Tesla battery researcher unveils new cell that could last 1M miles - <AUTHOR> https://electrek.co/2019/09/07/tesla-battery-cell-last-1-million-miles-robot-taxis/ <comment><USER2> Two things missed by the electrek piece:

\- The article is CC-BY and downloable without scribd horrible UI: [http://jes.ecsdl.org/content/166/13/A3031](http://jes.ecsdl.org/content/166/13/A3031) PDF direct [http://jes.ecsdl.org/content/166/13/A3031.full.pdf](http://jes.ecsdl.org/content/166/13/A3031.full.pdf) HTML direct [http://jes.ecsdl.org/content/166/13/A3031.full.html](http://jes.ecsdl.org/content/166/13/A3031.full.html)

\- In the conclusion the authors mention: Full details of these cells including electrode compositions, electrode loadings, electrolyte compositions, additives used, etc. have been provided in contrast to literature reports using commercial cells. This has been done so that others can re-create these cells and use them as benchmarks for their own R+D efforts be they in the spaces of Li-ion cells or "beyond Li-ion cells".

So it's science as it should be!

<comment><USER3> > Full details of these cells including electrode compositions, electrode > loadings, electrolyte compositions, additives used, etc. have been provided > in contrast to literature reports using commercial cells. This has been done > so that others can re-create these cells and use them as benchmarks for > their own R+D efforts be they in the spaces of Li-ion cells or "beyond Li- > ion cells".

That's incredible.

Normally I walk into these wunderbattery threads expecting to heap reproducibility scorn (we're still waiting for solid state glass batteries, and will in all likelihood be waiting forever) but pathways to reproducibility aren't something I'm used to in battery vaporware.

I'm actually excited for battery tech, which seems weird given all the disappointment over the previous decade or two. Feels like being excited for another cancer cure in mice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Post of the actual paper;

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20908726](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20908726)

For those commenting that the discharge rate is too slow in the test, or the depth of discharge was fudged... the tests were run with a high discharge rate combined with 100% charge at storage.

> Figure 23 shows the projected fractional capacity of these NMC532/graphite > cells as a function of time in years in a scenario where the cells are > cycled once per day (100% DOD to 4.3 V) in a cycling event that takes 6 > hours. It is also assumed that during the remaining time, cells are stored > at full state of charge. It is clear from Figure 23 that these cells would > provide an exceptionally long total driving range in an EV if the cells were > maintained at an average tem- perature of 20°C. Even if the cells were > continually at 40°C, 10 years of lifetime to 70% capacity and a total driven > distance of 1,200,000 km is projected. It is worth noting that only 3650 > cycles would be required for this total driven distance and 3700 cycles have > been demonstrated in Figure 16.

> Most important to realize is that Figure 23 assumes 100% DOD cycling on > every cycle and storage at full state of charge. If the reader reviews the > literature data in Figures 1 and 2, the reader will realize that the > lifetime will be much better in situations where the DOD is limited and in > situations where cells are stored at lower states of charge. Admittedly, the > projections in Figure 23 use the incredibly simple model described by > equation 1. It is our opinion that more sophisticated models will lead to > even longer lifetime projections.

<comment><AUTHOR> Would this be a correct summary of the paper?

1) eliminates Cobalt

2) improves energy density (more range)

3) faster charge rate

4) less SOC (state of charge) swing, meaning less cost & weight

4) 5x longer lifespan

<comment><USER5> 1) 532 is not a new chemistry. It's not even the lowest cobalt chemistry; there's 511 and 811 beyond that (811, or 80% nickel, 10% manganese, and 10% cobalt, is not yet technically feasible).

2) Range is decreased. 532 has lower energy density.

3) Maybe..? But nothing truly significant. The additives in this chemistry mean a lot of heat gets generated during charge/discharge. Heat is the limiting factor during charge, so swapping directly to this would mean lower top charging speed. However with better cooling... maybe? It can sustain high charge current for longer, but not as high overall.

4) The buffer for EVs is ~10%. It's not a big factor in cost or weight.

5) Yes, 5x longer lifespan. The caveat is that they havent actually tested >3 years, but IMO this is probably a 50 year battery. The paper is more conservative and gives it 20 years.

This will be pretty enormous for grid storage, since a battery that lasts 5x as long costs 5x less. It may be important for trucks and buses, since they are much higher mileage and will want to run at 100% depth of discharge. Cars on the other hand run closer to 20%, where normal batteries will also last for many thousands of cycles.

<comment><USER6> > since a battery that lasts 5x as long costs 5x less.

This is only true if there is an inflation-adjusted discount rate of 0%, which is unrealistic even in this era of low interest rates. Adjusted for inflation, paying $10 now and again at years 10, 20, 30 and 40 is better than paying $50 up front would be. (By adjusted for inflation, I mean that the $10 you pay in 10 years might actually be $11, but still $10 in 2019 dollars)

<comment><USER7> That's assuming that batteries would stay the same price while currency inflates.

<comment><USER6> It's assuming that the item you're purchasing would maintain the same _real_ price. If it cost $10 to start, and after 10% inflation the battery now costs $11, this holds. (Well, it holds if you have some way to beat inflation with safe returns. US government bonds _often_ but not always meet this requirement)

In the case of batteries specifically, I think it's likely that prices drop even without adjusting for inflation. This makes the price advantage even clearer.

<comment><USER7> What you are saying doesn't even make sense. The original comment was that a battery that lasts 5x as long costs 1/5th the price over time, and your hypothetical is buying a much cheaper battery for some reason. There is no reason to play semantic games with the time value of money, it is clear what the original person was saying.

<comment><USER6> My point was that as lifetimes get longer, value does not scale linearly. Would you pay 1000x as much for a battery bank that would last until 12019, or would you assume that it would be made obsolete at some point over that period? Maybe we've all moved to fusion, and grid-scale storage is useless. Or perhaps prices decreased by 10x over the next 20 years, and so getting a 20 year battery + a 9980 year battery would only cost 2+998/10=101.8 times as much as the original 10 year instead of 1000 times.

Time value of money is important, and IMO would be enough on its own. But opportunity cost from excluding future improvements matters too - and given the improvements in battery tech over the past decade, one that would certainly be relevant over the next _five_ decades.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Short thread commentary on the paper by Ric Fulop (co-founder of A123 battery co. and current CEO/founder of Desktop Metal): [https://twitter.com/ricfulop/status/1170527207657263104](https://twitter.com/ricfulop/status/1170527207657263104)

</comment><comment><USER8> This is very exciting. BEVs that were made before 2016 (I think that was when the last breakthrough trickled down to BEVs in the market) typically had a battery lifetime of about 70k miles or maybe a bit more before reaching 70% capacity. Fast-charging regularly might reduce capacity by several percent points within a few hot summer months. Basically, you bought a car for €30k and it might become useless 5-7 years later. Within a couple of years, we have gone from "I don't know, it's a bit risky to buy" to "My grandkids might be able to use this battery in their static storage system in a few decades".

<comment><USER9> I think that was mainly due to early EVs having low battery capacities in general (because batteries cost a lot more then) so daily commuting would cycle them much more deeply than current high-capacity models. This 2017 article[1] shows battery life data for hundreds of Tesla Model S's (which have always come with large-capacity batteries). One of the highest-mileage cars in their data pool had just over 220k km (137k mi) on its battery with 90% of the original capacity remaining. There are also a few outliers with under 100k km that are below 90% capacity, I suspect those are cars that have been subject to a lot of long drives and supercharging.

[1] [https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1110149_tesla-model- s-b...](https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1110149_tesla-model-s-battery- life-what-the-data-show-so-far)

<comment><USER8> The difference in lifespan that I mentioned occurred in packs of similar sizes, for all manufacturers but Tesla. Tesla is in its league when it comes to battery lifespan.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can anyone tell whether this is a solid state electrolyte? I'm still hooked on what I saw in that Netflix documentary where the guy was able to cut and puncture the battery without combustion. Also seemed capable of being much more dense.

<comment><USER5> It is not. This is a fairly conventional cell, with a different crystal structure for one of the ingredients, and a tweaked mix of liquid electrolytes.

The most important part of this paper is that they actually prove that optimizing for cycle and calendar life can have such incredible effects.

<comment><USER11> Will we end up with seasonal battery's? Many already accustomed to switching tiers in winter. Whilst temperature management of batteries would cover many aspects, some locations a better tuned battery would make it more efficient overall perhaps.

EDIT [s/riers/tires/;sleep]

<comment><USER5> Very unlikely. Winter batteries aren't a huge problem as long as you are gentle until the pack is warm. Hot batteries are more of an issue, as they don't really like temperatures above 90-100 F. Keeping the battery at half charge helps reduce that damage a lot.

Ultimately if you live in a hot climate the best thing to do is have a cool garage. The higher heat while out and about is not an issue, just the constant level of high heat. The only people who would get a real benefit from high temperature batteries are those without. Batteries are much more expensive than tires and the market is smaller.

<comment><USER12> Was wondering about if you could put a liquid coolant loop from the battery to the charging socket on the car, then have a heat exchanger in the plug and run water to and from it using a jacket round the cable, so you can have a rapid charge that also helps heat your bath water.

