Sprint to 'Bet the Company' on iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203405504576603053795839250.html

<comment><USER2> BGR is reporting that the iPhone5 may be a Sprint exclusive. That's pretty big for Sprint. Explains why Sprint has been completely mum about Windows Phone Mango. If this is true, it might be time for me to leave Sprint.

[http://www.bgr.com/2011/10/03/sprint-guarantees-to-buy- over-...](http://www.bgr.com/2011/10/03/sprint-guarantees-to-buy- over-20-billion-in-iphones-from-apple-launching-the-iphone-5-exclusively/)

<comment><USER3> If Apple made the iphone5 a Sprint exclusive, it would be unavailable to every single one of their existing customers. Literally...Every...Single...One.

There's a better chance that Tim Cook will eat an iPhone than announce a Sprint exclusive.

<comment><USER4> Customers are loyal to the iPhone, not the network it runs on.

I left Sprint to get an iPhone. If I need to rejoin Sprint to get the next iPhone, that's no problem.

<comment><USER5> I wonder how true this is outside techies. I'm personally network-agnostic, as I only use my "phone" for data and calls from the wife. I use about 100 minutes a month, so it doesn't matter.

My wife, however, makes at least 60 minutes of calls on more days than not, keeping in touch with friends and family (basically all the social lubrication I do with email and Google+). For her, the network effect is incredibly strong: all her friends and family are on Verizon, so she is very hesitant to switch as she gets the in-network minutes free. It was a huge deal for her when I announced I wanted to leave Verizon (for a Virgin Mobile Android) and how many minutes that would add to her plan.

I think a lot of people are loyal to their network not because of what they get from it, but about the people they know on it.

<comment><USER6> > For her, the network effect is incredibly strong: all her friends and family > are on Verizon, so she is very hesitant to switch as she gets the in-network > minutes free.

Sprint has unlimited mobile to mobile for plans with data, so as long as the other person is on a mobile line (probable since they are on Verizon), the call is free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I know I'm surely in the minority here but back in August I was so fed up with AT&T that I spent most of the month planning a move to Sprint. I was in and out of stores, researching phones online, talking to friends and more. Even with their poor coverage (my parents live in western mass and basically that entire side of the state is a black hole for sprint) I was so close to making the switch, at least for a one month trial.

The main reason I wanted to switch to Sprint was they seemed to be really for the consumer and pushed that they offered Unlimited Data. Most months I stay under 5gb (though its close) on my android phone but occasionally I travel and do use quite a bit more.

Before I did sign up though the rumors started coming out about the iphone coming to sprint which I immediately predicted would kill their unlimited data deal, which though its not on the phones themselves _yet_ has been enforced on hotspot users.

I know people _love_ their iphones but I just really hate how it is ruining networks for everyone. Every network they move to kills their unlimited data plan with their arrival. :(

<comment><USER8> May be someone could answer a question I have for a long time.

There are two different modes of operations wrt the mobile phone industry. US and most other European countries package phone and services together. Whereas in a lesser sophisticated market like here in India phone and services are independent of each other.

Both have their own pros and cons - Here I would never choose a crappy network because they have a better phone (I buy the phone of my choice) but at the cost of paying an extra premium (and that's quite a bit) for the phone (and the freedom to switch network anyday). The advantage wanes away as more operators provide better choice (but there is always the possibility that a phone maker could enter into an exclusive agreement).

Which of these models would result in a better service for the customer? Which is likely to succeed (or rather, be more successful)?

<comment><USER9> I worked with carriers on handset pricing strategy so I'm familiar with this issue. There is a reason many country telecom regulators ban subsidization of handsets - in most cases bundling is anti-consumer.

Bundling uses a common pricing psychological trick - by reducing the fixed price (i.e. the phone price) but increasing the variable charge (i.e. the monthly bill) the consumer has a perception that the deal is "cheaper". I'd venture to say that the wealth level of consumers who buy high end smartphones in the US is lower than those who do in other markets - essentially the lower one time charge encourages consumers to buy phones they really can't afford (it's like layaway for mobile phones). Furthermore, the consumer is locked into a long term contract (usually 2+ years) so they can't churn.

Finally, carriers can exploit uninformed consumers. For example, you can offer two free phones with a plan, one of which has a cost of $300 and the other $200 to the carrier. You can list both phones at a fake MSRP $350 making both phones seem like equivalent deals when in fact consumers who buy the $200 phone are essentially writing a $100 check to the carriers. Since carriers bundle phones with the service and most models are carrier specific, there is no perception of the actual value of a phone and thus, it's really easy to do this.

In general, the US market is pretty anti-competitive because of i) bundling ii) carrier locked phones iii) lack of pre-paid options (esp on the high end) iv) long term contracts v) CDMA networks which prevent re-using phones with another carriers

So in general US customers get a raw deal when compared to other markets (don't get me started on how we get charged for incoming calls and SMS). On the plus side, we do tend to get coolest phones first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10>
      > "Five years ago, the Motorola Razr was the top-selling phone," says
      > Credit Suisse analyst Jonathan Chaplin. "Imagine trying to sell 6
      > million of them today."

The thing about the RAZR is that it was a sleek, small form factor. I don't remember anyone who had one tout its functionality as the reason they got it. So the next sleek phone or better featured phone could easily displace it. The iPhone on the other hand combines excellent engineering of its hardware with tremendous strength in the software; not to mention the brand cachet. That's a significant competitive advantage and is harder to displace.

<comment><USER11> Actually, I remember numerous friends describing the original iPhone as having terrible reception. An old boss switched to skype for phone calls so he could keep using his iPhone for its apps (or something).

It seems more like the iPhone combines generally good-but-not-fabulous engineering with the continued irrational loyalty of "Apple Fanboys".

Edit: But this too may indeed be a competitive advantage that's hard to match...

<comment><USER12> There are over a hundred million "Apple Fanboys"?

<comment><USER13> Yes. That's how mac works. The instant anyone ever purchases an apple product, they are irrevocably an apple zealot.

Frankly, I'm surprised they haven't organized into a massive armed malita, given the amount of hatred and bigotry apple fanboys bring to a discussion. It seems like the complete solidarity of everyone to ever pass a credit card to Apple would make them a formidable force.

<comment><USER14> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malita,_Davao_del_Sur> ?

<comment><USER15> Militia

<comment><USER14> thatsthejoke.jpg

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> steve-howard I like my Sprint service. The reception is far from legendary, but it's there, and the data is unlimited. If I wanted an iPhone, I'd do what everyone else does and switch to AT&T (and now Verizon). I suspect that folks who really care that it's an iPhone and not an Android (or potentially WP7, if that ever gets off the ground) have already made their move.

<comment><USER16> Why wouldn't you buy an unlocked iPhone?

<comment><USER17> Maybe I'm missing something, but why bye an unlocked phone? You pay more up front and the same monthly fee for network access. Is it just the contract you don't want to enter?

<comment><USER16> The price of the phone is the same whether you pay upfront or through an increased monthly fee, but with the unlocked phone I can pop in a local sim- card if I travel, and I can change my provider whenever I want.

The only benefit for the locked ones are that you get to buy it on what is essentially cheap credit, but it's not like you save any significant amount of money on that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It sounds like Sprint is going to start a price war with Verizon and AT&T. Music to my ears.

<comment><USER19> I'll be impressed if any of them allow people already under contract to get a better price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It would be great if someone could come up with a summary of the offerings by the big 3 carriers; and the quality of service on the network. I'd love to switch to Sprint, but I'm not sure how their cellular network stacks up to ATT/Verizon when in remote areas. I'm on ATT currently, and was surprised to get reception at the top of HalfDome (though I have trouble getting it in my neighborhood in SF :-/ ).

</comment><comment><USER21> If Sprint keeps unlimited data for at least the 2 years that I'll be on contract, I'll sign up for Sprint the day the iPhone 5 is available. Sprint needs to compete on price and unlimited data to compete with Big Red and Big Blue and stay alive.

</comment><comment><USER22> If Sprint gets an exclusive on iPhone 5, there is going to be severe backlash. I know many people waiting to upgrade their phone until iPhone 5 comes out, and they aren't going to switch to Sprint to do it.

This would be a betrayal of all of their customers holding iPhone 3G/3GS/4 waiting to upgrade on Verizon or AT&T, and it will be a big chink in the armor for Android to exploit.

It would annoy me as a developer too.

For these reasons, I sort of find it hard to believe that an exclusive is possible, but I guess $20B is a lot of money.

<comment><USER23> Disagree.

There's no 3G/3GS on Verizon and exactly zero iPhone 4 Verizon customers are eligible for a subsidized upgrade yet. So it only affects the tiny number of customers who are going to pay $600 for an out-of-contract upgrade. The vast majority of Verizon iPhone owners would have to wait for their subsidized upgrade date which for most is March/April 2012 at the earliest.

For AT&T customers things are a bit more tricky. Any iPhone 4 owners are in the same boat as Verizon customers. Most won't have a subsidized upgrade available until late December. (if you have a more expensive plan with AT&T your upgrade date is earlier) This also goes for people who bought the 3GS in the last 14 months. The people who opted for the 3G in the last ~20 months decided to buy a low end model. For them the iPhone 4 or 4S would be the natural upgrade path and a massive upgrade.

