiku as a hobby. I've never heard of a single person making money from it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, you're about to: [http://tunetrackersystems.com/](http://tunetrackersystems.com/)

<comment><USER50> I think that's really impressive. An expensive piece of software shipping an operating system to go along with it. And they have a video showing worldwide installations, demonstrating that it is a successful product. Well done!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Took me a while to figure out what it is:

"While the first release(s) of Haiku will be very much like the _BeOS R5, the operating system it is reimplementing_ ..."

<comment><USER52> The domain name is _haiku-os.org_. Every page includes an "About" link at the top, and the root page has a two-sentence description in a large font at the top.

They really couldn't make it any easier to figure out what Haiku is.

<comment><USER51> The news release doesn't show a thing about what it is nor is there a link.

The URL with an OS in the name tells me what category it is in but not the USP (I don't really get that from the two sentences either but at least it's something)

So I went looking (not via Home or About because usually they are useless, YMMV) but via Documents.

So here I am, saying that it took me a while to figure out what it was.

<comment><USER53> There is no USP really... it's an OpenSource reimplementation of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS) (before your time?). Haiku has been around in some guise or other since the early 2000's.

BeOS was/is pervasively threaded and took full advantage of multiple cores (a very novel thing when it came out - BeBox had two PPC processors).

Similar projects include: ReactOS (Windows 2000), AROS (AmigaOS), FreeDOS (MS- DOS), FreeMiNT (Atari ST). I think there might even be one for OS/2

<comment><USER31> For all intents and purposes, if you had no exposure to BeOS, you won't really get why this project exists.

It is so crazy to think that we could be living in a completely different world today had Apple opted to acquire BeOS instead of NeXT.

<comment><USER54> I suspect Apple would have struggled to attract the amount of developers they did, by moving to a non-unix systems; which in turn might have hampered their efforts on mobile.

<comment><USER31> Well the bigger impact is that Steve Jobs may not have ever returned to Apple.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Sigh. Probably will try it later. Did try the R1/beta1, and had to fiddle in the BIOS to get usable output on secondary display (can't remember if i managed dual-screen) on intel graphics. Liked the look and feel of it, mostly. Because on the secondary display on 24"@1920X1200 the icons looked somehow stretched wide, but just a little. Not so on the internal 13"@1280x800. Question is: what to do with it? How stable is the FS? Where are the videos/intros which _really_ show what i can do with it, which i can't with other desktops? Haven't found a really compelling reason so far. (Hmmm, seems like they updated their slideshows and list of videos...)

Would FreeCiv stop slowing down to a crawl on larger maps in late game? Could i abuse AQEMU as performant dockerthingy for the applications i need?

<comment><USER55> > Question is: what to do with it?

perfect for an old 32 bit computer lying around. a computer for the grandparents. or the kids. or dual-boot into it for a focus for writing, with minimal distractions.

<comment><USER46> Dual-booting _is_ a distraction to me. Could also blow up some editor into fullscreen while having no messengers/mails running and be done with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Haiku looks like an interesting project. I like the concept and the consistent design, but ... it is still missing one critical feature ... a viable business model.

Linux is an example of what to expect without this critical piece. Decades of manhours from some of the best and brightest, millions of lines of code ... and a miniscule marketshare on the desktop.

<comment><USER57> It's not a business. Why does there have to be a business model?

<comment><USER56> It doesn't need one --- as long as it only aspires to be another hobbyist OS with a miniscule desktop user base.

<comment><USER57> It aspires to be something the developers enjoy hacking on and using, which is the very reason it exists at all. Why you seem to think it needs to be more than that is puzzling.

I'm sure the developers would love for it to be more than that, but there's a limit to what can be done and it's ASTONISHING what they have done.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A wave-powered ferry aims to forge a new path for shipping in the Philippines - <AUTHOR> https://news.mongabay.com/2020/04/a-wave-powered-ferry-aims-to-forge-a-new-path-for-shipping-in-the-philippines/# <comment><USER2> 'Wave-powered' my ass. 'Subsidies-powered' is what this is.</comment>


The Critical Security Flaws that Resulted in Last Friday's Hack - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cloudflare.com/the-four-critical-security-flaws-that-resulte <comment><USER2> Why does Google allow the hacker and the account owner to keep resetting passwords in rapid succession? The timeline indicates that two lengthy ping- pong sessions took place during the incident. That kind of behavior should immediately raise a red flag. How often do legitimate users reset passwords alternately from two different locations 10 times in 15 minutes?

I'm surprised that Google doesn't detect two people fighting for control of one account. They could have easily detected ping-pong sessions and and locked both parties out of their accounts for a couple of hours. Or they could have penalized the newly added recovery address by forcing an exponential delay between resets using that address. This is not the first time I've heard of somebody breaking into a Gmail account while the account owner is using that very same account.

