Reverse engineering the ARM1, ancestor of the iPhone's processor - <AUTHOR> http://www.righto.com/2015/12/reverse-engineering-arm1-ancestor-of.html <comment><USER2> It's quite interesting that a lack of resources ("given the small size of the design team at Acorn, a simple RISC chip was a practical choice") forced them to focus on simplicity. That simplicity then helped the chip use less power, which later left them well-positioned to capture a large share of a nascent battery-powered market.

<comment><USER3> Indeed! I think their open source business model had a lot to do with their success too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Possibly relevant - but in any event, interesting throughout - is Sophie Wilson's Computer History Museum interview: [http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102746190](http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102746190)

<comment><USER5> Somewhat related: Micro Men [1], a semi-documentary/drama movie about Sinclair's rivalry against Acorn computers in late 70s and early 80s. Sophie Wilson herself plays a quick cameo role towards the very end.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hco_Av2DJ8o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hco_Av2DJ8o)

<comment><USER6> They never were in the same space. Sir Clive made things cheap, Acorn made things well.

<comment><USER5> Their stories are very interconnected, though. If Christopher Curry hadn't worked for/with Sir Clive for 13+ years and learned about electronic calculators, probably he would have never discovered the upcoming wave of personal computers.

Also, it seems that Sir Clive's lack of vision for the future of computers, and his scattered mad-inventor-turned-businessman, were the main reasons for Cambridge Processing Unit Ltd - later Acorn Computers - being created in the first place.

Somewhat, the supercomputer we carry in our pockets these days are a direct consequence of Sir Clive's actions (or inactions).

<comment><USER6> I'll be more than happy to concede those points. It's a pity that Sir Clive didn't have the eye for quality as much as he had one for being totally original. Combined the two would have been deadly, the man was an absolute visionary.

He's still around (75 now).

<comment><USER5> Indeed. It seems he got bored too easily; sticking with one industry wasn't satisfying enough for him.

I guess _serial entrepreneur_ would be the buzzword these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think it would be fascinating if some of the older fab processes could be democratized and people could start experimenting with chip fab at home. Perhaps some tech out of the 3D printing field would be adaptable. No, you're not going to make something blazingly fast, but imagine printing your own ATMEGA328P or MSP430 or even 8086 clone.

<comment><USER8> I think running mixed lots of wafers is still a thing. However besides still being very expensive the other two issues are the software tools to lay out the chips. And then the cost of making the masks[1]. Friend of mine was working for a startup five years ago I think he said they needed 2.5 million for a small team + initial fab.

If you are interested you can get into programming FPGA's for a few grand at most. Far as I can tell looking on the outside of people doing both it's almost the same minus the chip layout manufacturing step. Also the design cycle time is hella faster and cheaper.

[1] I have no idea what masks cost now, but 15 years ago the company I worked for needed to change a metal mask and it cost $50k, I think a full set was $250,000.

<comment><USER9> I'm the founder of a startup taping out of first test chip in May... Getting 100 chips back on a shuttle run (Also known as a multi project wafer, where mask costs are shared by multiple companies) will cost us around $250,000. That is just the cost of these first 100 chips. Mask costs for a modern (eg 28nm) process start at about $2 Million, and go up from there pretty quickly, but is based on a lot of factors. Once the masks are made though, it is roughly $5K a wafer (where you can have 100s of dies on a wafer.

<comment><USER10> This sounds really interesting. I don't know what too much of this means though. Can you recommend books or in depth articles about the process of ic making?

<comment><USER11> The Wikipedia articles on semiconductor manufacturing are pretty good. Far as ASIC's, I struggled a while to find a great resource on all aspects of design, verification, and prototyping. Here's the best one I found for you:

[http://cc.ee.ntu.edu.tw/~ywchang/Courses/PD/EDA_Chapter1.pdf](http://cc.ee.ntu.edu.tw/~ywchang/Courses/PD/EDA_Chapter1.pdf)

On top of that, there's the cost of the photomasks that print the samples for testing (and later production). They range from tens of thousands on oldest nodes to millions on newer ones. Every time you screw up and change the design you buy another mask. Hence, avoidance of new nodes by low volume groups, design/verification tools that can cost $1mil/yr a person, and heavy re-use of components.

One trick that's popular is called multi-project wafers: a mask and chip run that's shared by several people with high cost split among them. This is available through groups like MOSIS and X-Fab. Lets you test your design in [more] affordable pieces. Plus, tooling and overall cost has come down for older nodes which are still highly usable for many scenarios:

[http://gsaglobal.org/forum/2009/1/articles_full_double.asp](http://gsaglobal.org/forum/2009/1/articles_full_double.asp)

Open tools are getting there slowly but not reliable or competitive enough. Here's the only open flow I know of:

[http://opencircuitdesign.com/qflow/](http://opencircuitdesign.com/qflow/)

So, overall barrier to entry for ASIC design is expensive expertise, high-cost of proprietary tools, and cost of masks (or MPW's). Going cheap on all these still gives several hundred thousand for a useful design on a good node. Simpler, single-purpose chips on oldest nodes can be less than that, though. Here's an example:

[http://www.planetanalog.com/author.asp?section_id=526&doc_id...](http://www.planetanalog.com/author.asp?section_id=526&doc_id=559519)

Hope all this helps your understanding of the situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Somewhat on topic, I wonder if Acorn makes even a penny from every smartphone made today (at least the non-intel ones).

Because that would be a lot of pennies. A true UK success story.

<comment><USER13> Acorn no longer exists, but ARM does charge royalties for their processor designs. Around 1% - 2.5%. They have revenue was £795.2 in 2014, so yes, that pennies and fractions of a penny do add up.

Edit: The cheapest ARM processor I found on Digikey is $0.35, Digikey must be buying them for under $0.15 so that royalties would be under 3/10ths of a cent.

<comment><USER14> Acorn _kinda_ exist but they were rebranded as Element 14 a few years back. In a slightly interesting twist, I own an Element 14 clone of the Beaglebone Black - which is powered by ... you guessed it, an ARM chip (built by TI). You can actually get RISC OS (the original OS for Acorn computers) images for the BBB - [http://beagleboard.org/project/riscos](http://beagleboard.org/project/riscos)

<comment><USER15> you are thinking about wrong element 14

acorn one was 'Element 14 Ltd', purchased by Broadcom, now Avago.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


First carbon dioxide battery is seven times more efficient than lithium-ion - <AUTHOR> https://www.adaptnetwork.com/tech/first-fully-rechargeable-carbon-dioxide-battery/ <comment><USER2> Miracle battery breakthrough du jour.

I've been watching this soap opera for years. These announcements keep coming, but nothing I can pop down to Fry's and pick some up.

Let me know when they're on the shelf at Fry's or Best Buy, or I can order them from Amazon.

<comment><USER3> Well, anything that does suddenly appear in stores or whatever, if you google it, you generally find that it's been in the process of development for 20 or 30 years.

So any given story about an innovation could be perfectly real, just not ready for prime time for a few decades.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can someone explain the science behind why a lithium carbon dioxide battery can at least potentially store seven times as much energy as a lithium-ion one?

</comment><comment><USER5> Requires molybdenum.

<comment><USER6> What kind of implications does that have? Is molybdenum very expensive to use in batteries?

<comment><USER7> It's quite a bit less common on earth than either Cobalt or Lithium, and currently pretty much all of it is used for metallurgy or lubrication. Roughly an order of magnitude less common than either Cobalt or Lithium (~20ppm vs. 1.5ppm).

EDIT: Also, per wiki, we produce almost 2x the amount per annum of Moly than we do of Cobalt, so presumably we're a lot closer to hitting a ceiling than we are with Cobalt/Lithium.

<comment><USER8> naive question but could we resolve this with asteroid mining?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Paper is linked at [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.201902518](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.201902518) / [https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.201902518](https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.201902518) , but is paywalled; only the supplementary info on construction is available. Does anyone with scihub access know what metric is being used for "seven times more efficient" \- charge/discharge cycle efficiency? Power/weight?

<comment><USER10> Aside, doi.org is redirecting to crack/malware site "thesoftin.com" both @188.8.131.52 and @188.8.131.52 report the same cloudflare url for this malware site (126.96.36.199). I dunno if a cloudflare bug or a hostile takeover of doi.org</comment></comment>


Robert Mercer Is Stepping Down as Co-CEO of Hedge Fund Renaissance Technologies - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/robert-mercer-leaving-rentech-breitbart-news-2017-11 <comment><USER2> _I supported Milo Yiannopoulos in the hope and expectation that his expression of views contrary to the social mainstream and his spotlighting of the hypocrisy of those who would close down free speech in the name of political correctness would promote the type of open debate and freedom of thought that is being throttled on many American college campuses today._

'The Overton window made me mad, so I threw a brick through it!'</comment>


Mathematical Limits to Software Estimation (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://scribblethink.org/Work/Softestim/softestim.html <comment><USER2> His point is that _" Objectively_ estimating program size/complexity is not possible." The 'objectively' qualifier is important.