<comment><USER5> A supercharger tops out at 250 kW throttles down when the battery pack gets to ~115 F. Hot water heaters run from 120-140 F. Domestic circuits at at most ~7kW, so you'll realistically never be able to do anything useful with the waste heat. At low power like that battery charging is 98-99% efficient.

Another problem is that the coolant loop needs to be kept quite clean. The fins are only about a few millimeters wide and in some cars (eg Model 3) they're electrically hot. Any grit or buildup making its way into the system is a huge problem and just having a valve that can open can cause problems.

<comment><USER12> I'm talking about having a domestic supercharger. You can get up to 70kW at the company head fuse as a standard residential customer in the UK. You can also go higher, but you have to apply for a quote, so at the moment getting a true domestic supercharger is a bit pricy.

However, they are going to have to upgrade it all anyway if we get loads of electric cars.

As for the coolant loop, I wasn't suggesting to have a valve that can open, just a closed loop to the socket and a heat exchanger that then heats the water flowing through the handle of the plug.

You then store the water in an insulated tank and use it as a preheated supply feeding your main water heating system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Having a cell that tolerates 100% discharge seems like a big deal, if it has similar energy density to other modern cells. A lot of lithium-ion cells shouldn't be discharge to less than 20% capacity or so, as it damages the cell.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm sure batteries would be immensely better if the military would spend money into research towards better batteries.

<comment><USER5> As someone who works in gov contracting, please no. Spend money literally any other way. Give it to the DOE. Fuck, just signing Musk a check would probably be better. The DoD is _singularly_ ineffective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > last 1M miles

It sort of depends what type of vehicle is attached to it

</comment><comment><USER16> OK, so if this is so great, when does it appear in the iPhone, which always seems to have battery life problems?

<comment><USER17> It would make the phone thicker which is not going to happen.

<comment><USER18> How much thicker?

<comment><USER19> [https://www.solidsmack.com/wp- content/uploads/2019/02/Energi...](https://www.solidsmack.com/wp- content/uploads/2019/02/Energizer-Smartphone-Battery.jpg)

bonus: [https://i.redd.it/og0o0b3cr8a31.png](https://i.redd.it/og0o0b3cr8a31.png)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> >> The new battery tested is a Li-Ion battery cell with a next-generation "single crystal" NMC cathode and a new advanced electrolyte.

If this is anything like growing single-crystal parts for aircraft, it won't be cheap. The real question should be whether these new battery modules will last twice as long while remaining less than twice as expensive.

>> Controlling the charge to less than 100% state-of-charge also helps push the longevity.

Um, that is cheating. Running any battery at less than capacity will extend its life. You could put two batteries in the car, run them at 50% or alternate between them, and get double the life. No prizes for that.

<comment><USER21> > Um, that is cheating. Running any battery at less than capacity will extend > its life. You could put two batteries in the car, run them at 50% or > alternate between them, and get double the life. No prizes for that.

Don't phones already do this? (IE: 100% is not really 100%, 0% is not really 0%.)

I don't see it as cheating, it's akin to the practical limit vs. the actual limit

<comment><USER22> Many laptops do it too. Lenovo even markets it as a visible (and annoying) power management feature. Most however simply handle the charge cycles behind the scenes, and adjust their definition of "100%" over time, so the user can remain blissfully unaware (and less likely to change the setting).

I don't mind this really. Batteries degrade over time; that's kinda just how they work, and I'd much rather have 100% mean "my device is done charging" and 0% mean "my device can no longer run." The specifics of what voltage or charge level or whatever actually translates to those numbers is not important, and honestly the battery / laptop manufacturer probably knows the right settings for those better than I ever will, so it's fine.

<comment><USER23> > Lenovo even markets it as a visible (and annoying) power management feature.

I wish macOS/Windows allowed this natively. I'm travelling this week with my Macbook, but it's been docked for the past couple months at 100% charge. Would be better for the battery if I could keep it at 60% charge until I plan on travelling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> fake-name "Miles per battery" is possibly the stupidest metric to use to describe a battery capacity.

Any battery can last one million miles if it's just sitting on a seat in a vehicle.

<comment><USER24> I think it's the best metrics I've seen in a while.

"For usage where our previous battery gets 300,000 - 500,000 miles, this gets a million miles". It's a real world number.</comment></comment>


Napier's bones (Napier's Rods) - <AUTHOR> http://history-computer.com/CalculatingTools/NapiersBones.html <comment><USER2> Ludwik Fleck's "Genesis and development of a scientific fact" goes very much in the line of looking at science as a gradual progress, with many failed attempts. written by winners. (Written pre-WW2; it served as an inspiration for Khun.) Its most eye-opening example is the history of [the concept/knowledge/science/... of] syphilis, from ancient to modern times. PDF (of print from 1979): [http://www.evolocus.com/Textbooks/Fleck1979.pdf](http://www.evolocus.com/Textbooks/Fleck1979.pdf)

<comment><USER2> I wanted to write it under [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11030593](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11030593), but posted in in a different tab. Sorry for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I actually just saw these for the first time on Sunday at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.

The main attraction was the final cranking of Babbages Difference Engine No.2 Serial 2, that thing is gorgeous in operation.

</comment><comment><USER4> I had an awesome math teacher in 3rd grade that taught us how to make these out of popsicle sticks and use them.

I always wondered why stuff like this never catches on in a school's math curriculum. Perhaps it's viewed as a gimmick that is impractical in the real world?

<comment><USER5> I learned Napier's bones in school too. It is impractical nowadays, but I think it shows some of the fascinating beauty of math that can inspire kids.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Slack-like discussion channels connect websites with mutual topics - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkRhhtazZjM <comment><AUTHOR> Full disclosure: I posted the app (back then version 1.0) on HN a few months ago. It haven't had much attention so I changed quite a bit about how it works (1.0: website based channels => 2.0 topic based channels connected to multiple websites). I'm aware that browser extensions are still not that attractive. Because of this and because how the 2.0 version works, I'm working on a site- integratable version (like Disqus) for single channels. The difference to Disqus is that the channels can be integrated into multiple sites and therefor form a connection between those sites.

The whole thing is still very early and I would be glad to hear some thoughts on this or what use cases you come up with.

Btw the backend is written in Elixir/Phoenix which is just a blast and you should try it out if you're a web developer :-)</comment>


Why might a C++ programmer say "I could never write Python"? - <AUTHOR> http://jvns.ca/blog/2015/01/24/why-a-c-plus-plus-programmer-might-say-i-could-never-write-python/

<comment><USER2> My main annoyance with Python, as someone who had C++ as his first programming language, is I cannot stand significant whitespace. Really. I know that this is a petty, peevish, not technically valid reason, but because of that Python irritates me.

Still I would not necessarily recommend against it.

Dynamic vs static typing, I have programmed in dynamic languages and for small projects there is a benefit to not having to worry about strict typing.

For large projects, you end up having to worry about strict typing anyways except manually (of course, there is a degree of this that is always true no matter what, and C++ is not the best example of "strong" typing, but it's a continuum). For that reason, I can definitely see the virtue of static typing for a large project, it does not solve all type related checks, but it at least reduces them, which can save some time.

<comment><USER3> More powerful type systems are great (I'm a happy Haskell programmer much of the time), but there is a surprising amount of safety you can get out of fairly minimal type systems if you figure out how to use them well. For instance, on a recent C project I was able to enforce invariants about what threads could touch what data. C++ has significantly more machinery to leverage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I know I will get some backlash for saying this, but there is a lot to be said for a good IDE. - PyCharm (a Python IDE) would detect the example given. The word "elephant" would be grey (parameter not used) and the live Python interpreter would underline "elephnt" (Unknown reference) upon pressing return.

He does state "by default" this would not be detected, which is true. Yes, the compiler isn't always on your back, but Jenkins is ;)

What the title should say is "Why might a C++ programmer find Python tedious"\- Answer, because he/she has to write tests.

</comment><comment><USER5> I understand the code from the article is contrived, but I feel it serves as a bad example. Presumably you would write unit tests for such code in any language, regardless of type safety. Such tests would catch errors like this.

> Tests that wouldn't tell you very much at all in Scala (that just run the > code and don't check the result) suddenly become incredibly useful!

I don't really know what that means. A Python programmer doesn't (shouldn't?) go out of their way to write insane tests like this because they are scared of the "uncertainty" of dynamic typing. Just write unit tests, and make sure your code is sufficiently covered. Use flakes/frosted to find low hanging fruit like this.

<comment><USER6> On the other hand, I see a lot of Java code where the unit tests are woefully inadequate but the fact that Eclipse/IntelliJ/Whatever had no warnings and javac liked the code meant the programmer thought he'd done a good job.

Hell, most of the world's C code was written basically that way. Often with a lot less testing and most of the testing that was actually done included no edge cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> you can also create a c++ example where a 'bool' gets unintentionally promoted to an 'int' causing the compiler to pick the wrong template without a the compiler emitting a warning.

