Assembly Language Step By Step, for Linux - <AUTHOR> http://www.duntemann.com/assembly.html

<comment><USER2> "The idea behind the book, nutty as it might seem, is to teach assembly language as your _first_ programming language."

This is a really interesting idea.

In the debate over whether every programmer should still learn C, a common argument for is "managed languages don't teach you about pointers and memory". Learning assembler would surely do that even better than learning C (albeit probably less practically useful overall). I can't decide whether that's a _reductio ad absurdum_ for the pro-C argument, or support for this book's thesis.

<comment><USER3> I really like the idea of teaching asm first for adults. I really didn't understand what I was doing in C until I'd learned assembly.

I think it would be interesting to have a college curriculum that started out in asm the first year, and eventually ended in a symbolic/lambda language like lisp.

<comment><USER4> sir assembly at the first year would scare away people from majoring in EE or CS. I think C is much better than asm to start with. But if they want student can be given a choice to learn asm as a elective in the first year. A choice bases credit system comes real handy in such a situation.Also we can have the same course taught in asm and C and students can be given a choice to learn which ever they want. So we would have to conduct fewer separate classes if the course focus is on the theory of computation.

<comment><USER5> From the perspective of a CS student I can understand abstrating the computational theroy from the applied science of programming for a particluar ISA and agree with your point. A similar arguement can potentially be made for Software Engineering.

However, if your discipline is EE or CE I'd have to disagree. Perhaps my educational experience and focus on embedded system design has distroted my view, but without starting with a basic understanding of computer and instruction set architectures I don't think I would have or could have been successful.

Yes, assembly is tedious and modern compilers do a much better job optimizing for 99% of all cases. But knolwedge of computer architecture as well as an understanding of how to represent common high level program structures (if, for, while...) coupled with a basic understanding of stacks and how C utilizes them at runtime is nothing short of foundational. It is the kind of information that has allowed me to transition to from different platforms and high level languages with very little effort because they are all built upon the same principles.

To be cliche about it, its simply learning to crawl before you can walk.

<comment><USER4> I personally parallel your views sir, and that too to a very great extent. But to a general high school student programming and computation is more about java and/or c++ or other such high level language. The bombarding the poor fellow with asm at the very first semester would be way too much for most of them.

Not everyone is able to understand and appreciate the beauty in the functionality of asm. I do not wish to deny that this is the best way to put forth the world of CS but we must first understand is the student ready for it or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I learned Assembly from a book called Mastering Turbo Assembler by a guy named Tom Swan. That was for DOS (early nineties). I'm definitely going to buy this book even if it's just for nostalgic reasons.

<comment><USER7> you can: [http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Turbo-Assembler-Tom- Swan/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Turbo-Assembler-Tom- Swan/dp/0672305267/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263291495&sr=8-1)

The cover looks familiar. Maybe I have bought this book too back then but never got around to read. However I did read the Borland C book by him: [http://www.amazon.com/Tom-Swans-Mastering-Borland- Swan/dp/06...](http://www.amazon.com/Tom-Swans-Mastering-Borland- Swan/dp/0672308029/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_4)

<comment><USER6> Yeah, sorry for not linking. Tom's a good writer. I also read his Mastering Turbo Pascal ([http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Turbo-Pascal-Tom- Swan/dp/067...](http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Turbo-Pascal-Tom- Swan/dp/0672485052/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263294609&sr=1-2)).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sweet!! I got started on his DOS assembly book an eon ago. I'm buying this today.</comment>


Facebook: "going IPO!" - <AUTHOR> http://valleywag.com/tech/facebook/f+++-you-yahoo-theyre-going-ipo-276254.php

<comment><USER2> I'm buying, unless they drastically under-price the offering.

<comment><USER3> Underprice? Buy high, sell low?

:)

<comment><USER2> If they underprice the offering, the price will go up a LOT during public trading on the first day, hence, high actual price for everyday investors and a big payout for the IBankers.

So what I'm saying is, if I can get in at a reasonable valuation, I'm in. If not, I might wait it out til the hype wears down a bit.

<comment><USER4> 'If they underprice the offering, the price will go up a LOT during public trading on the first day, hence, high actual price for everyday investors and a big payout for the IBankers."

False. Investment Bankers get paid a percentage of the offering price. If the price is lower, they make less money.

<comment><USER2> Their cronies (and often the bankers themselves) take large amounts of the IPO shares.

<comment><USER4> So when you refer to 'ibankers' as a group, you mean 'ibankers who steal from their employers'? Isn't this a distinction you ought to make? And doesn't your previous statement make sense if you were merely uninformed?