And while that's true, it's not a very useful result. There is a large subset of programs that _are_ easy to estimate. If someone says, "write 20 standard CRUD services," most people can accurately estimate how long that will take. There is nothing tricky there. If someone says, "write a program to solve Goldbach's conjecture," then it is true, you can't estimate how long that will take (maybe someone can, I don't know how).

In practice, for the kinds of tasks programmers usually do, experience shows that 90% of the time we can estimate correctly.

<comment><USER3> Imagine you've lost your keys. You've already looked everywhere for them. Now how long will it take you to find them? This what software estimation feels like to me. Simple tasks regularly turn into "find out why this simple code doesn't work". From there, you have no idea whether the solution will come in minutes, weeks, months or never.

It is still usually necessary to at least try to estimate as well as we can. And the higher level the task, the more the "detailed crap" averages out. But it is still not easy. And delivering software on time is usually as much about changing the spec as it is about doing the coding.

<comment><USER4> I don't even know that "detailed crap" averages out, because crap happens at all scales.

For example: we launched into an embedded project and were ticking along nicely, and suddenly discovered that we actually had to program a whole extra device, which we had thought came with all built-in firmware.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Estimation is a problem of horizons. Before you begin, the solution is N horizons away. You don't know what N is, and you don't know what's over the first horizon.

<comment><USER6> That is the problem of any-old-estimation-problem.

I think that the way a software engineering estimation problem _feels_ is that you begin with N component that will combine to create the cost. You add or multiply the components together to get your estimate. It seems reasonable. Then suddenly one of those components turns out to contribute ten times as much to the cost and your estimate is doubly shot, shot in terms of time and shot in terms of what you will be spending your time on. These two parts things together tend to make bosses and customers unhappy.

It would be nice if one had mathematical insight into such process. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how much big-O-type analyses give us, since they're worst case scenarios. By the halting problem, we know there's no general way to determine if a given program we start is going to crash. Yet we produce mostly bug-free programs, at least sometimes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Software creation is a process in which humans constantly make decisions. Each decision has the potential to impact the scope. A lot of decisions have limited impact and may be estimated. Some decisions at the margin have the potential to significantly alter and blow up the scope. Not all critical decisions can be identified in time and there is a good chance of unforeseen consequences. Containing those is vital.

For large scale software projects management and governance are often the determining factors for quality, cost and timeliness.

</comment><comment><USER8> I posted a link to this yesterday in the thread Project delays: why good software estimates are impossible (2015):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12711732](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12711732)</comment>


Hugo 0.19 Released: Native Emacs Org-Mode Support - <AUTHOR> http://bepsays.com/en/2017/02/27/hugo-019/ <comment><USER2> With the new nested parameters pages become very powerful. There were a few ways to hack around the single list of parameters, but this permits building pretty strongly-logic'ed pages. Having a template be able to respond to arbitrary depths of parameters is fantastic.

And the other improvements look great too. Thanks a lot team!

</comment><comment><USER3> Great job with this release! Looking forward to directly adding org-mode based content instead of markdown.</comment>


Hackers Exploit WhatsApp Vulnerability to Listen in on Users - <AUTHOR> https://digit.fyi/whatsapp-confirms-hack/ <comment><USER2> Extensive discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19904581](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19904581)</comment>


Mars Curiosity Descent - Ultra HD 30fps Smooth-Motion - <AUTHOR> http://youtu.be/Esj5juUzhpU

<comment><USER2> An absolutely extraordinary feat of video editing. This isn't just from mere "splicing together" of photos; the original source is only 4fps and with much less color quality.

</comment><comment><USER3> With soundtrack: <http://tinyurl.com/924zl5u> (youtubedoubler, john murphy - surface of the sun and the above video)

</comment><comment><USER4> Since this is made from splicing together all the photos, I assume then that the sounds are just being faked?

<comment><USER5> Yes, the sound is fake. There is sound on Mars, though very quiet from our perspective, but the rover (and especially the lander) doesn't have a microphone.

I did find this totally cool video that uses the status tones the lander sent back to earth, though: [http://www.space.com/17110-screaming-down-to-mars-how- curios...](http://www.space.com/17110-screaming-down-to-mars-how-curiosity-s- descent-sounded-video.html)

<comment><USER4> Ha, I guess that makes sense.</comment></comment></comment>


Mini Web - Mini-WWW http://mini-www.com/blog/mini_web/

<comment><USER3> How did this obvious troll make it to the front page of Hacker News? And why is anyone taking this seriously? The post is almost incoherent.

pg might want to investigate how exactly an account created 3 hours ago got 25 votes for such a bizarre Time-Cube-ish link.

<comment><USER4> Hard to tell right now, 25 upvotes is quite a bit, but all it really takes is about 4 or so in the first couple of minutes for anything at all to get a bunch more upvotes, I've seen that often enough. If it had a bunch of upvotes in two minutes or so that would be definitely suspect. Even PGs posts don't go that fast, so that's a good indicator something is fishy.

The <http://mini-> news.com/ (url messed up on purpose) seems to be an SEO spam site, so you're probably right.

<comment> Mini-WWW Hey, jacquesm, honestly, - have you EVER VISITED the <http://mini-> news.com/ (url messed up on purpose) you mentioned so angry? Does it look like a spam site full of ads? Absolutely not! The spam is to tell people you don't know for sure!

<comment><USER4> > have you EVER VISITED the <http://mini-> news.com/ (url messed up on > purpose) you mentioned so angry?

Actually, yes, I looked at it before I wrote that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like the idea. The execution is suspect.

The site seems cluttered. The mixture of typefaces, italics, and colors grate against everything I've come to love about minimal sites.

If this is what is ahead for the minimal web, count me out.

<comment> Mini-WWW Thank you, Lukeqsee! The execution is just in early ALPHA stage. I even run it on a cheapest shared web account (more powerful dedicated server and search soft are to be in October only). As for what minimal page is, I would tell you I've seen a LOT of websites that call themselves Galleries (Top Lists, or whatever) for MINIMAL Webpages, where only few of their links point to really minimal ones. No matter what the name for the Minimal pages could be, I see them as SMALL and FAST ONLY!

<comment><USER5> If that "Thank you" was sincere: you're welcome. If it's not, sorry, I'm only trying to help.

My definition of a minimal webpage: a design that doesn't get in the way of it's content.

Unfortunately your current font-* styles get in the way of your content.

It's that simple.

It doesn't matter what web server you use, or how _you_ define a minimal page. If I can't read your content, I'm not going to take stock in what it's trying to present.

<comment> Mini-WWW My "Thank you" was sincere! I launched the Mini-WWW Search Engine because I SIMPLY COULD NOT _READ_ many beautiful websites their developers still very proud of. So, that's my first criteria for the Ideal Minimal Webpage, - <AUTHOR> one that it's EASY FOR DOWNLOADING!!! I'm also sorry that you don't like my current fonts and styles (in fact, the only serious drawback about them I know is that fonts are with fixed size). Tastes differ, and although I accept my pages may not be excellent, they are very good in emphasizing idea of SIMPLICITY! More important, - they LOAD FAST!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For instant Mini-Web, just use this browser:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_%28web_browser%29>

<comment><USER7> For even better instant Mini-Web, just use Instapaper.

<comment> Mini-WWW As far as I remember, the Instapaper simply saves web pages for reading later. Although it may somehow facilitate easy reading of long text content (e.g., by moving it into another reading platform like Kindle), but not too much.

<comment><USER8> When you click on a "Text" button in Instapaper you get a simple uncluttered textual representation of the page.

<comment> Mini-WWW Unlike Mini-WWW, the problem with Instapaper is the resulting format is the SAME for all pages! It's rather boring world!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> <http://mini-news.com/2008/04/bye_bye_ads/>

Reading that article made me stop caring in any way about this submission.

<comment><USER10> Agreed, there are some crank elements to this, but it's better to give people the benefit of the doubt.

If he re-tools this to some kind of sever-side Readability, a good chunk of people who can't use bookmarklets will jump on board.

<comment><USER11> "sever-side Readability"

Maybe add NoScript like features as well.

Does anything like that exist?

<comment><USER12> You would use? Seems "simple": crawl webpages, remove html tags from source, wrap blocks of newlines around <p>s, style accordingly (good, readable font and generous white spacing).

Depending on the execution, this could be characterized as stealing other people's content, but anyway, are the above mentioned "features" what you want?

<comment><USER11> It was just a thought - I find myself using Readability a lot and imagine there might be some interesting things that could be done with it (e.g. better support for things like iPads).

<comment> Mini-WWW How one can use Readability for the cluttered site like Digg, if the latter practically stops low powered PCs at the very first stage, - downloading!!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Although launched with a zero funding, the business model for the Mini-WWW > is highly scalable: The more you invest into it, the more reviwers can be > hired.

I don't think this is what we usually mean by scalability. If you find a good algorithm to measure the "simplicity" of a page, it could be useful, but relying on a manual review process is a recipe for failure.