<comment><USER3> I was in the same situation about 1,5 years ago, when some security hole in Gmail allowed my account to be hijacked. The account was suspended automatically after the attacker had sent out 7 spam mails, and I could reset the account again without the attacker returning ever again. But, the ping ponging did go on for a while and Google did not bother.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Rule #1 when publicizing security incidents: always publish something else to the blog within 1.5 hours so that the security incident isn't the top post.

Edit: semi-tongue-in-cheek per comments below; as a CloudFlare customer I went to the blog when this first came up expecting to see something but bounced when the first post was a discussion of SSL BEAST since that was the hotness back in the fall of 2011.

I do believe it was not planned, but I also feel that vulnerability disclosures should be pinned for a while somehow if possible. I think one way this is done is having a separation between 'new feature' blog and 'ops' blog.

<comment><USER5> Haha. Wish we were that organized. We have a big announcement on Wednesday and need the announcement about Polish ([http://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing- polish-automatic-imag...](http://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-polish- automatic-image-optimizati)) and the feature we're announcing tomorrow (Mirage) to come out before then.

I think being among the top stories on Hacker News will take care of people seeing it. And, for the record, I voted the breach story up.

<comment><USER6> Hey, just wondering, did someone make that infographic by hand or is there some software that does it for you? EDIT: Made by a graphic designer, answered below.

And now I will shamelessly take this moment to request a few features related to account security :-).

* Alerting: SMS or e-mail notification when an unrecognized device logs into my account or when records in my domains change.

* 2-factor Authentication: Prompt for a code delivered via SMS, e-mail, Google Authenticator, or DUO Security to login from an unrecognized device.

* Login Accounting: Let me see what IPs logged into my account, when, geoip info for each, and preferably what actions they took while logged in. Provide an API for this info so I can write an automated script to analyze it for suspicious events.

If you end up making any of these features, it would be cool to open-source a library you used to do it. There are a bunch of large SaaS providers out there that use features like these but they're all homegrown implementations afaik.

Btw, the Google Apps Admin Audit API exists but I have never seen anyone do anything with it and it makes me sad. A few hours with [name a scripting language] and you could probably have a pretty robust Google Apps monitoring system, but no one seems to care: [https://developers.google.com/google- apps/admin-audit/get_st...](https://developers.google.com/google-apps/admin- audit/get_started)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Part of this attack bears a certain resemblance to the recent Bitcoinica compromise, in that, from what I understand, they were also forwarding admin emails to personal accounts, one of which was compromised leading to the attacker gaining control of the bitcoinica virtual servers. Cloudflare were fortunate - at least the changes made were reversible, whereas the bitconica compromise resulted in the virtual servers being unrecoverably deleted after breach and theft.

There are lessons to be learned from both incidents.

</comment><comment><USER8> Does anyone else get the feeling that the attacker is going to be someone the Cloudflare team knows? Firstly they would have had to have known Matthew's phone number. Then, assuming the attacker always had the plan of disrupting the target site, they would have had to have known that the password reset mails were BCC'd to admins.

<comment><USER9> Getting someones phone number seems pretty insignificant compared to using a previously undisclosed google security flaw.

And it's probably safe to assume that once you control the admin email account for a site, it's game over. You could request resets from other providers

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> O.o This reminds me so much of the hack sequence from the game Uplink. The game was based on "hacking" but intentionally used hacking techniques from Hollywood :) It was pretty fun. Anyway for the highest-level targets, you had to get a voiceprint from the phone of an admin, crack the password on the box, and break the encryption while bypassing monitors.

Just found out: Uplink is on Steam, and in the Ubuntu Software Center now.

</comment><comment><USER11> Incredible hack! Hats off to the hacker and to Cloudflare for the transparency of the response.

What customer was the target?

<comment><AUTHOR> Another poster on r/netsec ([https://pay.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/ui0k4/cloudflare_wa...](https://pay.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/ui0k4/cloudflare_was_hacked_with_a_flaw_in_google_apps/)) mentioned that it was 4chan.org.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wow - that's some epic transparency. Kudos to Matt and the Cloudflare team for that.

</comment><comment><USER13> I like the infographic showing the series of events, definitely goes a long way in terms of aiding transparency. I wonder if it could be a new trend?

<comment><USER14> I would love to know if the graphic was made by hand or in an automated fashion.

<comment><USER5> Made by hand by Kevin our great graphics designer. Was up late very last night putting it together. Filled in the last few details this AM.

<comment><USER14> Its awesome, hat tip to Kevin. You guys should make the smaller version a link to the full version. I did not see the text link at first...

<comment><USER5> Posterous usually does that automatically. Not sure why it isn't here. Will see if I can wrap the image in an <a> tag.

Update: Done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Would most of the attack been rendered impossible if Matthew answered his phone at 11:39 instead of letting it go to voicemail?

<comment><USER16> I'm not sure of the details here, but it wouldn't be too hard to make sure the reset call arrived in the middle of another call.