Or in C++ you forget to add "=0" to a method in a virtual class and you get a weird link error. Or in the not so distant past, forgetting to add a semi colon to a class definition... Or a simple mistake that makes the compiler emit 40+ errors on non-fitting candidate templates.

mumble mutter "pot" mutter mumble "kettle"

</comment><comment><USER8> This is why there's been a rush of languages targeting the space of "typesafe AND memory-safe AND accessible AND performant".

</comment><comment><USER9> My emacs catches this without any compiling:

[http://i.imgur.com/TVkU8KS.png](http://i.imgur.com/TVkU8KS.png)

I'm sure most editors would complain about this. There are also IDEs like PyCharm that give you tab completion for Python.

If a C++ person says they could never write Python it is because they don't understand there is plenty of tooling that will verify your code.

</comment><comment><USER10> This seems to be almost the exact reason I was taught to start all my perl code with `use strict; use warnings;` 15 years ago...

</comment><comment><USER11> Typos being run time errors is because of implicit declarations; it's not because of type systems. Implicit declarations are messy for others reasons too. See Python's 'nonlocal' keyword for an example.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is just an argument for using IDEs or modern text editors vs joe bloggs scripting pad. Any decent Python IDE (e.g. Pycharm, Sublime + pyflakes) would catch syntax errors.</comment>


Ask HN: Why is Netflix actually requesting the phone number? - <AUTHOR> I noticed that Netflix started to ask for the phone number (in my country at least).
Their pretext is that this is to restore my password. I find this is ridiculous.
I have restored my password several times already without a phone by using my email address. So I do not have to give my phone number for that (side note: suggestions like this make some users feel that they are treated like full idiots).
So I am wondering why are they doing this.
Are they trying to con out my phone number for what ever reason? That would be pretty low I think and I would like to assume that company like Netflix would not do that.
Also they do not have to prove that I am a real person. They already have my billing information.
Are they really trying to somehow "improve" the password restoration? I think that the restoration procedure over the email works also pretty well. So what would be the improvement? Would I have to manually enter some additional number to annoy me more over the fact that I choose a bad password and how it would improve my security?
Or is this just another example of their bad UI? Like not having an option to automatically remove movies from "My List" after I have watched them. Or showing a special notification for the new movie that I just watched.
So what advantage would having my phone number give to the Netflix? Any ideas? <comment><USER2> It may simply be 2-factor authentication. You request a password reset, and they text a code to your phone. You enter that code into your browser. That way, they know you have both the full account details and the associated phone in your possession. Increases the likelihood that you are the authentic account holder.

Many sites, Google included, now offer this _optionally_. If NetFlix is mandating it, perhaps they really have a problem with users accounts being hijacked.

<comment><USER3> It is just two-factor authentication and it is optional. I think it is growing in popularity (Mint added it recently as well.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I would put it then on the poor wording and lack of explanation of the feature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There have been a number of reports about accounts being stolen and pawned off at 1$ or less.. might have something to do with that.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is interesting, and I wonder how they would react in cases when it happens. In principle the revalidation of the original payment information should in fact clear this issue.

<comment><USER5> I think what happens a lot with stolen accounts is that they don't actually change the users password or email on the account. People just are basically sharing the account with the owner almost. Otherwise an account wouldn't last long that is sold.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It might be for finding out your country ?</comment>


Why Facebook Has Entrusted Its Future to the CEO of PayPal - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/11/on-david-marcus-and-facebook/?mbid=social_fb <comment><USER2> "Messaging is a modern version of the social graph"

"The company that controls the messaging platform will control the future of the way we interact with people and, quite possibly, with businesses"

"The growth team is the equivalent of Facebook's Navy SEALs"

The entire section about privacy.

I know it's Wired but this article isn't even a puff piece, it's reads like it's straight from Facebook marketing or a spoof of marketroid buzzwords. Am I alone in finding its tone gross? I've seen better journalism in "sponsored content" on buzzfeed.

<comment><USER3> It's breathless reporter-speak, and it's often not actually intentional or conscious. Many reporters truly believe they are uncovering Woodward and Bernstein level stuff every time they hit "publish".

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is less about THE future of FB rather than a bet on ONE possible outcome - transaction monetization on a many-to-many network, vs continued growth of their highly targeted advertising product.

On the internet just like in real life, someone has to be selling something to somebody.

When you're a "free" service (e.g. your users are your product), you can either facilitate transactions and take a cut (e.g. payments, in-app upgrades/stickers/etc), or you can direct the user firehose to someone (advertising, B2B services, data, etc). Facebook has predominantly been successful up until now doing the latter.

Messenger is a both a hedge against declining app/website engagement numbers and continued bottoming out of CPM/CPC for digital ads, as well as a bet on a Westernized version of WeChat and LINE have done, particularly in payments.

</comment><comment><USER4> I hope that this is just a reporter getting carried away with his subject, and not an indication of what our civilization has come to:

 _[...] When Despicable Me 2 came out in theaters last year, Facebook worked up a partnership that let users download Minion stickers. It's easy to imagine a future strategy for making money off stickers.

Marcus has even grander ambitions. [...]_

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure you understand how much people love stickers and personalization in general.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, but it's not like there aren't a lot of companies already out there making personalized stickers. There are many of them.

A marginal innovation in sticker-making is something interesting for Sticker Makers Quarterly; not the flagship magazine for thinkfluential technological super-innovation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I agree that messaging is a hugely important aspect for the future of Facebook, but I wouldn't say that FB's entire future is dependent on messaging. The article's title, with its use of "entrusted its future" seems to imply more than what's really at stake.

I would argue that virtual reality (with Oculus) or even the core social network base product is more important to facebook's future than messaging. Sure messaging is important, but it's becoming more and more of a commodity.

At the end of the day, I think facebook has currently entrusted its future to Zuckerberg and not the CEO of PayPal.

<comment> SG- The younger generation isn't bothering with Facebook as much (today's teens to early 20s) and going right to services that offer messaging and image sharing, maybe that's what the article is referring to.

<comment><USER8> You mean like WhatsApp?

<comment><USER9> Yes. The 13-year-olds are all over that shit, it's mind boggling. I became aware of this recently when I found out my niece's class has a WhatsApp group and it's their shared space, like a permanent party in there. After seeing that, I realized FB in comparison seems static, linear and (blasphemy) positively clean and well organized.

<comment><USER10> As a 30+ i find it funny that chat rooms are making a come back. I used IRC (and still use) back in the day, and the funky flash and java chat rooms that a lot of mainstream websites used to host to build their communities.

WhatsApp always appealed more than Facebook because it is much more like a chat room.

What goes around comes around as they say.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I thought it was perversely amusing that when Facebook's mobile app was finally usable, they went ahead and got themselves into a power struggle with their users by trying to force standalone messaging on them. I ended up deleting the Facebook app entirely and went back to using the web site. Whenever I've brought this up in a group of friends, I've found I'm not the only one to get that bright idea.

I wonder how many millions of users they got to delete their main app with this move.

</comment><comment><USER12> Seems like Facebook is in the "we have to control this market or we'll lose relevance" stage now. Almost nothing about a mission. Helping people share their emotions I guess. And some hand wavy stuff about reliability. But messenger just seems like a land grab. It doesn't seem like messenger solves any important new problems.

</comment><comment><USER13> Learnt a lot about Messenger's features from this article, even though I use it prob once-a-week.. seems they haven't done that great a job teaching users / onboarding them to new functionality. Feel like that would be right up the Growth team's alley

</comment><comment><USER14> was this article setup and paid for by FB? ([http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html))

</comment><comment><USER15> I understand why the piece has the title that it does - Messenger is considered - both internally and externally - as a critical piece of Facebook's roadmap. But man is it hyperbolic to imply that a company with the ads engine of Facebook's future is entirely dependent on an unfinished messaging product.</comment>


Ask HN: Any way to invalidate cookies? - <AUTHOR>

My work laptop was stolen last night. Is there any way to invalidate my HN cookies so I'm logged out on that machine? <comment><USER2> change your password ... ( all of them ) And next time use: <http://www.truecrypt.org/>

</comment><comment><USER3> In GMail, you can log out other sessions if you're logged in. At the very bottom, it says something like "Last account activity: xx minutes ago ..." followed by a Details link. Click it and you'll see the button to log out everyone else but your session.

Otherwise, I don't think so and am watching this thread to learn.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sorry, after rereading my post I think I might not have been clear. I was asking specifically about HN cookies.

<comment><USER3> Email pg perhaps? Donno.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sounds like a product. Remote Cookie Destructor.</comment>


'Beavis and Butt-Head' Revived at Comedy Central - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/arts/television/beavis-and-butt-head-comedy-central.html <comment><USER2> Will be interesting to find out how B&B have grown over the years. "This sucks!" :-D

Are any worthwhile videos even made anymore?

</comment><comment><USER3> With today's political correctness and sensitivity, it will be dead on arrival

<comment><AUTHOR> Most of the original run's humor came at the expense of two dullard teenaged white boys. The only remotely "cancellable" content I can really recall was around some of the white trash townspeople like Lolita & Tanqueray, but if anything this is a sector of American society which is still considered fair game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I give it 7 days before it's cancelled.</comment>


The 'impossible' EmDrive could reach Pluto in 18 months? - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-07/24/emdrive-space-drive-pluto-mission <comment><USER2> I've been following this story pretty closing for several months now. So here's the opinion of an actual research scientist.

