Oil Demand for Cars Is Already Falling - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-11-16/oil-demand-for-cars-and-transportation-is-already-falling <comment><USER2> The article tries quite hard to link the falling demand for oil to the emergence of electric vehicles. But looking at the reduction in half of the usage of gasoline in Italy, I see that basically all of it happened prior to 2013, long before Model 3 was a thing.

I found this interesting site [1] where you can see the gasoline consumption for every country between 1991 and 2012. And all big EU countries I looked at (Germany, France, UK, Italy) exhibited a steep decline between 1999 an 2012. This can't have anything to do with electric vehicles. Most likely it's the continuous improvements in car efficiency.

To check this I went to edmunds.com [2] and I compared the same car between the 2004 and 2018. Here's what I got for the highway mileage for 3 random cars (in all cases I looked at the most basic model):

\- Mazda 3: 2004: 29 mpg ; 2018: 37 mpg

\- Toyota Camry: 2004: 29 mpg; 2018: 39 mpg

\- Ford Explorer: 2004: 19 mpg; 2018: 23 mpg

That's an improvement between 21% and 34%. Not bad at all.

[1] [https://www.indexmundi.com/energy/?country=de&product=gasoli...](https://www.indexmundi.com/energy/?country=de&product=gasoline&graph=consumption)

[2] [https://www.edmunds.com/mazda/3/2017/sedan/](https://www.edmunds.com/mazda/3/2017/sedan/)

<comment><USER3> Recently got a Toyota Verso, and was shocked to find out it averages 62.8 mpg [1]. And it really is that efficient.

[1] [https://blog.toyota.co.uk/honest-john-honours-toyota- verso-f...](https://blog.toyota.co.uk/honest-john-honours-toyota-verso-for- best-real-world-mpg-performance)

<comment><USER4> Even my newish bottom-of-the-range Mercedes e-class will do close to 60 mpg on the motorway. Compare that to the previous model from 3 years ago, which was giving around 50mpg, and from 10 years ago, giving under 40mpg.

The newer models feel lighter and more nimble. Almost as if they've got rid of a significant chunk of their unneeded, inefficient components from under the hood and replaced them with something radically different.

<comment><USER5> They replace everything they can with plastic.

<comment><USER6> And aluminum, instead of steel, for hoods and body panels. Even rugged pickup trucks are shedding weight.

<comment><USER7> F150 lost 700lb in transition to aluminum structure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think falling demand has a lot less to do with electric cars and more to do with the MPG in cars going up and people finally buying newer cars. Electric car penetration in the US is not high enough to have a massive impact, but MPGs going up and newer models of cars getting on the road can have a massive impact.

When it comes to electric vehicles, the question won't be oil, it will be the supply chain still being very polluting and China having a massive foothold on lithium supplies.

<comment><USER9> _> buying newer cars_

And unfortunately changing cars too often has a significant environmental cost. I think making of the car has as much as 50% of its average life-time carbon footprint. So buying a newer car may be increasing the MPG, but brings in a huge upfront environmental cost.

<comment><USER10> Producing a gas vehicle is equivalent to two years of average driving as far as carbon footprint is concerned, according to this one guy on YouTube ([https://youtu.be/6RhtiPefVzM](https://youtu.be/6RhtiPefVzM))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here is everything you need to know about the demand for autos and the psychology of the auto consumer in the United States. Also very instructive about attitudes toward public transportation in the US.[1]

This video is worth one million words:[2]

[https://www.ispot.tv/ad/wy2O/state-farm-backstory-truck- song...](https://www.ispot.tv/ad/wy2O/state-farm-backstory-truck-song-by-john- taylor)

What is depicted in the video is considered, by much of the United States population, _to be their birthright_. The tax or incentive regime that would be necessary to prevent every young male from buying a _huge truck_ [3] would be a bigger political impossibility than banning firearms.

I note that General Motors just reintroduced 0% financing for trucks.

[1] ... which is well deserved. Bus transit in the United States is terrible. In most municipalities, there is no other option.

[2] A state farm (insurance company in the US) commercial that was aired in the past year during American football (not soccer) games.

[3] If you don't live in the US, you have _no idea_ how enormous the vehicles are that individuals are using to drive their single persons to the grocery store. It is very common to see a 7 meter long vehicle that is rated to tow an 8 horse trailer (or a yacht) being driven, with no cargo, and a single occupant, to run errands around town.

<comment><USER12> Great link, that video really does pack quite a lot of cultural context in a short time. If you're not from the US and understand each second of that video, you'll understand quite a lot about other things that happen in America.

I'm quite interested to see how Tesla's pickup truck does in this market. On one hand, it can be a total flop, because as you pointed out, huge swathes of this market exist because men need to acquire and exhibit their "masculinity" (as they understand the concept). Burning fuel and making noise seems to be one of the core components of this "masculinity". Coal Rollers simply take this to it's logical conclusion.

On the other hand, maybe its other attributes (0-60 times, towing capacity, size, technology, price) can be sufficiently better to overwhelm this "burning fuel and making noise" aspect and become a well-selling truck. Maybe buying a ridiculous 6-seater, $80k+ EV pickup will be how you update this "masculinity" while distancing yourself form the coal rolling assholes.

<comment><USER11> "I'm quite interested to see how Tesla's pickup truck does in this market."

I wasn't aware that Tesla had a pickup truck in the pipeline...

On the platform side, the skateboard chassis design and its low center of gravity along with AWD achieved with multiple engines, etc. - there's a lot to be excited about there.

However, the UI/UX is getting weirder and weirder and I have a hard time imagining that serious workers/contractors/fleets are going to embrace a big touchscreen and no physical controls and no physical dials behind the wheel, etc.

I think a much better outcome would be a Tesla licensee who could concentrate solely on the professional truck market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Think of an item, that you're purchased within the last couple of years, that was not made from oil but was manufactured in Russia. Ok, I wait. You can't think of any? OK, then what about from of the Arab speaking countries? Yes. I can wait. Take your time.

I hope those countries have a plan B for when the majority of the world's car run on something else than oil.

<comment><USER14> Does software count as an 'item' for you? If yes, for me (and I guess many others here) it would be various products of JetBrains, also Kotlin (even if I did not pay for that one directly) and OCR software from Abbyy. Also did not pay for, but use daily: nginx.

<comment><USER15> JetBrains are Czech, not Russian.

<comment><USER16> IIRC they're headquartered in CZ, but the developers were mostly in St. Petersburg, and Kotlin is named after a Russian military island.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Interesting anecdote: Alan Mulally (former ford ceo) greatly increased fuel mileage in SUVs due to his work in the aerospace industry (Boeing). He knew aluminum well and pushed for adoption of aluminum bodies instead of the traditional steel bodies. This shaved something like 600lbs off the weight of the trucks and contributed to significant MPG increases. F150s get 26 MPG highway, an almost unheard of efficiency 10 years ago for trucks. As recently as the early 2000s, 4 door passenger vehicles averaged around these efficiency levels.

You don't need electric vehicles to cut oil demand. This is just one example of many moves the industry is making.

<comment><USER18> Can confirm, my 2003 jaguar xtype got 17 mpg! Awesome engine noise, and not much else. Purchase price is down payment on first repair.

<comment><USER19> _Purchase price is down payment on first repair._

This has always been a problem for Jaguar, I wonder why they have never been able to get a grip on it.