<comment><USER5> That makes a lot of sense and could have been what happened. It would also make it more difficult for Google to do something like ignore responses that come after 4+ rings.

<comment><USER17> I'm more curious why a "secure" PIN is simply left, automated, as a message. A more "secure" option, I would think, would be to require some sort of input from the person who answered (say, "Press 1 for the PIN" where that number is randomized, or something).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "AT&T was tricked into redirecting my voicemail to a fraudulent voicemail box"

Capitan Crunch called...

</comment><comment><USER19> The hack seems very well planned - I wonder just how many smaller sites have been hacked the exact same way as practice, and not picked up since they didn't have direct access to Google's security people?

<comment><USER20> I'd imagine you wouldn't blow a discovered flaw in Google's two-factor authentication setup on a small site. You'd sit on it until a big enough target came along, which CloudFlare certainly has become.

<comment><USER19> I don't think you'd be blowing it if you have a reasonable idea that the site owner just isn't big enough to get Google to return their calls.

<comment><USER20> Any usage of an exploit risks its discovery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Pretty intense hack... I think Google gives you the option of setting up a recovery phone to receive voice or SMS messages. It looks like SMS may be more secure.

It also sounds like he didn't have 2 factor setup on his personal gmail account. I wonder if that would of helped.

<comment><USER22> I believe that once you have it set to use a phone number, it's always possible for the attacker to choose to have it call instead of sending a text. (I seem to recall it provides that option on the 2-factor login screen.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> So, the "Five Whys" analysis came up one short, eh?

Just kidding, this is a great level of detail and much appreciated, to understand CloudFlare's process and how to protect against or recognize these tactics elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER24> [http://www.securityweek.com/exclusive-google-two-factor- auth...](http://www.securityweek.com/exclusive-google-two-factor- authentication-flaw-exposed-google-apps-customers)

</comment><comment><USER7> Is flaw # 5 (or #1 depending on how you look at it) not having two-factor auth on the personal account? Or does account recovery by-pass two-factor auth by design?

</comment><comment><USER25> The funny part - cloudflare still hosts the DNS for the guys who claim responsibility for this attack:

       Domain Name: UGNAZI.COM
       Registrar: ENOM, INC.
       Whois Server: whois.enom.com
       Referral URL: http://www.enom.com
       Name Server: LEE.NS.CLOUDFLARE.COM
       Name Server: RUTH.NS.CLOUDFLARE.COM
       Status: clientTransferProhibited
       Updated Date: 29-may-2012
       Creation Date: 22-jan-2012
       Expiration Date: 22-jan-2013

</comment><comment><USER26> Hrm [http://exiledonline.com/isucker-big-brother-internet- culture...](http://exiledonline.com/isucker-big-brother-internet-culture/)

</comment><comment><USER27> Great job on the transparency.

And now I know about the Google Authenticator app. Fancy little thing, that; glad to find out about it.

</comment><comment><USER28> The fact that they are relying on an external mail vendor, and had passwords in their emails is a very sad practice.

<comment><USER29> I'm guessing that they didn't have passwords, but were BCC-ing the password reset emails/links to the gmail account.

But yeah... I don't like the idea of using Gmail for this either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Sounds like if the hacker had just done it out of hours, perhaps when the person in question was asleep, they would have had uncontested access to the accounts and the hack might have been far more damaging.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm amazed Cloudflare got a response from Google that quickly. I'm a paying Apps customer and I don't see responses for 24 to 48 hours on security incidents, not to mention that Google doesn't have a stellar reputation when it comes to things like "support".

Goes to show, it's always who you know (or it's bullshit, which is less likely). Or I don't have enough users.

<comment><USER32> Paying Apps customers can call Google and talk to someone immediately.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What was the new thing you tried recently while being remote? - <AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> For a starter I did try my own hair trimming

<comment><AUTHOR> And started a project in react for the first time. A beginner.</comment></comment>


iPhone toddler flashcard app outsells WP7 version 10-1 - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/04/toddlers-pick-iphone-over-windows-7-phones-10-1/

<comment><USER2> Generally useless article:

1) Misleading title 2) There's at least 10x more iPhones in existence than WP7 phones.

<comment><USER3> also...

normalized for the number of iOS devices out there (vs. the # of WP7 devices), WP7 probably "won" here.

(although I agree that this is sort of a non-story)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The headline should read: "iPhone version of mobile application outsells Windows Phone 7 version 10-1".

<comment><USER5> Agreed - I was expecting some sort of test to see which phone toddlers find more visually appealing.

<comment><USER6> This is immediately what I thought when I read the title as well.