No doubt there are some risks but I doubt Sprint would have a very long exclusivity period so even if Apple takes a beating for a month or two it will be of little consequence compared to $20B in the bank.

<comment><USER24> But it's not $20B in the bank, it's a commitment to buy $20B worth of phones over four years. Assuming 50% margin on Apple's side, this deal is worth about $2.5B/year. Compared to Apple's revenue of $65B/year or profit of $18B/year, this is peanuts, and not worth any sort of beating, especially since many of the sales they would make from such a deal would not be new, but merely shifted.

<comment><USER25> So a guaranteed 2.5B/year for a few months of exclusivity? Seems like a pretty big win to me.

> especially since many of the sales they would make from such a deal would > not be new, but merely shifted

Possibly, but they could pick up new customers as well (existing sprint customers that want to upgrade to a smartphone, etc).

<comment><USER26> You have to compare it to the alternative -- how many sales on Verizon / AT&T will they lose with this exclusivity? How many phones would they sell on Sprint if it was available there, just not exclusively?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> If sprint throws in tethering for those two years they will certainly poach a lot of customers. But with their overall network quality, it's likely that they suffer an AT&T style meltdown. Their 3G speeds are already the slowest of all national carriers, and an LTE rollout looks far off.

</comment><comment><USER28> I am unsure that lack of iPhone is Sprint's sole big problem. For some time now they have messed up with 4G and their 3G speeds aren't anything to write about either. And last time I drove through the US across 4 states my wife's Epic 4G had the least coverage.

And iPhone is more available today - you can buy it unlocked, you can buy it on AT&T or Verizon. So the only people that are really going to buy iPhone on Sprint are the smaller number that have only Sprint coverage (theoretical - not sure if that is valid) and only want an iPhone. The second smaller group will be the people within Sprint's 4G coverage areas that like Sprint's data plan better - as the speeds aren't all that great on WiMax compared to competition.

</comment><comment><USER29> As a Sprint customer, I worry that it's barely acceptable call and data quality will suffer with a massive injection of iPhones.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm not sure I understand. Is Sprint planning on undercutting the "regular" subsidized cost of the iPhone? Because otherwise, unless they're going to do something that really stands out, it seems like a case of "the only way to beat them is to be exactly like them".

<comment><USER31> At the moment, they're the only major carrier to offer non-capped unlimited data, and their "simply everything" plans (unlimited talk/text/web) are as cheap or cheaper than the Verizon/AT&T equivalents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Although exclusivity is hard to believe, the only thing that makes this plausible is that it makes sense for Apple to want multiple carriers for their products, each with lesser influence, than one or two major carriers with major influence.

</comment><comment><USER33> I really hope this happens. I want Sprint to succeed so when my verizon plan runs out I can still get unlimited data somewhere for a reasonable price.

</comment><comment><USER3> Flashback to 24 months ago, when Sprint "bet the company" on the Palm Pre. Something tells me this is going to go just as well.

<comment><USER34> To be fair, they are "betting the company" on something that the lack of probably lost them a large number of potential customers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> In other news, I'll continue to revel in unlimited data and Android updates on the Nexus S.

</comment><comment><USER36> i am a sprint customer and i hate this move. the android market may be chaotic but there is more freedom for the user. this is a dangerous move for sprint. android will only gain in market shares baring any great upset in the current trends.

<comment> Anti-Ratfish This is besides the point. Android seems to sell 3-4 phones to each iPhone sale (citation needed) so sprint is cutting itself off from 20ish percent of the market. That's what matters. Quenching the bleeding might be another perspective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> OMGWTFBBQ</comment>


Show HN: Bashcached – memcached built on bash and ncat - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/MakeNowJust/bashcached <comment><USER2> It can be used with a relevant Bash HTTP server for minimal developer learning curve.

[https://github.com/avleen/bashttpd](https://github.com/avleen/bashttpd)

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome! These small tools built on top of standard GNU tools are so refreshing.

</comment><comment><USER4> Would be good to see some benchmarks on this! :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry. Benchmarks is too wrong to use in production. In fact, it is x200~1000+ slower than real memcached.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Lovely hackery. If I understand right, line 92 is reading and evaling commands off a private named pipe. [https://github.com/MakeNowJust/bashcached/blob/master/bashca...](https://github.com/MakeNowJust/bashcached/blob/master/bashcached#L92)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Now, it uses socat instead of ncat because socat is more simple than ncat and it can cut off lsof.

</comment><comment><USER6> So cool!

</comment><comment><USER7> Cool. Why?

<comment><USER8> Why ask "why" when the delicious question is "why not?"

<comment><USER7> I do honestly think this is cool. The readme does not make it clear if this is a joke (which would be fine), or has any practical use whatsoever (which would be awesome).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder how many security holes this thing has. can != should.

<comment><USER10> It's obviously more oriented towards testing and stuff (as something compatible with memcached, but lighter) more than actual production use. Security holes are a bit less urgent in that case.</comment></comment>


Silicon Valley's Highest Paying Employers - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/166324/silicon-valleys-most-generous-employer-has-incurred-the-wrath-of-hedge-fund-activists/

<comment><USER2> These are average salaries, so the head brass pulling in million dollar salaries will skew the numbers higher than the normal employee pulling in $60k will skew the numbers down.

<comment><USER3> Right. The more telling number to use here would probably be a median salary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Overall average salary is a pretty meaningless metric.

Median base salary for software engineers right out of school would be far more useful.

</comment><comment><USER5> Sadly those salaries shown are 2X to 4X salaries in the DC area.

<comment><USER6> Cost of living is 1/2x in the DC area too.</comment></comment>


Libtiff goes offline - <AUTHOR> https://madfileformatscience.garymcgath.com/2016/09/08/libtiff-offline/ <comment><USER2> The code is now being hosted at [http://www.simplesystems.org/libtiff/](http://www.simplesystems.org/libtiff/) with a mirror site at [http://libtiff.maptools.org/](http://libtiff.maptools.org/) .

<comment><USER3> Or at [http://libtiff.org/](http://libtiff.org/)

<comment><USER4> NO. That is an old, hijacked domain. Read the story on Wikipedia: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibTIFF](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibTIFF) .

<comment><USER3> Oh, very annoying that remotesensing.org links to libtiff.org then!

<comment><USER4> Yes. The real libtiff people are trying to resolve that with the domain owner; he seems to be at least a little bit more cooperative than the libtiff.org one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seems like we've had organizations that house ideas for the public good for centuries now.

Why not involve libraries in the effort? They could keep a "master" copy and github.com, gitlab.org, SF.com, or whoever else comes next can host development versions.

<comment><USER6> [https://www.softwareheritage.org/](https://www.softwareheritage.org/)

<comment><USER4> They only do archiving. Hosting projects that are under development is not in their mission. [https://www.linuxfoundation.org/](https://www.linuxfoundation.org/) looks like a better match.

There is a need for an organization that is willing to host established but small and unfunded projects like libtiff, libpng, zlib, etc., and give them some minimal organizational backing in the interest of continuity (so no github). Somewhat similar to, but more general than, what the Network Time Foundation is doing for ntp and related projects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Thankful for libtiff's role in the PSP exploit community many years ago. :)

<comment><USER8> also one of the original iPhone 1 jailbreaks

<comment><USER9> To my knowledge this was _the_ original iPhone jailbreak (JailbreakMe). I was on IRC whilst the author was seeking donations before releasing it ;) Ran it on my trusty iPod Touch 1g only minutes after it was released.

This was for iOS 1.1 though, not iOS 1.0, as it was not encrypted and was never really locked down. It was Apple's choice to release iOS 1.0 without the security enabled that made further jailbreaking efforts much more straight- forward, because there was extensive knowledge of the file system.

This was all well before there was an App Store, and when Apple's public position was that they'd never allow third-party software on their platform ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A bit tangential, but I just noticed that in the Arch Linux repos, `libtiff` is version 4.0.6, but there's another package called `libtiff4`, which is version 3.9.7. I don't suppose anybody here might know the rationale behind this bizarre version/naming paradigm?

<comment><USER11> Isn't the number in the library file name a binary incompatibility counter and not necessarily related to the software version number?

[http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-HOWTO/Program-Library- HOWTO.h...](http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-HOWTO/Program-Library- HOWTO.html#AEN46)

<comment><USER10> Ah, okay, I somehow didn't realize that the trailing number referred to the number in the library file. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> And we have yet another core infrastructure project that isn't supported and doesn't get funding.

The real issue is that a lot of people rely on this and _nobody_ is willing to put anything back toward it.

Apparently we have learned nothing from the OpenSSL debacle.

</comment><comment><USER13> Why would the libtiff.org owner not want anything to do with the project?

</comment><comment><USER14> RemoteSensing seems to be back up, with a link to [http://libtiff.org](http://libtiff.org) as its purported new home.

However looking at the mailing list, it seems this domain is not controlled by the developers.

</comment><comment><USER4> We've had this before, when libtiff.org was hijacked, which it still is: it contains an old version of the libtiff website, with ads.

</comment><comment><USER15> because @libtiff is already taken on Github, I think libtiff.gitlab.io is okay enough

<comment><USER16> It doesn't seem to be actively used in the past few years, though; isn't there a process one can use to claim unused github user / org names? Might be worth talking to GitHub staff about...

