Thunderbird's New Home - <AUTHOR> https://blog.thunderbird.net/2020/01/thunderbirds-new-home/ <comment><USER2> I admit that software needs some sort of upkeep to not fall to bitrot, but I simply don't understand how we got to the near-falldown of Thunderbird a few years ago. You don't have to add new features, keeping it alive and simply fixing critical bugs is fine. Basically everyone I know would prefer a stable mail client not getting any new features over a few new features and addons breaking.

I'm really happy Thunderbird hasn't gone the way of the dodo.

<comment><USER3> The UX is that of the 90s. FF continues to see progress beyond the web browsers of the 90s, why shouldn't Thunderbird?

<comment><USER4> Maybe, but the UX _works_. I'd be very happy if they didn't start tinkering just for the sake of not being "stale". (See: Gnome Shell.)

As a daily user for 10+ years I can say there is certainly room to incrementally improve TB in many areas, like calendar and contacts, but don't mess with UX success.

<comment><USER5> I used thunderbird for years, gave up, and then tried it again a couple years ago. I think the UI/UX is really bad and was the reason I had forgotten why I left, and it was the reason I gave up the second time.

I unfortunately can't remember my complaints to make them more specific for a lively discussion, but I guess I am an anecdotal counter-point for thinking the UX was actually not a success.

<comment><USER6> I'd say a bad UI that is stable and familiar to the majority of users is actually a better UX than some new thing. See the MS Office "ribbon" interface for a good example.

Car manufacturers don't try to reinvent the steering wheel & pedals UI every couple years.

<comment><USER5> That is basically the motto of the Bloomberg Terminal, so I would agree with that to some extent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I mentioned this in another thread... but Mozilla/Thunderbird (not MZLA) should really concentrate more on feature-rich support. Specifically better calendar and provider integration.

Second to this, they should probably work on their own first class mail and calendar server as at least open core, and probably as SaaS as well. As much as I like some of the mail hosts out there, for some, the ability to self-host is big. The various pieces and software you have to cobble together are cumbersome, and even then, you don't get anything close to what Exchange+Outlook gives you.

It would be nice to see Thunderbird fill this space, it used to be what I would consider a best of breed email & newsgroup client, now, I'm not sure I would say anything close to that.

<comment><USER8> A near 100% drop-in replacement for Exchange server is kind of the holy grail of messaging/collaboration. I was looking at something that claimed to be that (or close) many, many years ago when I was doing consulting, so I could try to save my clients some money. But nothing had all of the features they wanted or was as seamless as they wanted it to be. I don't remember what the software was called, but it pre-dated Zimbra (which I think I've installed once to dink around with). I think this is more difficult now, with the move to cloud services like O365 and Google Suite. But having a self-hosted, Outlook compatible, Exchange substitute would be great.

<comment><USER7> That has been my experience as well... these days Office365 is often the best option, with Google Docs/Gmail, Fastmail and a handful of others coming close. I'd generally favor o365 currently, but would love to see Moz deliver a great alternative. They definitely have most of the expertise to do so (even if UI/UX could use some improvements).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does this mean I need to shift my donation?

I've been giving specifically to support Thunderbird development, not other Mozilla work [0] for the past few years because I think it's vitally important that email remains an open protocol, supported by mainstream desktop clients. Without Thunderbird, I fear email will be lost to the Gmail & Apple walled garden.

[0] [https://give.thunderbird.net/en-US/](https://give.thunderbird.net/en-US/)

<comment><USER9> Based on this Twitter discussion, it seems necessary to update the donation. Possibly because the recipient is no longer a nonprofit (previously Mozilla Foundation), but now a corp (MZLA). [https://twitter.com/mozthunderbird/status/122222824579547545...](https://twitter.com/mozthunderbird/status/1222228245795475457)

<comment><USER10> Thunderbird community manager here. This is correct. Moving from the Mozilla Foundation (non-profit) meant we had to cancel recurring donations.

We hope everyone will resume via [https://give.thunderbird.net](https://give.thunderbird.net)

<comment><USER11> There's no continuing option to give to the Foundation and direct support to Thunderbird? Since the new subsidiary is for-profit, direct donations will no longer be tax-deductible.

Feels like an odd choice (and perhaps, an important omission?) when the announcement calls out the importance of donations to Thunderbird.

<comment><USER12> I doubt it's legal for money to flow that way?

You'd be donating to a nonprofit and getting the tax benefit, then the nonprofit would be passing it onto a for-profit corporation. End result: tax- deductible donation to a for-profit corp. That doesn't sound like something the IRS would like.

It sounds like the ability to directly generate revenue was seen as outweighing the benefit of allowing tax-deductible donations. (This is my own speculation.)

<comment><USER13> Consider it this way: if a non-profit pays a for-profit company for services rendered (pure expense on the balance sheet), are they "passing on" your donation to the for-profit? I would think not. Non-profits need to be able to pay for things. At the most basic office-management level, they would need to rent office space, buy paper and coffee filters, contract a janitorial service, etc.

Would there be a limit? I don't think so. If I was running, say, a non-profit website host, 100% of my raised donations would be going, as expenses, to a for-profit company (some commercial cloud-hosting provider.) That's still an entirely-legitimate model for a non-profit to operate under.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> dugite-code I'm still looking for help upgrading/maintaining the Lookout add-on. This add- on allows opening the proprietary Microsoft Winmail.dat files

I don't have as much free time as I used to, that and Thunderbird is removing legacy add-on support faster than I would like.

[https://github.com/TB-throwback/LookOut-fix-version](https://github.com/TB- throwback/LookOut-fix-version)

</comment><comment><USER14> I switched back to mutt recently. I've tried to use and like Thunderbird, but I just can't make it work consistently across platforms. I really think mutt is the ideal mail user agent. If TB would just become a GUI for mutt, it may be useful to me, but otherwise, it's just not stable nor consistent.

<comment><USER15> I found mutt's ui difficult to use, but the main problem was that a significant part of mail I receive is meant to be rendered by a browser, for better or worse (worse). Can you say a bit more about your case?

<comment><USER16> Yeah, I'd almost give a kidney for a client with mutt's power and Thunderbird's rendering.

<comment><USER17> And Thunderbird's configuration system. I tried getting back to Mutt a couple years ago, but gave up configuring it after a few hours. I believe the biggest pain points were multi-server configuration and enabling as much caching as possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think it's good to put a bit of separation between Thunderbird and the rest of Mozilla. Thunderbird may have a modest but sustainable future of its own, and ideally it shouldn't be held hostage to the broader challenges and shifting priorities at the parent company.

</comment><comment><USER19> Will this affect development any? Thunderbird recently broke my "Virtual Identity" extension, which I've been relying on for years. Not sure what to do now.

<comment><USER20> Current thunderbird lets you customize your from address without the use of extensions.

<comment><USER19> It doesn't work well because you have to remember and do it manually every, single, time for every message to each recipient. V.I. would keep track of that for you.

<comment><USER21> > It doesn't work well because you have to remember and do it manually every, > single, time for every message to each recipient.

I'm having the very same problem, but never knew there actually was an extension for that - though it's a bit disheartening to learn that at the same time it no longer works in the latest Thunderbird version. Hm... (There's also [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1518025](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1518025) to port that functionality into Thunderbird itself, but it seems to have possibly stalled a little?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > explore offering our users products and services that were not possible > under the Mozilla Foundation

Can anyone offer insight on what this means? My assumption might be some sort of for-profit endeavor?

> Ultimately, this move to MZLA Technologies Corporation allows the > Thunderbird project to hire more easily, act more swiftly, and pursue ideas > that were previously not possible.

Not sure how a different legal structure would solve what sounds like an organizational problem.

<comment><USER23> MZLA Technologies is a subsidiary of Mozilla.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation#MZLA_Techno...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation#MZLA_Technologies_Corporation)

I'm interested in more clarification on what this change "actually means" as well.

<comment><USER9> A corp has more flexibility in what it's allowed to do, compared to a US nonprofit. Maybe similar reasons why Mozilla has the Mozilla Corporation in addition to the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation.

<comment><USER10> As the Community Manager for Thunderbird, I can say that this comment is correct.

The non-profit Mozilla Foundation had many rules about what we could and could not do. The new Corp gives us more freedom, legally.

<comment><USER24> Freedom to _what_ though? I'm at a loss why a structure that's OK for FF, is not OK for TB.

...unless there are plans for profit and charging a subscription or some such.

<comment><USER25> Firefox is under Mozilla Corporation, which is owned by Mozilla Foundation.

Thunderbird will now be under MZLA Corporation, which is owned by Mozilla Foundation.

Why not put it pack in Mozilla Corporation? Because Mozilla Corporation has tried to jettison it a few times for not aligning with their goals, I guess?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Why not a Thunderbird Corporation or similar, instead of another confusing 4-letters corp?