<comment> Mini-WWW Relying on a manual review process would be a failure only in the case you want to include into your search engine the whole Web. In contrast, the proposed niche is for a small Sub-Web, where a slow, - yet quality! - <USER2> reviewing would be quite sufficient: <http://mini-www.com/blog/next_big_thing- be_small/>

Use Google to access the Web. And Mini-WWW for the "Mini Web"

<comment><USER13> The problem is that such a slow reviewing process means that the results are likely bad, because only manually submitted pages are indexed. For example:

<http://mini-www.com/search/?find=c%2B%2B>

The results are currently terrible, and at $1 per page indexing fee, or a backlink to mini-www.com required I expect the results will stay bad for a long time, perhaps forever.

<comment> Mini-WWW Who said the actual implementation for the Mini-WWW search would be the same next week? And WHO SAID THE MINIMAL INTRODUCTION PRICE OF $1 IS FOREVER?!!

<comment><USER8> Don't shout, please.

<comment> Mini-WWW OK, I will not :-) I'm somewhat confused why some my answers I think are very important for this topic are down-voted ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So what you want to do is to create a minimalist web? By working out what we could remove and still leave a reasonable functioning core?

Having used the Web since '92 I can see the attraction of that :-)

What practical steps do you see for realizing such a vision?

<comment> Mini-WWW Rather, I want to highlight existing Minimal sub-Web through introducing the special niche Search Engine <http://Mini-WWW.com>! Hopefully, it can encourage webmasters to create more USABLE pages, like mobile or RSS movement. But to get to that point the project must become a really popular service!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> combine this with the semantic web and we would have a truly ubiquitous computing capable information architecture.

why not start it in ipv6 sphere only.

<comment><USER15> Your first sentence is buzzworded to hell. Do you mean a structured database of all published facts and opinions? Because I'd say the facts worth having are in wikipedia, or should be, so that's the place to work on semantics of facts, and opinions worth hearing are distributed by journalists, so work out how to make the New York Times semantic and work down from there.

As to your second question, because that would be a very stupid and bloody- minded idea. In order to make a simple web everyone can use it might just make sense to do it over a transport everyone can reliably and easily access, i.e. ipv4. Why the hell would you want to restrict it? ipv6 is not magic, just a complex new protocol for routing internet traffic that is not yet rolled out, and has no particular benefits for web transactions. It won't affect the web (that is, HTML served over HTTP) a damm.

<comment><USER8> I think you are taking this too seriously, the post looks like a good irony which has been down-voted because most people just didn't get it.

<comment><USER14> thanks :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Solving Towers of Hanoi with TLA+ - <AUTHOR> http://matt-harrison.com/solving-towers-of-hanoi-with-tla/ <comment><USER2> Great</comment>


Tumblr's stumbles under Yahoo - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2016/06/15/how-yahoo-derailed-tumblr/ <comment><USER2> Their ad strategy sure did suck. I know this because I really wanted to advertise on Tumblr since many of their users were already posting about my startup and driving tons of traffic (tens of thousands of page views, from posts with 100k+ notes) to my website.

I contacted their ad team and was told the minimum ad buy was $25k. I explained the situation and said that given the popularity of our product among the Tumblr community, I had no doubt we could find a revenue-positive way to advertise on Tumblr, but that we couldn't commit to $25k sight-unseen. I never heard back from them.

Considering how easy it is to advertise on Google or FB with just a couple bucks, I was shocked that Tumblr is so inflexible. I guess it's not surprising they couldn't get to $100M in ad revenue, since they'll only talk to companies that can afford $25k experiments.

<comment><USER3> Not diminishing your situation, but respectfully, you likely weren't the target customer-base for their ad sales team at that stage of the game. Sounds like your budget was too low, and you're a direct response advertiser (from the "revenue-positive" comment). That $25k min. spend is a sales qualifier and looks like it was successful in filtering you out in favor of advertisers who don't bat an eye at testing something new for $25k sight-unseen.

With big media properties that are being cleaned up, a lot of that early focus is typically on big brands who are doing large branding efforts that have cool and sexy creative and are super customized to the platform. They want to reach lots of people, and the property in turn wants to leverage it as a large case study to attract other brand advertisers.

What you were looking for would not help meet their objectives because your budget was likely too small, and because they are a new display-driven property, they don't want advertisers focused on performance. Why? Well, most performance advertisers are not super savvy with how they look at display performance, and would be looking at it from a last click measurement standpoint where it would almost certainly bomb (like most display, social, etc.). Big brands doing branding plays are looking for reach and engagement (or post-impression performance metrics in some cases). This is better for Tumblr for purposes of building case studies and selling in to other big brands, because big brands tend to not care as much about overpriced CPMs, which means more margin for Tumblr.

Again, down the line it might have made sense that you could make a lot of money for your brand and might have been a good fit, but realistically, you just weren't their target. Same reason FB weeded out all the crappy affiliate ads to the best of their ability and started pushing big brands for engagement-based stuff.

<comment><USER4> > That $25k min. spend is a sales qualifier and looks like it was successful > in filtering you out...

This sounds like an effective way for any company dependent on sales to fail. Especially online advertising sales where your incremental cost is approximately zero.

There should be a term for management that makes this mistake.

<comment><USER3> I disagree entirely. Particularly for a big display platform like Tumblr, that had a reputation for tons of porn and generally low-quality impressions, big companies need to see other big companies take the risk and do cool branding stuff that gets talked about. That takes investment, and means that you need to focus all of your business efforts in attracting that target, and then making sure they are successful.

With small budget direct response advertisers, all too often you get people who promise they will spend more if it is profitable, but because they don't know how to properly value display (see my last click comment) they won't see last click success, and will thus not be a repeat advertiser. Beyond that, they will also contribute to spreading the word that Tumblr is not a quality inventory source, which could kill them before they had a chance to really shine.

If I'm trying to grow ad sales on a property as large as Tumblr with the reputation it had, the first thing I'm going to do is make it clear that the focus is first and foremost on big brands and not the little guy. That's what brings in the dollars, not the latter. The little guys come in once you are already at scale with proven success for big brands.

Once that is successful with your limited sales resources, then and only then do you create a self-serve platform for small direct response advertisers with minimal 1:1 contact (ala AdWords, Bing Ads, etc.).

You need to think of the long game and think of where you would prioritize your resources. Would you rather get a small inconsistent cashflow of people who are likely to talk crap about your inventory because they don't know how to properly measure it if they don't see a positive ROI after spending a couple grand? Or would you rather focus all your efforts on big brands who know what they are doing, have the budget to do highly visible tests, and aren't afraid to "waste" 10's of thousands of dollars testing something new that might not work out?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article wholly ignores the rampant technical problems with Tumblr and the way that every "fix" for them makes the platform worse. Whether it's removing the ability to post reply chains, the completely broken Web and mobile interfaces, the haphazard rollout of new features, the sudden and unhelpful modifications to the search function's behavior, or the continuous useless pushes for people who are just reading blogs to instead make a Tumblr of their own, the site is far, far off track from where it should be development-wise. Yeah, ads are annoying, and I can't imagine Yahoo has helped matters, but I think the feelings of Tumblr's user base on how it's being modified are a large contributing factor in its decline.

Another factor is the failure of Tumblr's staff to appreciate the diversity of ways Tumblr can be used: as a picture blog, as a server status log, as a way of communicating person to person, as a way of communicating person to corporation, as a way of creating funny writing projects or online roleplaying, or just as a content aggregator. All of these are valuable uses of the platform. Not all of them are ever accepted or catered to, in fact, most of them are ignored.

I'd like to see more on why Tumblr's dev team does what it does than on why its ads team sucks.

<comment><USER6> This comment is just plain false. Pretty much every feature has been objectively improved since Yahoo acquisition.

\- search is actually usable now, was completely useless before acquisition

\- new messaging features are better than stuff they had before

\- rich text editor better than the one they had before (except if you want to edit in HTML or Markdown in which case it completely sucks now, but very few people probably post in HTML or Markdown)

\- replies, I have hardly ever seen them used before they were removed. in any case, the new implementation is much better

\- should I even mention the freaking video player?

Of course the users will complain, but I mean this is Tumblr, the userbase will complain about everything.

<comment><USER5> You didn't address most of the items I listed, but I will note for fairness' sake that as I said, I'm a former user. I left in November or so. I've heard good things about messaging, but not anything else you mention.

Replies were HEAVILY used by my part of the Tumblr community, and the changes to them really screwed things up for us. Like I said, lots of use cases for the site.

I certainly don't feel on the whole that tumblr was better when I stopped using it than it was when I started. Even if that is true now, it wasn't true for a long time, so my argument remains the same: its decline is due to inadequate tech work for a long period of time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yahoo derailed Tumblr? Ok, sure.

Just remember where it was when Yahoo acquired it.. $13m in revenue and $25m in expenses for 2012 (net loss of $12m for the year). With $125m raised, and $114m of debt on the books.

Yahoo acquired them just a few months after they announced these results for 2012.