<comment><USER17> There is definitely process and they should apply for it. Hopefully it's free and not hosting active private repos.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> LibTiff.info and LibTiff.io point to one of the available mirrors.

</comment><comment><USER19> Seems like it's time to host it on a DVCS service so the problem won't be so disruptive again.

<comment><USER20> Remember sunsite.unc.edu? Sourceforge? Both were the gonna-be-around-forever source code distribution points of their day.

<comment><USER21> > Remember sunsite.unc.edu?

That's a throwback. I looked it up and apparently UNC's Sunsite turned into [http://www.ibiblio.org/about/](http://www.ibiblio.org/about/)

There are a couple of other Sunsites still up. This one looks like it has not been updated since 1997: [http://sunsite.ubc.ca/](http://sunsite.ubc.ca/)

<comment><USER22> Nah, sunsite is a noob, along with Slackware. When you wanted to download boot/root, Tamu, or SLS you went to tsx-11.mit.edu or ftp.funet.fi to get it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23>
       /me cringes in fear of a left-pad moment -- what distros can't be built now?

Only half joking. ;)

<comment><USER24> Any distro that complies with the GPL will generalise its requirements to everything else, and thus host original sources for every single package. :-)

<comment><USER25> But not necessarily source history + issues plus obscure facts that were only pointed out once on a mailing list by someone who has since disappeared

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Tiff? That is a format I haven't heard in a long time.

edit: to everyone replying. TIFF is awful. We have _lossless_ compression now (read PNG) which is at least a billion times better. We shouldn't use it for anything in this day and age. Hell, just DEFLATE your TIFF and call it a new format. It will be better than TIFF

<comment><USER27> It's commonly used as an archival format since it's not lossy like jpeg.

<comment><USER28> JPEG is commonly used in its lossy format, but there's lossless JPEG[1] as well.

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

<comment><USER29> Application support is pretty huge, though: that's what effectively turned JPEG 2000 into a niche format since the standard was patent and license encumbered for the first decade and change and the vendors didn't make interoperability a priority because they assumed the technical merits would force everyone to adopt it in the end. When you're talking about lossless, however, it's often in the context of archival storage and people get spooked after they encounter files which they have trouble opening with perfect fidelity.

It's a shame since the compression technology was impressive and j2k would also have made a great progressive image format had browsers supported it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> For _important_ projects like this (libjpeg, libpng and others) it would make sense if there was sort of place to get all of them apart from mirrors.

What am I saying, that place[0] exists. Developers shouldn't have to shoulder the burden of hosting their code if they don't want to or don't wish to weather the expense. It certainly seems in this case they couldn't pay for self-hosting (or friend-hosting or whatever this is). I do suppose it is difficult to move development to a new system though(CVS to git).

[0] [https://github.com/](https://github.com/)

<comment><USER31> I'm no Stallman, but I'm deeply uncomfortable with how readily everyone is accepting (and encouraging) GitHub as the complete overlord of open-source software. As already pointed out, Sourceforge is a cautionary tale of how these services can go very wrong due to business issues. There's also a much larger philosophical issue with basing the open-source economy on a proprietary platform with no particular intent of open-sourcing its core software.

Yes, GH does a lot of things right, including generally making it easy to export data form their apps in a reasonably vendor-neutral form. But what happens when GH runs into financial trouble like SF did? Do we want just about every project out there to have to struggle to do something with their GitHub issues?

There are issues with having open-source projects maintain their own infrastructure, but I think it's the right thing to do wherever possible. It makes them truly independent in a way that a GitHub repo can never be.

<comment><USER13> Git is decentralized. GitHub provides free hosting for Git repositories. It's not like if GitHub dies tomorrow, you would lose all your source code.

<comment><USER32> You might lose a lot of metadata around it. The comment to which you're responding mentions issues, which along with pull requests would be a particular area of concern.

<comment><USER30> Would it be any different than say a redmine gets lost? Still, the coupling to GH is still a concern.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> There exists an alternative to TiffLib called TiffLibrary4java. [https://github.com/EasyinnovaSL/Tiff- Library-4J](https://github.com/EasyinnovaSL/Tiff-Library-4J) [http://mvnrepository.com/artifact/com.easyinnova/tifflibrary...](http://mvnrepository.com/artifact/com.easyinnova/tifflibrary4java)</comment>


Show HN: Calling native APIs, such as text-to-speech, at run-time via JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/LinguaBrowse/status/1101943350037544963 <comment><AUTHOR> This uses my open-source NativeScript IDE, NS:IDE:

[https://github.com/shirakaba/nside](https://github.com/shirakaba/nside)

NativeScript is a project to provide bindings for all native APIs (in the case of iOS: UIKit, AVFoundation, etc.) to a JavaScript context.

I have many more cool examples to share in time! Really surprised that NativeScript hasn't taken off in the same way that React Native has.</comment>


Uber Trials Fast Food Delivery Service UberFresh - mck- http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaymcgregor/2014/08/26/uber-trials-fast-food-delivery-service-uberfresh/ <comment><AUTHOR> It's incredible how fast Uber executes: they launched in the same month: 1/moving in Atlanta 2/convenience store in DC 3/lunch in LA 4/ride-sharing in SF

The one thing I am not sure is how they could branch out of pure "people logistics" (and into commerce). When I am hungry, would I open the Uber app, toggle 10 things and see the menu or just open Sprig/Spoonrocket? People always mention Amazon, but Amazon is search driven so I can find anything, that's ok. As for Uber, it's a totally new mental model they have to create. I guess for them, it is about the "Now". That being said, they have millions of users and CC on file, so it would be easy for them to create other apps for these different experiences.

<comment><USER2> Don't forget they also just launched an API. The goal of that may be that restaurants can put "get this delivered via Uber" buttons in their apps.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is for sure. But it is also assuming that stores know how to generate demand for their restaurant. The way they have out-executed Postmates is really crazy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> There are enough players in this area: Sprig, Munchery, Grubhub, Seamless, Caviar, etc. etc. What is Uber bringing to the table?

<comment><USER4> 1.) The ability to deliver from any restaurant, not just those participating or offering their own delivery service. 2.) Drivers in a large number of locations, likely closer to the intended restaurant than any "pick it up for you and deliver" service could ever be.

<comment><USER5> This is basically Postmates.

<comment><USER6> I agree, but I guess the argument is they are more efficient because unlike Postmates their drivers can work as both taxis and delivery vehicles so will have less down time.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is a big difference between - delivering food you have in your trunk in under 10 minutes, and what Postmates or Caviar does. It seems UberFresh is closer to a Sprig/Spoonrocket model than a Postmates model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How useful is this for customers if it's just a small period of time (and likely vendors not to mention limited area)?

I know it's a big jump to add a whole new competency (delivery vs. cabs), but I'm not sure I'd even try it out given other options (DoorDash) exist and don't operate on a trial basis.

<comment><USER8> I think someone in Uber has some dream of creating a system where drivers are constantly kept busy and completing jobs (small deliveries, driving people, food deliveries) in an efficient, algorithmic flow that keeps downtime at a minimum, while drivers earn money and Uber earns even more money.

<comment><USER9> Sounds like it'll only ever be a dream. Assuming they can keep sabotaging their way towards market dominance, eventually they'll reach a point where they have to deal with humans directly - and with humans you get problems you can't solve technically.

They will either have to dedicate people to strictly or mostly food delivery, or offer an annoying service where your driver has to make a detour so he or she can pick up a hamburger for someone else.

<comment><USER8> You call it an annoying service, they call it UberEconomy!

(In all seriousness, I think there could be a market for almost all of their ideas. The problem is the need for seamless integration and management of human assets that have little allegiance, combined with small, test markets, makes it hard to predict what services will take off and what will flounder)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


32-Year-Old NBA Rookie Steps Off Bench and Floors Crowd in Helluva Opening Night - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/04/11/601497604/32-year-old-nba-rookie-steps-off-bench-and-floors-crowd-in-helluva-opening-night <comment><USER2> Similar to this hockey story from a couple weeks ago:

[https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2018/03/30/598263399...](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2018/03/30/598263399/36-year-old-accountant-called-in-as-emergency-nhl- goalie-and-he-crushed-it)

The Chicago Blackhawks called-up their emergency backup goaltender, a 36-year- old accountant who plays in a recreation league. He blocked all seven attempts to score and was named player of the game.

<comment><USER3> Funnily enough NPR links that story in the article. Good for those athletes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good for him.

Apparently he worked as a math tutor to supplement his income.[1] Hope that he can put his physics degree to use when he's done with basketball.

[1] [https://deadspin.com/andre-ingram-is-the-nbas-best- story-182...](https://deadspin.com/andre-ingram-is-the-nbas-best- story-1825176085)

</comment><comment><USER5> Awesome story, would make a good disney movie. Sounds like a pretty dedicated/humble player and family man. Let's hope the money / fame doesn't turn him into Dennis Rodman... lol

<comment><USER6> Dennis Rodman would be a hard sell, but Ron Artest/Metta Worldpiece would be a better fit. He was the only other NBA player with a science degree, in mathematics. Jeremy Lin not, he was only business. Harvard still.