<comment><USER27> I'm assuming other projects will eventually move to MZLA

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> What problem is solved by creating a second corporate subsidiary? This post doesn't really explain.

<comment><USER9> To keep money streams and decision making for Firefox and Thunderbird separate?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> God I hope this goes better than Mozilla Messaging. I nearly joined MoMess, and was very sad to see where it went.

<comment><USER30> > MoMess

Nomen est omen?

<comment><USER29> Indeed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> An email client from the 1990's moves across two subsidiaries within the same company. Tada

</comment><comment><USER32> Not Sure if Brendan Eich is Reading, wondering if he has anything to share.

You need to setup an Entire Separate For Profit Company for a different product?

<comment><USER33> Brendan Eich left Mozilla in 2014.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Thunderbird is a great product, love it. Is there a way to follow Twitter users in "Blogs & News Feeds" ?

<comment><USER35> Nitter

<comment><USER34> Thanks I have started using it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I like the ENGMAIL plugin for GNUPG support. If I want to send encrypted messages to my friends I can do so with it.

</comment><comment><USER37> > More information about the future direction of Thunderbird will be shared in > the coming months.

Why ? Months is an eternity on the Internet.

edit: aye, aye for the downvotes, that's what karma is for, but would someone please explain why more information about the future direction of Thunderbird can't be shared now ? Does it mean there are no plans at all at the moment ?

</comment><comment><USER38> Anyone know if/when Thunderbird will start providing native support for Gmail labels (rather than using the less than satisfactory IMAP folder system that is currently used)?

<comment><USER39> Ideally, never. Tying an open platform into features that exist only in one SaaS offering from an advertising company isn't a good way to keep it open.

<comment><USER38> I understand your point, but gmail labels are such a good idea that Thunderbird should implement them as a native feature (even perhaps proposing it as extension of IMAP standard).

Also think Thunderbird should implement JMAP (Fastmail standard) and/or Google RESTful gmail API because these are open standards worth supporting.

Another feature that I would like to see more fully supported in Thunderbird (through better synchronization with mail provider server back-end) is editing emails, to include most importantly the ability to remove bulky attachments without losing email text or touching important meta-data. Unfortunately gmail treats each email as an immutable object, and the hacks that have been suggested to date to work around this limitation have all been clunky at best.

<comment><USER40> There's no need for an IMAP extension; there's already tags, but Thunderbird is pretty much the only mail agent that has some kind of support for IMAP tags. Google uses the folder hack in part because support for tags is so bad. However it would be nice if Google supported both folders and tags.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> this should be upvoted more

</comment><comment><USER42> Frankly, Mozilla should be rewriting Thunderbird with a completely clean slate. Focus on privacy (ie detection of email trackers) and integration with the big clouds (GSuite and O365), perhaps adding in some security features that are today only available in really pricey business offerings. I'd love to see this happen and for the next good email client to remain open and free rather than being acquired and strip-mined.

<comment><USER43> > integration with the big clouds

Integration with the big <whatever>s instead of supporting and insisting on open standards is the antitheses to the open web.

<comment><USER44> I think that's a false dichotomy. Both can happen.

<comment><USER43> Supporting proprietary APIs means promoting them, which harms open alternatives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I'm baffled Thunderbird has to essentially be crowdfunded while Mozilla pays their execs millions and experiments with mostly useless things in Firefox. The only thing I remember worth anything was Container Tabs, and that's mostly abandoned with little tooling and no sync support.

<comment><USER46> They've rebuilt several core parts of their browser in recent years, as far as I know, now being in a place again where I'm glad again I'm using fx instead of chrome. I for one am glad they focus on their core product :)

<comment><USER47> Absolutely, the release of Quantum too changed my view on FX completely.</comment></comment></comment>


Hardware is dead - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/15/hardware-is-dead/ <comment><USER2> Hardware is dead; long live hardware.

The free-fall in PC prices in the 90s "killed" the PC, except that every major PC manufacturer still sells high-end models, and retailers still make money on them.

The free-fall in automotive prices in the 20s "killed" the automobile, except that people kept buying faster, sleeker, newer models anyway.

Like so many other electronics and everyday devices, the commoditization of tablets won't "kill" the tablet. It will result in a glut of disposable, troublesome, irksome devices, but there will still be a very nice market of people willing to pay more for a better device. Go make money there, you'll be happier anyway.

<comment><USER3> So not to be that dude, but ...

"The King is dead, long live the King." refers to the accession of a new monarch. It implies in the language an immediate, uninterrupted rule of the line.

It should not be used when something has died, and it's just dead and there is no implied line of succession.

A terrible but relevant example would be "the iPhone is dead, long live the iPhone.", implying that the 4s is dead and 5 now reigns.

<comment><USER2> Whoops; thank you. I didn't know that.

<comment><USER4> Don't give in so quickly - your use was fine, and in keeping with the concept of "X is Dead, Long Live X"

<comment><USER5> But what the phrase really means is: "X is Dead, Long Live Y" with x being the diseased king, and y the rightful heir and new king.

As wikipedia states [1]:

The phrase _is a traditional proclamation made following the accession of a new monarch_

And...

 _"Given the memorable nature of the phrase (owing to epanalepsis), as well as its historic significance, the phrase crops up regularly as a headline for articles, editorials, or advertisements on themes of succession or replacement."_

That's why bigdubs was right.

But finally... most probably the successor and new monarch could be something like what Ballmer said to The Seattle Times [2]:

 _I think when you look forward, our core capability will be software, (but) you'll probably think of us more as a devices-and-services company._

Devices+Services is the new king. Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, are all going this route.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King_is_dead._Long_live_the...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King_is_dead._Long_live_the_King)

[2] [http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2019168601_m...](http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2019168601_microsoftballmer16.html)

<comment><USER4> Yes - that's precisely what the original poster was referring to. "Hardware (The old, legacy, big manufacturer, high margin, centrally built) is dead, Long live Hardware (The new, on-demand built, small manufacturers, lower margin, distributed build).

I'm sure there will be many more generations of hardware as well - indeed, the next big generation will probably be some form of print-at-home, then perhaps biological - who knows.

There will be many iterations - but they all will consist on something physical replacing the last generation.

With that said - I appreciate your meta-point, that the concept of "Selling Hardware Alone" without the devices/services associated it, is going out of vogue with the highly-valued companies here in North America. Point made.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've already started sticking them to the walls of my house to control lights, the thermostat, the garage door etc. This didn't make sense at $400/device but as soon as they hit $100 or so the game was afoot. Now they're so cheap, its literally cheaper to grab one from "the pile" and whip up a nice html5 interface for the task than to buy a dedicated Insteon controller or Nest thermostat. Hell, it was cheaper to automate my garage door and give it a REST interface on the web than to buy a single new clicker at Sears.

I'm guessing that in the near future there won't be many surfaces left in our lives that aren't festooned with touch-screenage.

<comment><USER7> What hardware are you using? I've wanted to try home automation for a while but all I can find is either the lowend stuff (X10) or the really highend stuff that requires a dealer to install it for you.

<comment><USER8> He mentioned Insteon, so I'm assuming <http://www.insteon.net/>.

I've been wanting to get into home automation too. My biggest fear is vendor lock-in. I'd like to hear more about how he gave his garage door a REST API, because that's something I could build my own interface for.

<comment><USER6> I had an old X10 relay module laying around. I just straight wired it in parallel with the wall button.

[http://www.thex10shop.com/product/x10-pro-home-automation- pu...](http://www.thex10shop.com/product/x10-pro-home-automation- pum01-universal-relay-switch-module-um506)

Looks like its been discontinued but I'm sure something like it still exists. I probably payed the $20 retail for it. Thus my judgement that it cost less than a new clicker from Sears.

The garage door has a sensor that's part of the security system, which was replaced by a beaglebone. Between the two systems, I can use the main server to program a small app to GET the state of the door and PUT the door into the open and closed state.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "At these levels there is almost no profit margin left in the hardware business. A $45 tablet is cheap enough to be an impulse purchase at the check- out line in Best Buy. A $45 price puts tablets within reach of a whole host of other activities not traditionally associated with computers. Tablets could be used by waiters in restaurants."

I've been to plenty of restaurants where waiters having been using handheld, wireless devices to take orders, so that's nothing new. And claiming that a rapid price drop means there's "almost no profit margin" and then equating that to the death of hardware seems completely upside down.

If hardware manufacturing has dropped to the point where complex devices are cheap to buy then we are entering a golden age of hardware since it means that manufacturing and design process has got cheap enough that many things that were previously too expensive to design/manufacture will be made.

It can also herald an era of 'mom and pop' hardware companies.

<comment><USER10> "... then we are entering a golden age of hardware ...

It can also herald an era of 'mom and pop' hardware companies."