It's easy to blame Yahoo for Tumblr's problems.. but Tumblr wasn't Twitter or Instagram. It was a tiny business (in comparison).. that without Yahoo very well could have been out of business by now.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-tumblrs-total- revenue-f...](http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-tumblrs-total-revenue- for-2012-and-how-it-will-make-a-profit-in-2013-2013-1)

<comment><USER8> Context is important. Tumblr had a lot of porn blogs, sure, but most people on it were 15-25-year-olds running personal blogs, interest blogs, and building communities. It was essentially the new Livejournal, but with Twitter-style reblogs.

Yahoo knew this, and wanted this demographic for their ad ecosystem. They often thought of themselves as a 'media company', and they liked the creative aspects of the community. They also, wisely, knew that Tumblr users would never accept being forced into using a Yahoo account, so they had to keep the userbases separate.

But this meant they couldn't use Tumblr to build Yahoo's social presence and its brand. They'd harvest some analytics, display some very loosely targeted ads to people highly averse to ads, but that mercantilist relationship was all was to be. In that light, they clearly overspent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Gosh the writing is _so_ biased I couldn't finish the article.

Stating something as fact (oh, a source disputed this), artful use of connotation ("a yahoo source played it off..."), and lastly (where I stopped reading), calling the founder of Tumblr s "20-something". You don't get to call a 29 year old a "20-something".

Feels overly sensationalized, even if yahoo is where start ups go to die.

<comment><USER10> What would you call him then? 30-something?

<comment><USER11> He's pre-30.

<comment><USER12> I feel like pre-30 valuation is the new company metric in SV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I love Tumblr, but this article is a bit distorted from reality.

Tumblr was failing to execute on the revenue side of their business, both before their acquisition, and then after.

At some point, Tumblr had to try and become a business and not just a website.

This article points blame at Marissa, but shouldn't it really be pointing at David, or a team of leaders?

<comment><USER14> I agree with the sentiment that the article reads as if "This is Yahoo's fault" \- not to say they didn't play a role as the parent company. Bottom line here is that Tumblr (with or without Yahoo) failed to monetize their platform.

This line stuck out to me as very true reflection of what the Valley sometimes looks like:

> Tumblr's stumbles under Yahoo may go down as a cautionary tale, both for the > perils of a large corporation buying a hot startup and for Silicon Valley's > belief that any social network reaching hundreds of millions of people will > inevitably generate boatloads of cash one day.

There was talk of "We'll make it an advertising platform" but did anyone really ask the Tumblr team "How" ? (I'd love to hear info from any insiders on HN)

Makes me wonder how many times a day the execs at Facebook wonder how they can ever monetize expensive companies like Whatsapp.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash I suspect purchases such as whatsapp to Facebook were less about opening up new revenue streams, and more about locking in potential competitors.

Not everybody uses their Facebook account but they may be more prolific on Instagram. They might not like being constantly monitored by Facebook Messenger but even with WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption, Facebook is still provided with valuable metadata, and the more diverse data sources, the more metadata resembles regular, easily interpretable data.

It's like Microsoft buying LinkedIn: the market was clearly bearish on the company, but a tech Titan like Microsoft has a lot to gain by keeping its finger on the pulse of potential hires around the world - with a crucial head- start before headhunters can find star performers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Mergers are hard, and "big company buys small company and derails it" is a common story, in every industry.

Some historians of the automobile industry (Paul Ingrassia) suggest that Oldsmobile would have gone much further if it had remained an independent company. Wikipedia points out it was the #1 car company, shortly before it was bought:

"In 1901, the company produced 425 cars, making it the first high-volume gasoline-powered automobile manufacturer. (Electric car manufacturers such as Columbia Electric and steam powered car manufacturers such as Locomobile had higher volumes a few years earlier). Oldsmobile became the top selling car company in the United States for a few years around 1903-4... General Motors purchased the company in 1908."

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

John F. Love points out that in mid 1960s Burger King was building twice as many restaurants as McDonalds, and was on track to surpass McDonalds by the end of the 60s. At that time, Burger King had very smart management. However, Burger King was then bought by Hormel, who regarded it as simply a place to dump surplus beef that couldn't be sold through other channels. And that is why McDonalds is the #1 burger company.

The software industry is full of such stories. Roomkey.com (it's pre-purchase name was Hotelicopter) might have transformed the hotel industry, but it was bought by a joint venture of Choice Hotels, Hilton Worldwide, Hyatt Hotels Corporation, InterContinental Hotels Group, Marriott International, and Wyndham Worldwide. This joint venture regards Roomkey merely as a bargaining chip to get better rates from Expedia ("Give us better rates or we will invest more in Roomkey".)

I could try to list all the innovative startups that Cisco has bought, cannibalized, and then discarded, but it would take me all day.

Mergers are the main way that innovation is destroyed in our society. Over and over again small startups are bought, and then killed by the different needs of the new owners.

<comment><USER16> I don't want to be a negative nancy here, but does anyone have any examples, preferably in the past 10 years, where a company with cool tech was acquired and did even better because of the acquisition? A company which really thrived and wouldn't have without being acquired? Things like Nest make me cynical that the vast majority of acquisitions end up destroying all the value created before the acquisition by the acquiree.

Edit: Android might be an example acquisition success story.

<comment><USER8> Android, Youtube, DoubleClick, Summize (to Twitter) [1], Instagram, WhatsApp

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/2008/7/twitter-buys- summize-f...](http://www.businessinsider.com/2008/7/twitter-buys-summize-for- about-15m-stock-and-cash)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Some knew the name, but they were hoping to be bought by a trendier tech > company...

It didn't occur to me that millennials could be oblivious to the existence of Yahoo. (Afterall, millions of people still use Yahoo Mail, Flickr, etc.)

> Karp, a coder at heart, is described by colleagues as "openly hostile" to > traditional advertising.

I suspect Tumblr users, much like Reddiors, are allergic to advertisements.

> Traditional marketers... were also skittish about some of the raunchier > user-generated content on Tumblr.

No shit. In many respects, Tumblr is essentially a bootleg porn site. From Day One, people have cited Tumblr's reliance on "adult content" as a major problem for Yahoo. I thought the would just ban adult content, but then I realized that they can't because they would lose a significant chunk of their userbase.

</comment><comment><USER18> I said it on the day of the acquisition and I'll say it again: Tumblr is the geocities of 2014. Tumblr wasn't even a good company before the acquisition.

<comment><USER19> That means we can expect a shut-down any moment now, given that that's what Yahoo! did to the original Geocities.

<comment><USER20> We should get to work right away building an archive. Gotta do it now, before the shutdown hits! We can call it "Bumblr," and it will memorialize all the worthwhile commentary that was ever made on Tumblr. (This should be a megabyte or two of text that we can upload to mega.com.) On the other hand, the Tumblr archive for porn will be called "Fumblr" and it will be hosted in Brazil.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Always loved Tumblr as a porn site and I am not kidding. I found Tumblr's porn blog far excellent in quality than was ad infested, pop-up opening porn websites.

</comment><comment><USER22> Is it just me or is the article desperately trying to find examples of how Yahoo hurt Tumblr only to come up with several trivial gaffes? I once worked in a company damaged by acquisition and it looked nothing like this. Tumblr simply didn't become the exceptional miracle some hoped for - and that is it.

</comment><comment><USER23> I wonder how much the two switches in ad teams correlate to the weird period of time when the ads on Tumblr were about 100% for a weird choose your own adventure cartoon thing?

</comment><comment><USER24> Several users have complained about this article being overly biased, so we've replaced the one bit of it we can (its title on HN) with a slightly more neutral phrase from the text.

</comment><comment><USER25> My issue with tumblr is that the search interface for it is awful and google/bing miss a lot of posts.

</comment><comment><USER26> Tumblr deserves it. The format encourages one-up-manship that leads toward every escalating victimization and identity crises in its users.</comment>


Truly New Marketing Trends - <AUTHOR> https://capitalandgrowth.org/answers/2981317/What-are-a-few-truly-new-marketing-trends <comment><USER2> Well chatbots I won't say it is a really new marketing trend since they have been there for quite some time now, but their capabilities in setting up successful customer support agents is definitely a new trend.

The problem though is that setting up a custom AI chatbot is so annoying. With there being so many tools out there which all seem to miss a feature that you REALLY need. Most times they all force you to pay to have that "Powered by…." imprint removed and AI doesn't work.

How about a done-for-you solution? These Chatifai guys set up a simple custom chatbot for just 19$/m in 72 hours after placing your order! [https://chatifai.datawisepro.com](https://chatifai.datawisepro.com)</comment>


YouTube Launches Multi-Angle Video Experiment - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/04/youtube-launches-multi-angle-video-experiment/ <comment><USER2> Do I have to to the work of editing the video myself to be able to watch it? When watching this video, you have to change to camera angle yourself to be able to see the presenter introducing the artist. I think I'd prefer to have someone chose the camera angels for in advance, but let me override ...if I cared to do so. I would love to see multi angle videos for sporting events.