<comment><USER2> I might be uninformed here, but don't the underwriters of public share offerings often also hold on to blocks of shares after the offering (completely legally)?

<comment><USER4> They only do that if they can't sell the stock. The point of underwriting is to sell all of the shares as quickly as possible. If your argument is true, it's not just a reason to avoid cheap stocks -- it also obligates you to avoid deals of any sort, since exactly the same inefficiencies exist.

<comment><USER2> I see. So an underpriced offering actually avoids the underwriters holding the stock- since there is obviously demand. I was under the impression that during the dot-com boom, a lot of the underwriter banking organizations were buying their own underwritten shares at IPO prices and benefiting from the early upswings (basically, arbitraging the lower offer prices).

<comment><USER4> They certainly do distribute it to favored clients if it's a hot IPO, but they have to balance the needs of clients and issuers: from what I've heard, that meant that you could only get in on a good IPO if you also bought into some less exciting ones. It's not like an investment bank can consistently screw one kind of customer without driving that kind of customer to another bank.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting.. I wonder how it will turn out.

<comment><USER6> Unless they're really generating tons of revenue, going public might be a rough road.

Sure the founders and investors get to cash out, but Wall Street checks in every three months, and can be unforgiving if you fail to meet expectations.

Remember that the Google guys didn't want to go public.</comment></comment>


Why do ebooks cost so much? - <AUTHOR> http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2011/01/16/why-do-ebooks-cost-so-much/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+dearauthor+%28Dear+Author%3A+Romance+Novel+Reviews%2C+Industry+News%2C+and+Commentary%29&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><USER2> _In April of 2010, 5 of the major publishers (Penguin/Putnam being one of them) instituted what is now called Agency Pricing._

Can anyone explain how this isn't considered price fixing, collusion or otherwise anti-competitive?

<comment><USER3> Or a violation of the First Sale Doctrine[1], for that matter.

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine>

<comment><USER4> They probably think ebooks are licensed, not sold.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It used to be that buying a great portable game was $40.

Full stop, you couldn't leave the store with a great, recent portable game for anything less than $40.

Now, I can get Plants vs. Zombies on my iPad, a game that rivals or even exceeds the production values, play time and overall fun of these $40 games, for under $8. At 2 AM. Without leaving my house.

Why aren't we seeing the same pricing evolution with eBooks?

We got to that cost structure in digitally distributed games by eliminating a bunch of bullshit salaries that exist between the creators and the consumers. We need to see the same cutting happen in the publishing industry before we can enjoy decent pricing. By its nature, this is going to be slower – software and game developers are quicker to try new technologies and distribution channels than people whose industry began over 500 years ago. But it's going to happen – there's no reason to be so stingy with publishing when you don't have to risk physical printing and distribution. Which means a lot of professional taste makers are going to find themselves obsolete.

<comment><USER6> >Why aren't we seeing the same pricing evolution with eBooks?

Because no "pricing evolution" ever took place. Pricing works as it always has. We, the buyers have decided we're not willing to pay over $8 for Plants vs. Zombies on the iPad. I still costs $30 or more for the computer. Most things on the iPad will cost less than their computer equivalent because the apps are simply not as powerful (unless it's a really simple app).

You seem to be arguing that it costs less to distribute and that's why it costs less on the iPad. How can that be the case for companies like EA sports who've had to rewrite their sports apps for a completely new platform? It has actually cost them _more_ and they've charged less.

EBooks cost more _precisely_ because they are easier to distribute. _For customers_. If I buy a book on amazon I suddenly have it everywhere. And I have _all_ my books where ever I go.

Pricing is only confusing when you mistakenly assume price = production cost + distribution cost + 10% markup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't know, but talking to tech professional writers I have responses similar to this:

<http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2010/12/bedtime-story.html>

Long story sort: If you get more money with the digital version than with paper you don't need publishers, or editors at all, you don't need to give away your copyrights in exchange for access to market by the gatekeepers(publishers) and a minority of the profits.

You don't even have to ask for permission, just let the market decide, like web startups.

On digital you just make an alpha version and send to friends for testing, make a public beta like this book: <http://iphone-3d-programming.labs.oreilly.com/>

...And just sell your book digital taking 70% of the money and never losing your copy rights, like you do when you sign with a (paper)publisher.

</comment><comment><USER8> Because people are ready to pay so much for them?

</comment><comment><USER9> This article talks about pricing models, but doesn't discuss why an ebook costs 9.99 and not 0.99.