Exactly!

I never understand bloggers and pundits who analyze these things from the perspective of the stockholders or owners of the large players instead of the consumers/small players.

Why the hell would you cheer about the high margins charged on the products you are paying for? Is marketing getting so good that consumers are now complaining about too much competition among those they buy from?

<comment><USER11>
      Why the hell would you cheer about the high margins
      charged on the products you are paying for?

I don't cheer high margins, but in some industries cheap medium-low quality products crowd more expensive higher quality products out of the market.

Consider inkjet printers; there are many cheap products on the market, but the consensus opinion among techies seems to be that there's no suppler with a good product.

It would be a shame if more of the technology industry went in that direction.

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure inkjet printers are a good example, although you can say that since the cheap printers flooded the market there are fewer "good" printers and they lost the economies of scale so they are more expensive.

This example is so polluted by the whole ink cartridge "sell the razor blades" business model and the legal challenges around 3rd party cartridges that I would be very hesitant to generalize from the printer example.

With that said, the kindle business model _is_ that same model so maybe there is something to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Being a mechanical engineer and a hardware guy myself, I may be biased, but I think hardware is alive and well. With rapid prototyping and open-sourcing of 3D printers, fabrications shops and the like, the opportunity to create new hardware devices is easier now than ever before.

The issue the article focuses on is commoditizing of hardware. Tablets all essentially have the same components and the economies of scale are exaggerated. When you have multiple manufacturers of very similar devices they all start reducing their margins to gain market share. This is a race to the bottom, and I believe the point the article is trying to make.

However, the innovators of hardware are the winners. New devices that create new markets, new functions, new possibilities for consumers have the potential to sell large volumes at high margins. This has the advantage of the added barrier of manufacturing. Competitors take longer to tool-up and compete, giving first-movers a larger advantage than software producers. The iPod, for example, still remains the leader to this day.

Hardware isn't dead, it just becomes a commodity over time. To avoid reaching the bottom, you have to be a company that's always innovating, just like software. Creating new products, vastly improving design, etc. Leave the copycats in China to turn it into a commodity, you should be onto your next big thing by the time that becomes an issue.

</comment><comment><USER13> The generic cheapness that may portend the death of hardware is the same force that is causing a renaissance of hardware hacking.

Most major cities have hackerspaces or techshops (<http://www.techshop.ws/>) where you can 3D print and use CNC mills. It's not uncommon to take apart cheap hardware and hack something into it (failure is much easier to stomach on a sub-$100 device).

Arduino has been the main driver in this area for years, but mark my words: Go on Raspberry Pi is the hardware platform of the future. Go is close to the metal and has great concurrency, which make it ideal for interfacing with sensors. No more dealing with Arduino's lack of real threads and the weird sketch format.

My Pis arrive tomorrow; long live hardware!

<comment><USER14> good point. I'm pretty happy that hardware hacking is potentially becoming mainstream again, hopefully it makes complex hardware design seem less and less like an ivory tower affair like it has for the past 20-30 years.

I've worked in the industry at a chip startup, and it's one where people hold on to stacks of internal design books across companies because the information is very niche and protected.

As far as the commoditization of consumer hardware, everyone in the industry knows about it, and they're responding by investing more by offshoring, or focusing on higher-end industrial markets. Hardware/chip startups are increasingly rare (or are very underfunded) unless they offer a significant game-changer due to the capital costs involved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> A $45 knock off tablet, bought in China miles from the manufacturer doesn't equate to a $45 price tag in the USA. Put a brand name on it (and some quality control), put in the 8 or 16gb the market requires (this tablet was 4gb) and shipping and import fees, and you're easily up to the $200 we're paying today.

This is a non-story.

<comment><USER16> Maybe not $200 [http://dx.com/p/7-0-resistive-touch-screen- android-2-2-table...](http://dx.com/p/7-0-resistive-touch-screen- android-2-2-tablet-pc-with-camera-wi-fi-tf-black- arm-v5-349-79mhz-107155?item=29) but agree on non-story.

<comment><USER15> Yes, but people aren't going to but those, look at the specs. What kind of experience does a 350mhz cpu give you?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think this is touching on a different vein.

For 30 years, companies have extolled the virtues of globalization, while jobs were moved overseas and shareholders reaped the benefits.

Now, finally, we're starting to see the consumer aspect of globalization. If I can buy a tablet for less than it costs to take my wife to dinner, technology is truly within everyone's grasp.

</comment><comment><USER18> 2 thoughts: He isn't saying anything except "margins are razor thin". Hardware companies have made money on razor thin margins in the past, and will continue to do so. Razor thin margins don't mean "0 margin".

He seems to be ignoring the costs of distribution. The reason the tablet is $49 is because you can walk to the factory from where it's being sold. Try to take advantage of that price and import it to the US and you'll find the cost is higher. I don't see why it's amazing that you can buy a cheap tablet at wholesale prices, that's obvious

<comment><USER19> Distribution is usually via Hong Kong at something of middle man markups, but still cheap. The last time we ordered this way, the item arrived declared for customs as 'Contents: Gift'. I'm not sure what the preferred weight limit is for them.

There's a sea of knockoffs over there, some terrible, others very good.

<comment><USER18> Yeah the "Contents:Gift" trick is cute, but illegal if you're actually importing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> One thing that's interesting about China is there are literally 10s of thousands of independent manufacturers. In the U.S publicly traded companies raise and borrow money for incredibly cheap and buy out and consolidate everyone but in China this doesn't seem to happen.

</comment><comment><USER21> I never understood why good articles have tiny non-descriptive titles, like the author got tired.

Certainly it's not for lack of space, it is the web after all and not a print newspaper.

If you have a 20+ paragraph story, at least give us some motivation to read it.

At least put a subtitle or appositive clause on the title.

<comment><USER22> On sites like this the author doesn't come up with the title.

<comment><USER23> Why is that?

<comment><USER24> Traditionally, editors and subs write the titles. Many online news sites ape the model that preceded them in the print world (except for the part about employing editors with a talent for actual editing).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> A low price point on commodity hardware certainly doesn't correlate to the hardware industry being dead. If anything it is quite the opposite. With such a low price point, the potential market opens up quite significantly. There become many more people that can now afford a tablet, and there also becomes many that can justify having a few around the house for various tasks. A tablet in the kitchen for just recipes becomes a viable product. Of course I would want that particular tablet to have some particular features. Maybe water proof, and easy to clean.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, you do have the Apple's and Amazon's of the world that the author mentioned. Quality/expensive hardware will continue to exist long into the future. It will help drive the advancements in technology, and a portion of consumers will always demand quality regardless of price.

If anything the low price point opens up the market for new products. Take Ouya as an example here. While they managed to get $8.5M on Kickstarter, their initial outset had them need less than $1M. I would argue, and I think I have here that we are on the brink of a cambrian explosion of new hardware devices, and given the low entry point, there will be many new companies that bring us exciting new products.

</comment><comment><USER26> Here's a link for anyone who feels like exploring the wonderful world of cheap generic Chinese tablets:

<http://www.dealextreme.com/c/tablets-1409>

Or cheap generic Chinese anything, for that matter.

<comment><USER27> Your implied negative standpoint, with the products are "cheap" and "generic" and "Chinese", is rather naive and amusing. The entire point of this article is the fact that these products are indistinguishable from the same ones with a HTC, Samsung, HP or Apple logo emblazoned on the device.

Hardware will truly be dead when people realize just how much they're paying for the brand name and nothing more.

<comment><USER28> As noted by another post above, take one of these products, bump the specs to something tolerable (say, 16GB instead of 4GB etc.), do some real quality assurance tests/screening, ship it halfway around the world, put a reputable name on it (so customers can trust they're getting something worth getting), add a sensible markup, set up a tech support hotline, and that $45 slate is now $200 - right about where decent tablets are now.

"brand name and nothing more" isn't nothing. It's why people pay Apple $649 for an iPhone 5 consisting of $167.50 in parts - there's more to a product than just parts, there's assuring you'll end up with more than just $167.50 in parts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Looks like great opportunities for folks to start hardware startups.

Anybody know how to pick up 2 or 3 of these for prototyping?

I'm also assuming you can somehow easily boot Linux on it.

<comment><USER30> I live nearby Hua Qiang Bei in Shenzhen, if you are serious I could ship some for you. I'm actually seriously considering setting up a Hua Qiang Bei e-commerce: this place is really a gold mine for electronics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Hardware isn't "dead", but companies that sell commodity hardware certainly don't have a bright future. Margins will be razor thin so unless you have insane volume or can manage your supply chain like a boss, then exiting now might be the best long term plan.

Similarly if you only produce Operating System software you are also "dead". Once the long extended death rattle of the PC compatible system is finally over there won't be a large common platform for third party companies to target. Even Microsoft sees the writing on the wall with this one hence Surface.