[https://www.youtube.com/user/MadilynBailey/ChooseYourView](https://www.youtube.com/user/MadilynBailey/ChooseYourView)</comment>


In your code editor, dock your sidebar to the right - <AUTHOR> https://ericlbarnes.com/2020/02/20/in-your-code-editor-dock-your-sidebar-to-the-right/ <comment><USER2> This title is a garden-path sentence. In the context of computer UI, "dock" is usually a noun. I had to read it a couple of times before I understood what was meant.

Swapping the clauses or using a comma would have clarified everything

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I just fixed that.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are your pain points using react native - <AUTHOR> Hi HNers
In three weeks, my internship will end and before I start a job, I have taken one month and an half to do open source.
I'm willing to focus on react-native pain-points or easy stuff that takes outerly long time to do.
My ideas so far :
- a RN library of components that is based on bulma.io so I don't recreate styled components evrytime
- a RN library that, given a list of fields create a bunch of react-native-router-flux scene, put some textInput with app side validation and generate a apollo-server url route that allow progressive creation of a ressource, as far as the user fill the form. That prevent me from taking a full week to write a form.
- a react-native CLI, that generate components, containers and so on, a little bit like redux-cli
I will be thrilled to have other ideas/pain-points.
Thanks. <comment><USER2> Hey mate navigation is still a pain point for RN. This OS project [https://github.com/aksonov/react-native-router- flux/](https://github.com/aksonov/react-native-router-flux/) is one of the more popular alternative ones and has many open issues. I am sure a-lot of people will be appreciative of any help. Thanks</comment>


Brain Functions Can't Be Pinpointed Like Towns on a Map; They're Like a Symphony - <AUTHOR> http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/health-and-human-body/human-body/mind-brain/ <comment><USER2> Can someone direct me to some link, if there's any which has all this article in one page. I might just get lost in 14 pages.

<comment><USER3> Open the page in print preview mode, all the content will be without annoying pagingation and ads.

e.g. Firefox: File > Print Preview</comment></comment>


Berkeley researchers find brain differences between rich and poor kids - <AUTHOR> http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2008/12/02_cortex.shtml

<comment><USER2> "9- and 10-year-olds differing only in socioeconomic status"

I suspect differing in socioeconomic status would cause other differences too

<comment><USER3> And be caused by other differences as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder which group watches more TV and which one plays more videogames?

</comment><comment><USER5> I like how the explanation is automatically deprivation and no consideration is even given to the possibility of heritability.

<comment><USER6> I have no dog in the nature versus nurture fight, but isn't it amusing that the examples of "deprivation" given are things which socially appeal to the investigator?

"Get your kid to the museum or they'll end up brain damaged!"

On the basis of the available evidence couldn't it just as easily be

"Park your kid at home in front of a Playstation and then make sure they're picked on at school for being geeks or they'll be brain damaged!"</comment></comment>


Teaching Concurrency (2009) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/teaching-concurrency.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Notable quote: "Process algebra is algebra, which is certainly math. Category theory and temporal logic are also math. These esoteric forms of math have their place, but that place is not in the basic education of a computer engineer. "</comment>


Double Fine Adventure - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/66710809/double-fine-adventure?ref=live <comment><USER4> One interesting response in the reddit thread about this was someone saying "...now you can fund the shit that nobody still wants to play?", followed by "20.000 is nothing", when another poster pointed out that over 20.000 people were already backing this project.

This seems to be exactly the publisher's point of view. If you consider marketing, development costs, console licensing fees, ... paying everyone involved in the project and to make sure that there's still profit left over for everyone involved, then 20.000 people buying your game is not that much.

However, for me this kickstarter project is kind of the opposite of pirating, where the developer gets the money before the development process has even started and they don't need to worry if they will break even, since the original goal has already been reached anyway. Plus, as already mentioned several times, they cut out the middle-man with this approach, so that this could definitely open doors for new & interesting projects.

Even though 20.000 is not much for a publisher of a AAA title, I am pretty sure that the final amount will turn heads in the gaming industry and might spawn some new developer <-> customer relationships similar to this kickstarter funding.

<comment><USER5> "kickstarter project is kind of the opposite of pirating". I love it.

Maybe even Kickstarter is the dual(1) of pirating?

(1) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duality>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Some analysis here:

1\. The publisher in this case has a track record, so there is less risk involved.

2\. $15 for an adventure game sounds "well priced"

3\. There is a bit of risk reversal on the pledgers since the game might turn out to be awful. This is compared to buying a game after it has been reviewed.

4\. However, the risk is only $15

5\. There is much nostalgia, and even if $15 is wasted, it would have been a nice way to thank Tim for the good times in the past.

6\. Presumably the game might cost a little bit more when it is released.

7\. What happens if the publishers blow out their budget? It is a sizeable team.

<comment><USER7> Thankyou for your analysis.

<http://i.qkme.me/35z247.jpg>

<comment><USER6> :)

I didn't have time to expand on the ideas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What makes a project like this succeed so spectacularly on kickstarter? Is it because the video is so well done? Or because Tim Schafer is behind it? Or because a lot of people want to play an adventure game? Or the perfect storm of all of the above? Just trying to wrap my brain around it.

<comment><USER9> It's Tim Schafer going back to a game genre where he produced games that people (rightly) have an undying love for.

The only surprise with this is that you wonder why he didn't do it already.

<comment><USER10> No surprise really; no publisher will support an adventure game. If it's not an FPS/Action/Sports game no one will touch it. It's the reason Schafer started doing "indie" games in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm actually quite shocked that game publishers aren't lining up to give Tim Schafer all the money he wants. But I don't really know what's going on in that industry.

<comment><USER12> Industry insiders correct me if I'm wrong, but Grim Fandango was pretty much the final nail in the coffin (no pun intended) of the pure adventure genre, because it had terrible sales. Simultaneously, it was a true masterpiece - <USER2> of the best in the genre. So it's not surprising that lots of people grew up loving adventure games and now have the disposable income and the nostalgia to fund a Kickstarter project, while at the same time making this a risky project for a game publisher.

<comment><USER13> Interesting that the Wiki entry continually calls out a commercial failure and goes on to say:

Total cumulative worldwide sales are estimated

between 100,000 and 500,000 units. [61] The game is commonly considered a commercial

failure, [62][63][64] even though LucasArts has stated that "Grim Fandango met domestic expectations and exceeded them worldwide".

<comment><USER14> I wonder if it's the Radio Shack problem. Why make only a little money selling electronics components when you can make a lot more money with the same resources selling cell phones? See also adventure games based on new IP vs. FPSes based on Star Wars IP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> They're currently $300k over their goal. Amazing.

Can we get a Kickstarter project going for an open-engine, updated graphics, Grim Fandango?

<comment><USER16> Do you think there is ever a risk to being "over-funded"? I know it sounds stupid, but it's an honest question.

<comment><USER17> 'course there is, but Schafer and Gilbert have been in the industry for some 40 years combined, and Double Fine seems to be nicely run as a pretty tight ship.

I think that's a case where it shouldn't be too much of a risk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> At this rate, this adventure game will also be ported to MS-DOS

<comment><USER19> All I really wish for is non-Steam and possibly Linux.

<comment><USER20> A Mac port, whether throughout Steam or the App Store seems likely as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> There are actually more donation tiers, but they're not listed on that page because KS only goes up to $10,000. [http://www.doublefine.com/news/comments/the_double_fine_adve...](http://www.doublefine.com/news/comments/the_double_fine_adventure- adventure_is_here/)

</comment><comment><USER22> It's really amazing he raised that much money so quickly, with so many in the higher tiers as well, especially since the higher tiers of funding are still a donation and do not provide any equity in the project. I suppose the original art wouldn't be worthless though!

<comment><USER14> What better use of one's money than to change the world? To help get something created that you will enjoy?

Imagine if the world didn't have ice cream or steak? How much money would you pay to live in a world with those things?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This project may exceed the previous highest donation record on kickstarter, which that record was awarded yesterday to that iPhone dock. Kickstarter is really starting to make some money I see.

<comment><USER24> Elevation dock: $1,052,809 w/ 43 hours to go Double Fine Adventure: $1,026,265 w/ 32 DAYS to go

There is no doubt in my mind that Double Fine will obliterate the record.

<comment><USER25> Would love to see the graphs for these.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Sigh. PC game. I'm not sure how long it's been since I've even seen a PC. I suppose I could kick in some money and hope it works under Virtualbox.

<comment><USER27> "PC" these days is often a general name for "desktop or laptop computer" - <USER3> doesn't mean it won't have a mac version.

<comment><USER28> In the FAQ, they mention additional release platforms would be one of the first things they would add should they raise enough money.

I think chances are good then since they've quite surpassed their initial goal!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> And right after this adventure he should create a sequel to Brütal Legend!

</comment><comment><USER30> On a tangent, is there anything as well designed and with as many features as Kickstarter but that can support projects from outside of the US?