Misguided puff piece.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Let me rephrase that: App has very significantly larger marketshare on windows 7 phones than iPhone.</comment>


Q2 2020 Update - <AUTHOR> https://ir.tesla.com/static-files/f41f4254-f1cc-4929-a0b6-6623b00475a6 <comment><USER2> The difference in the narrative versus the financial data is stark:

Quarterly revenue has not shown any growth for nearly 2 years, despite introducing more models and expanding global deliveries. Their sales of regulatory credits _this year_ is greater than all of the net income ever earned in their entire history.

<comment><AUTHOR> Tesla posted positive free cash flow (CFO - capex) for 4 of the last 5 quarters (page 24) and it the only company with increase in # of deliveries among the 10 largest autos globally (page 7). Gross margins >20% is also best in class in the auto industry

The list goes on in terms of growth & profitability

<comment><USER3> > "The list goes on in terms of growth & profitability"

It better. Tesla has a market cap of 4x that of VW, a car maker with €256bn revenue and ~€17bn profit in 2019.

It is beyond me why anyone would buy this stock over VW, let alone pay 4x the price for it. Even if Tesla could put out _900K_ cars in a quarter instead of the current 90K, they'd still not come even close to the competition is terms of financial success.

Tesla would need to utterly dominate the car market to live up to its current valuation. Dominate as in market share, not relative quarter-to-quarter growth.

<comment><USER4> For bulls, TSLA isn't a car company. It's _the_ climate change company. They are the best bet right now to upend the entire power mix.

I'm not saying I agree with this. Even if achieved, the amount of future success being priced in today is extraordinary. Combine that with a stock that's become "cool" to own with retail, and the huge short interest...and well it starts to make sense.

TSLA price action at the moment is really down to a lack of sellers. Shorts have been bent over in a way not seen at this scale since (ironically) VW. Simply put: everyone who has said TSLA is overbought has paid dearly. The bubble will burst, but it's never shorts that pop bubbles.

<comment><USER5> >It's the climate change company

What does this mean? ELI5 pls

<comment><USER6> They mean that in the mind of "the general public", Tesla is the foremost company "doing stuff" about climate change. Therefore, by owning Tesla stock you can get warm glowy feels about making a difference. You might also gain coolness points by mentioning that you are "a Tesla investor" to people that care about such matters.

<comment><USER7> I may be wrong—I own no TSLA and I'm pretty much the furthest thing from a professional investor—but I didn't think the comment about being "the climate change" company was actually about warm fuzzies, I thought it was about the potential financial upside.

My understanding is that very likely—whatever green energy technologies win out—energy storage and load shifting will be a major issue.

The entities that can build energy and power storage effectively and at scale will have a new and large market opening before them.

Tesla is in a decent position—by being near the front-edge of battery production and scaling there's real room for Tesla to be a major player in the world energy market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some comments to the results:

\- Production was very limited in Q2 as the Freemont factory was completely down for quite some time. Getting the delivery count they managed, was a small miracle, of course helped by the ramping up Shanghai factory. So making still a profit is a great result. If the factory does not get closed down in Q3, sale numbers should be quite a bit better.

\- Yes, they certainly moved all profits they could legally book into Q2 to help the numbers, that is a quite normal practice, the booking rules set clear limits to what is possible.

\- Tesla won't make huge profits however good the business will be going, as they are investing a lot into growth. They are still extending the Shanghai factory, building the Berlin factory and just announced in the earnings call, that they are starting to build the next factory in Austin, Texas. Tesla is going from 1 factory in 2019 to 2 in 2020 and possible 4 at the end of 2021.

</comment><comment><USER9> TSLA in some ways reminds me of Amazon at the beginning. Way overpriced, but kept reinvesting into new things as it went and the stock price kept going up and profits stayed zero forever while the company kept building itself bigger and bigger. So I can see the bull perspective.

However...

Car manufacturing is not the same as slinging books online. Profits are consistently thin and Tesla's only edge is in battery tech and being a status symbol. So it is trying to be the Apple of cars but also grow like Amazon. And their aren't breakeven without credits, so it is kind of like if 2004 Amazon was able to reach breakeven only because Barnes & Noble had to pay Amazon for not having a website.

Also, I am unconvinced that one car brand will be the "Apple of cars" since there is no ecosystem lock-in and at the end of the day it is a fashion/trend symbol - precisely when unemployment is nuts and the economy is in the shitter. It quickly could become more of a overly flashy negative than cool aspirational thing, kind of a rich-is-bad type of reach that Hummer had with gas-is-bad.

Maybe Elon pulls it off, but at this price it is really investing in a future that hasn't been built or even imagined yet.

<comment><USER10> No, their edge is their factories (manufacturing innovation). This is the real product. The cars don't really matter. Seriously.

<comment><USER11> Factories not for cars but for batteries?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I know the domain name is there, but shouldn't the post title contain "Tesla"?

<comment><USER13> Seconded. A hint that it links to a PDF would also be welcomed by everyone on a phone.

<comment><USER14> Out of curiosity, why is viewing a PDF unwelcome on a mobile device?