<comment><USER18> I think they were just very content to not care about it. I imagine they were making money selling replacement parts or upselling new Jaguars every 3 years :\\\\\\\

Personally I thought the shape of the X Type and S type was nasty, but loved the engine. Mine was sold to scrap when the reverse gear blew one day-- don't try to force the shifter into reverse if it won't let you for some reason.

The 70s XJS is a really cool body style and anyone with a lot of time, money, and or skill on their hands would be really wise to just knife a crate engine into it somehow and get all the reliability that Jaguar mechanical bits have never delivered, ever :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> On the subject of accelerating the transition towards sustainable energy, Elon Musk recently said:

> Without Tesla, ... There would still be a transition to sustainable energy, > but it would take much longer. History will judge this, obviously, but I > would say on the order of 10 years, maybe 20 years.

Source: [https://www.recode.net/2018/11/2/18053428/recode-decode- full...](https://www.recode.net/2018/11/2/18053428/recode-decode-full-podcast- transcript-elon-musk-tesla-spacex-boring-company-kara-swisher)

<comment><USER21> History will judge that Tesla's competitors made an extraordinary mistake in waiting 15 years to try to directly compete with Tesla in EVs. At the rate they're going they'll get to $50b in annual sales before most of the auto majors each have even a small fleet of EV vehicles available for purchase.

<comment><USER22> Nissan makes more EV's than Tesla by a bit.

<comment><USER23> It's totally false. Model 3 sales are about 15 times greater than leaf sales in the last months.

<comment><USER24> maybe in us, but herehere i can hardly see Tesla while police sometimes and public drive leaf and there are few small electric BMW, talks outside us/Norway doesn't really exist

<comment><USER23> Model 3 is sold _only_ in US and Canada, so I would be rather surprised if you saw it elsewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Has anyone written about, or documented how the ancillery ICE industry has coped in high penetration EV countries (Norway for example)?

I.e what has happened to all the mom and pop exhaust shops, transmission shops, service centers, local mechanics, etc etc. Have they just packed up and left? I'm really curious how this has played out in countries where adoption has happened fairly rapidly.

</comment><comment><USER26> Some folks I've talked to disagree but I think not an insignificant reason is ubiquitous usage of GPS and the internet (knowing precisely where to go and how to get there in the most efficient way possible).

EDIT: and then I figure another leap was the convergence of the two. gps/internet on cell phones.

<comment><USER27> You mean not getting lost is causing more efficient travel?

<comment><USER28> Or increased availability of traffic information allows people to avoid it easier by waiting or changing routes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Some SUVs with 4-cyl engines and CVTs get equal or better mileage then late 90s commuter cars.

<comment><USER30> Which, given the last twenty years of fairly impressive engine technological advancement, is in some senses a travesty.

<comment><USER31> Reminds me of looking at the Volkwagen Beetle's MPG as a timeline and how it sadly started getting worse over time despite having a respectable 30s decades earlier.

<comment><USER32> Isn't that because they got heavier (better safety features and structural integrity) and got more powerful engines? The original design can barely cope with modern highway speeds, with dangerously slow acceleration, and if you get into a crash at those speeds, you're dead.

<comment><USER30> All generally true statements, but we've taken it pretty far. The average vehicle weighs something like twice what it did thirty years ago, and where 40hp used to be adequate fifty or sixty years ago, and 120hp could be "sporty" thirty years ago, many modern cars with less than 200 horses are described as underpowered today.

Tangent, _" can barely cope with modern highway speeds"_, well, why does the highway speed limit _have_ to be 65mph or 75mph or 80mph anyway? People got by when it was 55mph. Now, I'm not calling for the return of 55mph, but I'd like to point out that highway speeds are not natural law. Raising them was a choice- a choice that was one of many small pieces to arriving at where we are today, that is to say without much improvement in fuel economy.

<comment><USER31> Highway speeds are also a bit of an arms race in themselves. The danger is in when you can't accelerate as expected compared to everbody else. Since 70s 'muscle cars' now have worse zero to sixty acceleration times than modern econoboxes who aren't even making it a priority. Just having a sweet sports car that floor it to sixty in fractions of a second isn't a danger in itself so long as used /safely/. It is when everybody does it that having an old junker that can't starts to become a bit of a hazard and congestion issue due to having to wait for bigger gaps.

It is a bit of a matter of conventions akin to driving on the left or right side of the road - while there may be some fringe situational benefits in some circumstances it really doesn't matter what you do so long as everybody does the same thing. In a bit of irony unusually following the law when few others do can itself create bits of hazard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Did I skim too fast? I didn't see any mention of where this electricity is coming from. Is it solar? If so, what countries / companies stand to benefit from this shift? Presuming the new boss is not the old boss (i.e., the oil producers in the Middle East), more importantly, what will this do to the socio-political power structure in oil producing nations?

p.s. The USA is also a top oil producer?

<comment><USER34> Renewable generation (solar, wind, geothermal) is usually made in-country. However, fuel-based generation (coal, natural gas, nuclear, oil, etc.) has fuel that can be shipped or piped in if you don't have a source for it locally.

So in general, the "electrification of everything" along with cheaper renewables and storage will likely push countries towards more "energy independence" than currently.

<comment><USER33> Also, what is the impact / risk of putting more eggs in less baskets? That is, for better or worse, gasoline is a distributed system with plenty of redundancy, at least at the pull up to the pump level.

But if the power grid goes down (e.g., cyber terrorism / cyber warfare), then so does your vehicle.

Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly in favor of cleaner energy. However, it does also change the overall nature of the game. It's not simply swapping one souce for another.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> speaking as an automotive mechanic by trade, other HN posters are right to point out this is largely due to advances in fuel economy. Id argue it wasnt hard for this reduction to occur, as the super-large SUV fetish from the 90s has long died out. most of the new rolling stock of large vehicles are crossovers, or hybrid.

another key point is oil recycling. most of the new oil put into engines is recycled with 15-20% new stock at best. the really old stuff that can no longer be refined after use is either blended for use in asphalt or recycled plastics.

<comment><USER32> > the super-large SUV fetish from the 90s has long died out.

Are you sure this is true? I believe the size of the average American new car is the largest it's ever been. Sedans and station wagons have been replaced with SUVs and trucks. Hell, Ford's barely even making cars anymore, just SUVs and trucks. More info here: [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/06/the-steadily- disappearing-am...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/06/the-steadily-disappearing- american-car.html)

I suppose that you were referring to Hummers, but they were only ever a tiny portion of the market. The rest of the market, however, has been steadily transitioning to larger vehicles ever since.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> We need to ban production of fossil fuels immediately. Tax the sale of reserves so that people can't afford to depend on this existential threat for daily life. Subsidize the production of green electricity and fund the transition to a fossil-free world. If the market can't handle this, nationalize whatever industry nessecary and bring under a central plan to accomplish the goal. The alternative of runaway climate change is far worse.

<comment><USER37> It is hard to disagree with your sentiment, but to get the discussion going, it helps to complicate your position somewhat:

\- who is 'we'? The policy-makers? The voters? They voted a climate-change- denier into the presidents chair. Not fair? Should've listened to those fear- mongerers telling you to stop using Facebook as a source of news.

\- how to deal with the global economy? There is no 'central' plan. Funding green energy will just shift the balance to other countries.

\- who is going to produce so many electric cars in such a short amount of time? Without transportation, you will risk civil unrest.

\- how would you produce steel? How to prevent movement of steel production to developing countries?

\- how will you transform the agricultural industry? Even if you start now, the transition to 0% fossil fuel usage will take at least a decade. The supply of lithium and the battery production capacity are simply too low.