<comment><USER31> I'm not sure if it's a match featurewise, but <http://indiegogo.com> looks and feels very similar.

Nikodemus Siivola used it to fund SBCL threading improvements: <http://www.indiegogo.com/SBCL-Threading-Improvements-1>

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Could this work for a project that ended up free for everyone? What would the rewards be?

<comment><USER33>
      limited-edition t-shirts
      limited-edition action figures
      dinner with the devs
      cool gold-colored cd/dvd/usbkey/etc with the software
      your likeness as a minor character
      limited-edition plush toys

Basically any kind of promotional tchotchke you can think of. It would have little intrinsic worth but it would be RARE which means that if the product became well-loved it would be worth something down the line when you decided you no longer had room for it - and until then it's an item that tells people something about you. "Oh man is that the commemorative bong for Psychonauts 2? Holy cow I loved that game."

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Wow, I've never even heard of kickstarter. This is a space I'll be looking at!

</comment><comment><USER35> Please be Maniac Mansion III.

</comment><comment><USER36> Funny headline allusion error. It was a nice surprise to see that they were 100% funded in just 8 hours. I guess Notch's push made a big difference.

<comment><USER37> As far as I'm aware, this is a completely different project from Psychonauts 2. I don't think Notch had any real significant involvement in this Kickstarter campaign.

<comment><USER21> Notch tweeted this and got them some attention. Oh, and he pledged $10,000 to _this_ project. <https://twitter.com/#!/notch/status/167551424396394496></comment></comment></comment>


Early research on genetics of depression were built on nonexistent foundations - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/05/waste-1000-studies/589684/ <comment><USER2> We're trying to fix this problem at scite.ai [https://medium.com/scite/scite- trust-but-verify-7d13e6a144cc](https://medium.com/scite/scite-trust-but- verify-7d13e6a144cc)</comment>


In One Tweet, Kylie Jenner Wiped Out $1.3B of Snap's Market Value - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-22/snap-royalty-kylie-jenner-erased-a-billion-dollars-in-one-tweet <comment><USER2> This whole recent update to Snapchat has been horrible in almost every way. Haven't heard a single good thing from the people I know who use it. My question is how does an update that is almost universally hated by the user base get through to production? Does Snapchat not have any user feedback in their design or is it simply "How can we make more money"?

Seems to me Snapchat forgot the most important thing about a products profitability: the customers.

<comment><USER3> The lesson for Snapchat, and really any new software company, is that design updates need to roll out slowly. You cannot drop a boat load of changes on users. Facebook learned this early on when they introduced the new wall and news feed. Now they allow you to preview design changes before they get fully rolled out.

The design changes aren't necessarily bad, it still looks and operates fine. Snapchat just made the rookie mistake of changing everything at once before anyone could orient themselves around the changes.

<comment><USER4> It's typical tech hubris. For a consumer product, changes that are convenient to product development are almost always shitty for the customer.

<comment><USER5> The issue here is assuming that the users of said sites are their customers. They are not.

When you are selling beef, do you worry about how the cows feel about it?

<comment><USER6> You do if it affects the way the beef sells.

<comment><USER5> Right. Was going to add that ammendum, but didn't get around to it.

The point is users are _ancillary_ , not the primary means of revenue. Whenever there is that mismatch, you'll have issues like this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> An experience redesign (vs a reskin) is saying you have something new good enough to justify disrupting your user's existing routines.

It's not clear to me what that new thing is in the new Snapchat UI. It seems better consolidated but less consistently sorted/organized. But for direct communication with friends, it's not really that different.

If anything, the redesign feels like an attempt to protect the core feature of Snapchat - the direct communication vs the spammy broadcasting - at the cost of a temporary hit to revenue. I don't see how it would make them _more_ money in the short run.

I honestly have _no idea_ how a celebrity would use the app, so it could easily be much worse for her, but that direct experience probably isn't relevant. Snapchat isn't Twitter. Twitter and Instagram seem to be dominated by "influencer" type stuff, which is why I practically never use them - Snapchat is better for talking to people I know. Trickier to monetize that, though.

Regardless, thanks to modern metrics ("spying" if you're uncharitable) Snapchat is doubtless aware of all the changes, so we'll see if further changes come or if this was just complaining-about-change.

</comment><comment><USER8> Have to agree, the recent update is a head-scratcher. They made user stories considerably more confusing to use, and these same user stories are what made Snapchat successful and exciting to begin with.

I really think they should work to bring back the daily city/event stories too. For those that don't remember, they used to aggregate the biggest events and city stories on a daily basis and provide those front and center. Was a really unique way to experience a city across the world from where you are! They've since gotten rid of this, and moved it into a hidden "SnapMap" feature which is easily missed by many users.

<comment><USER9> >I really think they should work to bring back the daily city/event stories too.

I remember this showing me how great some places are across the world that I never thought of, when they were daily (or was it weekly?) a different city/country. At the risk of sounding ignorant, I remember learning just how modern and developed Namibia's urban life is from one of these.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If she were to short the stock and then posted a tweet is that illegal? Or the inverse if she bought the stock and posted a tweet? It seems like some of these social influencers have a lot of power.

<comment><USER11> If Wall Street/investors are so out of touch that a vacuous tweet of a socialite can have so much effect, to me that's a different issue entirely. Not to mention one reason this could happen is if the stock price was grossly overvalued in the first place. In general, I don't see anything specifically illegal about this.

<comment><USER12> Kylie Jenner has 24.5 million twitter followers that presumably think somewhat similarly to her. I'm pretty sure that her thoughts on this matter are indicative of a larger trend that an investor would be wary to ignore.

<comment><USER11> A trend is more than one person, and as the article states her situation has recently changed. This is all a sign of pure laziness/hype/greed, instead of doing some actual market research before you make investment decisions. In any case, I'm not sure how much of her "thought" went into that tweet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Could someone explain to be why the new update is bad? I primarily use snapchat for my friends' stories. With the new update I no longer have to see ads under the stories, which is a positive for me.

<comment><USER14> Why I don't like it is 3 fold: 2 major and 1 minor. The first is that my friend list is 1\. Person I just Snapped 2\. Person I just Snapped 3\. Person I haven't talked to in forever (but just posted to their story) 4\. Person I haven't talked to in forever ...

And there will be times I snap a person and go back on the friends list and their gone! Like they just don't show up anywhere I have to search them to see if they opened my snap.

Second is that I have people (like family) who I don't snap much but still look at their stories. In the new version I actually have to search them all Individually which is awful.

Third is minor but I find the friends list cluttered and difficult to process. Stories, Streaks, message notifications, scores, Bitmoji, names all cluttered into one single line item.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > on the heels of a tweet from Kylie Jenner, who said she doesn't open the app > anymore. Whether it's the demands of her newfound motherhood, or the recent > app redesign, the testament drew similar replies from her 24.5 million > followers. Wall Street analysts too, have begun to notice, citing recent > user engagement trends noticed since the platform's redesign.

So if it crashes even more, can we safely say it was caused by some of the "similar replies" on this HN thread? ;)

</comment><comment><USER16> Reminds me of the backlash Digg received back in the day.

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/pda/2010/aug/31/digg-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/pda/2010/aug/31/digg- redesign-revolt)

<comment><USER17> Yes, this is an important lesson about redesigns. I saw a couple people brush off the Snapchat redesign angst with, "Meh, people will get over it", usually with links to the (admittedly accurate) Oatmeal comic about Facebook layout changes [0]. And while that's certainly the case sometimes, don't count on it as a general rule: Digg demonstrated conclusively that a poorly-received redesign can torpedo the entire company. Proceed with caution.

[0]: [http://theoatmeal.com/pl/state_web_winter/facebook_layout](http://theoatmeal.com/pl/state_web_winter/facebook_layout)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Like any other company, it's important to diversify your revenue.

Snap tied itself heavily to flash-in-the-pan pop celebrities. It should also have cultivated other types of thought leaders from other groups if it wanted to be anything other than a flash-in-the-pan, itself.

If you don't think clearly, the hockey stick on the graph smacks you in the head.

</comment><comment><USER19> Can someone remind me how on earth is Snap's market cap US$20 billion right now?

<comment><USER20> I don't get it either, apparently a tech companies value is tied directly to and only to the size of its user base. I could never use the app effectively so I'm happy to hear it got a redesign of any kind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Trump tweets about taxing European solar and stock in Vestas (wind power) drops 35% in two days, despite the company ringing in contract after contract...

Now a different reality tv star crashes $1.3 billion worth of value with a tweet about not using a platform?

Stock is quite frankly getting dumber than CryptoCurrency.

<comment><USER22> Cryptocurrency has always been catching up rather than ahead of the game in the speculation stupidity arena. I always have a good time when I read /r/wallstreetbets (even though they're pretty self-aware, it can still be hilarious).

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Its not this tweet that wiped out the market value, its the fact that less people are using snapchat..