So to ensure survival a company needs to be in control of the entire widget, both hardware and software to produce the best possible system. This will yield a diaspora of almost but not quite compatible devices running a variety of different software platforms. Some will be open source, some will not. Some companies will survive the transition, most will not and new companies will rise and take their place.

</comment><comment><USER32> So what he's saying is there's room in the market for a software company to take these $35 tablets(in volume), add custom software enhancements, and sell them for $200? Sounds like a business opportunity, if maybe a bit short lived.

Also, why has nobody pointed out the opportunity in taking these and making custom software for various industries like Medical, Automotive, Automation (home or industrial), Sales (of various things).

Custom software on disposable hardware could really turn into some big money businesses. Maybe there's no money in the hardware, but you can add some serious margin by bundling it with custom software and maybe add the tag "enterprise" if you want to sell to large companies.

</comment><comment><USER33> I think he has it backwards. Hardware is getting cheaper, making it easier to sell products that used to be too expensive. The cheap labor in China is fairly accessible to everyone.

This is an opportunity, not a death blow.

$0.99 Apps didn't 'Kill' software for the same reason.

</comment><comment><USER34> If I had a processor that ran 1000x faster than current processors, would I be limited to selling it for $50?

Currently commoditized hardware is dead, perhaps.

There will come a hardware invention that offers something new, and there will huge profits there.

</comment><comment><USER35> So I've decided to try the experiment. Ordered a 7" android tablet - [http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Best-discount-price-Free- ship...](http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Best-discount-price-Free-shipping- Android-4-0-3-7inch-Tablet-PC-with-Capacitive-AllWinner-A13/597529226.html) described as running ice cream sandwich from aliexpress for $57.68, with free shipping.

It's not quite $45, although it looks like I could've got that price if I didn't need shipping.

Should be interesting to see what I get and how cheaply made (or not) it is.

</comment><comment><USER36> Let's make an important clarification here: When the word "hardware" is used in this article (and this thread) it is really to mean "commodity consumer hardware". There's far more to the hardware business than what you can buy at BestBuy or Walmart. That said, even industrial and specialty hardware is under pricing pressure in markets where reasonable volumes can be had.

That's the secret, really. Any market where product can be manufactured in volume is a market that can be targeted by the benefits provided by the Chinese manufacturing machine. Limited volume products are not a good fit for this system.

That said, I don't really understand the surprise or revelation perhaps implied by the author. What is so special about a tablet? In terms of the hardware involved and the manufacturing process, well, nothing. Absolutely nothing. A tablet is no different than any other electronic device.

And, yes, while a stereo amplifier or a CATV tuner use different components, a tablet is subject to exactly the same manufacturing process and obeys the same economic rules. Any product that can be manufactured in the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or millions of units per month will, eventually, race for the bottom in terms of pricing. This does not necessarily equate to lower quality.

The question that we should really be asking is: Why are we paying so much for tablets in the US?

<comment><USER37> >> Why are we paying so much for tablets in the US?

Because of few factors:

1\. It's relatively hard to find a Chinese tablet that can you be sure it has good quality. That's what branding is for, but chinese tablets don't have good branding.

2\. Marketing does help to sell products. Promotion is needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> >Try to take advantage of that price and import it to the US and you'll find the cost is higher.

A college I did graduate work at has a huge auditorium named after a man who made tens of millions of dollars throughout the early 20th century importing stuff from Asia. Which taught me that huge profits can be had by importing exotic junk and <s>ripping off</s> selling it to your fellow citizens for many times what you paid.

</comment><comment><USER39> The manufacturer he failed to identify is most likely Shenzhen Lyric Pioneer (<http://www.lyxfsz.com/>), which is behind dozens of the All Winner based Android tablets, under a wide variety of brand names.

(One of their more amusing product pages: <http://www.lyxfsz.com/en/products_view.htm?id=27> ... )

<comment><USER40> There are thousands of LyricPioneer-likes in ShenZhen. Which LyricPioneer do you mean?

<comment><USER39> I'm not sure what you're trying to say. Is the name common? (Google doesn't seem to find anyone else using that name in English, but that doesn't need to say much). In any case, the website URL I provided makes the reference unique, down to the address.

If you mean there are lots of similar products from other sources, then maybe. But pretty much all of the cheap Android tablet models that make it to Europe at least use the exact same board design (identical PCBs, apart from minor changes depending on features, but even most differences between models is accounted for by what components are mounted on the PCB, not differences in board design), the same handful of cases, and the same Android distribution and the same model numbers - everything points to a single source for the ones sold in the UK at least, but maybe none of the other manufacturers bothers with the export market.

I've seen nobody dig up any alternative manufacturers of these specific models over the last couple of years. There may be a few others, but the AllWinner based tablets soldin Europe seems to be pretty much from a single source. If you see a large number of different brands, that doesn't really say anything - that's the case for the ones shipped to Europe too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> The low end of every successful product category ever created eventually becomes a commodity. The author has equated the commoditization of low end tablets with the death of one of the worlds largest industries.

This would be like saying; margins are slim on spreadsheet software, the software industry is dead.

This article exudes a failure to grasp basic economics.

<comment><USER12> This is a more succinct and elegant way of explaining what I was trying to say.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> It's worth noting everyone in the hardware business knows this. For example: why do you think everyone is fighting over the living room? Players like Samsung want to sell you a cheap tablet so you might buy the smart TV it pairs well with. And then maybe you'll buy content there too.

</comment><comment><USER43> What is really exciting about this is the impact on emerging markets. I live in Ghana and tablets and phones are how people access the internet, and will for the foreseeable future. If tools get good enough there might never be PCs as a tablet seems to be a much more accessible interface to get started with.

It is an interesting market to think about trying to monetize but the potential is huge as tablets drop to a price point where average urban dwellers (who are currently barely computer literate) can afford them. I already see iPads in the hands of the richer crowd and expect to see cheaper Androids flooding the market very soon. The need for custom software to make it easy for a population that can only hunt-and-peck is going to be huge.

</comment><comment><USER44> Another win is when these products become components themselves. Think robotics and other DIY projects that can have a huge amount of functionality out of the box thanks to an established platform tied to an excellent selection of sensors and communication options.

</comment><comment><USER45> As a alleged kernel engineer I wonder what this means for me.

For now, I see it means that one person out of a dozen gets to write the device driver -- if that --and the rest of us get to do patch slavery. heh. :)

as far as linux, it is kind of sucked the air out of the room for embedded development, but I think in kind of a good way. I'm sort of out of an interesting systems job, and people who think they can write an app in user space for their device and be done with it are in for a shock when it doesn't go quite right, but with embedded linux people can just write an app in user space for their device and be done with it. Yes, you read that right.

</comment><comment><USER21> It's going to be amazing when you can buy a usable tablet for $20 at at the dollar store - or maybe even a vending machine.

I remember when desktop calculators were more than that.

Don't we have Google to thank for this in large part?

</comment><comment><USER46> The first question that popped in my mind as I read this was: how will this affect Apple over time?

If tablets with decent specs are available in China at relatively low volumes for $35 each, it's a matter of time before we start seeing free and nearly- free tablets in developed countries like the US. (Not just Amazon; companies like Verizon and Comcast could throw in a free 7" Android tablet just for signing up with them.)

Will consumers continue to shell out for iPads, iPhones, or iPods to the same degree when they can get decent Android devices for near zero?

<comment><USER31> If the market follows the iPod model then consumers on a whole will prefer the Apple models over the "cheap" alternatives. This will continue until the market is superseded by another market.

If the market follows the PC model then Apple's share will collapse to a modest percentage, but will still control the profit share.

In either case Apple wins.

<comment><USER47> I'd argue that following the iPod model rather relies on the competition's devices remaining fairly horrible by comparison - none of them ever had such nice hardware, and I never tried one with adequate software to handle several thousand songs on the device. This seems unlikely to repeat itself to me; IMO* the Nexus 7 is an extremely nice little tablet which proves this kind of thing can work, and other manufacturers can take advantage of Android to provide good software, which often let down the iPod competitors.

There is a third option of course; that the market follows neither model that have gone before, and Apple does not win this time. We won't know for sure until after, though.

* Disclosure: I work at Google, so my opinion is not without potential bias.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> "Amazon is also clearly way ahead on this model. At the Kindle launch event last week, Jeff Bezos highlighted that Amazon does not make money on the Kindle, it makes money on the content it sells on top of the Kindle."

And Nintendo has been aware of this since the 80s. Consoles have been closed platforms with razor thin to loss leader margins on hardware for over thirty years now. It's only that the development model itself has shifted with tablets and smartphones, they're a bit more open than they used to be.