Ron Artest was also pretty old when he came to the Lakers, and soon renamed himself to save the world, while himself playing with all the dirty tricks. But Ingram is a different kind. He is a sharp shooter on a Nowitzki level, and while Nowitzki's numbers degraded Ingram is currently No. 1 in 3 pt efficiency in the G League. His numbers are almost at the Troy Daniels or Kyle Wiltjer level, the historical best sharp shooters from the G League, but those players didn't have that much luck after switching into the NBA. Troy Daniels had one good/legendary match, similar to Ingram, but then his numbers declined. But he became at least a sometimes starter for the Suns. Ingram is a fantastic fit for the Lakers.</comment></comment>


HoverZoom extension confirmed as spyware; forwards data to ad agency - <AUTHOR> https://code.google.com/p/hoverzoom/issues/detail?id=489

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's some of the author's comments:

 _> This script was added after a partnership has been established with a media consulting company. It detects unused domain names and posts the results to their site. The collected data is strictly anonymous._

<https://code.google.com/p/hoverzoom/issues/detail?id=489#c16>

 _> This is a testing phase. If the tests are OK and the script stays, I'll add a way to disable it._

<https://code.google.com/p/hoverzoom/issues/detail?id=489#c19>

 _> As I said, browsing history isn't captured. All the script does is anonymously testing for unused domain names. This does not violate user's privacy. If you don't agree with this, you are free to stop using Hover Zoom until I add an option to disable the script._

<https://code.google.com/p/hoverzoom/issues/detail?id=489#c21></comment>


A slump in new businesses is a drag on the economy - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/20/business/economy/startup-business.html <comment><USER2> Not noted in the article, but I feel like a lot of the reasons that the rate of people starting their own business is declining is that the costs of essential services like housing, education, healthcare and childcare have been increasing at a rate much greater than inflation [0]. It was comparably easier to pay for essential services 30 years ago than it is today, and it is difficult to take the risk of starting your own business when you need to pay higher costs for basic life necessities.

[0] [http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user2305...](http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user230519/imageroot/2016/08/18/College%20Inflation.png)

<comment><USER3> Costs are a problem for sure. But the biggest factor is the FED. They have slowly increased rates the past 1.5 years and have stated that they are going to increase interest rates further and pop the economic bubble. Not only that, Yellen has said the FED is going to shrink their balance sheet.

Credit is drying up and becoming more expensive and will be for some time. All business activity will slow ( new or established ). And we'll get a recession soon. It's only after the recession, when the FED decreases rates and loosens credit controls that business activity will start to increase again.

<comment><USER4> Should the rates be kept at 0 or near it forever? What happens when there's a recession despite the low rates, is the government supposed to pay banks to take their money? Some of your points can be argued for and I'd agree with them, but to put it out like the big bad government is just looking to turn off the economy is pretty disingenuous

<comment><USER3> > Should the rates be kept at 0 or near it forever?

Of course not.

> but to put it out like the big bad government is just looking to turn off > the economy is pretty disingenuous

Where did I say this? Also, the FED isn't "the big bad government". They are a private corporation.

Why do so many people on hackernews read into things and get defensive?

Recessions are a necessary part of an economy. All I said was that the FED exists to pop bubbles via their interest rates. I didn't say it was good or bad. I was just pointing out why recessions happen.

<comment><USER4> Forgive me if I read into your comment incorrectly. To me it read as if you are stating that the fed increasing the interest rate at all is what is going to lead to a recession and that businesses won't be started until they lower the rate again, even though that rate is historically low.

Also the Fed is not a corporation like all the others in the US. They are indepentish because they aren't answering on day to day basis to the political side of the government but they still ultimately work for the government

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Over 80% of small business loan applications are rejected. SBA loans in the US take 6 months - 1 year to get and still require cash down. Leasing companies hate start-up businesses. Landlords want financials and personal guarantees. In short, there's very little liquidity available for most start-up businesses in the general economy.

Got cash? Great. Most high growth areas are short STEM graduates, short trades-people, but long on large companies who can outbid you for talent.

Got cash and talent? Awesome. Large companies have more than you and pay less vig for it. If you're lucky your business is likely to be acquired as it hits critical mass. If you're unlucky as the eye of Sauron notices you - all that easy big company money will crush you.

Oversimplified? Sure. There are exceptions, success stories and counter- examples. But understand that small business and small business job creation is not a priority in the US.

[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=cAYh](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=cAYh)

[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12027714](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12027714)

In agriculture the USGOV is literally paying farmers NOT to farm in some areas. The priority is wealth preservation and predictable returns for baby boomers and special interests who vote, and who control votes.

You know who wants to change this? Who wants to repatriate 2-4 trillion in liquidity back in the US where its very likely to benefit small business growth? The only high profile person I've heard championing this issue is Trump. He appears to be fighting hard for it in upcoming tax reform legislation. Opinions about this guy aside, if he gets his way on dollar repatriation there's going to be a lot of money available for investment.

<comment><USER6> > Who wants to repatriate 2-4 trillion in liquidity back in the US where its > very likely to benefit small business growth?

The last time there was a tax holiday, the money was basically paid back to investors in the form of dividends and share buybacks.

Unfortunately the WSJ link is 404'ing, but [https://web.archive.org/web/20140117143531/https://online.ws...](https://web.archive.org/web/20140117143531/https://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052970203633104576623771022129888) you can see the first paragraph:

> The 15 companies that benefited the most from a 2004 tax break for the > return of their overseas profits cut more than 20,000 net jobs and decreased > the pace of their research spending

<comment><USER7> And do you think investors just flushed that dividend/share buyback money down the toilet?

No, they invest it somewhere else, and for most wealthy investors the best returns can often be found in tech start-ups. So it still makes it easier for start-ups to obtain capital.

<comment><USER8> Is it actually difficult for tech startups to obtain capital? My impression is that it's not. Non-tech small businesses are the ones that seem to have more difficulty getting off the ground with loans, and it's not clear to me that shareholders/corporate executives getting fat bonuses from dollar repatriation would put that cash into small businesses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It would be useful, at least on HN, to distinguish small businesses like a new pizzeria from what most of us call a startup; i.e. a tech company that's probably building software to solve a problem and scale.

That aside, I would point out that startups and small businesses are no match for the incumbents when it comes to lobbying and regulation. The principle of "concentrated benefit, diffuse harm" applies, especially when the power is already concentrated in a corporation looking to weaken future rivals.

Few politicians and policy people on either side of the aisle understand tech, startups, their financing or incentives, and vast swaths of the tech sector are remarkably disengaged from educating those decision-makers even as Washington and the state capitols pass laws that affect their interests.

Immigration restrictions, for example, will have an enormous and damaging effect on US tech. How many people do you know have actually spoken with their senator about it?

<comment><USER10> Every one of those companies is someone's dream. Don't dismiss them for not being tech. Domino's Pizza ($2.5B revenue) was once one of those new pizzerias that you wouldn't call a startup (read the History section of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domino%27s_Pizza](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domino%27s_Pizza)).

<comment><USER11> I disagree.

The same mentality is why universities graduate more students in the visual and performing arts than computer science, math, and chemical engineering combined(1).

It's not enough to let people follow their dreams, if their dreams lead most of them off a cliff. You have to either catch them when they fall, or help them find better dreams.

(1) [http://www.chronicle.com/article/Tuning-In-to-Dropping- Out/1...](http://www.chronicle.com/article/Tuning-In-to-Dropping-Out/130967)

<comment><USER12> Not everyone has the desire or ability to do STEM. I'm not sure why you'd not encourage them. You do appreciate having someone cook your food and create the art and media you consume, right?

<comment><USER11> The best part is paying minimum wage for it, because there are so many of them. :)

Except not. These aren't people going on to be visual artists. These are people frittering away their college opportunity, and then going on to careers were the degree doesn't help.

> _" There is nothing wrong with the arts, psychology, and journalism, but > graduates in these fields have lower wages and are less likely to find work > in their fields than graduates in science and math. Moreover, more than half > of all humanities graduates end up in jobs that don't require college > degrees, and those graduates don't get a big income boost from having gone > to college."_

These aren't people successfully chasing their dreams - these are people avoiding adulting for four more years. It's not appropriate to encourage kids to go to college "for the love of something," unless they already have the means, or at least a plan, to pay for the rest of their life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This was the key insight to me:

'Many economists say the answer could lie in the rising power of the biggest corporations, which they argue is stifling entrepreneurship by making it easier for incumbent businesses to swat away challengers — or else to swallow them before they become a serious threat.'

How many start ups are founded with an explicit target at being acquired by a megacorp? Increasingly a few massive monopolies in tech are siphoning up more and more markets, often without even extracting profit (its for data and customer acquisition). While it is good for the consumer, it certainly is not helping maintain a dynamic economy.

<comment><USER14> how are large behemoth corporations better for the consumer than an array of small businesses competing for the same dollars?

<comment><USER15> It's easier. I like the convenience of just going to Amazon and ordering what I need without having to think about it. When I'm in a new city for a night I could research and pick out a boutique / bed and breakfast, or I can just open the Hilton app and get a consistent room without any work.