Q. Does the Em drive produce thrust?

A. Undetermined. Several tests from multiple independent labs have reported thrust, including in a vacuum. However several of the labs that reported positive thrust come from a sketchy background.

Q. Does it violate conservation of momentum?

A. Undetermined. There are several competing theories trying to explain the phenomenon, but we lack raw data. I think the last thing anyone wants to see here is "new physics".

Q. Roger Shawyer seems like a scummy kook?

A. Yes. This is why more testing is really important.

Q. What about more tests?

A. A few dozen people have taken it upon themselves to hack together emDrives and test them. The first couple so far were plagued by poor construction, RF interference, and poor experimental design. However, the hacking community is slowly getting its shit together.

Q. Pluto in 18 months?

A. If it works. My intuition screams "its cold fusion all over again", but there is still a chance.

<comment><USER3> Thanks, nice summary.

> I think the last thing anyone wants to see here is "new physics".

I really want to see new physics, because I want to see us get off this rock and far away. I think most people want to see new physics. I think that's why this topic is so popular.

That said, I can understand _physicists_ not wanting to see new physics.

Wait. In a way, that sentence is _crazy_. In a way, physicists should want to see new physics more than anybody.

Where does the "not wanting to see new physics" sentiment come from? Just not wanting to be wrong?

<comment><USER4> I'd love to see new physics! Every physicist I know loves new physics.

But if you claim to violate the conversation of momentum, everyone is going to be skeptical and not believe it. We have hundreds of years of experiments and observations that support the law and have looked in many places from small to large and not seen violations. This is what makes people not believe it and thus physicists are going to assume you are wrong and not physics. It's not so much a negative concern, but more of a practical one. But should it be tested in a rigorous manner and reproduced, then physicists will believe it. It's just it hasn't and thus we are going to stick with the established very well understood and tested theory. Like are you sure you have properly counted all the initial momentum? Are you 100% you are not introducing energy to the system? The possible explanations is long and a good experiment will eliminate as many of these as possible.

As an example, look at the OPERA experiment which found to have superluminal signals. New physics? Nope, just a faulty piece of equipment. BICEP showing gravitational waves? Nope, just poor data interpretation and neglecting interstellar dust. So if you want to claim new physics, be damned sure you have ironclad proof.

<comment><USER5> > Every physicist I know loves new physics.

If physicists don't want new physics, they should stop doing research!

<comment><USER3> Only as long as the new physics is in your little sphere of influence so you can keep the grant money gravy train flowing. Presumably.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's good to see that someone finally got around to testing this in a vacuum. Here's the paper mentioned in this story:

[http://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/6.2015-4083](http://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/6.2015-4083)

High levels of skepticism are still warranted, as much as I would love for this to pan out. Every time this gets tested—presumably more and more carefully—the measured force gets smaller. The original test at Chinese Northwestern Polytechnical University measured 720 mN; this latest test in a vacuum chamber, only 20 μN. This is so tiny that a test anomaly would seem a much more plausible explanation than a violation of the conservation of momentum.

Of course the ultimate test would be to put one of these in space and try accelerating something with it, in the same way that the ultimate test of a perpetual motion machine would be to make one perform macro-scale net work.

<comment><USER7> What would it take to get one of these into space?

<comment><USER8> from the looks of how testing is going, a good old fashioned rocket.

<comment><USER7> Well yes, I don't expect a tiny fraction of a Newton of force to get them into orbit, but I meant more as a way to test whether the anomalous force is usable for spaceflight.

After all, it will either sit there and do nothing or it will move.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Let's cut to the chase:

 _5\. Q. Why does the EmDrive not contravene the conservation of momentum when it operates in free space?

A. The EmDrive cannot violate the conservation of momentum. The electromagnetic wave momentum is built up in the resonating cavity, and is transferred to the end walls upon reflection. The momentum gained by the EmDrive plus the momentum lost by the electromagnetic wave equals zero. The direction and acceleration that is measured, when the EmDrive is tested on a dynamic test rig, comply with Newtons laws and confirm that the law of conservation of momentum is satisfied._

[[http://emdrive.com/faq.html](http://emdrive.com/faq.html)]

So, the momentum simply "builds up". That's an exceptionally weak explanation.

<comment><USER10> Can anyone explain electromagnetic momentum? I thought that em waves (photons) are massless. How can they have momentum (mass * velocity)?

<comment><USER11> Because photons travel at the speed of light, we need to consider relativistic effects. Under special relativity, classical momentum (mass * velocity) is not actually conserved. To achieve conservation of mass, we consider the "inertial mass" of an object instead of the classical mass, where the intertial mass is given by:

        m'=ym
        y=1/sqrt(1-(v/c)^2)

As you can see, y>1 and y approaches infinity as you speed approaches the speed of light. This is why we say that the mass of an object increases with its velocity, and that any object with mass traveling at the speed of light will have infinite mass.

Now consider the momentum, p, of a photon. We have:

         p=m*y*v
         m=0
         y=infinity
         v=c

this gives us p=0*infinity, which is indeterminate, so we cannot use this equation to determine the momentum of a photon.

Instead, we can use the engery-momentum relationship, which states:

        E^2 = (mc^2)^2 + (pc)^2

(This is a generalization of the famous E=mc^2 equation to also consider the momentum). In this equation m refers to the rest mass, not inertial mass. Because we are dealing with a photon, we have m=0, which gives us:

        E^2=(pc)^2
        p=E/c

Indicating that the momentum of a massless object is proportional to its energy.

<comment><USER12>
        E^2 = (mc^2)^2 + (pc)^2

Is it just coincidence that this looks like the Pythagorean theorem?

<comment><USER13> It's not entirely coincidence.

Four dimensional space-time has a metric analogous to but not quite the same as euclidean space: the time part has the opposite sign from the space parts.

      ds^2 = (c dt)^2 - (dx^2 + dy^2 + dz^2)

ds is an "invariant proper time" which has the same value in all frames of reference. Check any special relativity textbook for the details.

Just as you can start with distance and then build up to momentum and energy in classical physics, in relativistic mechanics you can start with this metric and build up vectors in 4-space for velocity and energy/momentum. (Turns out that the time part is an energy while the space parts are momentum.) The upshot is that

      (m_0 c^2)^2 = E^2 - (p c)^2

which is the frame-invariant length of the energy-momentum 4-vector. (I think that m is better written as m_0, the rest mass, since the "m" notation sometimes means relativistic mass, which is different.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Making projections like "this drive could get a probe to Pluto in 18 months" seems kind of premature, given that scientists still aren't certain that the drive works _at all_ , let alone how efficient it actually is.

<comment><USER15> I'd say science reporting is a sad ghetto of journalism, but that's giving too much credit to the profession as a whole.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "WIRED understands that there are multiple labs around the world working on their own EmDrives, although Tajmar's is the only new one willing to go public so far."

I'm very curious about this bit. I wonder who is working on it?

<comment><USER17> NASA has a group working on it: [http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/2014000...](http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20140006052.pdf)

The Northwestern Polytechnical University in China is testing a version of the EmDrive: [https://dx.doi.org/10.1088%2F1674-1056%2F22%2F5%2F050301](https://dx.doi.org/10.1088%2F1674-1056%2F22%2F5%2F050301)

Finally, a number of amateurs are interested as well: [http://emdrive.wiki/Building](http://emdrive.wiki/Building)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Has any independent laboratory confirmed this effect and published on it in a peer-reviewed journal?

<comment><USER19> Not exactly a journal but NASA reproduced the Cannae and EmDrive style devices and documented it:

[http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20140006052](http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20140006052)

Turning 17 watts of microwave power into 40-91 micronewtons of thrust isn't exactly stunning, though.

<comment><USER20> from the wikipedia ion thruster article:

> Ion thrusters have an input power spanning 1–7 kilowatts, exhaust velocity > 20–50 kilometers per second, thrust 20–250 millinewtons and efficiency > 60–80%.[1][2]

3 orders of magnitude less thrust than for not needing to accelerate any fuel all the way into orbit? i'll tell you space companies will send trucks full of money to anyone who can make a reliable one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wonder how they rule out the effects of the Earth's magnetic field. I can see there being some small effect due to some kind of eddy currents pushing ions into one direction. Maybe they turn the apparatus at multiple angles and check the bias to north-south?

<comment><USER22> I seem to recall that they could not find any variance in the force by orienting the apparatus in different directions. Some good work has been put into finding the cause of this, and most of the easy and obvious errors have been tested and found to be unrelated to the effect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Conversation of momentum is strongly tied to the conservation of energy through relativity theory. If it actually works (I doubt it) it has _really_ strong implications.

<comment><USER24> Conservation of momentum is a much bigger deal than conservation of energy. We already know of situations in which energy isn't conserved (like the energy of a photon decreasing when there is metric expansion where it is.)

Conservation of momentum is a consequence of the translational symmetry of physics via Noether's theorem, so that's what we'd need to give up to hope to see it broken.