<comment><USER15> Some browsers and apps auto download the pdf.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Revenues down Year over Year, and yet their stock price is 8x. Profiability increased, but its market cap is larger than Toyota which has over 10x the revenues. This stock is truly one for /r/wallstreetbets.

<comment><USER17> You realize their factory was shut down for much of this period, right? Comparing YOY quarterly figures here is very disingenuous.

<comment><USER16> Their stock price rose 8x. There's nothing in these numbers that justifies this type of meteoric rise exception pure, unadulterated speculation. They wouldn't have even been profitable if they couldn't sell their regulatory credits. How is that justifiable for an 8x YoY increase?

<comment><USER18> The potential upside for Tesla is huge. If they can become the Apple of electric cars and if electric cars become standard, they could be worth trillions. The reason their valuation was not in the trillions is because there is a risk that they will go bankrupt, that other companies will take the lead in EVs, or that EVs will not be where the market is headed in the foreseeable future. The reason for the jump in valuation is that those risks are being steadily reduced. EV competition is scarce, Tesla's cash reserves and consistent free cash flow hugely reduce the risk of bankruptcy, and the market is continuing to demonstrate that it wants electric cars (at least Tesla electric cars, that is), even during a pandemic. There is certainly an element of speculation and retail investor FOMO, but if Tesla's institutional investors didn't think this valuation could be justified at all they probably would have sold by now. Time will tell how reasonable the valuation really is, but betting against Tesla has not worked out very well so far.

<comment><USER19> But why would they become the Apple of electric cars? Why do you think they have better chances than anyone else? The market, to me, seems to show that most people still buy non-electric cars. Once that flips, any other much bigger car manufacturer could start producing more electric cars. There doesn't seem to be any rocket science to it.

Back in the 90s I bought a Rio PMP300. Before anyone knew what MP3s were, it was the first mp3 player out there. That didn't help them when people _did_ care about mp3 players - bigger players just came and ate the cake. I'm not sure what makes Tesla a different story. Seems like it was supposed to be "Autopilot", but we all know how good that's going.

<comment><USER20> I do think Tesla is way over valued at the moment. How could they be worth more than the market cap of all the vehicle companies combined? There isn't going to be largely more numbers of vehicles bought each year.

As to why Tesla could be the winner? One reason is that all the other automakers are failing to produce mass market EVs that anyone wants to buy.

<comment><USER21> My wife & I are considering our next vehicle our last non-electric one.

We consider every vehicle brand a joke aside from Tesla.

<comment><USER16> There are many reasons why Tesla is not optimal. If you get into an accident, your car will be in the shop for months. Literally months. I have a Tesla with a minor trim at the bottom of the car got damaged. It took 3 months, and they had to take apart the entire car. Literally even the back seats were taken apart just to change the trim on the bottom. It cost over $10,000.

Tesla's quality has dropped so much that JD Power's latest survey ranked it near the bottom in terms of quality. Everyone that has a Tesla says that they are fun to drive (they are) but they feel cheaply made.

The European car manufacturers are coming out with electric cars and I think they're ability to create a luxurious feel will make a big dent to Tesla's sales. Case in point, the Porsche Taycan looks amazing and will be a competitor to the Model S.

<comment><USER21> Nobody in my circle of aged 25-35 North American friends talk about buying a Tesla because it is only an electric car. It is the whole package that gets people to buy it. Not only does it look good, it feels smooth while driving, it actually feels like it is a modern vehicle, the software updates and "autopilot".

Every known vehicle manufacture outside of trucks & SUVs have no brand value to "millennials". I don't know anyone I communicate with who is excited to buy a ford, toyota, and or even a porsche car.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> So many red flags

Profit is all regulatory credits, actual auto sales flat to down, accounts receivable balance is now 1.4B or >20% of revenue, interest income is $8M (down -20%) even though global interest rates were cut to near 0 in Q2, R&D and service spending down despite dozens of projects the company claims to be working on.

<comment><USER23> Maybe it's red flags when you make conservative measurements against a traditional industry proxy measurement - and applying classic investment banking logic.

However you have got to remember that this is not just another company, it's not just another brand. They've already changed the world, it's all there in their track record.

<comment><USER24> They don't have any significant monopolistic advantage and they're operating in a highly price-sensitive, competitive market.

My personal theory is that Musk knows this and his real objective is to provoke car manufacturers into competing on electric. From Musk's point of view, the win is likely not Tesla making any significant amount of money for shareholders but instead it driving the whole market towards electric, thereby achieving the "real" objective of lowering emissions.

Many of his behaviors over the years suggest this could be the case: publishing a 'master plan', releasing Tesla's patents, noting the stock price was "too high", and sinking all of his PayPal money into SpaceX, Tesla, and Solar City (and then borrowing to pay his rent).

<comment><USER25> I'm pretty sure musk had literally said this is not your theory. that's why there was there patent stunt. It not some plot rather being the change you want to see, a even if Tesla collapses they moved the EV needle.