</comment><comment><USER49> The 1st thing I was thinking about the $45 China quoted market price (which is probably lower since it doesn't include either volume or haggling) was the cost of shipping from China to the other markets. At the end of the article we see the price after shipping translate to $79, which adds approx 100% to the cost in-stores. I guess the next wave will involve ways of either making shipping and the process of importing cheaper, or just circumvent it all together with say 3d printing.

</comment><comment><USER50> Hardware will die, when web sites or apps will give them for free (as a true commodity). Imagine, you get a nexus tablet when you sign up for Gmail or Google Apps.

<comment><USER51> I can imagine something like every shopping trolley having a tablet built into the handle that shows the store layout,specials near you, etc.

Would be pretty neat

<comment><USER52> [http://www.news.com.au/technology/well-aisle-be-its-a- smart-...](http://www.news.com.au/technology/well-aisle-be-its-a-smart- trolley/story-e6frfrnr-1226241466882)

I'm sure there is better out there though!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> 2 cents: After the hardware break even point how does a hardware manufacturer gain an advantage in such a market? Add malware to the build.

The manufacturers are faceless, nameless and blameless. There's no way for a bad sale to really hurt them. Hence, no market incentive to keep it clean.

Expect these to go lower still, but personally I would stick to branded tablets for anything requiring a secure login.

</comment><comment><USER54> It's called differentiation. If you don't have it, you're in a commodity market (Android anythings). If you do have it, you're not in a commodity market and generally hardware gross margins hover around 50% (or more!).

If you won't innovate and differentiate, then yes, hardware is dead. You won't make any money these days making something someone else makes cheaply. _MAKE_SOMETHING_ELSE!

</comment><comment><USER55> I guess the key will become content. Tablet makers will want to be "the only tablet that can do X" where X won't necessarily be a technical hardware feature but rather a deal made with a content producer to be the only platform for their content to be distributed on.

That way you can sell devices at a huge markup despite the hardware being identical to lower end models.

<comment><USER56> This is what Amazon seems to believe, although they are _marking down_ prices, not marking up.

They appear to be fine with producing cheap, commodity tablets as a means to enable more content distribution from their services. Classic razor blade model. It's worked well for Kindle (ereader version) so far, and I imagine it will work pretty well for their tablets.

When you have good content, you want to practically give away the vehicle that delivers that content.

<comment><USER55> It would be possible to come at it from the other direction though.

Let's say Apple decided to buy up some big content producer or network. Let's say HBO because that's the one everybody seems to talk about.

They could now make that content exclusive to their devices, or perhaps even models of their devices. Say you want to watch "game of thrones" you have to buy the 16GB instead of the 8GB one of whatever. Despite the fact that there is no technical reason for this to be required, you can then charge much more money for the 16GB one, an order of magnitude more than the extra flash storage is worth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Do keep in mind that $35 USD in China is not directly comparable to prices in the USA. And not just because of the cost of living in the USA.

There are no returns, for example. When you walk out of the store, that's it. If there is any kind of problem, your main option is to just throw it away. There is no tech support either.

</comment><comment><USER58> He seems to equate low price to mean there is no profit margin, which isn't right.

There is obviously enough margin to get the device to the USA and sell it in a retail store for $75 (a retail store that demands its own margins)

I'm surprised that seeing it at Fry's didn't change his mind to 'these things are going to sell like crazy'

</comment><comment><USER59> [OT] Apropos the recent discussion on third-party requests and Adblock Plus, Ghostery and NoScript:

Wow, just wow. This website pulls in requests from _28_ third-party sites and wants to run javascript from _21_ third-party sites.

This abuse is why users have NoScript et al.

</comment><comment><USER60> Confusing that he shops in Shenzen every "four to five months" but had only "heard" that tablets had gotten cheap, what he's reporting on has been going on for at least 18 months.

</comment><comment><USER61> Amusing then, that there is so much interest in hardware. A hardware company seems to win a big prize in practically every hackathon I've seen in the past year at least.

</comment><comment><USER62> $56 [http://www.frys.com/product/6905837?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT...](http://www.frys.com/product/6905837?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG)

</comment><comment><USER63> I'm pretty sure that this is the table from the end of the story. [http://www.frys.com/product/6982177?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT...](http://www.frys.com/product/6982177?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG)

I wonder how this compares to the Nexus 7 in terms of usability/response/lag/etc.

<comment><USER64> Android 2.3, never going to get updated, crappy resolution, slow single core processor...

Honestly, it's going to suck compared to a Nexus 7. Remember, Android 2.3 IS NOT a tablet operating system, the first of which was 3.0, so it's basically a 7" non-cellular Android phone.

<comment><USER65> And windows 95 was a terrible desktop operating system. But it still sold. The people who are going to buy this won't care.

<comment><USER64> It wasn't crappy at the time. For those of us used to Windows 3.x it was amazing.

This is more akin to selling Windows 95 on machines after Windows 98SE was already out. At that point, yes, 95 was considered terrible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> So, a $35 device can be sold at frys for $75 at 100% profit?

And you say hardware is dead?

</comment><comment><USER67> Hardware is dead long back, long live hardware

</comment><comment><USER68> ... except if you're Apple.

</comment><comment><USER69> Well why do you think that Apple has so much cash in the bank? (it is only partly from the App Store skim).</comment>


Show HN: Do you love shopping at Costco? With TallyUp save money and shop smarter - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tallyup-for-costco/id932235451

<comment><USER3> I can't tell why I would want to track my spending at costco. What does this do for me? How much work is it to enter data?

<comment><AUTHOR> Many Costco shoppers, myself included (member for 17 years) routinely get carried away in Costco. It's part of what Costco purposefully cultivates - <USER2> treasure hunt. (It's why they never label the aisles.) Showing up at the cash register and seeing a $400 or $500 bill, or much more, is not uncommon. Tracking your spending is easy. Click add to cart. Enter the 6 digit Costco code. If it is in the database already, you're done. (We have thousands of products in the db already) If it isn't, you enter the name and price so that the next shopper doesn't have to. All the data is community driven. For those who aren't concerned with how much they spend, there's also many other features besides the shopping cart.

<comment><USER4> I still don't understand the alignment of the shopping cart feature with Costco shopper needs.

Are Costco shoppers concerned about how much they unexpectedly spend on treasures? Everyone splurges up at Costco, but for what you buy unexpectedly, are you really conscientious? If so, is there another issue to address?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is an excellent question and the answer is it depends on which subset of Costco customers we're discussing; it isn't one size fits all. Let's start with a background of the demographics of Costco shoppers (2004 research). 85% are affluent or living comfortably and 15% are getting by or poor. For many in the 85% how much they're spending isn't a major concern and your question about alignment with needs is a valid one. But there are many exceptions. Some of that 85% are shall we say "fiscally diligent". I personally chatted with one woman in Costco (who clearly looked affluent with the fur coat and all, and she had a cart full of stuff) who said "Oh my husband will love this, he's always complaining about how much stuff I've put in the cart and complains we're spending too much and that we don't really need half of it." Does a shopping cart function serve as a sanity check in these situations? We think so. "Gee c'mon Myrtle, look at that, the app says we're on the hook for over $500, do we really need all of this?" Contrast that with the typical scenario of not really knowing and showing up to the cash register and the clerk says "$510.25". At this point if people are surprised rarely do they don't start removing items. They just pay up. And perhaps fight in the car on the way home? ;-) Even those who are very penny conscious, those who shop at Costco because the perception is they are saving money, can get carried away with impulse purchases. These are anecdotal but on more than one occasion I've heard conversations in the aisles similar to "Husband: wow look at the price of that. That's way cheaper than at X store." "Wife: yeah but are we going to use all of that before it goes bad?" If it's unclear to the couple whether or not they should purchase it, the app adds an additional data point of "Hey, we really can only afford X dollars here today, and the app says we're already near that total, let's skip it for now". And regardless of which demographic you fall into others want to be able to confirm that what gets rung up at the cash register is actually correct. Mistakes still get made, price cards on the display are sometimes at odds with what is in the cash register shows. Having a shopping cart function that details every product and what the price is you're expecting to pay is a great feature for some people. "Wait a minute, that's supposed to be $14.99 not $17.99." Lastly, the shopping cart is only 1 of 4 core features that TallyUp provides. The product discovery (new products, sales, seasonal), price and stock notifications and nearby stock search are, in our opinion, all very compelling features.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is there an android version on the way?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it's currently being worked on.</comment></comment>


When Power Goes To Your Head, It May Shut Out Your Heart - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2013/08/10/210686255/a-sense-of-power-can-do-a-number-on-your-brain?ft=1&f=1007 <comment><USER3> """If you ask a psychologist, he or she may tell you that the powerful are simply too busy. They don't have the time to fully attend to their less powerful counterparts."""

No real psychologist will tell you that. Not even the worse case of status-quo apologist psychologist.