\- if you subsidise green energy, you will also promote the inefficient production of the goods necessary for this new market. The inefficient production can and may happen oversea, causing you to just shift the problem to China or elsewhere.

\- "the alternative of runaway climate change is far worse". You cannot influence the global markets. If the nationalisation/taxation will cause civil unrest and an illegal usage and trade in fossil fuels, the alternative might be better! At least the (legal) usage and trade is subject to international oversight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> For reference, estimated daily oil consumption in 2018 is 99 million barrels: [https://www.statista.com/statistics/271823/daily-global- crud...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/271823/daily-global-crude-oil- demand-since-2006/)

</comment><comment><USER39> Title: Oil Demand for Cars Is Already Falling

2nd Paragraph Text: Oil use for cars peaks in the mid-2020s...

Ugh!

<comment><USER40> Read farther — that's quoting a 2016 report that is already proving obsolete. The article continues, contradicting that very report:

> But demand for oil consumed for transportation is already waning in certain > markets and segments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> In the mean time, France is about to see nation-wide grassroot demonstrations all over its territory over fuel tax, highlighting the disconnect between cities and urban area.

ICE vehicles are not going to the junkyard anytime soon.

<comment><USER42> How bad is their fuel tax? In Australia we have huge amounts of tax on fuel but I've always known that as normal.

<comment><USER41> About USD6.33/gal, or AUD$2.3/l for diesel, about the same now that gasoline, though there was larger price difference in the past which lead a lot of people to get a diesel car, so these folks have been hit hard. It's about twice the price as here in Canada.

<comment><USER43> I've see. Articles suggest that's 3-4 times smaller than the social cost of abating the societal costs of burning fuel. Pretty sobering to think how different the world would be if that price were charged to the burner of fuel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Relevant [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11879869](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11879869)

</comment><comment><USER45> Producing electricity still demands oil. Even 100% naturally generated power requires tons of oil to lubricate generators and moving parts.

<comment><USER46> Solar has moving parts?

<comment><USER47> Yes, at least on my country most solar power plants use single-axis trackers. The increase in capacity factor makes it worthwhile: on the 12 months up to this September, the highest average capacity factor for fixed solar power plants was barely above 20%, while for single-axis trackers it got to nearly 30% (source: ONS monthly solar generation report).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I was about to say.. the oil demand for my old car seems to be increasing.</comment>


Amazon's D.C. Move Threatens the Founders' Vision for America - <AUTHOR> https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/04/13/would-the-founders-have-freaked-out-about-amazons-dc-headquarters-226653 <comment><USER2> If the Founders' Vision was to keep business and government separate, then why was New York City the capital of the US when George Washington was sworn in as president? It didn't last very long, but a lot of people wanted to keep it there. It was Thomas Jefferson that demanded it be moved to a "rural setting", which this article completely glosses over and tries to imply it was the general will.

<comment><USER3> Yes, people disagreed. It was a compromise.

<comment><USER2> "The Founder's Vision" implies a grand plan, not a compromise, and especially not a compromise driven by a single person.

<comment><USER3> I agree, but I don't think it was just Jefferson? He negotiated a compromise because he needed more votes. Seems like this implies he did have _some_ votes (from southern states), just not enough?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This seems a bit silly in the modern world. Yeah, geographical proximity mattered 200 years ago, but these days most senior business people travel about the country constantly. I bet they are more often not in their office than in.

Second, lobbyists are in Washington all the time anyway. Amazon can spend their money influencing politics from anywhere.

Keeping powers geographically separated doesn't mean much in the era of video conferencing and air travel.

<comment><USER5> If you were right, SF housing prices wouldn't be what they are, and Amazon could have put their HQ in Wyoming and gotten a great deal on real estate. Proximity matters. It affects not just who works together but who runs into each other, who you see walking around your city, and how you look at the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't understand why everyone assumes the DC move is for lobbying or government influence. I always assumed it's just a business move, the DC area has a high supply of security-cleared engineers and AWS is pushing into GovCloud. It seems a lot more plausible to me that Amazon is just making a strategic business move by tapping into a unique labor market, than some conspiratorial culture-shaping crusade.

</comment><comment><USER7> Nothing in the article quotes anything directly from the founders about geographical separation of economic centers and political capitals. Lobbying has already corrupted Washington. There is no logical argument in the article. It seems to be be anti-Amazon propaganda.

<comment><USER8> You're completely correct, but I think it's worth using as a spark for a conversation on Amazon's more metaphorical political move into Washington. That is the concern.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This article is nonsense. Off the top of my head: Accenture, General Dynamics, Northrup Grumman, and M&M/Mars have corporate headquarters in the suburbs around Washington. Not such a big deal now, but AOL also through off quite a bit of wealth for a while.

</comment><comment><USER10> Strange move, i think Amazon might be making a play again with the political sphere now.

This is purely a play between Amazon and the political caste. They will definitely not fight amazon in DC, and Amazon might gain all kinds of leverage with this one.

<comment><USER11> Or maybe they'll drive up the rent and piss off every single senate staffer, judicial clerk, and lower level regulatory agency worker in the district.

DC has a relatively low cost of living compared to NYC or SF, due to the high number of GS payscale[1] workers.

[1] [https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay- leave/salaries...](https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay- leave/salaries-wages/salary-tables/19Tables/html/DCB.aspx)

<comment><USER10> Politicians are homeowners, they will welcome the explosion of housing value

<comment><USER11> These workers aren't usually buying, they're renting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think it is important to note that while it doesn't really matter in what city Amazon is located, it's metaphorical "move into Washington" in terms of politics is the problem.

Crony capitalism is cancer. Why did we not realize that if we increase the power given to government, someone will abuse it? People have suspected it could be a malicious politician, but it has instead become corporatists that buy their competition out of business to secure monopolies and prevent competition. The more authority we cede, the more it can be abused.

I think the best possibility is to move more regulation to state and local governments and to relegate the feds to constitutionally specified powers. Local governments can be easier to buy, but it is my belief that such an impact would be offset by 1. the common man's greater control in how his local government is run (one vote in 100 one-hundred-thousand is much greater than one in three-hundred-million). It is also much harder to catch one-hundred small fish than one whale.

<comment><USER10> Yup, my intuition is along those lines as well. Are politicians going to block the massive money that comes along with this like they did in NY?

And can you imagine the leverage you get with the big topics like breaking amazon up if it means all the DC officials and gov employees will lose this precious boon?

AOC finally won the war on this one. Government just showed it was powerful enough to bend Amazon's will.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Despite Amazon propaganda about their new HQ being "national landing" and collocated in DC/VA/MD, there is no such place.

The new HQ is in Arlington, Virginia and considering DC traffic is not an easy transit to or from anything not on same the metro-line.

Bezos already lives in VA and owns the Washington Post. I don't see how moving his HQ makes a difference at this point in terms of access to government lobbying by him.

</comment><comment><USER13> > Movements like the Yellow Vest protesters in France, for instance, have a > bigger and easier target to attack because the country's economic and > political power is concentrated in Paris.

In this case, wouldn't this be a feature of localisation of private and public elites? That is, it is easier for a grass-roots protest to take hold and target corruption in a centralized way?

</comment><comment><USER14> "Many of the founders would have hated the idea of a megacorporation in such close proximity to Congress and the White House..."

How on earth can the author claim to know what the founders would have thought? I can't think of anything left in writing that would suggest such a thing.

Seems like the author is just pulling stuff out of..... let's say 'the air'.

</comment><comment><USER15> Good points, although just a matter of time. The DC area functions as regional support for basically all large tech companies.