<comment><USER24> I can assure you that Musk has at no point intimated that Tesla is not a worthy investment and that he's not interested in profit maximization. He has only ever hinted at this peripherally, as described.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've seen a great deal of speculative investment in Tesla as of recently. I pray no middle class people will lose their entire net worth, much less in the middle of a crisis.

<comment><USER27> Old people on my Nextdoor are asking whether they should buy some TSLA, which was as good a signal as any I've ever seen when the same people were asking if they should maybe get some bitcoins (at $20k each). TSLA like every other US equity right now is supported by retail momentum alone.

<comment><USER28> TSLA is absolutely the present-day BTC.

<comment><USER29> I really need to get better at getting into these asset bubbles. I'm too late for Tesla, and it doesn't look like BTC has been going anywhere lately. Anyone got any tips for me?

<comment><USER30> I'm not sure if you're trying to be sarcastic, otherwise, I don't think a straight answer can be satisfactory for you.

Also, it might not be the best use of this forum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Pre Close:

\- From Bloomberg re Robinhood and TSLA "number of Robinhood accounts holding Tesla shares (in some form) is at an all- time high of 496,890. Tesla is the second-most popular stock on the platform over the last 24 hours, and the 19th-most popular stock over the last 7 days."

Looking at:

\- if profitiable check for amount of regulatory credits that Telsa gets from other automakers, this could be the difference between profitablity and not, though if this is what puts them over them edge then be a bit concerned

\- Is Texax truck factory happening or not? If so, what kind of tax incentives did they get as these types of tax deals are the first thing that could get cut if reports of Texas', um Texas sized, budget gaps exits, Tulsa is the other option, maybe with the SC ruling Tulsa is native land there could be some weird tax deal there??

\- Tesla's capex was cut way back from almost $3B forcats to under $1.3, helps make them look profitiable last year at the expense of that having to be made up this or next year, look for capex to be much higher

\- Model Y and X and S are only made in Fremont, though Shanghai will start producing the Y soonish, still lots of geographical risk as the pandemic and factory shutdown illustrated, Musk must do better here

\- Model Y was discounted and its brand new, Model S and X were discounted as well, TSLA really pushing to make their quarter for cars delivered, watch for gross margins to be down but numbers to be very juiced for a large beat

Numbers:

\- Rev $6B vs $5.5B, down from previous highs, but with teh lock down, pretty darn good!!

\- profit of 50cents per share on a GAAP basis, nice, though credits really juiced this

\- 4 quarters of profitability, though not always pretty or organic is really nice to see

\- Net Income was $451M vs ($74M), nice but mostly a factor of major discounting of cars and credit sales

\- Cash and cash equivalents @ $8.5B, nice!!!

\- Solar, yawn, 27 MW installed, why even bother at this point?

\- handed over 90,000 vehicles, different from produced

Outcome:

\- market cap is now $320B, wow!!

\- stock is flat on day as one would expect with so much vol leading up to announcement. The Post earnings drift traders are probably staying away as you need nerves of steel to trade TSLA earnings:)

\- Musk is now able to exercise an additional 1.69 million stock options, meaning he would reap a $2.1 billion gain if he exercised and could immediately sell the shares.

\- S&P 500 here we come, so /r/wallstreetbets and robinhood, congrats you guys did it!!!

<comment><USER2> > _if profitiable check for amount of regulatory credits that Telsa gets from > other automakers, this could be the difference between profitablity and not, > though if this is what puts them over them edge then be a bit concerned_

$400MM+ in regulatory credits.

GAAP Profit is around $120MM so far in 2020, with almost $800MM in credit sales. Crazy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Anecdotal story: I registered to buy a Model Y. But then covid hit and I'm now working at home and really have no need for a new car, plus with the economy in freefall, I have no desire to pick up that much debt. Combine this with Musk's threats to leave California, his other crazy rants, and tweets about the red pill, there's zero way I'm going to buy a Tesla any time soon, if ever.

I may or may not be representative of Tesla's target customer, but if you go by the Warren Buffet school of investing in what you know, then I would suspect Tesla's immediate future does not look good.

</comment><comment><USER33> What are regulatory credits? I thought the 7500 credit ran out?

<comment><USER34> This is separate from the consumer EV tax credit.

Every car manufacturer must produce a certain percentage of electric cars. If their actual EV sales aren't enough to cover that requirement, they can purchase "EV credits" from companies that exceeded their regulatory requirements to avoid a fine.

Essentially this policy gets car companies that aren't producing EVs to subsidize the ones that are.

<comment><USER35> Interesting! I wasn't aware of this credit. How it's structured is fascinating in that they essentially have to pay their competitors for not meeting the quota. (Of course the markets for EV vs ICE is somewhat different, but not disjoint.)