One reason is simple economics: there's no perfect substitute for a specific book. If I want the next book by my favorite author, buying another book with a similar looking cover won't really do it. So price wars aren't as competitive as they are in, say, the grocery store.

But the bigger reason is that it costs a lot to produce quality books at scale.

First a publisher has to decide to make the investment. This means an editorial assistant or intern needs to read hundreds of manuscripts. Agents will read thousands of queries and hundreds of books to find one that they will actually publish. The actual editors will ready ten or twenty books for each one that they want to make an offer on--and then usually not end up with the winning bid. Which means starting over and looking for another book.

Don't forget that when an editor is trying to acquire a book, she has to consult with marketing, sales, and other groups in the company who will judge how well they will be able to support the book. To get a few good books, they have to run through this process many times. Don't forget that contracts need legal review and an accountant need to make sure that the author is paid.

Once a book is acquired by a publisher, the editor takes it through several revisions, which will usually substantially alter it. In this stage a book may suddenly become very emotionally compelling or gripping--in ways that a casual reader wouldn't have predicted. Or maybe it will lose a boring introduction that would have turned readers off before they got to the good parts.

Once a book is edited, it needs to be typeset and copyedited, which means a lot more reading by a few more people. Also, it needs a cover design, and possibly interior art, which needs not only to be created but art directed. And legal may need to review it if there are usages of brand names or other potential issues.

At this point, we actually have a book. It looks like a book, it reads like a book, and it could now realistically be tested against a target market. There's no such thing as a minimum viable product for a book. I'd like to see a more scientific, testing-based approach in publishing, but often the book doesn't come together into a hit-worthy package until you've done the work to take it all the way. You might have ten books with hit potential, but only one of them comes out of this process having fulfilled its potential.

Now, someone needs to put the book out and actually market it. This means a publicity person needs to get the word out to the press, and marketers who buy ads and run campaigns. In the modern world, someone needs to be on facebook and twitter. Often this is the author, but it's still adding to the amount of work that went into the book. The author will probably also be touring around in meatspace, possibly paid for by the publisher and possibly not, but that money is coming from the consumers no matter what.

The book files will need to be archived and corrected for future editions, and someone will need to manage the financial relationship with the author as the book is published across print editions and various ebook retailers, each with its own quirks and process.

And speaking of ebook retailers, they need to get paid to! Their 30% has to cover all the costs of running their operation, which may include subsidizing ereader devices and all the costs of negotiating with both the big publishers and the hundreds of little ones.

Even after this painstaking process, many books will fail. A bunch will barely earn back their investment. The regular-sized hits will keep the business afloat, and the mega-hits will make it worth being in the business in the first place.

It's really hard to predict whether people will like your final product until you put that final product out into the marketplace. For entertainment products this is especially true, because a little bit of polish makes a huge difference. I'm sure I've missed things, but keep in mind that the cost of printing and shipping most books is less than $2 for a hardcover, less than $1 for a paperback.

Is there a better way to do this? Of course there is. But it isn't here yet, and it's a lot harder than you think (but I highly encourage you to try!). Someday, someone will figure out how to crowdsource a lot of this or turn it into a scientific numbers-driven process, but early experiments have not made a lot of progress.

tl;dr Producing good books at scale is expensive and requires creating a lot of not-so-good books as a side product. The physical manufacture has never been the main cost driver.

<comment><USER10> If HN were to have an official mantra, surely one of the finalists would be "charge for a product based on the value delivered, not based on the cost to deliver" - so why wouldn't that apply here? The publishers think that a ebook delivers ten bucks worth of value to the reader. Seeing as they sell pretty well, it seems they're right to some degree.

Put another way, if the market is willing to sustain the price (and sales figures suggest it is), why not charge $9.99 for a ebook?

<comment><USER11> Fair enough, however, $9.99 is no longer the common price point. Most new releases are $12.99 now, which many people think is too high, and the problem is the retailers can't do anything about it because of this "agency pricing".

I had no problem paying $9.99 for books on my kindle, but most of them are $12.99 now and I just feel like that's too much. In some cases, buying the physical hardcover is actually cheaper than $12.99 too, and that's what REALLY pisses some people off. The physical nature of the product surely is at least $1 - $2 of the actual cost of the the book, so buying it digitally gets rid of this cost.

Also, many books are destroyed if they're not sold (hence the "if you bought this book without a cover" warning in the front of many books). By moving to digital, the publishers no longer have to eat these costs.

So basically, eBook pricing is complete bullshit.