The article makes it seem like an absurdity to the founding fathers to imagine such a large multi-national corporation being there. But they certainly could imagine this, the revolutionary war was a fight against the British East India Company inextricably tied to Britain until the entity dropped stewardship of these colonies out of budgetary concerns. Masquaraded as a decisive victory to support its new national identity, it was clear that corporate control of the government would not be the stance of the new American government.

Yes then the largest public company in the world moving there does theeaten this. But at the same time, that ship has long sailed and this just reminds everyone.

</comment><comment><USER16> Military industrial complex already accomplished that...

</comment><comment><USER17> Move the capital to Kansas City.

<comment><USER18> Think bigger! I'd love to see a built from scratch planned city as the capital with proper spaces for all the national museums and departments and a strong public transit setup.

Of course the idea is far better than any attempt at it would be and I have no idea how we'd move everything that's been packed into DC to a new location. Given the amount of sea level rise we're probably going to see though there's going to have to be some pretty intense engineering to keep DC as it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> OMG, what a bunch of conjecture and bullshit, starting with the ridiculous title. Amazon (or any corporation) doesn't need to be located in D.C to lobby the shit out of whatever they want. That's a complete no-sense.

Being in D.C might make some difference in hiring people that have special experience/skills/clearances working with the government, and of course, Amazon being Amazon wants to sell stuff to the government. It would be stupid of them not to. I'm pretty sure that's the extent of it.

This person thinks that we are still living like in the days of the Founders where people used horses and shit. Newsflash: We live in 2019, and we have airplanes and the internet. The geographic boundaries between government and corporate America stopped mattering a long time ago.</comment>


Ask HN: Job prospects for pure C and C++ programmers? - <AUTHOR> I am looking long-term - 15 years at least and I want to know from the HN folks, what prospects do I have as a C and C++ programmer with a good grasp of algorithms.<p>What other fields should I pick up along the way? And, do I need to have significant knowledge of AI/ML/Cloud-computing/Data-Science, etc. to sustain myself in the long-run (long-run being defined as 15 years) <comment><USER2> I wouldn't build my career around a programming language. Languages are one of the least important factors in a programming career.

That said, if I had to choose a couple of languages for the rest of my career I would choose C, C++, and SQL. All of those have enjoyed huge success since they were introduced, with mountains of legacy code and plenty of new development.

Once you master C and C++ a lot of similar languages should be very easy to learn: Java, C#, Python, Go, Ruby, PHP, Swift... they are all more alike than not.

As a hiring manager I would not be very interested in someone who only worked in one or two languages, or only had language expertise to offer. A candidate stuck with two languages for years would send the wrong message for sure.

To build and sustain a long career you need to solve problems and add value. You need to get along with people and contribute positively to a team. You need to learn business domains, not just languages and tools. You need to be the person who says "I can figure it out," not the person who says "Leave me alone, I only want to write C++ code."

<comment><USER3> Yes, that is the conundrum of modern software engineering.

Companies would like to have people that are flexible and can jump on any language or technology while people have a natural need to sharpen their skills and build upon and enrich their existing knowledge.

Learning the Nth framework or language is neither of those. It's a grind, it's waste and it's always running only to stay in the same place. Programmers instinctually feel this, but the argument of flexibility is persuasive and market success does seem at least to correlate with breadth of skills.

To put it bluntly: many programmers don't give a crap about building successful products or producing value and instead want to become masters at what they do.

<comment><USER2> I agree, and well-put.

If we don't constantly hone our skills and learn new things we risk getting left behind. I think programmers can imagine that as a bigger threat than it is, but it can happen if one chooses a dead end to specialize in. Not getting in on a trend early presents the risk of getting left behind, especially in today's tech hiring process that often requires experience with relatively young languages and tools. That said I would still focus on the larger trends rather than specific languages or tools.

When I got into programming 40 years ago it was just barely possible to learn most of the major languages and tools used in business applications. Today that's not even possible for niches like web development. I read an interview with Bill Gates a while back. We're close to the same age. He said he just got lucky, born at the right time, and he got into programming as a teenager and grew up with the technology. He said it's much harder now to get started because there are so many places to start, so much to learn, and the languages and tools continue to drop on us faster than we can keep up. That can lead to despair, or over-specialization.

I now specialize in web applications, but I can't learn everything, so I don't try. I wait until something gets traction, when I start seeing demand from customers (rather than HN buzz or a mention in the TIOBE rankings), before I pay attention to it. Once a language or tool gets significant traction it tends to have a long lifespan: Unix, C, COBOL, SQL and relational databases, PHP, etc. I work mainly on legacy software so I don't have to stay bleeding edge. I know this seems like a boring "I give up" path, and I partly got here because of increasing age discrimination, but it let me relax a bit about keeping up with beta versions of Rust and React and focus more on what my customers actually want.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I run a low-level programming conference [0] with professionals who rely on C and C++ day-to-day or just low-level stuff in general.

While this is a plug, I genuinely believe joining the event and talking to them would help you. The networking / hallway effect, even virtually, shouldn't be underestimated either.

Good luck -- there's definitely lots of system software people needed, as someone else here pointed out.

[0] [https://www.handmade-seattle.com](https://www.handmade-seattle.com)

</comment><comment><USER5> So there is the _Problem Domain_ (specific subject expertise eg. ML, Big Data etc.) and there is the _Solution Domain_ (Languages, frameworks, platforms etc.) As a _Programmer_ you need to become good in the latter so as to apply it in any problem domain that you might be asked to do in a specific job. IMHO, a decent mastery of C/C++ is a must. Because that entire ecosystem allows you to work on everything from dinky little MCUs to honking big servers your opportunity space is large. They form the underlying bedrock and a "glue" between everything. The added benefit is that you are forced to understand how Computers really work. Thus you can fully focus on the problem without simultaneously struggling to map it into a specific language/framework/toolchain/HW. Of course in any non-trivial system, you may need to pick up different languages but that can be done as need arises (for similar type of imperative/OOP languages). C/C++ will never go away and will always be needed.

On the Problem Domain front, Cloud Computing and Data Science are here to stay. They are fundamental shifts in the computing space and hence one needs to become knowledgeable in them. I am not too gung-ho on the AI/ML fad since there is too much hype around its supposed benefits but of course you can study it for its intellectual challenge and apply as need arises.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your insights. A couple of answers talked about Rust - do you have an opinion on this language and its uses?

<comment><USER5> I know very little about Rust and have quite honestly, not bothered with it at all. It definitely does not have the market penetration of C/C++ and hence not proven itself in the "real world". You can do anything and everything in C/C++(multi-paradigm language). I will get more "bang for my time" by upgrading my skills to C++17/20 from C++98 than i ever will studying Rust.

From a current industry/job pov, i think the following are the most important ones; C/C++, Python, Java, SQL, Javascript and C# (from MS ecosystem). They allow you to tackle different possible domains.

Also given the prevalence of distributed systems; Erlang/Elixir are good to learn.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There are lots of jobs in systems software that almost all C and C++ with some scripting languages. I think in this field the most important things to understand are operating systems, Linux pthreads / syncronization, some hardware fundamentals so it memory coherence and fences make more sense.

</comment><comment><USER7> I agree with gregjor, and I'll just add that I recommend checking out these (highly entertaining) videos by Alex Stepanov, creator of the C++ STL: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHxtyCq_WDLXFAEA- lYoR...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHxtyCq_WDLXFAEA- lYoRNQIezL_vaSX-)

In the first few lectures he lays out what he thinks it takes to be a great programmer. I'm pretty confident that there will be a job market for great programmers for at least the next 15 years.