<comment><USER34> Yeah it's an awesome system! Similar ideas exist for controlling carbon emissions (like a cap and trade system, where, to oversimplify it, everyone gets an equal amount of "greenhouse gas points" which you can either spend on polluting or sell to others)

<comment><USER36> Actually, this system is counterproductive, I think. Starting production of EVs costs you money, but it also takes time, and the penalties for not meeting quotas are something you have to pay right now. So, in the end, the money you spend buying "EV credits" is the money taken away from your R&D budget on EVs.

You might argue that the company receiving money for "EV credits" would invest them in increasing the production, but that's often not the case - since they have already met their quotas and are off the hook, they are free to simply hand this money out to shareholders in form of a dividend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Positive financial results, one surprise to be seen here is a massive reduction in model S builds, more than 60% drop-off QoQ Presumably due to COVID, but maybe not?

<comment><USER38> I would argue that the model S/X should be updated for their respective costs; They pretty much sell a 6 year old interior that was "space age" at the time. Since then their have been minor interior/exterior and looks extremely dated as the competition has "caught" up and the cheaper models surpass it. The only main changes to the car have been better battery and performance, the latter doesn't improve the day to day experience of the car.

When your spending 100k on a car you expect Mercedes type of luxury. Previously, Tesla didn't have to compete on that because the Model S/X were ahead of its time an proof of concept cars, with the release of Model 3/Y there is no reason to have one, unless you need the additional size and want to have an electric vehicle on principle.

<comment><USER39> > _When your spending 100k on a car you expect Mercedes type of luxury_

This is the old way of thinking, and it illistrates perfectly why the other auto manufacturers have been caught flat footed re EVs.

For many decades what you said held true - more money on a car meant a higher quality interior.

Now things have changed dramatically, because what we thought of as a "car" has changed so much.

You can now spend 100k to get a car that never emits a single toxic chemical while being used. A vehicle that much cheaper to drive and own. A vehicle that requires significantly less maintenance, a vehicle that is silent and less fatiguing to drive, etc. etc.

This are all the reasons besides "I got a more luxury interior", and they're the kind of reasons that make an EV compelling.

<comment><USER40> The Model 3 and Y make that (mostly) moot (size aside).

We've got a Model 3, I've had S loaners and my dad's got an S, and I've driven the S as far back as maybe 2013?

There are things I like about both. It's not at all clear to me that if you made me choose a free car to receive, that I'd choose the S over the 3.

If you're making me spend my own dollars, 3 all day. I just don't like the S twice as much.

<comment><USER41> Musk said a few conference calls ago that Tesla doesn't really have a long- term ambition to make a significant fraction of their profits from S/X. I believe he said "keeping them around for sentimental reasons", which is probably overstating it a bit.

But they're clearly not worried about cannibalizing their own product line.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Purely anecdotal but we are in the market for a new car when our current lease runs out. We were looking at Tesla and the quality is not there and dealerships means we can't test etc. The valuation is crazy, VW can literally flip the switch and start producing more e-Golfs etc when the demand is there.

<comment><USER43> Not to defend TSLA's valuation, but the argument of other car giants being "able to flip a switch and make something better" has been proven wrong many times. There are plenty of rational "TSLAQ-arguments", that one is no longer on that list.

<comment><USER41> I think we're beyond TSLAQ by now. Are you saying there is a high likelihood that Tesla will go out of business? (The 'Q' means de-listed from the stock exchange).

Maybe the valuation is a bit steep, sure. But there aren't many reasonable arguments left for the company going under, apart from perhaps investment overextension due to some future initiative, or some magical and incredible accounting fraud.

<comment><USER43> True, I still use it to designate the short-TSLA/anti-TSLA crowd which tirelessly uses this argument despite the evidence that it is false. As for the chances of Tesla going under being slim to none at this point, which I agree with and believe explains (partly) the stock's repricing, I think it's still a popular argument for the die-hard Tesla shorts à la Einhorn.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> OK, they're profitable, and sales are flat to decreasing. Viewed as a mature company, what are they worth?

<comment><USER45> These are not normal times: flat sales during Q2 is quite an achievement when all your competition tanked by ~30%.

<comment><USER44> The question here is, what's it worth without assuming great future growth? Tesla is in the price range of BMW, in the midrange luxury segment. Assume they stay there. What's Tesla's value?

<comment><USER46> > Assume they stay there

Hopefully that assumption doesn't hold. Quoting from the earnings call:

"Our cars are not affordable enough—we need to fix that. We are making progress in that regard. We need to not go bankrupt, obviously, but we're not trying to be too profitable. One or 2 percent, it's not too crazy. Slightly profitable and maximize growth, making the cars as affordable as possible"

<comment><USER44> Tesla's price movement has been in the other direction - upward. The Model 3 was originally supposed to sell for $35,000. Now, it's "$39,990 - $56,990".

<comment><USER47> More recently there were 2k cuts on 3 and Y and major cuts on S and X.