<comment><USER23> Much like conservation of energy is a consequence of time translation symmetry. If you mix spatial and time coordinates through relativity theory you can see that these are strongly coupled.

Your photon example works because there is no time translational symmetry in the case of metric expansion and it's a general relativity model. In general relativity there is no conservation of momentum either. It would be hard to even define since coordinate systems change from point to point. We can only say that the energy-momentum vector is going through parallel transport, which is like conservation in the local coordinate system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Question: why did someone build this drive if theory predicts it won't work? Were they just tinkering or did they have an alternative theory from which they could deduce it might work?

</comment><comment><USER26> Reddit has a sub forum that seems pretty active -

[https://www.reddit.com/r/EmDrive/](https://www.reddit.com/r/EmDrive/)

</comment><comment><USER27> "They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers.

But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown."

</comment><comment><USER28> Seriously, it isn't _that_ expensive to get a shot on a possibly blowing up test rocket that is going into orbit, launch something and fly it out to mars and back. We'll believe you then.

</comment><comment><USER29> The worlds biggest unsolved mystery about microwaves has still not yet been answered; how exactly does one microwave on HIGH?

<comment><USER30> While your comment doesn't add much to this discussion, I won't turn down a chance to educate.

Conventional microwave ovens only have two states: on and off. (I won't rule out the possibility of some exotic build having multiple powers, but the ones you interact with on a normal basis don't.) So, power levels cannot change the output level of the magnetron. Instead, the power levels control what percentage of time the magnetron is on. A power level of 50% means the magnetron is on for roughly 50% of the indicated time. These off periods will typically result in more even heating at the cost of time. The off periods give the heat a chance to conduct through the food and balance, reducing the lava-and-ice problems seen when heating frozen things in microwaves.

HIGH just means 100% power level.

<comment><USER31> _> I won't rule out the possibility of some exotic build having multiple powers, but the ones you interact with on a normal basis don't._

Mine does, and it cost $120.

[http://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-Countertop-Microwave- Technol...](http://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-Countertop-Microwave-Technology- NN-SD681S/dp/B005BFZ5N6)

(I don't find that it actually makes a difference when using it, though.)

<comment><USER32> I have a Panasonic and it makes a difference. (or maybe it's just confirmation bias?)

Where the Panasonic shines is at lower power settings. E.g. if you defrost at 30% power for 3 minutes you get much more pleasant results than using the typical microwave. In a typical microwave the thinner areas actually start cooking rather than simply defrosting when operating at 30% power.

<comment><USER30> I would expect it to make a bigger difference at low power settings, so I don't think it's confirmation bias at all. 10 seconds of almost-high output compared to 9 seconds of high output won't see much difference. However, 10 seconds of low output vs 2 seconds of high will see a big difference. Same amount of energy, but delivered over a 5x longer time period.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Vidcrunch – the best videos from the web, curated on one page - <AUTHOR> http://vidcrunch.com

<comment><USER2> Neat idea. The layout looks very similar to devour.com. Was that intentional?</comment>


Perlara (YC W16) is shutting down - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/eperlste/status/1101188476936970240 <comment><AUTHOR> I felt that this was notable because of how real Ethan's sentiments felt to me. It's the exact opposite of an "incredible journey" non-answer to why a company is shutting its doors.</comment>


Show HN: Minefold, cloud Minecraft hosting - <AUTHOR> https://www.minefold.com

<comment><USER2> Interesting!

What I wonder is: given how inefficient Minecraft is (in general), how can you have healthy tech margins when a single server can take up many hundreds of megs of memory (and chew through a respectable allotment of CPU time)? As I recall, this grows linearly with each player added.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, in fact the server's memory usage grows the further each player is away from each other :)

We are doing Heroku-style spinning up and spinning servers on demand. We only pay for however much you play.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Chris and Dave have done it. If your non-geek mates play Minecraft, they'll do well with Minefold. They'll come for the ease of setup and stay for the support.

</comment><comment><USER4> Awesome stuff, about time someone built this!</comment>


Odd Job: This teen bought a bunch of vending machines. Now he makes six figures - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/1/31/21067944/vending-machine-youtube-job <comment><USER2> "How much money can you reasonably pull in a month from vending machines?

I'd call a good month for 25 machines and eight locations to be about $6,000 to $7,000. The thing with vending machines, though, is that the net profit is only like 50 percent. So about $3,000 a month. The margins are what they are, between the food purchasing and gas."

The rest comes from YouTube, as he makes videos about the business.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. The real money from those arcade/vending machine owners come from monetising the content they make about running their business, not the business itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another horrible misleading clickbait title by Vox. The title for the post should be changed...</comment>


Garry mods Garry's Mod to catch pirates - <AUTHOR> http://www.joystiq.com/2011/04/13/garry-mods-garrys-mod-to-catch-pirates/

<comment><USER2> I have been bitten twice by such schemes, although having a legit copy:

\- In Settlers 3, buildings started to produce wrong items: iron instead of pigs etc. In a game that heavily relies on well crafted production chains, it completely wrecks havoc. It was fun for 5 minutes, but after finding out that it was actually a misbehaving copy protection, I was a bit angry. Also, explaining to support or other users on forum that your copy is actually legit only worsens the pain.

\- Operation: Flashpoint was much worse. First of all, single player works as expected. But when the copy protection thinks you use a copied disk (or your CD-rom is not behaving as expected), it quickly started to ramp up the difficulty to the point where an enemy shot you with a pistol over a kilometer distance. It took hours of frustration until I found out what it was.

There are other games that implemented such schemes. Usually, they have one thing in common: they produce false positives that are much harder to detect than a simple "I think you have a pirated copy. If not, please ask support for further assistance."

In this case it might work, because Valve can actually revalidate whether the ID given has bought the game and rule out false positives.

But please, stop that stuff.

<comment><USER3> There were already a few false positives ([http://www.facepunch.com/threads/1078239-Pirate-catching- cat...](http://www.facepunch.com/threads/1078239-Pirate-catching-catches- me.-I-did-not-pirate)).

<comment><USER4> This isn't actually a false positive. The system for catching people is a two part process.

1) Error is noticed, someone asks about it on the Steam forums.

2) User ID is checked to see if they have GMod on their steam games list. If they don't, then the person is assumed to have a pirated copy.

Now, we can still get false positives (someone is using a friends computer and posts under their ID, and the friend doesn't have Gary's Mod), but it sounds like this person was permabanned.

<comment><USER2> You forgot one step:

0a) Legit user is not able to play the game properly and wastes precious lifetime and falls victim to angry comments by fellow users in search for help.

0b) User is actually a pirate, but I really don't care about those.

Thats what makes false positives so bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So, it's a good idea to punish people that are trying out your software by banning them from purchasing it? Sounds like the A/B testing phase was skipped on that one...

<comment><USER4> How would you propose to do A/B testing with pirates? It seems like a bit of a difficult proposition. It seems to me the only way you could run such any sort of test for this is by doing exactly what Gary is doing. Hopefully, after some time is passed, he might be willing to share whether he sees an improvement in sales.

However, actions such as these aren't really about increasing the sales of any particular software product being sold. It's about creating an environment in which game piracy is frowned upon by the community in general. I'm not going to argue if it's effective or not (or even morally the right thing to do), but I think that it's missing the point to claim that if Gary does not see a direct increase in sales, then he's being foolish (which is what you seem to be implying). I suspect that this is more about respect†, than about money.

†Again, we can debate if this sort of thing is the right way to go about gaining it, see Argorak's comment for obvious reasons why you don't want to do this.

<comment><USER6> He isn't expecting to witness an increase in sales from this.

"I don't think the error isn't (sic?) going to boost GMod sales.. I just like to give people that paid something to be smug about." <http://twitter.com/#!/garrynewman/status/58100503036432384>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sheer brilliance :)</comment>


Talking about Mastodon on Reddit - <AUTHOR> https://mathstodon.xyz/system/media_attachments/files/000/169/755/small/328a4e976fdbf37c.png <comment><AUTHOR> From [https://mastodon.social/@Nigma](https://mastodon.social/@Nigma)</comment>


Can The Human Race Please Stop Sucking For 5 Minutes? - <AUTHOR> http://blackhole12.blogspot.com/2013/01/can-human-race-please-stop-sucking-for.html

<comment><USER2> Here's what helped me get through hard times and poverty: meditation and Zen Buddhism. It simplifies life, puts strife in its proper context, and makes poverty beautiful.

Now is the time to pull back a little. Same with your friend. Meditate. Seriously.

<comment><USER3> I've been practicing psychonautics and freeganism.

The problem is, and I believe this applies to equally Buddhism: _Why should we have to go this far?_ I cannot have a polite conversation about psychonautics with most everyone, but if not for the research done into this field, I'd still be suffering from terrible pain and misery.

Most people will not understand mysticism. Telling someone "try mysticism" is about as helpful as "get a job." Hackers being "high risk" makes sense: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0XK9yMAxPk>, and I think that applies here more so than some philosophical system.