<comment><USER2> +1 for Stepanov.

Programmers who can solve problems, add value, and work with other people will always be in demand.

<comment><USER5> Not to be snarky, but this is just a oft-repeated platitude by the "Management" types who do not understand the psychology behind programming. Given the synergy between language and thought expression, mastery of a language is what will help you solve a problem and add value. If you just have a cursory knowledge of the language you will never get anything done.

<comment><USER2> I've been programming professionally for 40 years. Sometimes I'm in a manager or hiring position, but mostly (as a solo freelancer) I'm working directly with customers and solving business problems, using programming skills.

I'm very familiar with the psychology of programming. Read the classics: Weinberg's _The Psychology of Computer Programming_ , Tom DeMarco's _Peopleware_ , Brooks' _The Mythical Man-Month_. Notice that those books are all about programming but not about languages. Alistair Cockburn studied programming success and failures and concluded that team dynamics -- "soft" people skills -- are a first-order driver of project success. Brooks came to a similar conclusion.

Mastering several languages well enough to produce working code and (more important) participating in a team and business organization is a necessary precondition to calling yourself a programmer. But language mastery is not sufficient for long-term success (many of the languages and all of the tools and platforms I worked with in the 1970s and 80s are extinct today), nor is it sufficient to contribute at a senior level. By analogy a person can get through life just knowing how to hammer a nail, but they aren't going to work their way up to architect doing that, and eventually they'll get replaced by a nail gun.

<comment><USER5> >Sometimes I'm in a manager or hiring position, but mostly (as a solo freelancer) I'm working directly with customers and solving business problems, using programming skills.

I think this explains why we seem to be a little at cross purposes :-) Your job requires Programming but you are not "just" a Programmer (you are a one- person company). As i interpret it, "Programmer" is a specific role within an organization which demands more of technical skills and less of others. Their focus is to design/implement a module within a larger system and not bother about Customer Relationship, Sales etc. which are no doubt, important facets for a company but it is not their role to play (Brooks says the same thing with his "Surgical Team" metaphor). Most "average" people have enough innate "Soft Skills" to function in a team working towards a common objective which is usually sufficient for a programming role.

<comment><USER2> I have solo freelanced for a little over a decade. The prior almost 30 years of my career was mostly spent in cubicle farms with other programmers. I started programming professionally (meaning I got paid to do it) in 1977, to give some context. I started programming for free, on my own and in school, in 1974.

One thing I learned early on, thanks to some good mentors and managers, was that expanding my interests and skills out of programming would improve my chances of surviving a layoff or getting made obsolete. The most recent incident, at my last full-time job at an educational software company, illustrates that. Most of the programmers I worked with limited themselves to a couple of programming languages, hated meetings, did not interact with marketing or sales or management except under duress. When the company's fortunes turned and they started laying people off, I survived. I actually asked the CEO (my two direct managers had been laid off) why more senior people had lost their jobs but I hadn't. He told me that I was the only programmer who had taken an interest in the business, could work with marketing people, and had expanded my skills when needed (I had to learn enough Lisp in a hurry to deal with a product the company bought and had to integrate, no one else volunteered).

I've had similar experiences in my career, and I attribute it to being that one person, or one of a small number of programmers, who took the opportunity to learn the business domain and contribute in ways beyond just writing code. I survived at another company that replaced a lot of in-house code with a Salesforce-like product, probably because I was one of the only people in the programming group who didn't crap all over and moan about the management decision (I actually pointed out that our backlog of technical debt evaporated when the company moved to a third-party solution).

I still write code most of the time, but my customers (most of whom I've had for 3 years or more, a couple for a decade) tell me they appreciate that I take an interest in their business and help them solve _business_ problems, rather than just telling them that rewriting in Rust or whatever will solve everything, which most managers have heard (or tried to do) enough times by now to show some caution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My experience with our C/C++ devs: they do a wide variety of software. From old Windows programs, Embedded firmware with or without operating system, drivers, or extensive Linux based UI programming.

They are hard to replace, are tough problem solvers and deliver code in our toughest environments.

I think all this data/ai focus is nice, but I think hardware is the real deal breaker. Have an eye on Rust in all the regards.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you think Rust will get a leg up on C++ in the near future?

<comment><USER7> I think Rust will continue to gain more traction, but it has a looooong way to go to catch up to C++. Regardless, if someday all the jobs are in Rust, you can simply learn Rust and you'll be good to go. Knowledge of the fundamentals is 10x more valuable than knowledge of some particular flavor-of-the-month language.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've found in every job I've had the best results were from being good at mixing c++ code with other stuff. I know how to work with a lot of languages, but am not really an expert in any of them except C/cpp. Some examples: ios/android apps (objC/java) but the visualization part is cpp. Huge rendering pipelines in Python, with specialized converters and renderers in cpp. Large complicated web thing but it needs to encode video fast, so that part is in a standalone cpp tool. At least half of the job is getting good at knowing what parts to write in cpp and what to write in something else.

</comment><comment><USER10> I used to be a typical C++ programmer but lately I have mostly been using C/C++ with other languages.

\- C as a workaround for a Docker problem.

\- C++ with C# in Unity.

\- C++ in Android with Kotlin

As you hinted in the question, it is good to combine C++ with other skills.

If you want to stay purely in C++, then the automotive and aeronautical industries are heavy C++ users.

But as @gregjor says its best not to stick to one language. To add to that, I would recommend not to define yourself by the language you program in and instead be prepared to stay flexible and keep learning.

<comment><USER2> When I'm hiring and get a candidate who seems very focused on a language, or only has experience with one language, I'm probably not going to consider them.

It's not just the limited skill set. I've run into too many programmers who only want to work with the tools they know and like, which limits their usefulness in a team and in the business. Most companies write and use software as a tool to solve business problems, they aren't all that interested in catering to what programmers think is cool or fun.

I'm all for mastering language and tools, as many as you can, but if you want steady employment keep your eyes on what employers look for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> My 2 cents: anyone selling themselves as an X programmer would immediately lose points as far as I'm concerned if I were hiring. Programming languages are tools. Being a C programmer is like being a hammer woodworker. It makes no sense.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have seen C++ programmers jump from HFT to image processing to video compression and then to embedded systems.

They were completely different domains.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Depends on your goals to start with.

Regardless of what I think about C, it is undoubtly the king of UNIX/POSIX platforms and embedded development. So that might be an area you feel at home with.

Although C++ has lost the full stack role it once enjoyed with the 90's OS stacks, it is the current king of GPGPU programming (CUDA, Metal Shaders, SYCL and HLSL), HFT, what game engines use at their core.

Finally as many are pointing out, don't silo yourself with one language, most of use many languages at once.

For example using C++ alongside either Java or .NET is quite common.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. I feel more comfortable with C++ & Python. Somehow Java irritates me!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's more important to focus on the problem domain than the specific tools. Figure out where you would like to work and the kinds of problems you would like to solve, then evolve your technical skills with them.

C is mostly used these days for embedded systems. C++ for high performance network services. Higher level and more sophisticated languages are coming for those domains, e.g. Rust. Lua is interesting for embedded systems, and the Erlang VM for network services.

</comment><comment><USER14> Loads. If you're a programmer capable of programming well in C and C++, with a good grasp of algorithms, you'll have no trouble finding software jobs. Many of them will use other languages, but that's no great impediment. You'll have a lot of opportunity to learn them.