<comment><USER14> Right now it's great. Come back to this question after competitors are driven out of business and you don't have much of an option should Amazon decide to capriciously raise prices. I tend to think decentralization is a good thing even if it's not more convenient at every level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Cost of healthcare is in IMHO, the reason. It's hard to start a business and get talented people if you can't afford to provide healthcare.

It's really hard to change jobs when you have a family with __ANY __health issue, this is also causing people to stay in jobs longer than we 've seen since the 50's.

The F'd up healthcare system we have is now dragging down the economy.

I've seen a lot of debates about basic income, I think that is stupid. If we give out basic income people will need to use that money to pay for healthcare.

How about healthcare for everyone, then we can figure out basic income.

<comment><USER17> Was healthcare formerly more affordable? Or did people not use it in the past?

<comment><USER18> The price was lower, but the overall regulatory environment was much worse.

Insurance companies could deny coverage based on a variety of pre-existing conditions, even minor ones.

Insurance companies could deny coverage based on the lack of previous coverage, i.e. not having a valid insurance policy for a few months while you were switching employers, etc.

The policies had no hard limits on out-of-pocket maximum, which meant that for some prolonged treatments (cancers, complicated surgeries) you could easily get into the debt that would lead to an eventual bankruptcy.

The forms that you had to fill in during the application process asked for a quite detailed family history, so for a couple with kids that would include parents, grandmas and grandpas on both sides, and then you add siblings. If you omitted any symptoms or complications, perhaps by mistake, or perhaps grandma's arthritis wasn't really a dinner conversation topic, the insurance companies could claim that you've intentionally falsified your medical history, and deny coverage retroactively.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> 500,000 businesses a year means we're not talking about high-tech startups alone. This entire article seems to be using a single statistic (100,000 fewer businesses are started per year now as compared to before the recession) to push an agenda. It talks about how useful these businesses are in employing the less-educated and as an entry point to the middle class, and then talks about YouTube and Instagram without acknowledging those are two very different types of business.

I would be interested in seeing a breakdown by sector. My guess is that the number of new restaurants, laundromats, and nail salons has decreased the most, and that's what's driving the overall decline. And, rather than being the result of pressure from the Googles and Facebooks, it's a natural result of the recession. Fewer people have the nest eggs to start a capital-intensive business, and fewer people have homes to use as collateral. Credit is harder to come by. And potential customers have less disposable income to shop with. All of these trends are well-established and seem to have a broader impact than the main points of the article.

<comment><AUTHOR> Remember the trend is almost 40 years old, starting in 1980:

 _Yields on 10-year U.S. Treasuries hit an all-time low yesterday. Before you spin a story using recent events: remember long rates have been trending down for thirty odd years. And that's true in most advanced economies. So think bigger than jobs day or Brexit or liftoff. And while I've got you thinking in decades not data releases … also consider that the share high-growth young firms, aggregate productivity growth, and general satisfaction have all been trending down since early 2000s. And again not unique to the United States.

No single factor has a chance at explaining all these trends … Still I think a common thread of population aging and reduced risk taking is worth exploring. The idea that aging can change individual behavior is nothing new but sometimes the gradual and the familiar are easy to discount. Also, and a bit more provocatively, I want to argue that effects of population aging go well beyond the behavior and views of older individuals.

..As we age, we are less willing to take risks.

In numerous studies, including my job market paper, older individuals are less willing to take risks than younger ones. In fact, I was able to see how much risk tolerance changed with age (and other factors) in decade-long panel study of older adults. Aging by a decade led to a 17 percent decline in risk tolerance. For comparison, women were 14 percent less risk tolerant than men, on average, even after taking into account several other observables including age. My main takeaway from this work was that persistent differences across individuals create more variation in the willingness to take risks than the changes within person over time. However, of the factors that seem to cause risk preferences to change, aging was by far the most robust in my data and shows up in other studies, including those with younger adults._

[http://www.smashcompany.com/business/the-decline-of- entrepre...](http://www.smashcompany.com/business/the-decline-of- entrepreneurialism-in-the-usa)

Also:

"Where are all the startups? U.S. entrepreneurship near 40-year low"

[http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/08/news/economy/us-startups- nea...](http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/08/news/economy/us-startups-near-40-year- low/index.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> A common problem with governments and government data, there is no adequate startup taxonomy. See [https://steveblank.com/2011/09/01/why-governments- don't-get-...](https://steveblank.com/2011/09/01/why-governments-don't-get- startups/)

</comment><comment><USER21> This feels like a conversation meant to get a veiled point through, perhaps pushed by the same minds behind reevaluating anti-trust around large technology companies: [http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/17/open- markets...](http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/17/open-markets- google-antitrust-barry-lynn-000523)

It'd be interesting to get a split beyond just pure volume of startup businesses to dive a little deeper -- small businesses divided by industry, and also revenue/profit per small business might be interesting to look at.

Anecdotally, it doesn't feel like small businesses have slowed, though I live in the eye of the Silicon Valley storm. I'd love to dive deeper into the stats to try to reconcile what I'm anecdotally experiencing and the systematic truths that might be out there.

</comment><comment><USER22> Before the Internet, small businesses had a few key competitive advantages going for them: being local. Process Knowledge. knowing your customers. Customers had hard time to compare. Etc. Now they're gone.

After the the Internet and the recession, scalable businesses, had few advantages going for them: everything became scalable. A lot of VC funding. Technology is better(and the advantages come first to those with capital). Many things can be turned into a network. Everything became global.

So those forces should decrease the number of small businesses. By a lot.

On the other hand, small businesses still got some advantages, and the main among them: many new niche markets became accessible, mostly via targeted marketing, scalability and opening of larger markets. That was the new hope.

Did could it be that this hope has failed us ? and if so, Why ? What can be done to enable more niche businesses ? or is it the wrong answer ?

<comment><USER23> > Did could it be that this hope has failed us ? and if so, Why ? What can be > done to enable more niche businesses ? or is it the wrong answer ?

Small businesses can't compete with global mega-corps who exploit cheap labor and lobby(bribe) the government in their favor. Young people can't afford to start their own businesses when the smartest among them have massive amounts of student loans, rising housing costs, and are under the threat of bankruptcy if they get sick. If we want to stimulate small business growth while also increasing economic development in rural areas, we need to do something about globalization. People need to feel economically secure to have the leverage to start a business, which necessitates a rising quality of life for all the classes, not just the upper class.

<comment><USER24> > Young people can't afford to start their own businesses when the smartest > among them have massive amounts of student loans, rising housing costs, and > are under the threat of bankruptcy if they get sick.

You think that 35-year-old with a wife, 2 kids, and a mortgage has those problems any less?

Not having universal health care is an economic drag. We have study after study on this.

Rising housing costs are a drag by preventing labor liquidity. People can't just move from one area to another when so much of their wealth is tied up in an illiquid asset.

Neither of these is inherently tied to globalization.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> Chiba-City DC has funny issues likely shared with some other locales. The traffic is so bad people do not want to show up. People move 30 miles away for square foot dreams appropriate to where they grew up and then hate getting to work. Then many dimmer lights here enjoy well paid, easy and even secure event planning or influence peddling jobs. DC political giveaway and pecking order jobs are attractive temptations for entrepreneurs comparing notes and dating. Then add limelight fears vs. friends working well behind walls.

I tried to explain during onboarding that we were not providing public school teacher security and summers off with "tech industry" upside. It did not matter. Expectations were driven by friends and family narratives. Everyone borrowed like consumers, even dabbled in tech day trading and panicked at every industry downturn.

Entrepreneurs must have the operative networks to "front run and flip businesses" or be money savers with real wills to endure as an operational team. Sony failed first making ironing board covers. The team kept going together. I learned enough working for Bill Wynn and Mark Pincus. People not so lucky must read some business case history and biographies. Those are not long or hard reads. Otherwise people are infected with the wrong expectations.

Student debt is a giant depressing obstacle. I am considering registering a religion so "friars" can defer their student loans operating small scale operations together, rotating roles, cost accounting, scheduling, writing contracts for fulfillment and finding sound counsel advisors. Business formation must put process refinement, team building and network growing front and center. It has to be functional, information rich and mostly fun all by itself.

No waves of pens solve these problems deep within motivational structures and widely disparate comparisons between possible futures.

</comment><comment><USER25> My gut says it's because a larger portion of the younger workforce don't feel the urge to start a business - or even work.

I know too many undergrads who live in their parents basements playing video games all day. Parents pay for their housing, food, and gadgets. Their "happy" and don't sense a need to work or be productive or even hold up their end of the table.

Bring a little financial adversity into their lives and my guess is you'll see some hustle.

<comment><USER24> > Bring a little financial adversity into their lives and my guess is you'll > see some hustle.

That would be awesome, except that research shows over and over that the laziest rich kid does as well or better in life than the most motivated poor kid.

Bring some consequences and financial adversity to the rich and maybe we'd see some hustle, eh?

<comment><USER25> Depends on your definition of "as well or better in life". If you mean they make as much money... maybe. If you mean they produce more than they consume, I doubt it.

I would like to see that research though. Can you provide links?

<comment><USER24> [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/10/18/poor-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/10/18/poor- kids-who-do-everything-right-dont-do-better-than-rich-kids-who-do-everything- wrong/)

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1298425/Michael- Gove...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1298425/Michael-Gove-says- rich-kids-better-poor-clever-children.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wonder how much the amassment of frivolous patents by large companies coupled with fear of litigation contributes to this trend.