I myself have been royally blasted by our industrial-capitalist complex. Jail, abusive/manipulative family, poor, mother ridden with terminal illness and hospital bills, and quite honestly -- "African American"; even now I no longer can define myself as this term, preferring the term "elf." But even this offsets me socially. The things we have to do to attain happiness and integrity of identity in this country installs a sense of guilt and engenders neurosis. Even to today I have had to swallow racial slurs and comments, just to fit into a cultural system of computer scientists/programmers. I am constantly seeing how rigid and inorganic this ethnic group is; and it is somewhat terrifying. (All I can really defend this point with is: _Have you had to deal with racism on a daily basis? If you cannot say 'yes,' then I cannot truly explain this problem to you. It's similar to the points Colin Powell makes when he recants the GOP: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQ8ZWWceTL0> \-- his points really just set the stage for just how systematically impoverished our country is ethnically).

Often it is simply unfair, and the system is constructed to where one cannot appeal to the sympathies of the majority of the population. Most denizens are prepared to employ defensive tactics like "but at least you can vote!" or "at least you're not in the Congo!", etc. It's simply unhelpful to the dialogue here.

<comment><USER2> I'm sorry to hear of your difficulties brother. Lets actively work to make life better. Maybe we won't have a very happy life but we can have a life of meaning.

<comment><USER3> Oh, I'm on it.

I have the endurance of a strict motherfucking son-of-a-bitch.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Whalesong: a Racket to JavaScript compiler - <AUTHOR> http://hashcollision.org/whalesong/

<comment><USER2> Awesome! I remember hearing something about this a while back. Is this is what's going to be used to teach racket online?

This also means that it'll be easier to support racket with lighttable(<http://www.lighttable.com/>)</comment>


Dydra - Cloud-based RDF store, a database-as-a-service - <AUTHOR> http://dydra.com/

<comment><USER2> Looks cool. From looking at their public github projects it seems like they use Ruby + Rack a lot. I would love to know the implementation details. Can't wait for my beta invite.

Business-wise, I do wonder how many people will be interested in hosted RDF data storage. I am comparing them with companies like cloudant.com for CouchDB and mongohq.com for MongoDB: more wider used data stores.

<comment><USER3> [http://docs.dydra.com/faq#what-technologies-is-dydra- built-o...](http://docs.dydra.com/faq#what-technologies-is-dydra-built-on)

<comment><USER4> "We'll share more details in upcoming blog posts, but the website is built with Ruby and Ruby on Rails, relying heavily on the RDF.rb framework. Our back-end infrastructure is based on core technologies such as ZeroMQ, AMQP, and Redis. Our proprietary distributed SPARQL query engine, called SPOCQ, is built in Lisp. Our distributed RDF storage system is built in Ruby and C, relying on Raptor and Rasqal in particular. Our stack as a whole is hosted on Amazon Web Services."

That's pretty bad ass.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's interesting that all the docs and APIs are open and they advertise that, but say nothing about the platform. It's great for the client to be open and for users to own their data, which presumably is RDF and very portable, but risky to invest in building anything that's dependent on a closed platform. I suppose it comes down to what service level agreements are provided for the service.</comment>


Ask HN: What engineering practices do best teams follow to excel? - <AUTHOR> I am very interested in productivity, efficiency and well-being of a tech team.  What are some macro and micro practices/thumb rules/casual habits that you and your team follow to excel at what you do.<p>Sorry if a repost, and links to articles etc. welcome. <comment><USER2> \- Always do code reviews

\- Focus on "Developer UX". Bottlenecks in codebase, testing, deployment, Q/A pipeline can cause massive productivity issues.

\- Use a wiki to document infrastructure and internal practices (reducing "tribal knowledge")

\- Focus on culture - in particular, we have great success with "Autonomy, Mastery & Purpose" as one of the guiding principles.

\- Do 1-on-1's</comment>


Cassandra By Example - <AUTHOR> http://www.rackspacecloud.com/blog/2010/05/12/cassandra-by-example/

<comment><USER2> In each of the two examples he defines a way of tracking both who you're following and who is following you by implementing two tables in SQL or two "column stores" in Cassandra.

Why would you need to (or want to) store these separately? A table indicating User X is following User Y would give you enough to fullfill queries for both followers and followees.

<comment><USER3> In a database, yes, a single table with two indexes would efficiently look up followings/followers.

But in Cassandra there is no support for secondary indexes, so the follower/following data needs to be in separate column families. Then, they each have an index and can be looked up efficiently. (At least as far as I understand things in the NoSQL world)

<comment><USER4> So what happens when you create the follower but not followed index then realize you need it. Is there a way to create that new ColumnFamily without writing a object-by-object program that must traverse all the data? I suppose the concept of data locality doesn't apply, but what is the best way to do that sort of operation?

<comment><USER5> You'd write a MapReduce program to do it. Cassandra 0.6 has full support for Hadoop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I thought this was going to be about engineers trying to warn managers about impending massive failure and no one listening. the most famous (engineering) example being Challenger's O-rings.

see Cassandra Complex: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra_(metaphor)></comment>


Ask HN: Is it possible for a freelancer to work on challenging things?  - zero-g

In the beginning of my career I tried to freelance a little bit and I realized that there was only simple things to work on. Like develop some site, or fix some bugs on existing site, or something routine and boring stuff, which full-time developers from that company wouldn't be happy to do.
I was thinking recently that it would be great to work as a freelancer from anywhere on different things every time and don't stick to something for a several years. But I'm afraid I won't be able to find something really challenging and interesting like things I would work on at full-time job in some SV tech startup. By interesting and challenging I mean something with performance challenges, huge amounts of data, distributed systems, scaling and stuff.
Am I right and I should better look for a full time job? Or am I just don't know how and where to find freelance projects? <comment><AUTHOR> If by challenging you mean large and distributed, then I would agree these areas are probably less common in freelancing than in longer-term engagements. If by challenging you mean intellectually advanced, there are plenty of freelance jobs involving machine learning, computer vision, and other niche technologies such as robotics. Although my experience is more limited than that of some folks here, my guess is that most jobs, whether freelance or employed, are going to be run-of-the-mill. In many ways, computers were invented to ease boring administrative tasks, and this purpose lives on.

</comment><comment><USER2> The reality is that most really good shops want employees because they know the value of long term engagements with Software dev talent.

My experience is most of my freelancing work has come from corporate systems, it's not glamorous work but it pays the bills and pays well. From time to time some interesting things come along, like working on an ancillary project to IBM's Watson but those are few and far between for the majority freelancing.

There are exceptions like if you know nich or less used technology like big data technologies or Ruby for example.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's possible to work on challenging things. But, if you want to work on things which are specific to a company and which require a long time to learn (say about 6 months before you can become productive), the only way is employment or long term contract. I have friends who work on challenging things via long term contracts, may be this is what you are looking for.

</comment><comment><USER4> I would think that if you want to work on challenging things as a freelancer, you'll have to specialize in a niche. Your expertise will allow you to make up for a lack of familiarity with a particular code base.</comment>


Ask HN: Your Thoughts on a Customer Success tool we are building - <AUTHOR> We are building a tool where we plan to integrate website analytics, product usage analytics, support and email data into one place to get a complete view of the user. Looking to target growth, success and marketing folks.<p>Would you be interested in Beta testing the product? <comment><USER2> Yes. Would be extremely interested.</comment>


Second Life's Oculus Rift Integration is Ready - <AUTHOR> http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Tools-and-Technology/Second-Life-s-Oculus-Rift-Integration-is-Ready-for-Beta-Testers/ba-p/2544572

<comment><USER2> VR could kick something like second life up a lot of notches - maybe the next FB buy?

</comment><comment><USER3> "Second Life is still going?", said everyone.

<comment><USER4> MMO's have a habit of lasting a long, long time. Second Life is only eleven years old.

Everquest is fourteen years old, Ultima Online is about sixteen years old, and Meridian 59 is about nineteen years old, and all of them are still receiving updates.

And I think if you want to include MUDs, you can go even older than that.</comment></comment>


Google Code now supports Mercurial - <AUTHOR> http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2009/04/mercurial-support-for-project-hosting.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I particularly like their DAG grapher: <http://code.google.com/p/erratic/source/list>

Something about the curved corners leaves me really pleased with how it looks.

<comment><USER2> Neat to see a good, live use of SVG out in the wild.

<comment><USER3> Google is certainly no stranger to "VML for IE, SVG for everybody else": it's what Google Maps uses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It seems that Google did a good job implementing mercurial on its own infrastructure. It could encourage open source developers to switch from subversion to hg.

</comment><comment><USER5> Disclaimer: I use Git for my own stuff and as an svn client at work.

But I wonder if Git's author's boorish-yet-sort-of-amusing behavior when invited to speak at Google a couple of years ago may have also quietly weighed on the decision some:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8>

</comment><comment><USER6> Looks like the main reason for the choice was efficient HTTP support.

</comment><comment><USER7> They doesn't get it. It's not about just public repository hosting anymore -- it's about "social networking" for code. I know, this sounds like hype for anyone except those who used GitHub (or, maybe, BitBucket, but I haven't used it). It's different than just hosting projects.