</comment><comment> racer-v Crazy that we still use apps instead of protocols for feeds and video. What's the closest thing to an open substitute? I've been looking at Gajim for XMPP + video chat [https://gajim.org/](https://gajim.org/)

</comment><comment><USER24> So I read the article, but I've seen claims like this before: some event correlated with a stock dive equals "proof" the event caused it, when it turns out some other news got announced like a quarterly result. Is that what's going on here?

<comment><USER25> I don't follow Snap well enough to know the cause of the dive, but they did release their first ever annual report as a public company this morning:

[https://investor.snap.com/financial-information/sec- filings](https://investor.snap.com/financial-information/sec-filings)

<comment><USER26> That is certainly a much more likely cause of the devaluing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Considering the stock rose nearly 50% after last earnings... It was bound to fall.

<comment><USER28> Hindsight bias. It rose because of a gigantic short squeeze coupled with better than expected earnings.

>Revenue: $285.7 million versus $252.9 million estimated, according to a Thomson Reuters consensus estimate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Replace Snap with something else. For example: "In One Tweet, Kylie Jenner Wiped Out $1.3B of Microsoft's Market Value" to see how ridiculous it can get, then think about why is that.

</comment><comment><USER30> The causation here is weak to say the least.

<comment><USER26> Another user pointed out that Snap released their first annual earnings report since IPO this morning, which seems a far more likely cause :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> At this point it's hard to think of a major app or OS that _hasn't_ done something to royally screw over its users with unwanted updates that changed everything for the worse.

There needs to be a mechanism for making certain user guarantees, especially once money has been exchanged. And arguably since "time is money", if you have invested a certain amount of _time_ in something that's then been messed up by the provider, you should receive similar guarantees because you've essentially "paid" a lot for it.

One of the problems is that it's just too easy for companies to radically revamp things freely. Open-source used to sort of defend against this with the forking option. Too many modern devices are now locked-down to the point where open-source isn't feasible for much of the software you're likely to need.

Another problem is that too many updates are able to lump the bad with the good. Perhaps we need a way to force entities to develop their software features in such a way that at least two independent classes of updates are feasible: for example, allowing users to skip stupid UI revamps without becoming completely unable to receive other bug fixes.

</comment><comment><USER32> >on the heels of a tweet from Kylie Jenner, who said she doesn't open the app anymore

Ouch. Sounds like she should have been a beta tester of the revamped site. In other words "don't bite the hand that tweets you." I'll let myself out.

</comment><comment><USER33> I've always found the rise of Snapchat a bit volatile. Their main audience is bound to lose interest and move to the next cool thing. Facebook at least has a utility, so it's not only about where the "cool kids are".

Like MySpace.

</comment><comment><USER34> Maybe a lesson to be learned for companies here: ignore the "small vocal minority" at your own peril.

</comment><comment><USER35> This is basically celebrity news.

</comment><comment><USER36> "Temporarily" could be added to the headline.

</comment><comment><USER37> if this is not proof that the stock market is a house of cards i dont know what is...

</comment><comment><USER38> Kylie who?

<comment><USER39> There is only one Kylie (Minogue) and she is far too classy for social media shenanigans

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Snapchat is purposefully difficult to use, and completely user-hostile (notifications in particular).

This is how they keep adults off their platform.

<comment><USER41> Let's go into that a little more. Are you thinking that "exclusively for kids" is the message, and that you have to appeal to the demo to keep them?

Another major user hostile feature is viewing anything on Instagram: the images (main reason to be there, eh?) are hard to zoom or save. The videos have few options like speed or captions. They almost revel in "here's your fixed size picture frame, enjoy our choices".

<comment><USER40> I think SC wants to appeal to young people. Young people don't want their parents around. So SC needs to find a way to discourage older folks while not appearing outright hostile.

Solution? Create a somewhat frustrating user experience. For Some reason, younger people will tolerate that and older folks won't, thus you skew your demographics the direction you want.

It's not that the app is impossible to figure out, it's just that it has a lot of unnecessary friction. Another way of saying this is: Adults care more about good UI/UX than younger folks.

I realize there are a lot of assumptions in my argument here, but it is my best reasoning out of the situation.

<comment><USER41> > Adults care more about good UI/UX than younger folks.

I was thinking the opposite, almost. I would propose: kids care more about a fun instant experience (socializing) vs adults caring more about utility (I like this picture, can I zoom and save it?)

So it might be the lack of utility that drives the ancients off the site, not the lack of Pretty UI.

<comment><USER40> I think that is absolutely true, but I was talking about a different dimension than fun or utility-- which is simply frustration.

Things like, the pointless Team Snapchat messages that MUST be watched. The app sending notifications when someone is typing, and then when they send a message. This means for each message I receive, I effectively look at my phone twice.

And last but not least, if there's a gap in some not particularly exciting conversation I was having--my 40 year old brain can't remember what the heck we were talking about.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


An ancient memorization strategy might cause lasting changes to the brain - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/16/14950798/memory-palace-method-of-loci-brain-fmri-activity-neuroscience <comment><USER2> Wonder how much sitting at the same desk in front of a screen for 40+ hours a week has to be compensated by the sensation that "the wide web is so vast in diversity of the different virtual locations I can go to" memory-wise.</comment>


Show HN: My Log Database Project - brown-dragon https://github.com/theproductiveprogrammer/kore <comment> brown-dragon Hi HN,

I'm looking for feedback on my distributed log db project. It's a part I pulled out of a stochastic time tracking system that we are building. I think it's a neat idea and has a lot of potential and I haven't found anything like it yet.</comment>


Have you given Pokémon Go full access to everything in your Google account? - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/11/pokemon-go-privacy-security-full-access-google-account?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+USA+-+morning+briefing+2016&utm_term=181381&subid=13759385&CMP=ema_a-morning-briefing_b-morning-briefing_c-US_d-1 <comment><USER2> > The issue appears to stem from the fact that Niantic Labs uses an outdated > version of Google's shared sign-on service. ...

> ... But it seems that because Niantic Labs used an unsupported, out-of-date > version of the sign-on process, that permission-granting step was skipped, > prompting Google to default to warning users that the app had "full access" > to their accounts. ...

> Slack security engineer Ari Rubenstein has confirmed that, despite the > misleading entry, only basic permissions are granted to the app. "'Full > account access' is not the best wording, and should probably be changed on > Google's end," Rubenstein wrote. "My best guess for what is happening is > that one of the scopes is a legacy 'login' scope from OAuth1 which may be > leading the UI to default to 'Full account access', when in reality, it only > has the above perms."

Sounds better than expected.</comment>


How to Build a Powerful Data Science Team Without a Data Scientist - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2016/03/01/how-to-build-a-powerful-data-science-team-without-a-data-scientist/#813ac203f410 <comment><AUTHOR> We did it this way at our company and it was pretty successful. But keep in mind that we were just looking to tap in the existing AI technologies out there and leverage them.

</comment><comment><USER2> I would be curious to find out, How many companies have done it this way?</comment>


SEC Suspends Deutsche Bank Research Analyst for "Not Meaning What He Said" - <AUTHOR> https://www.sec.gov/news/pressrelease/2016-30.html <comment><USER2> The bloomberg coverage gives a bit of background on the analyst. Even though there is supposed to be a "Chinese wall" between analysts and the investment banking side there always has been, and continues to be, politics involved in what an analyst can say.

This is illustrated from this quote from the linked article:

> Despite those concerns, the agency said, he maintained his "buy" rating and > told colleagues on an internal call that "we just had them in town, so it's > not kosher to downgrade on the heels of something like that."

The tension has always been how to allow analysts to say what then mean about companies while at the same time keeping the company happy so that they can earn investment banking fees from the same company for things like debt raises or new issues.

Its very hard to convince a company to use your services while ignoring an negative rating by an analyst.

Unfortunately this leads to getting a lot of double speak form analysts where they might say one thing public ally but another thing privately to the buy side, after all its usually the end game of a good analyst is usually to get a job on the buy side. And you do that by creating a track record of being able to pick alpha long and shorts.

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-17/ex- deutsch...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-17/ex-deutsche- bank-analyst-banned-over-rating-at-odds-with-opinion)

TL/DR Don't trust written reports by analysts. Trust slightly more what they tell you over the phone. Trust completely what they tell you in a job interview.

<comment><USER3> > Even though there is supposed to be a "Chinese wall" between analysts and > the investment banking side

Is that a SEC rule? I haven't heard of it and I'm interested in the details.

<comment><USER4> I'm pretty sure it's the same rule that outlaws insider trading. If the analysts and investment bankers talked to each other they could potentially cook up some crazy schemes: "Hey Joe, I just invested someone's money in company X. Can you upgrade them to a BUY rating?" "Sure thing Bill, what's my cut?" "10% of the increase?" "Sure, sounds fair." Or another scheme: "Hey Joe, GM is a big client and is starting to get a little worried about TESLA. Can you downgrade them?" "Sure thing Bill, let's put Elon in his place and keep our big clients happy."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The problem here is that "analyst" is not a profession, with a body able to support anyone who steps out against their employer/other financial relationship.

This guy kept himself employed, and betrayed a trust.