Even if you are right and it's a frivolous patent, you can't afford to defend yourself. Once you get big enough to survive on your own and establish a small foothold, the big boys will be looking to steal all your IP through the court system.

<comment><USER24> Patent shakedowns are nothing new. See IBM and Sun from the 1980's.

[https://www.forbes.com/asap/2002/0624/044.html](https://www.forbes.com/asap/2002/0624/044.html)

<comment><USER26> No, but the amount is new. Back then it wasn't it's own industry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Most US small businesses are small retailers and service businesses, not innovative startups. Starting a small retail shop today is not a good idea - you probably get clobbered by Amazon and WalMart before you even start. Malls are dying. The US is "over-stored."

Starting a service business still has potential, but it may mean being a slave to a franchise system like Servicemaster or Roto-Rooter. It's more like a contract employee. There's consolidation in services. Think Uber.

Starting a restaurant is a classic way to lose money. Don't go there.

There just aren't that many places where there's potential profit for new entrants in classic small retail and service businesses.

</comment><comment><USER28> I think the rising cost of health care, child care, etc just mean that your business better provide a real service or fill a niche that is badly needed. If the barrier to entry is super low then everyone with a half baked idea would start a business, watch it fail and default on their debt. It's probably not a bad thing to be at least somewhat hard to start a business. That said, most serial entrepreneurs bring their own money and manage to build something as they have the capital. Then after a few years, sell their mediocre company for 20x what they put in. Rinse and repeat. Life is pretty good when you are already rich.

<comment><AUTHOR> Whether starting a business is good or bad is irrelevant, the question is why it is happening less now than in 1980. Also, where does this trend end? The rate of business formation has been declining for almost 40 years, and the rate of decline has accelerated since 2000. So we should ask, how far does this trend go? How large do the monopolies grow? Will there ever be an era when the USA returns to creating new businesses at a rate that would have been normal for most of the 20th century?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> One issue with studying the effects on economic policies (licensing, wage floors, etc) is that it's difficult to meaningfully measure companies that never get created, beyond maybe hypotheticals via polling.

</comment><comment><USER30> Does an IT contractor count as small business or startup in the USA? If so, could it be skewing the stats significantly?</comment>


BuBBLE: A Lisp Dialect DSL Written in Haskell - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Ninjacop/BuBBLE <comment><USER2> Repo read me file referred to a documentation wiki, but I couldn't find it. Any link for that?

<comment><USER3> There's some documentation on the Github wiki [0]

[0] [https://github.com/Ninjacop/BuBBLE/wiki](https://github.com/Ninjacop/BuBBLE/wiki)

<comment><USER2> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Lisp written in Haskell, sounds like a idealist's dream!

<comment><USER5> There's also a Haskell writen in Lisp (in Racket, to be exact) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6UCeHiKodo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6UCeHiKodo)

<comment><USER6> Just to add: Hackett [0] is a lispy Haskell that has been under active development for some time.

Based around a paper, _Type Systems as Macros_ [1]

[0] [https://github.com/lexi-lambda/hackett](https://github.com/lexi- lambda/hackett)

[1] [http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/stchang/pubs/ckg- popl2017.pdf](http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/stchang/pubs/ckg-popl2017.pdf)</comment></comment></comment>


Oculus' New $99 Samsung Gear VR Makes Serious Virtual Reality Affordable - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/24/gear-vr-for-all/ <comment><USER3> I bought the original Gear VR with very limited expectations and was surprised how well it worked.

The reason it works so well is the GearVR platform is comprised effectively of three things:

a) Lenses to make for comfortable, adjustable viewing.

b) A touchpad for input.

c) A ton of high quality / high fidelity sensors like Accelerator, Gyrometer, Geomagnetic, Proximity (1)

Since most VR functionality is driven through sensor fusion it's a very elegant solution to develop a one-size-fits-all headset that gives devs a way to build/test/deploy against one set of sensors vs a phone-by-phone approach.

Take that plus the fact that the DK2 screen is an overclocked Galaxy 3 screen (2) and it makes complete sense.

(1) via [http://www.samsung.com/global/microsite/gearvr/gearvr_specs....](http://www.samsung.com/global/microsite/gearvr/gearvr_specs.html)

(2) [http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/31/oculus-rift-dk2-gets- torn-a...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/31/oculus-rift-dk2-gets-torn-apart- revealing-its-samsung-innards/)

</comment><comment><USER4> From OC2, but semi-offtopic - What did people think about the Michael Abrash lecture "These are the good old days"? For me it was one of the most inspiring lectures on engineering solutions for HCI solutions. The cool part was that it positions Oculus as a technology company supporting senses far beyond vision.

<comment><USER5> Any chance you have a URL to a transcript or video of this lecture?

<comment><USER6> 1:35 [http://www.twitch.tv/oculus/v/17538854](http://www.twitch.tv/oculus/v/17538854)

<comment><USER7> Direct link for Abrash: [http://www.twitch.tv/oculus/v/17538854?t=1h35m30s](http://www.twitch.tv/oculus/v/17538854?t=1h35m30s)

Carmack's: [http://www.twitch.tv/oculus/v/17538854?t=3h31m10s](http://www.twitch.tv/oculus/v/17538854?t=3h31m10s)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've had a chance to actually test this device and I can say it was comfortable, and the VR experience felt smooth and responsive. I was skeptical since it was powered by a phone, but I was definitely surprised.

<comment><USER9> The phone is the screen, right? Or is the phone processing the content and delivering it to the screen? What's the resolution like?

<comment><USER10> The phone has a big part in content delivery and processing too. The screen resolution on Galaxy Note devices (GearVR needs one of those) is 2.5k. That is divided between both eyes. But the thing is that Oculus itself uses the screen yanked out of a Galaxy Note. So screen quality and resolution should be top notch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder how effective this VR actually is.

It seems that VR heavily depends on high quality screens, with very high resolution, and low latency and persistence. However this works with a screen that isn't optimised for those attributes.

$99 may be good, but it seems likely that it will be much worse than the Oculus Rift, I think is targeting ~$400-500, and could be far better. Is it worth it?

<comment><USER12> Phone screens on top-end phones are high enough quality to manage (and are higher resolution than most PC monitors anyway). They also have the added benefit of being able to render graphics internally as opposed to being attached to a PC by a cord. Yeah, the graphics may not be quite as good, but the gap in perceived graphics quality between a $1000 PC and a flagship cell phone is rapidly closing.

I think the Rift will be the choice of the "PC Master Race", but a solution like this is much more mass-market friendly. There's no reason a headset like this should cost more than $30 once mass-produced - and that's low enough to be an impulse purchase for a lot of people.

<comment><USER13> > perceived graphics quality between a $1000 PC and a flagship cell phone is > rapidly closing

Is this true? Can an iPhone 6S theoretically run CS:GO or Crysis (an eight year old PC game)?

<comment><USER14> Perhaps not the actual CS:GO binary - but one built on Metal could certainly come close to CS:GO on lower settings.

<comment><USER13> Wow, that's awesome! My 3-year-old video card uses 160 watts of power and roars like a jet engine running CS:GO at 1080p.

It blows my mind that we've come so far so fast.

<comment><USER15> The trend lines showed a year ago that a high end smartphone in about 3 years from now (mid-way through the PS4's lifetime) will have higher paper specs than a PS4 ( _paper specs_ , not necessarily as well-utilized).

An Nvidia Shield tablet is on paper roughly equivalent to an XBox360. The Shield set top box is double that. A few more doublings and the prediction will play out.

<comment><USER16> 3 years from now, the PS4 will be 5 years old and much cheaper than a high-end smartphone.

<comment><USER17> yes, but a high end smartphone will always be cheaper than a high end smartphone _and_ a PS4.

the point isn't that phones are cheaper than other things, it's that you need one anyways.

<comment><USER16> You may need a smartphone, though that's debatable, but you don't need a high- end expensive one. And those wont't have paper specs anywhere near PS4-level anytime soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Interesting. I would get one if I could hack it for other devices. It is kind of amusing that even when Microsoft has started making cross platform compatible hardware [1], Samsung is stuck on a page from the old MS playbook. Hardware that is only compatible with Samsung devices and not even other Androids. [2]

[1] [https://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-band/en- us/support/hardw...](https://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-band/en- us/support/hardware/microsoft-band-system-requirements)

[2] [http://www.tizenexperts.com/2014/06/pair-your-samsung- galaxy...](http://www.tizenexperts.com/2014/06/pair-your-samsung-galaxy-gear- and-the-google-nexus-5-tizen/)

</comment><comment><USER19> Does anyone know (preferably with a source) whether the visual correction in the _new_ Gear VR will cover the same range (particularly, the near-sighted range) as the existing Gear VR?

</comment><comment><USER20> Well, looks interesting, but too bad it doesn't work with the new Samsung phone I got just 7 months ago (S5).

<comment><USER21> you mean 17 months ago? I got it when it launched, and can't wait to get rid of it. What an ugly phone =(

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Does anyone else think there is going to be some crazy additional Star Wars release tie in after the Facebook thing today to boost sales? I wouldn't be surprised if a VR version for Gear came out once a good bootleg was out.