</comment><comment><USER8> <ducking while the Git fans prepare to flame>

<comment><USER9> I was going to start rawring but this made me laugh. Still odd they chose to support Mercurial first. Maybe it's used internally more that git is?

<comment><USER10> They document their tradeoff analysis here: <http://code.google.com/p/support/wiki/DVCSAnalysis>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think Google is making some bad choices with the technologies that they are choosing to support (Python/Java over Ruby, Mercurial over Git).

While there might be technological advantages to Python/Java/Mercurial, the Ruby and Git communities are a more evangelical and willing to try new things.

<comment><USER12> "I think Google is making some bad choices with the technologies that they are choosing to support (Python/Java over Ruby, Mercurial over Git)."

I remember a large portion of Google's codebase has been based on Python/Java when Ruby was not popular back then. How could you say they made a bad choice to support their own infrastructure? As the reason of choosing Mercurial for Google Code, consider the following facts in addition:

0\. Mercurial is written in Python (well, some critical parts in C)

1\. Google App Engine supports Python first (then Java)

2\. GvR works in Google

3\. Python adopts Mercurial this year for version control

<comment><USER13> The road of convenience isn't necessarily the best road for your product.

Looking at how github has exploded, and how much more momentum git has in the community, it's hard for me to be convinced that it's not worth the effort it would take google to support it. I also think they should support hg and bzr.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do I know in an interview if someone can handle startup-life? - <AUTHOR>

So I'll freely admit I work stupidly long hours- I live on Redbull, and get off on making things that I can look back at, and say "Yeah, I'm proud of that."
My primary job is in IT, but I'll jump in on and spend two hours creating user stories or writing marketing copy.
 There's been times that I added code which is still in production years later.
Things are hectic, but challenging, rewarding, and if you put in the effort, you can make a real difference.
One of the things I've found is that when you work with people for a while, you get a feeling for who'd you want to steal for your next company. The sort of people you know are perfect for this sort of environment, and really thrive in it.
Basically, as Joel says- People who are Smart, and Get Things Done.
Here's the tough part- How do I find those people BEFORE the Hire/NoHire decision is made?
Are there any tricks to finding people in the interview or phone interview, and get a sense of how well they'll work in such a weird world? <comment><USER2> I don't know what the secret is, because "smartness" is vague enough that it's not objectively measurable. We aren't talking about lifting weights or running the mile where you can know your own abilities and compare them to another person's - intelligence just doesn't work that way. Interviews and conversations are the best way I know of to tell how "smart" someone is, but there are problems there as well.

The problem I have in mind (there are others) is that it's not very easy to tell if someone is smarter than you are. I find that it's easy to tell if someone is less intelligent than I am because they don't recognize their assumptions, draw incorrect inferences or are otherwise sloppy. However, in a sense I'm just testing for the absence of stupidity and not the presence of intelligence. I find it very difficult to tell if someone's actually smarter than I am or just more knowledgeable.

What I would suggest is that you have several people interview this person separately (ideally on separate topics) and use their opinions to formulate a judgement. If, after conversations on different topics, 5 engineers say "this girl seems to know her stuff" then it's a much safer bet that this is person is a bar-raiser than if it's just you. Yes, you'll likely be turning lots of people away, but that's what happens if you keep raising the bar.

</comment><comment><USER3> "So I'll freely admit I work stupidly long hours- I live on Redbull, and get off on making things that I can look back at, and say "Yeah, I'm proud of that." My primary job is in IT, but I'll jump in on and spend two hours creating user stories or writing marketing copy. There's been times that I added code which is still in production years later."

Are you expecting your employee to go through those same sacrifices while at the same time only getting a paycheck?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not a founder here; I just get enjoy this. See also: The people at Reddit.

I'm not expecting people to climb over Everest, but there's a difference between people who show up, and people who try to make a difference.

I've worked big companies Twice before.. In both cases, I knew it was wrong for me within two weeks of starting. I didn't stay at either longer than a month.

There IS something very different about the entire startup environment. I just don't know how to select for it.

<comment><USER3> If I'm going to get a percentage of the business, I would definitely work my ass off after-hours with red bull to get the app/business going. However, if I am just an employee, I will do my best, but not put in anything beyond what I am paid to do.</comment></comment></comment>


Tall and Narrow - <AUTHOR> http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2011/05/22/Portrait-Mode

<comment><USER2> I find this better explains use cases.

<http://www.informationarchitects.jp/en/ipad-scroll-or-card/>

<comment><USER3> _Information Design: Card stacks create random breaks in the reading flow. The more breaks the more you need to reorient—in other words: Think._

One thing I've found is that in a scrolling interface, I tend to neurotically scroll constantly, keeping my actual reading visual field at the top few lines of the scrolling area. I.e., when I can scroll, I will, constantly.

Card-based, or paginated reading interfaces, on the other hand, allow me to relax because I know I don't have to page over until I hit the bottom of the current page. The constant (very) low-grade anxiety is gone.

Not that that's an overwhelming argument for pagination, but it's not a point I see addressed ever. I agree with most of the other points, e.g. lack of indication of length or place. But they seem pretty easily addressable.

There are compromises, too, like a scrolling interface with a page down mechanism, but I've found that they're not as satisfying as a horizontal pagination.

Part of this might be having grown up with physical media.

<comment><USER4> I do the same thing when using a mouse. Interestingly though, when using a touch interface for the same page, I tend to scroll less often. This includes when I'm using a touch pad for scrolling on a PC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I disagree with the OP. When you're actually reading newspapers, books, and magazines, they're open and are wider than they are tall. All other media, TV, movies, etc are also wider than tall, and tablets are not about consuming totally static content.

</comment><comment><USER6> Would folks please edit the titles to remove the blog name, author, and other meta-text leaving only the actual post title? There are some exceptions, of course, but I suggest that for a post like this, the title ought to be just "Tall and Narrow." Thanks for listening!

 _Please flag and/or remove this post if the request really doesn't belong in the discussion. Even if you agree with my request!_

<comment><USER7> The content of the /html/head/title element is indeed what was entered as the posting title.

<comment><USER6> Yes it does, and HN suggests the title element as the default when submitting a link. However, most blogging products add extra stuff like the name of the blog for SEO purposes. If you look at the post itself, the title is simply "Tall and Narrow."

HN shows you the doman (tbray.org) next to the title, so there is no need to also have the title incude Tim's name or the name of his blog.

So my suggestion is to override the default, as we are not search engine bots. I contend this makes the titles easier to read and parse for humans. JM2C, of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The OP is ill informed.

Devices are meant to be landscape oriented because our field of vision is landscape oriented - and it feels natural to have most of your field of view occupied by what you're primarily engaged in.

This is the reason books are landscape oriented once opened, so are newspapers (broadsheets both when opened and folded, tabloids when unfolded)

Also our shoulders are about 1.5-2 feet apart - so portrait orientations are uncomfortable to hold.

Columnar rivers of text, when laid out correctly (without requiring a vertical scroll) on a landscape oriented tablet "feel" natural -- and is the right thing to do instead of filling empty spaces with attention stealing widgets.

Infact you can attempt similar multi-column layouts on the web, albeit with limited success, like on most of the apple.com site and the erstwhile International Herald Tribune iht.com site (before it got merged into the NYT site)

</comment><comment><USER9> I say it depends. For 7 to 10" tablets, the author may well be correct.

I have a 5" Dell Streak which I almost always use in landscape, especially when reading PDFs as the display is sufficiently wide that I don't have to scroll horizontally.

</comment><comment><USER10> You can hold a tablet in portrait alignment, and have a news/reader app that gave you multiple tall narrow columns of text.</comment>


Ask HN: Service to track my movie and book consumption? - <AUTHOR>

Is there a service out there to track what movies I watched, tv series episodes I saw and books I read? <comment><USER2> There's "All Consuming": <http://www.allconsuming.net> . Here is an example of one user's "consumption" (not me!): <http://www.allconsuming.net/person/sipes23/>

The service is somewhat primitive, but has two features I like. You can download your consumption content (but not your actual commentary). And you can add your "recently consumed" list to a website with a little javascript.

The site is a spin-off from Amazon. They use a lot of Amazon content. You can also add stuff which is not on Amazon, for example here's the "grapes" page: <http://www.allconsuming.net/item/view/93636>

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks more like a Amazon affiliate than a real spin-off. But it seems like a nice site. Will have a look at it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I just started using SpringPad (<http://www.springpadit.com/>) and it's awesome for this kind of thing.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd recommend going Old School, and just using a Moleskine and a pen.

<comment><USER2> The thing I don't like about this option is that it's not easily searchable, unless you don't have a lot of content.

<comment><USER5> A plain textfile might be an alternative that does that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> this is what getglue is supposed to do

<comment><AUTHOR> That's it. Looks really usable, setup also was simple.

Shame that it's English only :(</comment></comment>


The Full Guide To Get Press Coverage For Your Startup - <AUTHOR> http://leostartsup.com/2012/05/7-steps-to-get-press-coverage-for-your-startup/

<comment><USER2> A blog post from a startup guy, saying the number one thing to do for press coverage is blog, posted to yc by that guy himself.