<comment><USER4> So, what would they say?

<comment><USER3> They would explain it in terms of personality traits, past history, sociopathic behavior, reward systems and tons of other insights etc.

There are lots of studies in power relations, and I've never seen the lack of empathy exhibited by some powerful people explained away as "they are busy".

<comment><USER4> That sir, is a generalization used to raise the importance of the article. I skip that. What you say is a relative explanation of the causes, but not showing evidence of a definitive neurological trigger, which they claim to have discovered as responsible.

This is also one reason why many people I know, don't take psychology serious, because it lacks on the neurological background and tries to explain things that 'could, would, should' happen in cases like 'a,b or c' without giving a definitive answer. This leaves the asking person in a uncertain and unsatisfied state. definitely. There are other psychologists who explain things logically and simple, that convinces much more people and gives them more insight into the 'why's' rather than squishy explanations of the 'what's'.

<comment><USER3> > _This is also one reason why many people I know, don 't take psychology > serious, because it lacks on the neurological background and tries to > explain things that 'could, would, should' happen in cases like 'a,b or c' > without giving a definitive answer._

That's exactly the reason why I take it seriously. Because it considers many factors, and the multiple facets and interactions between a person and other persons and/or surroundings, and understands that human psychology does not work like some antiquated naive reductionist machinery.

The "definitive answers" on this front ("it's gene X that makes you behave Y, it's that substance in the brain that makes you violent", etc), are for people who believe in silver bullets and one-size-fits-all answers. IMHO they reek of pseudo-science, mixing cause and effect, correlation and causation and working at the wrong level of abstraction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This does not surprise. Research has repeatedly found that even momentary success boosts testosterone, and we know the effects that has on behavior, including a loss of empathy. And vice versa for failure dropping testosterone.

See [http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolution-the- self/20090...](http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolution-the- self/200905/the-testosterone-curse-part-2) for a basic overview of the effects of testosterone.

This fits evolutionary "just so" stories very well. Males in pair bonding species pursue a mix of alpha (impregnate lots of females) and beta (trade child care for access to one female) strategies. A successful male should become more willing to go for alpha behaviors. A successful alpha strategy requires not minding the real negative consequences of your behavior on others. Conversely beta strategies are going to fail hard if you're not deeply aware of the feelings of those around you.

Which is precisely what testosterone does.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> There are a few studies on the same subject. Most notably by Paul Piff

Here is the peer-reviewed paper: "Higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior": [http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1118373109](http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1118373109)

New York Magazine did a feature story about the study: [http://nymag.com/news/features/money- brain-2012-7/](http://nymag.com/news/features/money-brain-2012-7/)

A PBS piece on the study: [http://youtu.be/IuqGrz- Y_Lc](http://youtu.be/IuqGrz-Y_Lc)

And the documentary: "Park Avenue: money, power and the American dream - <USER2> Poverty?" [http://youtu.be/6niWzomA_So](http://youtu.be/6niWzomA_So) \- also exams the psychology behind power.

<comment><USER6> More than a few; I cite a number of others at [http://lesswrong.com/lw/dtg/notes_on_the_psychology_of_power...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/dtg/notes_on_the_psychology_of_power/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I suspect that the evolutionary mechanism behind this is that the members of the species (or tribe etc.) who are powerful (leaders?) must have some sense of ruthlessness in order to enable their whole group to survive; and empathy is directly counteractive to ruthlessness.

<comment><USER8> Or it could be the way for nature to lead a group to a disaster, a fight with another group. So that better group survives.

<comment><USER9> That ascribes a lot of agency to nature, and I think will lead you to flawed conclusions.

<comment><USER8> I am not drawing any conclusion. Just proposing a counter point. Nature has no plans for humanity ofcourse.

<comment><USER9> Presumably you draw some conclusions ever; I'm just saying you shouldn't use reasoning like above in getting there when you do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It could be that our brain takes every chance to reduce its energy consumption. You could save on empathy/theory of mind big time, it seems.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think having some sense of power important to the well-being of humans? Feeling powerless can lead one to feelings of despair and helplessness. Of course feeling superior over others and pointing them down is not healthy either. But feeling like you have some control over one's live is essential.

<comment><USER12> > I think having some sense of power important to the well-being of humans?

Of course it is. That's not the question, I guess.

The question is: How much difference regarding power (generally expressed in money/wealth) is healthy to society?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Can we please stop with "emerging neuroscience" crap. [http://www.amazon.com/Brainwashed-Seductive-Appeal- Mindless-...](http://www.amazon.com/Brainwashed-Seductive-Appeal-Mindless- Neuroscience/dp/0465018777/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_y)

<comment><USER14> I think you got downvoted because your comment didn't add value, but I suspect there is something behind it, so I'd be interested in learning more without reading that entire book.

<comment><USER15> Book Description:

"What can't neuroscience tell us about ourselves? Since fMRI—functional magnetic resonance imaging—was introduced in the early 1990s, brain scans have been used to help politicians understand and manipulate voters, determine guilt in court cases, and make sense of everything from musical aptitude to romantic love. But although brain scans and other neurotechnologies have provided groundbreaking insights into the workings of the human brain, the increasingly fashionable idea that they are the most important means of answering the enduring mysteries of psychology is misguided—and potentially dangerous.

In Brainwashed, psychiatrist and AEI scholar Sally Satel and psychologist Scott O. Lilienfeld reveal how many of the real-world applications of human neuroscience gloss over its limitations and intricacies, at times obscuring—rather than clarifying—the myriad factors that shape our behavior and identities. Brain scans, Satel and Lilienfeld show, are useful but often ambiguous representations of a highly complex system. Each region of the brain participates in a host of experiences and interacts with other regions, so seeing one area light up on an fMRI in response to a stimulus doesn't automatically indicate a particular sensation or capture the higher cognitive functions that come from those interactions. The narrow focus on the brain's physical processes also assumes that our subjective experiences can be explained away by biology alone. As Satel and Lilienfeld explain, this "neurocentric" view of the mind risks undermining our most deeply held ideas about selfhood, free will, and personal responsibility, putting us at risk of making harmful mistakes, whether in the courtroom, interrogation room, or addiction treatment clinic.

A provocative account of our obsession with neuroscience, Brainwashed brilliantly illuminates what contemporary neuroscience and brain imaging can and cannot tell us about ourselves, providing a much-needed reminder about the many factors that make us who we are."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "When Power Goes To Your Head, It May Shut Out Your Heart "

This is also called not being grounded - though it doesn't necessarily mean you don't use logic to dictate your behaviour, though heart is an easier guide at times.

</comment><comment><USER12> > "What we're finding is power diminishes all varieties of empathy"

Another reason to stop the decline of the middle class and to begin to reverse this trend.

<comment><USER17> OTOH - when we reach the end game, only 1% will be apathetic, and the other 99% of serfs will be highly empathetic.

Oh, I forgot: The Singularity is going to make all of us fine upstanding members of "The Culture" or some such thing :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thank you! That was a very useful source for my studies.

</comment><comment><USER18> Leashes diminish those at either end of them..

 _there 's an emerging field of research that suggests powerful people who begin to forget their subordinates can be coached back toward their former kindness_

I know one way that ought to work, and has the added benefit of being just: stripping them of their power (over others). If there is another way, I'm curious.

<comment><USER19> that may not always be practical though - how would you go about stripping the power of the employer over the employee? without an employer's power to say, decide whether an employee gets fired or a raise, the relationship would no longer be there.

<comment><USER18> Humanity threatening its own survival like it currently does is not practical either. Even going back into the ocean like the dolphins is more practical than _that_.

And more importantly, I think there is a difference between justified authority and power. Not that I'm automatically accepting employer and employee relationships as desirable, just like with "citizen vs. politician", but for example it's perfectly okay that parents can yank their kids at the arm when those are about to run into traffic, and otherwise curtail their autonomy, as long as it's justified. That's not power, that's authority, and even authority needs to be constantly re-evaluated and justified.

If you're on an expedition and the most experienced person leads it, one would expect that when they get sick, they would pass that job on without any fuss at all, since it's about the well-being of the expedition, not about their personal power, right? Notice how in many cases instead we have people asserting ownership, certainly when it comes to employers, and even in politics. When was the last time you strolled into a place and up to the manager/president, proved you're smarter in all ways, and successfully convinced them they should give you their job and work under you? Thought so :P

<comment><USER16> One way I feel we can give people more power, on the individual level and even out the playing field in employer-employee relationships, is to have the government taking care of all basic living needs - where you don't actually need to work in order to survive. For a business to succeed then, they would have to be kind and people would want to have to work for them out of other options - of which I could see that leading to many more co-operatives and the like.

<comment><USER20> isn't the problem here that the people who run the government are _in power_ and as the OP suggests, that makes them incredibly unlikely to be _compassionate_? At a fundamental level, then, the government seems like a bad candidate to be the agency responsible for "taking care of all basic needs".