</comment><comment><USER23> My only question is have they fixed the whole driver problem yet?

The Oculus Rift DK2 was a complete disaster. I understand it's a "dev kit" but if they are to release it for general use they will need to drastically change the way the driver installs, the way it communicates error messages and issues with the connection.

It took me several hours to release I needed to move the Oculus Rift "monitor" to the right. And it's working "fine" on my desktop - but I can't get it working on a laptop (and current Oculus Rift statements suggest they will never support it on laptops...).

<comment><USER24> The latest Oculus SDK (0.7.0.0) on Windows _absolutely_ fixes this mess. I have nothing but praise for the latest software and this is coming from someone who couldn't use his Rift since around November last year when the AMD drivers and the Rift's extended mode stopped working together.

Basically now the Rift is considered a proper HMD as a category of its' own and not a bastardized monitor. There is no more extended mode. Everything compiled with Oculus SDK 0.6.0.0 and above now works in Direct Mode only. The latency is noticeably better. With the latest AMD/Nvidia drivers, you just plug the headset in and there's no monitor-type configuration at all.

Note this is with Windows 10; I don't have first-hand experience with 8.1 but think it'd be much the same. It really is that much better.

Also, if you haven't checked out the latest VR Desktop ([http://www.vrdesktop.net](http://www.vrdesktop.net)), you need to do this too. In addition to giving you a giant screen to see your desktop on, you can now play full-screen games in it, watch YouTube 360 videos properly in it and watch 3D movies encoded in side-by-side or top/bottom encoding. It's really really awesome :)

<comment><USER23> > The latest Oculus SDK (0.7.0.0) on Windows _absolutely_ fixes this mess.

Tried to use that to show it off to a friend on his desktop running Windows 10. Didn't work. The demo desk worked - but nothing else did. Also - didn't I read something where .7 is not backwards compatible with apps compiled for .6?

> AMD drivers and the Rift's extended mode stopped working together.

I find extended mode only works for me on my AMD card. And I think this is part of the problem - there appears to be a number of "it works for me"/"it doesn't work for me" threads all over the Oculus Rift forum from people with varying builds including threads of "if you follow this incantation and sacrifice a chicken while modifying your registry - this will make the Oculus Rift work"

> Also, if you haven't checked out the latest VR Desktop

I tried that out - but it crashed for me almost every time I tried using it.

For me the Oculus Rift has pretty much been a fail - I couldn't tell if the fail has been on my end (ie my desktop) or Oculus Rift's end. Though I really think if they hope to get a market share is to hire the guy(s) who has been working on JanusVR and make that a bundled "app". Right now that is the only reason why I don't just put it in a box and forget about it. Yes - <USER2> understand this is a "development kit" but I would like to know that it's functional before I develop for it. If people have to read out of the Necronomicon to use it - there is no point in developing for it. I feel like others share this opinion because I think Elite Dangerous implemented support but said that they won't update it until the Oculus Rift has a non-dev kit version.

I'm just frazzled because I purchased this $300 device expecting it to be somewhat stable - and it seems like something I would get out of a kickstarter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is excellent. I know many people for whom this would be cheap enough to just add on to their next phone contract, who otherwise wouldn't have dipped their toes in it.

As an aside, I really wish Google and Oculus could get together and work out how to allow Cardboard apps to take advantage of the extra hardware from the Gear VR if it's available. Using a Gear VR and then trying Cardboard shows how woefully inadequate Cardboard is; but there are some cool Cardboard apps that I'd really love to be able to try with the much much better tracking of my Gear VR.

</comment><comment><USER25> The two questions that pop into my head are

1) How long can you use it with say an S6 before the battery is drained if I don't use the micro USB cable that they offer (especially with something like a game running on it)

2) What about storage. A modern 3d game requires quite a bit of space. Sure you could load a couple of them onto the phone but AFAIK the S6 doesn't even support SD cards...how is this handled? USB OTG? I read that the Gear has a microSD...can I really store all stuff on this or is there a requirement to leave some Gear apps etc. on the actual phone?

</comment><comment><USER26> Is there any reason this is getting a lot of press now? I've seen it all over twitter. This thing has been out for a WHILE. I used one a Toms store in Portland. It was neat but I'd much prefer something with a higher resolution. VR is all about resolution imo.

<comment><USER27> This is a new version and the first non-"Innovator Edition" (read: enthusiasts/devs) - the big deal I think is that presumably as a true consumer product, it'll be getting a lot more distribution, and moving forward will probably a big part of Samsung's pitch for differentiation of their flagship mobile products.

More resolution would be nice, but it's not everything. The biggest issue for VR geeks is probably the lack of positional tracking. A close second (or first, depending on how sensitive you are) is the relatively low refresh rate (60Hz) causes noticeable strobing for a lot of people. At that refresh rate you don't get the temporal super-resolution bonuses you get at higher rates. Fill factor is as important (if not moreso) for screen-door effect - the CV1 and Vive screens are lower-res, but look much better. AFAIK, the S6/N5 screens don't support global refresh (although there is direct front-buffer access). Lack of physical IPD adjustment is a big deal, and it's hard to solve w/ a single screen w/o sacrifices. Oh, and of course, running the devices comfortably w/o overheating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I picked up a Homido VR cheaply and it is quite nice and fits all phones I have. The downside is that it starts to hurt after a while but it is enough to do VR experiments on my S5. I would recommend if you have an older phone and you can pick it up cheaply.

</comment><comment><USER29> I wish it shipped with a gamepad (e.g., for a $149 price point), but this is still great news!

</comment><comment><USER30> I wonder if this will work with a Nexus 6, or if it only supports Samsung phones.

<comment><USER31> Only 2015 Samsung phones.

<comment><USER32> I wouldn't be surprised if they sold this at breakeven or a slight loss in order to try and get some market share back for their phones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I don't think it's much affordable if I've to upgrade to Samsung's latest device! Given, it's a good marketing ploy!

</comment><comment><USER34> I got to try this out at XOXO and it worked remakrably well. Really enjoyable to use and i didn't get motion sick.

</comment><comment><USER35> Screen sold separately* ?

<comment><USER36> Think of it as an high-tech Google Cardboard.

edit: wording

<comment><USER37> No, it's significantly better. The headset has MEMS sensors running at 1 KHz (the Note 4 runs at 100 Hz IIRC), which means the head-tracking is perceptually flawless.

Add to that the quality of the optics, the high quality screen, the wide field of view, and the difference is substantial; if you haven't tried both, just trust me. They're not even in the same category.

Now, the Zeiss headset, that thing is just a high end Google Cardboard.

<comment><USER35> Sorry, but there is no screen with this device, correct?

<comment><USER38> Think of it as an enclosure for Samsung phone that is significantly better than a high-tech Google Cardboard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Ok, but it's not the right product to bring VR to the masses.

<comment><USER40> why not? is a tethered experience that requires a $1k+ desktop the right product?

<comment><USER39> 1) Tied to Samsung device (singular).

2) No software ecosystem.

3) No hype, interest or marketing.

It's kinda like Microsoft tablet laptops before the iPad. Serviceable, but not a category maker.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Super excited by this. Does anyone know if they've dealt with nausea during use? This is the only thing I really wonder after trying the original.

I'm also selling Orift.co for anyone interested in the VR space! ([https://flippa.com/5569435-invest-in-the-future-of- virtual-r...](https://flippa.com/5569435-invest-in-the-future-of-virtual- reality))</comment>


Show HN: Do you track Assets, Liabilities, Net worth? What services do you use? - <AUTHOR> https://apps.apple.com/us/app/balanceviewer-net-worth/id1476048552?ls=1 <comment><AUTHOR> Hi Hacker News community,

Personally I used google spreadsheet to track my Net Worth for years, but wanted to get something simple with graphs and available on mobile. After researching I didn't find anything user-friendly and simple + I didn't want the app to be connected with my bank account for security reason and because not all of the assets are in bank. Some of apps did something similar but didn't have support multiply currencies, which is also an important feature for me since I love to travel and I have accounts in different currencies.

So I decided to create mobile application for tracking Net Worth the simplest as it can be but with informative statistic of Net Worth changes with stylish design and ability to customize charts as you want. For me is important to track balances for 2 accounts together out of 10 and 10 out of 10 to know my total net worth.

That's why I've created an IOS app BalanceViewer - [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/balanceviewer-net- worth/id1476...](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/balanceviewer-net- worth/id1476048552?ls=1))

If you track your Net Worth - I'll be happy to hear your feedback about the app to make it better for all of us.

What cases are most important for you while tracking Net Worth?

Thanks in advance!</comment>


Iron 'blueberries' may be sign of microbial life on Mars - <AUTHOR> http://www.lifescientist.com.au/article/436306/iron_blueberries_may_sign_microbial_life_mars/

<comment><USER2> There is also an alternate explanation that was replicated in the lab: [http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/050325blueberr...](http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2005/arch05/050325blueberries.htm)

        He obtained a quantity of hematite and
        blasted it with an electric arc.
        The results are seen in the right
        half of the image above. The embedded
        spheres created by the arc appear to
        replicate many of the features of the
        blueberries on Mars. No other laboratory
        process has achieved a similar result.

<comment><USER3> Well...