<comment><USER3> At least it's the full guide!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wouldn't it be wiser to spend time and energy trying to get coverage within your startup's domain rather than technology blogs? Obviously tech coverage would be good for networking, funding negotiations but why is domain specific coverage not even mentioned, surely it is vastly more important?

<comment><USER5> Yeah it's wiser and brings more traffic, links, etc. than one post on TechCrunch. But being on TechCrunch is some kind of a label, it's good for your reputation, especially for upcoming fundings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Make friends with a writer. Particularly one of the opposite sex. Ask them to write about you. Works every time.

<comment><USER7> Do tell more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great post - what a lot of people forget - or don't do well is to highlight and show-off the press they already received. This was also missed in the article. Writers tend to think along similar lines and if you can show that there are others writing good things about you - and can present a log of what's been said in the past - it gives journos a great starting point for their next article about you or your startup. The guys at Presstler are working on an interesting solution for this - providing automated Press Pages - www.presstler.com

</comment><comment><USER9> They're pretty good (although I think I read them before here on HN), except maybe the seventh.

Trying to be on press every month is pretty optimistic. You should also take into account that writers cover news that are interesting to their readers. A minor change, a new feature, usage stats... they don't get usually covered for new/small startups because they're not so interesting to their readers.

Also, you can be annoying if you start to send non interesting pitches every 2-4 weeks, so take care with that.

</comment><comment><USER10> Was wondering what a person should do if working on a startup while holding a full-time position and is being followed by colleagues on twitter.

<comment><USER11> Market directly to your prospects.

This PR stuff is just a waste of time for small startups. You should market like the local pizza joint and not like a Fortune 500 company.

I'd like to hear from your troubles. Drop me a line? email is on my profile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> How about, create something actually useful and share it with some people? So much intelligence and time is wasted in this community on gimmicks and a big marketing push to just try and make an easy buck

<comment><USER13> Some of us who genuinely create useful things (as evidenced by existing users) still have a difficult time getting traction in the PR world, myself included.

It's a frustrating realization that crafting a thoughtful and engaging product isn't enough to "make it big". A lot more to the story, but still.

The web startup scene + typical tech blogs is an old boys' club - all that matters is who you know. And that's why it's all bullshit.

<comment><USER14> Are you aware of the what the "old boys' club" really is? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_boy_network> \- "social and business connections among former pupils of male-only private schools".

Techcrunch was founded in 2005 (most of those private schools are 100+ years old) and often publishes articles by people who cold email them. Yes, knowing a reporter helps, but all those people are pretty accessible over email and twitter and ultimately tech blogs are pretty much the furthest thing from an "old boy's club".

Yes, it can be frustrating to have to pitch your startup or product and get rejected or just ignored even when you know it in fact is really good, but that is simply the nature of press. This article is trying to help you get more press with less struggle. Give it a try.

Deciding that "it's all bullshit" might make you feel better temporarily but it is not going to get you any closer to your goals.</comment></comment></comment>


Disney: When You Wish Upon a Startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_24/b4088085636384.htm?chan=innovation_branding_top+stories <comment><USER2> ...and 2.6 / 5.0 on TheFunded, hmmm.</comment>


Supreme Court justices appear conflicted over Aereo copyright case - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-scotus-aereo-20140423,0,2375336.story

<comment><USER2> From the NYT article on this: "Your technological model," Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. told Aereo's lawyer, "is based solely on circumventing legal prohibitions that you don't want to comply with."

I hate to uses loaded terms, but it seems like we are about to see some legislating from the bench.</comment>


Schmidt: "Android Adoption Is About To Explode" - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/15/schmidt-android-adoption-is-about-to-explode/

<comment><USER2> I think it would be great to have more competition in the smartphone marketplace. My concern as a developer is that with so many devices coming out can I be reasonably assured that any app I write for android will work on all devices as with the iPhone? I certainly cannot afford to buy 12 different phones. Sure, adroid is _supposed_ to be the common OS but is it going to really work that way in practice?

<comment><USER3> You raise a good point, and in order for this to work they'll need to ensure a full suite of emulators are available for testing. Android already provides an emulator [1] that can be configured to match the target device, although I can't speak to its quality as I have not used it. Windows Mobile is in a similar position, and its SDK provides emulators for every phone you would want to test on.

Phones differ so much in form factor alone that you really need to be testing individually for any phone in your target market anyway. Its a huge time-sink to be sure, but you won't be flying blind.

[1] [http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/tools/emulator...](http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/tools/emulator.html)

<comment><USER4> Its not just about being able to test (although I have serious doubts that any suite of emulators will be able to give anything more than a rough guess as to how an app will perform on a wide variety of potential platforms) but also about what features will be available, what APIs will work, and how much code you will have to write to deal with some funky condition on Vendor A's phone that makes it differ in some subtle way from Vendor B and C's phones. Eventually they will probably figure it out, but for the next year or so this game is going to make browser feature detection look like a walk in the park...

<comment><USER5> From I seen so far unless you're playing with low level stuff the software is consistent across the devices.

For now Android is far from the J2ME scenario, let's hope it will stay that way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> With the new Verizon Android phones coming to market shortly, a key factor will be how many features does Verizon remove from the phone. The new Android phones are extremely powerful and Android provides an excellent platform to leverage the hardware. However, it's doubtful that Verizon will offer the new phones with full support for things such as free Maps/Navigation, free games, chat, etc -- since they charge quite a bit for these services on other phones. It will be very interesting to see how this plays out.

<comment><USER7> Verizon is getting better.

They crippled the HTC Touch Pro horribly (including cutting its RAM in half for no good reason), just like most of their phones.

But the HTC Touch Pro 2 came out completely unmolested.

Hopefully this represents a change in strategy...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would expect with all the revelations lately about Microsoft's behavior that a lot of the Windows Mobile licensees to take a look at coming out with an Android phone (since they cannot license Web OS or iPhone OS).

<comment><USER9> > I would expect with all the revelations lately about Microsoft's behavior...

What, in particular, are you talking about?

<comment><USER8> Sorry, posting as I was going out the door. The Sidekick disaster is a problem, but the first party phone referred to by jsz0 is probably a bigger issue. Think "Plays for Sure" vs. Zune.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does "explode" mean that it will be fragmented to a zillion of unmanageable pieces? :(

</comment><comment><USER11> Google's profits were up 27% (as reported today) while Nokia was reporting a loss. I doubt anyone on this site finds this surprising.

Google is doing what Google does, which is to say it brings its services to users and users use them. And all of it is subsidized by advertising.

Google is playing a different game, and until someone starts challenging them they're going to continue to be adopted as the platform of choice for every market they're in. The only exception: Facebook.

<comment><USER12> > The only exception: Facebook.

To provide a little context, Googles revenue in the UK alone was $200 million more than Facebook's highest revenue reports ($500 million).

[http://investor.google.com/releases/2009Q3_google_earnings.h...](http://investor.google.com/releases/2009Q3_google_earnings.html)

On earnings calls, every quarter, the report on revenue growth is centered around various metrics with search advertising. Search advertising continues to be the most profitable form of advertising on the web. Facebook has impressive statistics, but I don't see them challenging Google in any one of Google's core businesses. When Facebook becomes a public company and matures more and has a solid way of generating revenue then they _might_ be in a position to challenge Google.

<comment><USER8> If local search is going to be super valuable then I think and interesting challenger to Google's dominance would be one of the credit card companies. They already know all the merchants and take a very interesting part of Google's business like Craig's List did to the newspapers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> They would be fools to say anything else. What platform owners trying to attract developers would ever say, 'Our prospects look grim'?

Not to say android won't continue to grow. Not to say they won't explode. Just to say, why would you put any stock in what Schmidt says? It's like asking Steve Jobs if his next product is going to be amazing, or a Goldman Sachs executive if he deserves his compensation.

</comment><comment><USER14> As a G1 owner (which I do love), I would love to get my hands on an HTC Hero and hack it to work on T-Mobile....I've never wanted to switch carriers until I was disappointed with the MyTouch (forgot the HTC hardware it runs on). I think T-Mobile could of done so much better by bringing in the slightly higher priced HTC Hero and kept the G1 as their entry level model.

</comment><comment><USER15> Translation: Our manufacturers are getting desperate, and are about to subsidize and/or give away a metric assload of phones to a lot of people who are too cheap to buy your apps.

<comment><USER16> I think your translator is broken -- there's just a bunch of new Android phones all coming out at once, whereas before last month there was only the G1 on T-Mobile. Hence the explosion.

<comment><USER16> Here's Gartner's prediction of Android going from 2% to 14% by 2012: [http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9139026/Android_to_gr...](http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9139026/Android_to_grab_No._2_spot_by_2012_says_Gartner)

There may be as many as 40(!) phones coming out in 2010.

<comment><USER17> Here's Gartner's prediction of everything:

Growth! <insert picture of exponentially growing curve>

<comment><USER18> Did I imagine it, or was there a website posted here a while ago that tracked these kind of predictions against reality? I had a quick google for it but couldn't find it.

<comment><USER19> You're thinking of <http://wrongtomorrow.com/></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>