<comment><USER16> Also to add, when you only take care of a few of a person's overall needs then the synergy that can take place on the holistic level gets lost - and so the amplification effect and benefits on all of society are lost. You can't go half-ass when it comes to this - people will of course argue what that means and fully encompasses, though there will have to be a methodical, logical, pragmatic, etc. way to determine it - and so far for me business has allowed me to learn the tools and terminology - basically I look for the leading metrics for a healthy society, healthy people, and allow that to guide me; You have to have a definition for what health and wellness are, and what it means too, of course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> and that's why gun ownership is bad for society.

<comment><USER22> I think you meant murder is bad for society, because gun ownership never killed anyone.

<comment><USER3> No, it only (along with a society of trigger happy idiots and borderline sociopaths doing the owning) vastly increased the chances murder will happen.

<comment><USER22> It sounds like you are calling us gun owners trigger happy idiots and borderline sociopaths.

<comment><USER3> Indeed I am.

<comment><USER22> There's no rational reason for you to say that about a person you don't know. That's ignorant and textbook prejudice.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Sherwood – Copies of the Servers of Cayman National Bank and Trust (CNBT) - <AUTHOR> https://data.ddosecrets.com/file/Sherwood/ <comment><AUTHOR> see [https://twitter.com/DDoSecrets/status/1195899716653010945](https://twitter.com/DDoSecrets/status/1195899716653010945)</comment>


Quantum Maxwell's demon 'teleports' entropy out of a qubit - <AUTHOR> https://m.phys.org/news/2018-12-quantum-maxwell-demon-teleports-entropy.html <comment><USER2> Some of my religious friends would think scientists are literally playing with demons</comment>


Benefits of systemd over daemontools for services management in Linux - <AUTHOR>

Would you use daemontools (http://cr.yp.to/daemontools) for service management in Linux or would you prefer something like systemd/upstart? What benefits can I get by migrating to systemd fom daemontools <comment> vezzy-fnord systemd generally has a wider array of options for manipulating the execution environment than daemontools or most of its derivatives do, possibly barring nosh. Though, one could use tools from packages such as util-linux to make up for plenty of it.

Using an init system means you get a more complete framework for managing system state, as the process of booting, configuring early minutiae like TTY and environment setup, shutting down and maintaining service groups in the form of runlevels/milestones/targets are handled.

systemd is a rather exceptional case as it's a project which aims to enforce standard policies and tools for just about the entire layer of low-level userspace. So you will be incurring significant workflow changes beyond supervising processes.

Depends on how far your needs go.</comment>


First road car produced with a 3D printer - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-11/02/printed-car <comment><AUTHOR> This is a better article: [http://www.fastcompany.com/1698943/the-urbee- hybrid-the-firs...](http://www.fastcompany.com/1698943/the-urbee-hybrid-the- first-car-to-have-its-body-3-d-printed)</comment>


Chrome OS and NO Skype - <AUTHOR>

As a Beta tester, my number one complaint with the CR48 Chrome netbook is that you can't use Skype. I have a sister that lives in New Zealand, and that's how we keep in touch. Is there a reason that Skype can't run on the OS or is it just a competition thing where Google is blocking Skype from being used in their OS? If it's a blocking tactic, that's ridiculous. Why not keep people happy by letting people use what they want to use. If they want to use the competition then your product isn't good enough. Get to work and make it better. <comment><USER2> What's stopping you from using Skype on the CR48 is the lack of a Skype web app. Google isn't blocking, and in fact cannot block, apps on ChromeOS.

edit: Skype has talked about moving to the web for a while now. We'll see. [http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/04/more-details-on-skypes- big-...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/04/more-details-on-skypes-big-move-to- the-web/)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's great. If Skype comes out with a web app, the CR48 will rock.</comment></comment>


Breaking the Solidity compiler with a fuzzer - <AUTHOR> https://blog.trailofbits.com/2020/06/05/breaking-the-solidity-compiler-with-a-fuzzer/ <comment><USER2> The Solidity compiler not quite mature yet, I feel. A compiler optimizations course I took as an undergraduate had us look at trying to improve upon state- of-the-art in some emerging field, and a partner and I picked solc. The optimizer was clearly very new and left us a lot of low hanging fruit because it'd readily leave performance on the table–for example, it would fail to hoist/defer stores to storage, which are between two to three orders of magnitude more expensive than standard arithmetic or stack operations. It's really strange that nobody has given this another look, considering that billions of dollars flow through smart contracts…

Solidity itself is kind of strange too: it doesn't seem to have a consistent design and parsing it is in many cases more hard than it needs to be for what appears to be no good reason other than "this is how C/Java looks so we're going to blindly copy it.". I can't say I'm surprised to see a fuzzer quickly find bugs in the compiler.

<comment><USER3> The EVM itself is pretty inefficient. They're planning to replace it entirely with ewasm (a deterministic subset of wasm), once they do the big 2.0 transition in a year or two. That may be why there hasn't been a major effort on compiler optimizations for the EVM, though they do make regular updates to Solidity. (The current version is 0.6.9, fwiw.)

There are also some other smart contract languages in the works, the main one being Vyper, but it's not quite ready for production.

But if you're interested in picking some of that low-hanging fruit, you'd probably be welcome, most of the Ethereum community is pretty open to new contributors.

<comment><USER4> Are you sure the future ETH 1 shard won't continue to execute transactions via the EVM? AFAIK, I don't think it will be replaced, it'll just live within Ethereum 2 as an "execution environment".

<comment><USER3> That is a possibility. They haven't made a final decision, but it would make things easier. But most of the network would still be running ewasm (after Phase 2).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Could this be used to find bugs in already published contracts? It brings to mind the 2013 PRNG issue [0] that led to a bunch of wallets being drained. Something that is perfectly valid today might have a vulnerability in the future.

[0] [https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2013/08/some- secur...](https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2013/08/some-securerandom- thoughts.html)

<comment><USER6> Theoretically, I think so.

Looking through their code examples though, the compiler failures look to be in obscure/unlikely to be used areas. Additionally, they state that some are dependent on particular compiler flags

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It doesn't surprise me at all that bugs were found in SMT Checker. I recently wrote a blog post on how Solidity's model checker works, and stumbled across several bugs while attempting to write simple example contracts. I didn't even need a fuzzer :).

That area of the codebase is far from complete, which is why it is considered experimental and hidden behind a flag that you have to manually enable.

<comment><USER8> One of the distinguished papers at PLDI this year is on fuzzing for SMT solvers. People have been fuzzing these solves for years, but even now new approaches find new bugs.

[https://testsmt.github.io/papers/winterer-zhang-su- pldi20.pd...](https://testsmt.github.io/papers/winterer-zhang-su-pldi20.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Rather than fuzzing, why not just implement it in a language with a formal proof like Ada SPARK?

<comment><USER10> you'll still only be as correct as your formal proofs (e.g. using formal proofs isn't a replacement for fuzzing)

<comment><USER7> On the other hand, fuzzing is only as "correct" as your coverage, properties/assertions, corpus synthesis, etc.</comment></comment></comment>


Researchers are developing a battery powered by diamonds made from nuclear waste - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/are-radioactive-diamond-batteries-a-cure-for-nuclear-waste/ <comment><USER2> Our civilizational message in a bottle, the Voyager Records and Pioneer Plaques will outlive their power sources by an incomprehensible amount. The record is estimated to survive for more than a billion years. The power source for less than 40 before it is rendered unusable.

The message will travel onwards forever, cloaked in dark, dashing the hopes of any recovery. Of bringing joy to alien beings. Of giving them certainty that they certainly weren't alone in the universe at some point in their past.

What if we could create something, some undefined means to generate a pulse ever X years for more than a billion years? Is it possible to make a billion year battery? Oxford's Electric Bell at a cosmic time scale? Could human ingenuity create a device that would make our next message in a bottle more discoverable for those beings who do not exist yet?

Is it possible for humanity, with current technology and scientific knowledge, to transcend its cradle and create something that functions for billions of years?

<comment><USER3> Sending pulses that are detectable for even just a couple light years requires surprisingly high power (unless it's a very tight beam, which would be rather pointless for this purpose). That would be a huge challenge with fitting it on an interstellar probe. Our best bet would probably a geothermal setup powering a radio beacon, located on Mercury or Mars; or maybe on a moon that is heated by high tidal forces.

We could also try engineering something similar to natural nuclear reactors [1], powering up a radio beacon once water rises high enough every couple of years. That might run for a million years or so.

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

<comment><USER4> Why not use a passive solar heliograph, e.g. a spinning cubic or dodecahedron mirror? That should last for a million years or more.

<comment><USER5> At that stage you are having different considerations.