<comment><USER12> I was going to buy a Kindle this week but this article is making me think twice. I thought it'd definitely be cheaper to buy books. What about PDFs? There are thousands of PDFs on the internet which you can get for free, is the quality of PDFs worse than books in kindle format? Do you have to scroll sideways or something? Or is the font smaller?

<comment><USER13> Yes, The Kindle can read PDFs. (I recently got a Kindle 3). However it's a second class reading experience. You can't change the font size (you can zoom in/out) etc. It's easy to convert a normal 'text pdf' to an ebook format suitable for Kindle (cf. [http://www.technomancy.org/kindle/convert-books-to- kindle-fo...](http://www.technomancy.org/kindle/convert-books-to-kindle- format-on-command-line/)). If it's a PDF of scanned images from a book, then you'll need some OCR stuff.

<comment><USER12> Okay thanks, so I can assume that hypothetically if I were to download text PDF books from certain places, then convert it to Kindle format, I would then be able to get first class reading experience? Are you happy with your Kindle 3 overall? I'm considering whether to get the one with 3G, but I don't know how good the webkit browser is, what do you think of it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Agencies won't be around much longer in any case. Disintermediation strikes again.

<comment><USER15> If I were to write a book, either technical or a novel, I would be tempted to hire a freelance copyrighter, editor and publicist, then list it on Amazon, Safari etc. myself.

You can find these people on Elance and similar sites, but there is an opportunity for a website that is a one-stop-shop to do all of this in one place (ie. find the various people, organize listing, sales etc.).

Anybody know if this already exists?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Perhaps because people are willing to pay and without the high price on ebooks, the price of traditional books would not be justified.

All in all, I hate how many books are made too verbose just to sell more pages and therefore have higher price. The same content would be better communicated with less repetition and side content.

<comment><USER17> This is exactly why I enjoyed Crush It, by Gary Vaynerchuk. Quick and to the point.

So many business books especially read like a collection of blog posts and filler, rather than providing a real and valuable hypothesis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Because of the higher costs of manufacturing and distribution, plus all the real estate to store the books.

</comment><comment><USER19> It depends on the value of the book, and the author, and the content.

A very famous author is more akin to a best selling band. The can afford to charge less because they can make up for it through volume.

I've written several books, and they are available in print as well as digital formats. I think that my books are valuable and that people reading them will get $10 worth of value out of them (actually I think they will get a lot more).

The real question for me is, "Why are some people so cheap as to think my work is worthless and theirs is so valuable?"

Some won't hesitate to plop down $4 at Starbucks for a coffee but then complain that a book that will bring hours of pleasure or instruction is not worth two or three times as much.

</comment><comment><USER20> For no particular reasoning other than they can get away with it.

<comment><USER21> Another way to say "they can get away with it" is "enough customers still find the product more valuable than the cash price set for it"

<comment><USER20> Sure.

But don't you have to factor in those who download it for free to find the "real price" then?

<comment><USER6> Theft generically pushes prices _up_. Not down.

<comment><USER22> That's because theft generically reduces inventory while leaving the seller with the need to recoup the marginal cost of the item stolen. This is one of the many reasons why downloading something without the copyright holder's OK is not the same thing as theft. (This is not to say it isn't a crime or that it's morally OK — just that if it is a crime, it's one _other than_ theft.)

<comment><USER6> >This is one of the many reasons why downloading something without the copyright holder's OK is not the same thing as theft.

This is pure nonsense. It's true that no inventory is lost when a product is downloaded and in some cases no sale as well. But you'll never convince me (and it's impossible to prove) that every single person who ever downloaded any software wouldn't have purchased it had they not had the option of stealing it.

The issue is that software has huge up front costs. If people were to follow your "morals" there would be no reasonable way to recoup those up front costs, since it would just be ok to take what you want.

I do tend to think that the fact that the creator continues to get full price long after they've past production costs and made a healthy profit could use some scrutiny (i.e. is there a better way to do this), but software is hardly the only industry where this is the case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This story is especially timely for me - I'm building a website <http://www.booklends.com> that will let Kindle and Nook owners lend books to each other easily. It's kinda my weekend startup right now. I'm hoping to have the site ready enough in a few days enough to do a "Ask HN: Review my startup" post...

It is now possible to lend some Kindle and Nook books to other users for 14 days - but only if the publishers allow it. I feel that if the current craziness in eBook pricing continues, this will only drive people towards using the lending features of their devices.

This story did also answer another question for me: I never understood why Amazon removed from their API the ability to get a Kindle book's Offer Price.