<comment><USER41> There's also been some inflation since the Model 3 was announced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Off topic but why is the document written with painful amount of tracking? (By tracking I mean in the typography sense, i.e. letter spacing, not that the document is tracking you.) It almost seems like they don't want people to actually read the document.

<comment><USER49> I suspect they're not embedding the correct font in the PDF, leading to strange spacing.

<comment><USER50> Indeed, it's using some font named GothamSSm which is not embedded and getting replaced by some random Sans font by your PDF viewer. What idiotic PDF generator doesn't automatically embed non-standard fonts? (apparently Powerpoint...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Given their net income is positive, what is the probability that they are added to s&p500?

<comment><AUTHOR> High, because of the Criteria to join the S&P500[0]:

\- a market cap of $8.2 billion \- its headquarters in the U.S. \- the value of its market capitalization trade annually at least a quarter-million of its shares trade in each of the previous six months \- most of its shares in the public's hands \- at least a year since its initial public offering \- the sum of the previous four quarters of earnings must be positive as well as the most recent quarter.

[0] [https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/documents/methodologies/me...](https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/documents/methodologies/methodology- sp-us-indices.pdf)

<comment><USER52> If they are added to S&P 500, does that mean that a bunch of index tracking funds buying it all at once?

I would assume that's already been priced in, if so.

<comment><USER53> It does, but the rebalancing occurs in September I think.

<comment><USER54> A company can issue new shares for the index funds instead of requiring those to buy the shares on the market. Otherwise, with the low free float, such demand would move the price higher.

<comment><USER55> Is there a reason the company would want to do that? Why wouldn't they just let the price move higher?

<comment><USER56> To raise capital and fuel their growth. They raised 2 billion earlier this year at a price of 767 (1650 now) to fuel their growth because they thought there share price was high then. It seems like a perfect time to announce another massive capital raise to fuel their growth now that their share price is double what it was back then and this page [0] lists 1 trillion dollars worth of sp500 index funds and I know vanguard sp500 etf (voo) which isn't in that list has another 250 billion. sp500 is about 27 trillion so that list alone represents about 4.6% of the market.

TSLA joining the sp500 means those index funds alone will have to buy about 4.6% of TSLA to rebalance so this to me looks like an amazing opportunity to raise a ton of cash to fuel cybertruck/semi/roadster growth. 4.6% of TSLA 300 billion market cap could fuel a 13.8 billion dollar capital raise which could be announced after sp500 inclusion as a quick way to get those funds to the proper weighting.

At least that is my idea. During the call, they said they have 8 billion in cash so they don't need to raise any more capital. But then again, elon also said that right before their 2 billion dollar raise earlier this year so...

[0]: [https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/101415/4-best-...](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/101415/4-best- sp-500-index-funds.asp)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Regulatory credits ? I don't understand the motivation behind them. How do selling and buying these help any emission standards ?

<comment><USER58> It's just a punitive tax on the producers of heavy emitters, with the proceed going to Tesla instead of the government. Tesla is treated very generously as their cars count as emitting 0g Co2, which is not the case unless they are recharged with renewable energy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Why is "making most of your money from interest" better than "making most of your money from credits"?

If you asked me what's more likely, for interest rates (to customers) to fall or for emission credits to stop, I know where I'd put my bets

Edit: It's an actual question, not just rethorical

</comment><comment><USER60> Wish they would fix their customer service story.

</comment><comment><USER61> well, and all this is after the ceo said they are overvalued a couple of weeks back!

<comment><USER62> He said that about his company 2 months ago (not weeks).

[https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/01/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-says- sto...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/01/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-says-stock-price- is-too-high-shares-fall.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> infinity squeeze time

</comment><comment><USER64> 120M net profit and 782M in regulatory credits in 1H 2020.

</comment><comment><USER65> I remember Elon at one time claiming that model y demand will outstrip model 3, x, and s combined. It's getting harder and harder to believe his claims

<comment><USER66> Well the Model Y has been on sale since March in the middle of a pandemic. The Model 3 has been on sale for 3 years.

I think we'll have a better view on Model Y demand in the coming year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Can we be realistic here? I am 100% behind zero emission electric vehicles. However, we are still 10-15 years out from even reaching the necessary infrastructure to support more than 10% market pen. Certain patents will have expired by then. I also despise the fact that Tesla was largely funded by US tax payers and they will likely shift majority of manufacturing abroad in the near future.

<comment><USER20> Why do you think they will shift manufacturing abroad in the near future? The factories in China are building for the Chinese market to avoid import duties.

<comment><USER67> A) When it's significantly cheaper to produce vehicles outside of the US due to regulatory and labor costs, Tesla will do what's economically rational. B) US auto manufacturing is subpar. A big reason why I liked Tesla in the beginning was the narrative of US manufacturing revival. Thought they were serious about producing quality vehicles here. Past two years showed that's not the case.</comment></comment></comment>