1) The article that started this thread links to an abstract of a paper which claims to have pretty compelling evidence for a relationship between mico- organisms and connections, and appears in a pretty respectable journal.

2) The site you link to... how to put it kindly... reads like a bunch of cranks. Seriously, go poke around in there; they link the plasma-arc thing because it supports their "Electric Universe" ideas, and they use it as a vehicle to push that. And their link to the paper about it is 404, so I can't actually verify it, but it's a "presented at", not a "published in", which is a red flag.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for pointing that out and putting it kindly.

In case anyone is interested in spotting any further red flags with the idea, here is a similar paper by Ransom on craters and spherules: [http://www.benthamscience.com/open/toaaj/articles/V004/SI016...](http://www.benthamscience.com/open/toaaj/articles/V004/SI0162TOAAJ/185TOAAJ.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "(But geologists _have_ shown that the more a guess is repeated, the more it's apt to be called a fact.)"

Heh.

Anyway, the blueberries have come up again the last couple of weeks as Opportunity has just run into new rocks with similar little round things in abundance. Maybe not exactly the same things, but similar.

You can see some of the new ones on the rocks here: <http://marsrover.nasa.gov/gallery/all/opportunity_p3062.html>

Microscopic Imager of some of them here: <http://marsrover.nasa.gov/gallery/all/opportunity_m3064.html>

</comment><comment><USER5> It seems like everything we see "could be proof of life on Mars". It's great there's excitement, but it would be even better if the media didn't cry wolf every time.

</comment><comment><USER6> Could someone please explain to me how such conditions could be present on the surface of mars or the deserts here on planet earth to trigger the same results as the lab results?</comment>


Why the iPad 3 will be buttonless (VIDEO) - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/#!5780541/how-to-activate-the-best-secret-feature-in-your-ipad

<comment><USER2> Why it won't: requires two fully functional hands to operate.</comment>


Google: Mowing lawn with goats - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/mowing-with-goats.html <comment><USER2> Regardless of the carbon impact of this move, the fact that such an idea was not laughed at and quickly shot down is pretty cool.

<comment><USER3> There are actually plenty of businesses that rent goats for clearing property

<comment><USER4> I'm somewhat surprised by this. Do you have a source or news article?

<comment><USER5> i realize it sounds like i'm setting you up, but just google the phrase "goat rental."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is this really lower-impact in climate change than traditional mowing? I think it's far from obvious.

With the goat solution, we must count the cost of the goat transportation. And I suspect that the methane emitted by goats -- a worse greenhouse problem than CO2 -- may actually have a greater effect than the exhaust from a lawnmower.

<comment><USER7> The carbon emitted by the lawnmower came out of the ground, where it had been for millions of years. Net effect, more carbon in the atmosphere.

The carbon in the goat methane comes from the grass, which took that carbon out of the air a few months back. Net effect, nil.

I hate it when people get anxious about cow farts contributing to global warming.

But the thoughts about the transportation of the goats are worth exploring.

However, if you want to go that route you also have to add the net carbon emissions for construction, maintenance, and transportation of the lawnmower, which are non-trivial.

I strongly suspect the goats are a net win.

<comment><USER8> "The carbon in the goat methane comes from the grass, which took that carbon out of the air a few months back. Net effect, nil."

Can you explain this? The grass absorbs CO2, and the goats turn the grass into methane. Except that methane is a way more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. So how could the effect be nil?

<comment><USER7> Well okay, not nil. But the methane eventually oxidizes back to CO2, half life 7 years: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane>.

Contrast with fossil fuels, which take a looooong time to get (permanently) back into the ground.

<comment><USER9> From looking at the wikipedia page, methane is converted to water and ethane with broken down ozone. Ethane is a much milder greenhouse gas. Not sure what ethane half life is. If I understand this correctly, the net result will be putting carbon and hydrogen into the atmosphere (via ethane) and taking oxygen out of the atmosphere in the form of water and maybe reducing atmospheric ozone. With a side effect of 7 years of methane.

Regardless, this is not a closed carbon loop, and it results in global warming.

<comment><USER10> It is a closed carbon loop as long as the grass the goats turn into methane ultimately regrows. It's true that you have a sustained amount of methane due to the flux through this loop.

The same is true for fossil fuels, _in principle_ the loop is closed because eventually plants will turn the CO2 back into fossil fuels. It's just that because the time constant of that loop is thousands of years and we burn it much faster than that, most of the fossil carbon will eventually make it into the atmosphere.

Even though methane is a more efficient greenhouse gas than CO2, the time constant on the CO2 cycle more than makes up for that difference. When making these calculations, you can't just look at the amount of emission, you need to look at what sustained amount of atmospheric level results from that emission.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Goats are really good at eating just about anything. Much better than sheep. Problem with sheep is that they will eat too close to the ground and kill the plants.

<comment><USER12> I was under the impression that goats present the same problem? Here's an interesting article from a couple years ago on some effects of overgrazing of goats in China, including desertification, starvation, and dust storms.

[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003498352...](http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003498352_cashmere282.html)

<comment><USER11> If you leave any animal with minimal amount of food, they will consume it all. The difference is how close to the ground they eat. The sheep will take the stem all the way to the ground, while goats, cows, and horses will leave a little bit. This allows it to grow later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> How about using a reel mower? As a bonus, you would save gym on fees.

<comment><USER14> Google's gym is free.

<comment><USER15> Not for Google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Something like this once happened at National Semiconductor. I remembered it wrong--turns out Widlar used sheep: <http://www.national.com/rap/Story/widlar.html>

</comment><comment><USER17> Back in January when I was on my honeymoon, we stayed at a wonderful eco- friendly place on the island of Bohol in the Philippines. They use goats to keep the place they have carved out of the jungle tidy and free of weeds. After seeing how little impact this involves, I was duly impressed; it looks like a tropical garden:

<http://bit.ly/HzqRF> <http://bit.ly/glO6K>

Nuts Huts, Loboc, Bohol Philippines: <http://www.nutshuts.com/>

N.B. I'm in no way affiliated with them, but it's a great place to visit and relax.

</comment><comment><USER18> Mowing, putting the cut grass in plastic bags, and then burying them in a landfill would probably be the most "green" way to go, if you were irrational enough to think it would have a big impact.

<comment><USER7> Ah! I think you get it too.

Although the greenest way would be to just let the grass grow and have a hayfield outside the building.

<comment><USER14> screw grass and the compulsion to turn everywhere into the Savannah, let the forest grow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I remember my elementary school did this once. They set up a (weak) electric fence right next to the playground. We had fun with _that_...

</comment><comment><USER20> The Swiss have been doing this for a while. Saw a herd back in 2000 in Thusis munching on the grass near the railway station.

</comment><comment><USER21> they used to do the same thing in santa cruz around the lagoon. it was pretty wonderful. one saturday morning walking through i saw a goat give birth. it was at once the most disgusting and cutest thing i had ever seen. LIFE!

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm getting goats to mow my field. They make great pets! They're about like dogs, with more human eyes. The hard part will be keeping them out of the crops, and from escaping. Goats are highly intelligent escape artists.

</comment><comment><USER23> In 2001, I visited some friends in Cologne. One afternoon, two of us cycled down to a big stretch of open parkland along the right bank of the Rhein. It was a warm spring day, and "everyone" was out enjoying the weather. Lots of groups camped out on the grass with picnic lunches.

Along came a herd of sheep. Yes, sheep! (I said to myself, after a double- take.) Nobody got upset; neither people nor sheep. The sheep slowing munched their way forward, the herd casually breaking around the various groups.

I got some great pictures. Not online, unfortunately.

</comment><comment><USER24> I was biking past there the day before yesterday and saw those goats. I wondered: what sort of a PR stunt is this? Now I know.

</comment><comment><USER25> I believe there's a guy who rents out his herd. I've seen goats in other fields (near Yahoo, in the past)

<comment><USER26> yeah, that's what the article says

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> UC Berkeley uses goats, too: <http://oep.berkeley.edu/programs/fire_mitigation/index.html>

</comment><comment> patrickg-zill Mekmitasdigoat ?

[http://www.sigmasoft.com/~openbsd/archives/html/openbsd- misc...](http://www.sigmasoft.com/~openbsd/archives/html/openbsd- misc/2001-01/msg01514.html)

</comment><comment><USER28> The Idea seems to be taken from Surfer Dude (2008) movie, staring Matthew McConaughey.

</comment><comment><USER29> If you substitute sheep for goats, you'd get tasty mutton as a "side" product...

<comment><USER14> You can also eat tasty goat.

<comment><USER30> I made this a few times recently. Goat curry:

       ~2lbs cut up goat meat, browned in a small amount of oil
       4-6 potatoes, peeled and cubed
       2 onions, diced
       5-10 dried red chilis, crumbled
       Lots of curry, garam masala, coriander, cumin, chili powder to taste
       Salt and pepper to taste
       1 bag frozen peas, added 30min from the end

Add water and stew. Keep adding water as time goes by, adjusting to desired consistency. Stew for at least three hours.

Tasty goat!

<comment><USER31> How many people are you feeding?

<comment><USER30> Two. Then myself, for lunch for a few days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Does much grass even grow around there without watering it? I thought it was quite dry. If they're wasting fresh water with a sprinkler system this whole thing is pretty funny.</comment>