</comment><comment><USER15> Not sure if I'm too late to the party, but if you get into embedded bare metal and RTOS programming you can easily get 10+ years out of C/C++.

FWIW, I am on year 16 of my own C/C++ only career.

EDIT: Huh I'm old

</comment><comment><USER16> very good, neither of them is going anywhere any time soon...or ever. but it is mostly about what yo uwant to do and learning the language to get you there. c and c++ are the low-level languages so you will be doing low-level stuff. it might be fun or not, depends on you.

</comment><comment><USER17> I guess in embedded, C is still strong?

<comment><USER2> You guess right. That's not the only domain C gets used, though. I think of C as a fundamental skill to build on even if you seldom write C code.</comment></comment>


Facebook User Who Uploaded Pirated 'Deadpool' Copy Sentenced to 3 Weeks Prison - <AUTHOR> https://torrentfreak.com/facebook-user-who-uploaded-pirated-deadpool-copy-sentenced-to-3-weeks-prison-181005/ <comment><USER2> This is quite astonishing. He wasn't the guy who ripped the movie. He just shared it on fb. It was likely shared everywhere else to begin with, but he was the only one they could get because he put his real name on fb. So what's the lesson here ? Don't put your name on shit. It may seem obvious, but it is not so difficult to fall into this.

</comment><comment><USER3> I agree, he doesn't have to be jailed or something, it might have an effect on him and even to his life. He'll be consider convicted/felon rather than a violator. Fine would be enough but having him locked up even 3 weeks in prison will have an impact on his life. Much has been said, we don't even know if that man is aware of such crime just like that, maybe he just want to share it to others that haven't seen it with a good intention.

</comment><comment><USER4> For the law as written, sounds like a very fair sentence for the guilty.

<comment><USER5> Yeah... I don't agree that prison time is appropriate but, I do suppose the sentence was not too excessive. I suppose for most people a couple weeks in the clink is better than the 1,000,000+ fines we were seeing for copyright infringement in the 90's. Although since this is criminal I guess he could still have civil liability.

<comment><USER6> Spend a day in jail and then think about 3 weeks and whether it's "fair".

<comment><USER7> It's not that bad. 3 weeks means you're going to county jail (in California). 3 weeks in county is great. They feed you a bunch (5 times a day), you aren't there long enough that you are compelled to get a jail-time-job, and the weather is fair. There's a TV, books, paper, pens, cards, etc.

<comment><USER8> Jail: where you'll loose your current job and be destined for minimum wage for the rest of your life!

<comment><USER4> I know someone who served 15 years for murder and he makes $40k a year in one job, and is an investor in a sports bar.

<comment><USER9> The plural of anecdote isn't data.

<comment><USER4> Indeed. Of course, neither was the comment I was replying to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> is the amount of effort and money spent on the case worth the 3 week punishment he received? my point is they could have better avoided the whole trial and given him a deal to do community work etc instead of sending him to prison for 3 weeks for something which even though "a crime" is not exactly rape..

<comment><USER11> Your opinion of this would change if it was a case against someone who broke into your home and stole all your laptop/phone/tv etc. "Not exactly rape" either, and really not that much total damage but still the reason they procedure the case instead of just letting the criminals off easy is that it sets an example for the general public to avoid that sort of criminal behavior.</comment></comment>


Dun and Bradstreet teams up with Microsoft to reimagine the power of data - <AUTHOR> https://news.microsoft.com/2017/07/19/dun-bradstreet-teams-up-with-microsoft-to-reimagine-the-power-of-data-in-the-cloud/#7247r5Xopvz7ZodT.97 <comment><USER2> From my perspective, D&B is in the business of scaring SMBs into paying for a 'cleaner credit report' for thousands per year. Its always seemed like a big sham to me, and thats after 6 years of receiving taunting letters that 'my credit report has been requested, and for only $5,000, I can close more deals by looking stronger from a credit perspective!"

<comment><USER3> D&B made a terrible mistake in 2010. They let a startup in Malibu use the D&B name and take over some D&B services for small businesses. The startup called itself "Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp". Their business model involved cold-calling companies and giving the impression that unless they paid D&BCC, their credit rating would get worse. This caused terrible publicity for D&B, lawsuits, extortion charges[1] and eventually settlements. D&B finally bought D&BCC for $360 million in 2015.[2]

This destroyed the reputation of a once-respected company.

[1] [https://blogs.wsj.com/corporate- intelligence/2014/01/21/dun-...](https://blogs.wsj.com/corporate- intelligence/2014/01/21/dun-bradstreet-will-face-charges-over-credit-ratings/) [1] [http://labusinessjournal.com/news/2015/apr/29/dun- bradstreet...](http://labusinessjournal.com/news/2015/apr/29/dun-bradstreet- buys-back-former-unit/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> D&B is one of those companies that I wonder: Why are they still around? There should be a better way. They feel extremely legacy. Interfacing with their software and customer service infrastructure is always a painful experience for me.

<comment><USER5> Companies have no incentive to share information about themselves to anyone other than the government and credit agencies. So given that constraint what D&B does is the most efficient way. And they're already so dominant it's hard for competitors to break into their business. So they have monopoly power and can afford to have bad software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you do iOS development as an organisation, you need a D-U-N-S number, because Apple relies on them identifying organisations. And now Microsoft. Horror of horrors!

</comment><comment><USER7> I already do not use linkedin because their tools will trick you into doing things that have serious real world consequences. Now that Microsoft is connected with these people anything they make that sends back telemetry can potentially affect your credit report.

If there was ever a practical argument for the average person not using their products this it.

</comment><comment><USER8> So MSFT dynamics/ CRM products will now have a Data.com alternative (terrible) with prospecting functionality.

The heating of MSFT v SFDC continues.

</comment><comment><USER9> D&B and whole DUNS number racket are the living antithesis of innovation.

</comment><comment><USER10> flagged as PR release, no actual startup / tech content

</comment><comment><USER11> Meh.</comment>


Groovy Projects Intends to Join the Apache Software Foundation - <AUTHOR> http://glaforge.appspot.com/article/groovy-projects-intends-to-join-the-apache-software-foundation

<comment><USER2> Unless I've missed it, there still hasn't been an announcement on what Grails is going to do. I just assumed they'd announce in tandem.

<comment><AUTHOR> Per the mailing list Guillaume doesn't know whether Grails will be joining Apache as well. It is sort of strange because I always took the two projects to be a package deal. But I suppose they have two different managing groups.</comment></comment>


Rainer Weiss, Remembering the Little Room in the Plywood Palace - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/rainer-weiss-remembering-the-little-room-in-the-plywood-palace-20170615/ <comment><USER2> I miss building 20 and was sorry when it was torn down.</comment>


Be mindful of Clojure's binding + thread boundaries and lazy sequences - <AUTHOR> http://muckandbrass.com/web/display/~cemerick/2009/11/03/Be+mindful+of+Clojure%27s+binding

<comment><USER2> There is work in progress on adding some features to Clojure to allow child threads access to dynamically-bound variables:

<http://www.assembla.com/spaces/clojure/tickets/170>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Bah, my first submission and I submitted a broken link. This one's fixed. Sorry, folks. :-(</comment>


How to Increase your Facebook Fans - <AUTHOR> http://aspiredtechie.com/ways-to-increase-your-facebook-fans/1247/

<comment><USER2> #7. Advertise: It's only $25 to play the game and your ability to target users is amazing as you use their interests as keywords.</comment>


Softlayer Cloud: An operations guy's rant about really bad service - <AUTHOR> http://kovyrin.net/2011/05/02/cloudlayer-bad-story/

<comment><USER2> "This was enough and we've finally made the decision to give up and go back to real hardware only we control and manage. It took us more than a month of work, but we think we've got pretty good system built as the replacement for Softlayer cloud based solution."