And first contact is probably less scary if you can build mega structures in the orbit. Vanity mega structures if its sole purpose is to announce your presence to the universe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Discussion about this topic was posted/flagged yesterday, it was a different website.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24324684](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24324684)

Discussion on reddit about this topic from 3 days ago with 350+ comments.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/iiedk4/energy_f...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/iiedk4/energy_firm_says_its_nuclearwaste_fueled_diamond/)

</comment><comment><USER7> eevblog had a good video about this product: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzV_uzSTCTM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzV_uzSTCTM)

<comment><USER8> TL;DR it's a 100 microwatt power source which is essentially nothing for most applications.

<comment><USER9> The Ambiq Apollo3 uses 6µA/MHz at 3.3V (so 20µW/MHz), so that's something.

You can also use it to charge a capacitor that can provide short bursts of energy so you can use it for sensors that sleep most of the time, taken a measurement and send some data, then sleep again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So the first problem is that power output is very low. But the second problem is worse:

You cannot turn this power source off.

At 7% efficiency, if you had a 1W battery, it would dissipate somewhere around 13W of heat. If your smartphone needs 5W then it would dissipate somewhere around 65W of heat. Constantly.

Radioactive decay doesn't turn off.

<comment><USER11> Not a problem in this case because those batteries are less than miliwatt in a pretty macroscopic package.

<comment><USER10> Yeah. I'm just pointing out that if you tried to scale this to useful power amounts, the waste heat would be overwhelming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> They sure have got themselves a lot of press. However, PR skills doth not a product make. In fact, all the noise just increases my scepticism.

<comment><USER13> Agreed. For almost 10 years now we keep hearing about these wonderful new batteries that are just a couple years away.

Posted from a Li-ion powered device.

<comment><USER14> This is not like other batteries - it's nuclear. Nuclear batteries are old school - they have been powering the voyager probes since the 80s.

And the issues are different - less technical - more political.

<comment><USER15> These aren't RTGs though, they are betavoltaic. Instead of using thermocouples to capture part of the decay heat (of plutonium, in Voyager's case), they generate current from beta particles hitting a semiconductor.

<comment><USER14> What's the significance in that? I mean, why are beta particles less political than decay heat?

<comment><USER15> RTGs are only really useful with particular elements; plutonium is used because it emits a lot of heat for a very long time. People freak out about plutonium.

I think these betavoltaic cells can use elements which are less likely to get people upset about proliferation or environmental effects. It's not the same thing at all, but I think you could compare these favorably with e.g. Americium in common smoke detectors (alpha decay).

Edit: also your comment just said nuclear batteries and voyager, but these batteries are not anything like those batteries and should not be thought of as the same, regardless of politics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Radioactive batteries are certainly possible (and some exist). Achieving power levels and safety requirements for everyday use is the difficulty.

I realized some years ago it would be possible to make rechargable hafnium batteries. They would be awesome -- but you have to figure out a highly effcient means of converting gamma rays into electricity.

<comment><USER17> In a better version of the article[0], it's mentioned how they've significantly increased the efficiency - by adding Carbon 14 to lab-grown diamonds. Carbon 14 is both radioactive and a semiconductor, meaning more of the beta particles are changed into electricity.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24333019](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24333019)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Does not says anything about power levels?

There is debunking [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDFlV0OEK5E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDFlV0OEK5E) it saying that power level are impractical for anything large, therefore it is pipe dream in regards to removing all the nuclear waste.

</comment><comment><USER19> Fun to think of a future civilization 1000 years from now getting an alert to change a battery, and then all the effort it would take them to look through ancient documents to figure out the process :)

<comment><USER20> This talk of permanent batteries reminds me of the little power spheres in the final Foundation series by Asimov et al.

<comment><USER21> Stargate, zero point module.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wonder if this is non-radioactive enough to be sealed inside the human body for things like a brain/computer interface. Implant the electrodes + transmitter inside the skull and seal it up, then have a receiver device outside the skull receive and interpret the signals to control things.

Hard part would be making it safe enough and just how many people would need something bad enough to do literal brain surgery for such a thing.

<comment><USER23> It's safe enough already - betavoltaics are only held back by their super low power density and insanely high price.

<comment><USER22> What about the size?

<comment><USER24> You can make them very small, a couple millimeters. The power density will cripple you long before you hit a size limit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> TLDR (kind of)

* Using alpha/beta decay in a diamond structure to generate electricity in the battery

* Utilizing nuclear waste in the process

* They say the battery is safe for civil use (e.g. not limited to military/industrial use)

* About the same price as a LiIon battery for a Tesla (~$9K)

* However, it recharges itself and shall last for decades !

* They want to do a pay as you go sales, but also extract revenue for the utilization of nuclear waste.

* Done with the PoC. Doing a commercial prototype. Outlook is ~2y time to market.

* Targeting the UPS market at big cloud datacenters as a first customer

* They say technology works from nano scale (bots) to cars and industrial applications. However military/industrial could be first large deployments (no need to comply with same regulations)

</comment><comment><USER26> Perhaps useful to power sensors in remote areas that only need a bit of power but solar isn't a good option (maybe in mines or underwater). The power density is too low to handle anything than needs a lot of power.

</comment><comment><USER27> I posted this a day ago and a great comment worth checking: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24320915](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24320915)

</comment><comment><USER28> I wonder if this was the same company EEVblog debunked. It was mostly marketing claims, as these things make so little energy its pretty much useless on earth.

</comment><comment><USER29> Wasn't this debunked? As I recall, after some digging, it came to light that the amount of power offered by a typical-sized battery from this company even at 100% efficiency would be on the order microwatts. There was even an article paid for by the company with an illustration displaying 100 uW on the unit.

I'm not at my computer and can't easily dig up sources at the moment, but I doubt they're hard to find.

</comment><comment><USER30> Unlike usual, this fake product at least is getting some comments about how it's fake.

But still there seems no emerging consensus it's fake, and this has been posted multiple time.

If nothing can be done about this egregious example, think about what happens to the other 99% of times where it's fake but it takes a little more thinking.

<comment><USER31> I don't understand. It is nearly useless but it does not seem fake to me.

<comment><USER30> This is similar to what the Russians for example do... but, what if, technically, we are not sure, in the future, you can't be sure.

People have posted half hour long videos explaining this and the circles continue.

If it's 'useless' it should be flagged and not posted again.

I'm not a lawyer so technicalities on the English language don't interest me.

To barely begin, the title is "Are Radioactive Diamond Batteries a Cure for Nuclear Waste?"

Because it has a question mark might work in a court room, but I'm not interested. We are not children. It's just deceitful and fake.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > Radiation levels from a cell, says the company, will be less than the > radiation levels produced by the human body itself, making it totally safe > for use in a variety of applications.

That makes sense until you put say 10 of these devices into and on your body...

<comment><USER33> Not at all if it actually puts out less radiation than the same volume of tissue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> A way better write up than this fluff piece: [https://www.wired.com/story/are- radioactive-diamond-batterie...](https://www.wired.com/story/are-radioactive- diamond-batteries-a-cure-for-nuclear-waste/)

<comment><USER35> Ok, we've changed to that from [https://www.electronics-lab.com/self-charging- thousand-year-...](https://www.electronics-lab.com/self-charging-thousand- year-battery-completes-lab-tests/). Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Whenever I see a headline like this, it makes me think of this paper: [https://www.socmot.uni- konstanz.de/sites/default/files/09_Go...](https://www.socmot.uni- konstanz.de/sites/default/files/09_Gollwitzer_Sheeran_Seifert_Michalski_When_Intentions_.pdf). TL;DR: sharing one's intentions and receiving attention/praise for them seems to make follow-through less likely.

</comment><comment><USER37> It cost me $10k to mod the battery on my phone, but now I won't have to charge it again for over 5,000 years.

</comment><comment><USER38> What a headline...

</comment><comment><USER16> One big problem -- I expect existing battery companies would make sure tech like this would never see the light of day, even if it were possible. Too much money to be made with disposable batteries.

<comment><USER39> That conspiratorial trope misses the prisoners dilemia aspect of it. Assuming no other sensible objections to the technology (like assuming radiation would scare people from buying it and get it banned from many contexts regardless of actual danger) they know that if they discovered it competitors could do so as well. Furthermore if they went with it they could practically monopolize the market with short term gains and even if they destroyed their steady income stream (unlikely given there would still be some demand) the short term gains could be reinvested elsewhere. Relying on publically traded corporations to think long term when there are short term profits to be made? That is the opposite of the norm.

<comment><USER40> The Light Bulb Conspiracy would like to have a word with you. Planned obsolescence is how technological advances are funded.

<comment><USER41> The conspiracy that was continually undermined by its own members and collapsed after just 6 years? I think that reinforces their point rather than yours.</comment></comment></comment></comment>