If Deutsche had to go to as much effort to fire him as they would to fire a bank auditor, then he would be confident enough to say what he means. That's why it's hard to fire certain roles

Edit Someone else makes the very good point - don't get advice on a company from people being paid by that company

You need to pay for investment advice

</comment><comment><USER6> This stuff used to happen a lot back in the first dot com bubble. The poster child at the time was Henry Blodget:

       ... Merrill Lynch e-mails in which Blodget gave
       assessments about stocks which allegedly conflicted
       with what was publicly published

Blodget agreed to a fine and a lifetime ban from the securities industry.[1]

But don't feel too sorry for Blodget. He later founded Silicon Alley Insider, which became Business Insider, which was eventually sold for over $343 million. Henry probably made out OK on that.[2]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Blodget#Fraud_allegation...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Blodget#Fraud_allegation_and_settlement) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Insider#Acquisition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Insider#Acquisition)

</comment><comment><USER7> You edited the headline to make it sound like some kind of thoughtcrime.

The analyst came out of a non-deal roadshow meeting, told his proprietary traders to sell everything, told his top hedge fund clients to sell, maintained the buy rating, told his colleagues he maintained the buy rating to keep the investment banking relationship.

from the release [https://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/2016/34-77150.pdf](https://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/2016/34-77150.pdf)

16\. On March 28, 2012, Grom and DBSI hosted Big Lots' Chief Executive Officer and Senior Vice President of Finance at a non-deal roadshow ("NDR") at DBSI's Boston office. Beginning at about 7:30 a.m. and continuing until about 3:15 p.m., the Big Lots executives held private meetings with DBSI clients. Grom attended all of these meetings.

17\. Before the NDR, Grom was bullish on Big Lots: he believed the company's first quarter financial performance, particularly its first quarter comparable store sales, would be strong, with comparable store sales "up four or five, maybe six percent." At some point early during the NDR, Grom's view changed and he ultimately concluded that Big Lots' first quarter comparable stores sales would increase by only two to three percent, a significant shift in Grom's view. Grom believed, and his financial models reflected, that even a one percent change in Big Lots' comparable store sales could significantly impact its earnings per share. Grom became particularly concerned during the NDR when Big Lots' executives made what Grom believed to be cautious comments about Big Lots' consumables business, which comprised approximately twenty- five to thirty percent of Big Lots' total sales at the time.

18\. At 8:51 a.m. on March 28, 2012, shortly after the first NDR meeting had ended, Grom called the DBSI trader responsible for trading Big Lots' stock. At 9:31 a.m., within a minute of the market opening, the trader placed an order to sell 25,000 shares of Big Lots' stock, which he had purchased the day before in a firm proprietary account.

19\. In the early afternoon on the day of the NDR, Big Lots' Chief Executive Officer abruptly asked Grom whether he was going to downgrade Big Lots stock. At 1:23 p.m., Grom emailed one of his junior analysts back in New York, simply stating, "this is gonna be hard." Three minutes later, the junior analyst responded, "uh oh." At 1:26 p.m., Grom sent the junior analyst another email, stating, "[p]retty clear that biz is just ok."

20\. Beginning within minutes after the NDR had ended, Grom communicated with several DBSI clients, including Hedge Fund A, Hedge Fund B, Hedge Fund C, and Hedge Fund D.

After talking to Grom, all four of these DBSI clients subsequently sold their entire positions in Big Lots stock

[details of sales omitted]

22\. On March 29, 2012, Grom issued a research report on Big Lots entitled "Not All Is Good In Buckeye Land," in which he reiterated his BUY rating. As required by Regulation AC of the Exchange Act, Grom signed an Analyst Certification that was included at the end of the report, which stated: "The views expressed in this report accurately reflect the personal views of the undersigned lead analyst(s) about the subject issuer and the securities of the issuer."

23\. On March 29, 2012, at 7:30 a.m., roughly two hours after his Big Lots research report had been publicly disseminated, Grom spoke about Big Lots on the DBSI morning conference call with firm research and sales personnel. Grom said that he had maintained a BUY rating on Big Lots because "obviously that we just had them in town so it's not kosher to downgrade on the heels of something like that." Grom also said, "[B]ut more importantly than that, I think there's obviously time left in the quarter" and that he and his team was "gonna do our homework on it" and "gonna be in front of 'em."

24\. Less than a month later, Grom repeated his assertion that he had not downgraded Big Lots on March 29, 2012 because he wanted to maintain his relationship with Big Lots' management.

<comment><USER8> Came here to say the same thing. The HN headline is completely off the mark.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Strange phrasing used by the SEC. Would be better to say they charged the analyst with cronyism.

<comment><USER10> Yep. Or at least say "they charged the analyst with saying something he was himself thinking not true" \- if you really don't want to use the quite clear headline that SEC provides: _SEC: Deutsche Bank Analyst Issued Stock Rating Inconsistent With Personal View_

In colloquial use, we would say the analyst was fired for lying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If your job is making predictions, then surely your performance can easily be measured by the outcomes of those predictions. That way, not saying what you think would hurt your bonus or your company's reputation through poor performance. Perhaps that's only effective at combating widespread dishonesty and an isolated case like this wouldn't affect his overall accuracy much.

<comment><USER12> The guy ran a pump and dump scam. His reputation with the suckers doesn't matter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Too bad we can't apply this standard to politicians and judges :-(</comment>


Bill Gates: What I Loved About Paul Allen - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-i-loved-about-paul-allen-1539862016 <comment><USER2> Dupe. Recent conversation : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18231961](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18231961)</comment>


Ask HN: How to save my career at 35 - <AUTHOR>

I'm 35. I've started a few companies, nothing amazing. Before becoming an entrepreneur I was a network and systems engineer. I enjoyed it, but now no one wants to give me work as a engineer because they think I'm too senior. I feel stuck at 35 being too young for senior roles in established companies and too experienced for even mid level roles in engineering (though I wouldn't mind it).<p>What should I do? <comment><USER2> Rewrite your resume to de-emphasize the entrepreneurial stuff. Once I changed my resume to make it look like I was an employee rather than a founder, I got plenty of traction.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am 41 and immediately get calls for Programming jobs and also as architect etc. Work with a resume writer.They know how to best present a resume.

</comment><comment><USER4> >no one wants to give me work as a engineer because they think I'm too senior.

I read this as "we're afraid that if we offer him a mid-level role as an engineer, he'll get bored and leave to start another company".

Considering your background, I can see how that would be a common concern so maybe in the next interview it might be worth blatantly stating that you really are committed to a full-time engineering role for the next few years.

</comment><comment><USER5> With experience as an entrepreneur and system engineer, I think you would fit a senior position perfectly. Don't you think you could teach a thing or two to younger ones? :-)

Otherwise, I'd suggest pushing daily code on github to show that you still enjoy hacking and can get shit done. That would be my biggest fear.. Is he still passionate about coding and debugging stuff?

Also, saying that you are an entrepreneur can be a bit scary for some employers.. They know that you could leave on a heart beat to start a new business.

</comment><comment><USER6> Are you not in a location where there's a searcher-friendly job market? Have you exhausted the possible set of places you could work?

</comment><comment><USER7> "no one wants to give me work" \-- You're talking to the wrong people (HR flunkies & recruiters). Zero-in on the true Economic Buyer, a senior executive or manager who you can help. Linkedin is a good place to build a prospect list. Reach out and engage them in a conversation.

</comment><comment><USER8> Im 33, most people think I'm around 28. Just relax about it, don't talk about age too much, and maybe dress the part. network, have a pint with people, be chill, and it'll all work out.</comment>


Data Is a Toxic Asset, So Why Not Throw It Out? (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2016/03/data_is_a_toxic_asse.html <comment><USER2> While I agree that there is a lot of hype around data as an asset/product, I think the author's being a little glib about its value. Clearly, in the current moment, targeted advertising is a huge trend, and I'm a little curious at which point the author thinks this will settle down. In the past few years all of the major tech giants have rode a wave of "data is power" to the top of the market, while companies who have struggled to do so effectively have fallen comparatively short. Targeted advertising has been shown in many studies to be more effective than traditional marketing and as a practice it necessitates the collection of large amounts of personal data.

And sure, there are costs to leaking personal data and then getting sued, but a lot of companies anonymize their data as a practice AND can't really be held accountable to consumers AND even if you do get sued, it's likely not enough to put a company like Google or Facebook anywhere close to going out of business.

It's reasonable to suggest that there will be some kind of government intervention into specific practices surrounding data acquisition, but I think a full overhaul or ban on personal data collection is unlikely: the moneyed interests simply value this data too much to allow for (American) politicians to disrupt its influence on their stock portfolios. Couple this with Congress's inability to act on numerous problems it faces and the fact that most current Congressmen and women (and their constituents) really don't consider this a top-tier issue and you've got a whole lot of reason for things not to change course. For data to become a real "toxic asset" there needs to be a dramatic sea change - it's not as much of an inevitability as the author suggests.</comment>