This can't possibly be a good end solution! Haven't you read everyone else's blog posts and forum comments that there's _no possible way you can ever build anything as good as _insert_vendor_name_here_ has done with their cloud_?

There's _0_ chance that you'll be able to respond to a 2400% increase in traffic/usage in under 43 seconds! And you'll never ever be able to replicate around the globe instantly, and even if you could, it'll cost _so_ much more than _cloud_vendor_ because they have economies of scale you can never achieve. Ever. Seriously.

I just can't believe someone would consider - you know - owning and managing hardware that they control with their own SLAs and support people in place. _Where's your sense of cloudsourcing?_

<comment><USER3> There's 0 chance that you'll be able to respond to a 2400% increase in traffic/usage in under 43 seconds!

You don't need to be on a cloud to support that. Dedicated is so much cheaper/more powerful than typical cloud machines that you can have a surplus of machines ready for your bidding and still pay less than the cloud +end up with way more processing power.

Also, you don't need to own/mange the hardware- Hosting companies will lease it to you + repair it when things go wrong

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, even if one could scale up his web/app farms 2400% so fast, I'd really like to see a database that scales up/out this well :-)

<comment><USER4> You should look into NoSQL. It's web scale!

<comment><AUTHOR> MongoDb? ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow this post was like reading a post from myself in the not so distant future. We had the _exact_ same experience on SoftLayer CloudLayer. Random I/O failures, read-only mode and of course the most frustrating part was the support process around that.

We had a week last month where we would lose a couple boxes a day to this issue at which point we said enough was enough and switched completely over to dedicated boxes (still from SoftLayer). Everything has been smooth sailing since.

To their credit SoftLayer (and probably more specifically our awesome account rep) stepped up and refunded us our money we spent on the CloudLayer in March (after some cajoling on my part) but their general reaction is one of a company that's completely disjointed. When I got really pissed and started bitching on twitter in March I received inbound contacts from multiple people on their sales/marketing/account mgmt team. Unfortunately these people didn't seem to be well connected to each other and are even less connected from IT (so they could empathize but not really affect change) and "management" (this faceless part of the company which seems to love to cut off it's own nose to spite it's face).

The oddest (and probably most infuriating) part of the whole thing is how everyone at SoftLayer went to great lengths not to acknowledge that the CloudLayer product had issues. They always seemed shocked by my assertion that something was very wrong with CloudLayer product and asserted that I was alone in seeing these issues. To this day I've still not read a single "we know something's wrong and we're fixing it" post from them and that's the part that bothers me the most because it implies that their either incompetent or disingenious. Neither of which are a trait you want in an infrastructure provider.

<comment><AUTHOR> Damn, this is exactly what I was experiencing: when I'd ask "wtf? how comes your management would not see the trend" I' d constantly receive "you're the only customer experiencing this problem!" bullshit.

<comment><USER6> > ...bullshit.

Worse: Lie. Bald-face lie.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yet another opaque cloud, where a vendor uses some disingenuous language to disguise or confuse exactly how much resources you are actually getting for your money. Cores != hyperthreads. Don't get me started on "dynos" or "small", "large" and "extra large".

<comment><USER8> at least Heroku are pretty upfront about what a dyno is

<http://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/dynos> (linked from <http://www.heroku.com/pricing#1-0>)

<comment><USER7> Yeah but that doesn't really tell you anything about the underlying hardware. Your performance will vary depending on which nodes your dyno is running on. Hardware abstraction is a great thing, I just think that a little more transparency is in order.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone have any contacts at Softlayer?

This could be a great opportunity for them to explain how their business works, and give some potential customers insight into how they're working on things.

Or... it could be an opportunity for a marketing-speak filled cover-up which would damage their credibility further.

<comment><USER10> Seconded, I have been eying off their cloud service as a way to manage our server costs as we have some pretty wild but predictable swings in load throughout the day/week. We currently have dedicated hosting with Softlayer so a cloud in the same data centre as our existing databases etc would be great.

This however has made me pause, we are a small team and I like my sleep. A response would be awesome.

ps. pretty happy with Softlayer over all btw.

<comment><USER11> My data on SL Cloud is about 6 months old now - but it's seriously far behind their dedicated offerring. A poor control panel lacking vital functions, frequent downtime, and slow io mire it.

<comment><USER12> I am using SL Cloud currently and I can back up the reports of slow io and clumsy control panel. Uptime, however, has been great.

We're going to try moving to their "Bare Metal" cloud db offering To take advantage of local storage (10x faster writes in my tests)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I find it fascinating that cloud has become almost a synonym for rapid provisioning and VPS based systems. I think this is really short sighted. Having a great uptime or latency does not automatically follow from being able to spin up tons of servers. And being able to provision dedicated servers in hours is still pretty magic to me. If nothing else, focus on just provisioning is obscuring other critical issues like network connectivity and I/O bandwidth and latency.

mgkimsal is spot on with his (sarcastic) comment, you need to think for yourself.

</comment><comment><USER14> > So, many times a week we would wake up, see an instance dead (all critical > processes locked in D-state), call Softlayer, and spend hours (literally) to > bring it back up.

Wouldn't keepalived or heartbeat help with failover? If I see an instance died, I would delete it and start a new instance with a latest backed up image. I assume it would take ~15 minutes compared to relying on the support.

<comment><AUTHOR> The thing is, all our cloud instances were redundant so SL downtimes almost never caused real service disruptions on the site. But when one instance dies, there is a huge chance that other one (two, five, ten) will die soon as well. As for the automated kill/deploy scripts - really often even their own cloud- related portal features don't work (like when you try to restart/reset an instance and their APIs and portal just time out, etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> We had a good experience (from what I remember) with using Softlayer cloud to supplement our physical hardware when we had high load. We'd bring online ~5 cloud instances to handle the load.

</comment><comment><USER16> I've done some benchmarking of softlayer cloudlayer and their "SAN" back cloud servers have about the worst IO performance of any provider. Even the largest 16 and 32GB instances performed extremely poorly. EC2 EBS is a much better performing storage platform. Stay away from cloudlayer if you have anything even remotely IO intensive.

[http://blog.cloudharmony.com/2010/06/disk-io-benchmarking- in...](http://blog.cloudharmony.com/2010/06/disk-io-benchmarking-in- cloud.html)

</comment><comment><USER17> How is their cloud storage? I was comparing prices between services the other day and it seemed pretty competitive, but haven't yet tested latency and such. Wondered what other HNers have found compared to Amazon and Rackspace in terms of service/issues. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER18> I was running softlayer dedicated boxes for about 18 months. It was a much better experience than what looks like a horrible cloud setup.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, we run 100+ dedicated boxes for 3 years now and our experience is really great. Hence the rant - why couldn't they provide the same quality of service and support for their cloud offering?

<comment><USER19> Because cloud computing is a more complicated way of delivering CPU, memory, disk (space and performance) and network. Complicated always has a much lower likelihood of being better, more durable, cheaper or more reliable.

<comment><AUTHOR> You know, we never complained about cpu, memory, disk or network performance. The only real complaints were about the fact that no cloud instances had uptime of more than a week. I'm totally OK with shit being slow (we could always optimize or scale out), but when it is plain broken - this is when I need to wake up and fix things.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


DNA evidence uncovers major upheaval in Europe near end of last Ice Age - <AUTHOR> http://www.phys.org/news/2016-02-dna-evidence-uncovers-major-upheaval.html <comment><USER2> One area in history that really facinates me is Doggerland: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland)

A low lying land, which was abundant with hunter gatherers, that then become flooded.

Not much is know about these people because their lands are now under the north sea. However I do wonder how these people shaped our history.

The people of Doggerland could have migrated south as their lands become flooded. which would match the timeline.

</comment><comment><USER3> TLDR;

About 14,500 year ago, during this period of climatic upheaval, the descendants of the hunter-gatherers who survived through the Last Glacial Maximum were largely replaced by a population from another source.</comment>


Building in public: from first line of code to frontpage of Reddit - <AUTHOR> https://levels.io/hoodmaps/ <comment><USER2> This is a really excellent article about making and launching things. In particular the notes on how you changed your messaging for different communities is excellent.</comment>


17-year-old claims responsibility for Twitter worm  - <AUTHOR> http://www.bnonews.com/news/242.html <comment><USER2> While this is probably illegal, Twitter clearly does need people to help them fix their system. The last two years worth of my tweets got deleted yesterday for no reason. That's an outright embarrassment to them, and it makes me angry as well.

<comment><USER3> A quick calculation shows that all of Twitter's tweets come to about 260GB uncompressed (including 40 bytes of metadata for each tweet). The social graph would be about another 200GB. Given that the entire Twitter could fit on a high end laptop's drive, it's weird that they wouldn't have enough replication to avoid data loss. Even if you assume the data is doubled because of denormalization, it still seems fairly manageable.

<comment><USER4> You know we would love to see the calculation.

<comment><USER5> My guess is he's looking at a recent Twitter status_id from the public timeline[1] and multiplying it by 180 bytes. Wildly inaccurate no doubt.

1\. <http://twitter.com/public_timeline>

<comment><USER3> About a week ago there were 1.4 billion tweets and 27 million registered users, based on the tweet and user IDs. If anything, that number is slightly more than the real thing, because of deleted tweets and spam. I multiplied the tweets by 200 bytes (I added 40 bytes of metadata, and a 20 byte premium for any unicode tweets).

The size of the social graph is harder to estimate. Out of a sample of 459,000 "more influential" Twitter users, the average user follows 262 other twitterers. So the information in the social graph is about 30 GB, assuming 64-bit IDs. They potentially store an edges table of the form (user1_id,user2_id) (60GB), and a denormalized list of followers and friends for each user (30GB each). This comes to about 120GB (I revise my earlier number).

Yes, it's a very rough estimation, but it is in the right ballpark.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I know a large number of people here are against using vulnerabilities to do anything but in all honesty we need more of these kind of deviants (the ones who do little to no harm while exposing bugs and glitches). Sure we could all wish for a world where everyone followed rules and respected everyone else so much they could leave their doors unlocked but I think everyone would settle for more people like this.

That is if he was honest in the interview and what he did.

<comment><USER7> The problem with that assumption is the same problem people make with consumers; you're expecting them to be rational. This guy was launching a Twitter-clone and blatantly attacked the Twitter service. If it wasn't for the fear of repercussions in regard to JAIL TIME, I doubt he would have ever come clean.

"I am the person who coded the XSS which then acted as a worm when it auto updated a users profile and status, which then infected other users who viewed their profile. I did this out of boredom, to be honest. I usually like to find vulnerabilities within websites and try not to cause too much damage, but start a worm or something to give the developers an insight on the problem and while doing so, promoting myself or my website."

OH RLY?! Promoting yourself and your website by writing code that, despite his ridiculously naive belief, reflects what MILLIONS OF CONSUMERS COMPLETELY DESPISE in the form of disruptive viri, malware, spam, etc. Absolutely everything a consumer hates, he decided to be a marketing gimmick to attract people to his web site. In case he didn't get the memo, honest twitter-app developers have a difficult enough time convincing users to give them their l/p for value-added services that have no intention of creating disorder. Thanks for making that job easier.

Jesus h...

<comment><USER8> >he decided to be a marketing gimmick to attract people to his web site.

(1) At least it was only a marketing gimmick. Do you not know how much more damage a worm such as this could do if the author chose to?

(2) You make it sound like it was some well thought out scheme for him to become a millionaire. No, it was something he seems to have launched and it just caught fire and spread like crazy.

For a 17-year old, I would say this is pretty expected behavior.

Edit: Just read that the worm apparently deleted buncha tweets. If that is the case, that is pretty bad and crossing the "funny" line.

<comment><USER7> (3) If you're going to quote anybody, at least quote the source.

 _Mikeyy explained to BNO News that he created Stalk Daily from "boredom" and because he "needed a way to make money."_

Sounds to me like premeditated criminal intent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Yeah he probably should not have create the worm. I got bit by the worm today. But... the real problem is Twitter, they constantly demonstrate their inability to run a prime time website.

Outages, security issues, multiple times a day the page renders in different unusable ways. The only real reason they get a free pass is the site is mostly an entertainment product and has marginal usefulness.

I use the site to communicate but if it doesn't work I just go to Google trends to see what is happening or just ask people via skype whats going on.

</comment><comment><USER10> Can someone elaborate on what the following paragraph is trying to say? I can't seem to follow.

Through looking at the code behind Twitter, Mikeyy was able to produce a similar site to Twitter with some additional features. "I used my past knowledge to gain an insight on how Twitter worked and outputted to a user. Although both of the sites are coded in different languages I was able to give my site the same features as Twitter, while coding some of my own."

<comment><USER3> He built a Twitter clone (StalkDaily.com) which completely copies Twitter's HTML.

<comment><USER10> Understood, although a sentence like "Although both of the sites are coded in different languages I was able to give my site the same features as Twitter, while coding some of my own."

don't make any sense to me. It sounds like I'm either not understanding something or that it's not a very coherent sentence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Myspace was targeted by something similar a few years ago. The worm creator was hit with a lawsuit and "three years probation, 90 days community service and an undisclosed amount of restitution."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samy_(XSS)>

</comment><comment><USER12> While his hack was (semi-)cool, his motives and actions post-attack were not.

</comment><comment><USER13> Hadn't he put a message up yesterday saying he wasn't responsible?

<comment><USER14> Yeah.

 _"For everyone wondering, I did NOT promote and/or was involved with the spamming ON Twitter. All bad things you are hearing about this site is not true. Please reconsider as I am not the person who did this…StalkDaily is a website that follows the same functions as Twitter, except more advanced How? Well, instead of just adding an "update status", people can add pictures and videos. Then you can stalk them, so when they upload a video or picture, or comment someone, you'll know!"_

[http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/11/twitter-hit-by- stalkdai...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/11/twitter-hit-by-stalkdaily- worm/)

Pretty lame, if you ask me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's hard to tell if this is a credible news source.

<comment><USER14> The kid admitted to it on <http://www.stalkdaily.com/>

<comment><USER15> Thanks for the independent confirmation... call me paranoid, but I wasn't going to visit stalkdaily, an alleged source of XSS attacks, myself.

<comment><USER16> You could just, you know, log out first. Especially if you know exactly what it's going to do beforehand.

<comment><USER15> Log out from _every_ account that might have an XSS vulnerability? That's a tall order. You don't know what an proven-untrustworthy site is going to do before you visit.

I suppose I could visit with lynx/curl/etc., if my curiosity were strong enough.

But either of those strategies are a lot of trouble for very little payoff.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>