(somewhat terse announcement here: <https://forums.aws.amazon.com/ann.jspa?annID=854> )

You can query the List Price, but this isn't what people would actually pay for the book. Sounds like they removed this ability because the publishers are making them play games with the actual price that they can offer to customers.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is my personal opinion of what could be the solution.

1) Ebooks will be kept on publishers' servers

2) A standard which all ebook readers can read will be adapted (during the crossover period publishers can keep ebooks in multiple formats)

This could be it. Now the retail sellers can sell the book for a lower cost. Every time a purchase is made, let's say a key is generated by the retailer (e.g. amazon) that will allow you to download the book from the publisher's (e.g. penguin) server.

or

3) An umbrella organization for all the publishers is created. The organization manages the ebook standard and hosts the ebooks themselves. Publishers pay money to the organization per download basis (to cover the hosting cost) + a yearly membership fee (to cover the management costs)

4) The umbrella organization can actually sell the ebooks itself (maybe even use advertising to cancel out the yearly membership fee) and/or resell them to major retailers.

Everybody could sell their book to the umbrella organization, pay for the sharing costs and make their book available around the world.

This would allow easier publishing, cut out the 30-40% retailer margin and make the books more available.

The current model has the retailers to closely tied to the whole system. Without them, nothing works, so they are the price-makers. Furthermore, retailers actually make the ereaders so they get to subsidize the reader and spread the cost on the books, this unfortunately provides disincentives to support other platforms. Therefore we need to centralize the distribution system.

The first steps would be creating an open standard that every retailer has to support, so we wouldn't have to be tied to their devices.

</comment><comment><USER25> One of the other main reasons ebooks costs so much is because they are sold in proprietary formats. Yes, some costs associated with producing, distributing, and selling physical books are diminished, but at the same time, publishers now have to pay to convert their text to each retailer's ebook format -- both a set fee and per-copy-sold fee. Publishers are forced to pay-to-play (essentially) in Amazon's store, or B&N's store, or whatnot, so that their books are available in their formats, a cost that is then folded into the production of the ebook. So yes, some costs go down, others go up.

On a side note, the agency pricing model actually is better for most authors/illustrators as well, not just their publisher. Physical book, the author gets a set royalty (anywhere between 5-15%) based on the retail price. Ebook, the author gets 25% of net receipts. The breakdown there is:

$10 physical book at 10% royalty: $1 per book to the author (out of ~$5 to the publisher)

$10 ebook at 25% net: $1.75 per book to the author (out of ~$7 to publisher)

It's a move toward more fair compensation for the content creators.

</comment><comment><USER6> A lot of people in this thread are going off course due to the red herring about how much it costs to make an ebook. There are systems where cost is based on price to make but capitalism isn't one of them.

The real issue here is Agency pricing. Personally I don't understand why a company like Amazon wouldn't try to do something against them since it constrains what they can do with ebooks, an otherwise very flexible product. They could do things like selling a high end camera ebook at a loss provided the customer also buys that camera from them. With this pricing scheme they have no flexibility with ebook prices at all. They are essentially providing an online store for publishers to sell their products directly. Is 30% a fair price for such a service (personally I might try to get more because their store might be competing against mine)?

</comment><comment><USER26> I want to know when the BitTorrent market for eBooks becomes as well populated as the one for MP3s. I hope soon!

<comment><USER13> It's not far off that now. One annoyance at the moment is that loads of books are just scans of pages in a pdf. So they aren't computer readable text, no searching, no font size chasing, no reflowable text. It's a pain by eventually Oct will get good enough.

<comment><USER26> Any good sources or eBook themed trackers you can recommend?

<comment><USER13> I don't know of any specific ones. I just use Demoinoid mostly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> That is the wrong question. The question should be, "Why are ebooks priced so high?"

</comment><comment><USER28> Interesting article on "Agency Pricing". So all the big players in the industry come together, make a pricing compact that no one can break, and as a side effect lock out all the smaller players.

How is this not price fixing and collusion?

</comment><comment><USER29> Ebooks aren't even competitive with actual books, second-hand books in particular. For almost any popular book published more than a few years ago, it's a lot cheaper to get it in a second-hand bookshop.

<comment><USER30> That doesn't help if you tend not to read the sorts of popular books that are easy to find in second-hand bookshops.

Nor if you don't want to spend a bunch of time shopping for books that may or may not be in stock.

In my experience, second-hand bookstores are great for serendipitous finds - books that look interesting that you weren't looking for and maybe didn't know existed, not so much for finding a specific book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Expect prices to fall as ebook reader penetration/market share increases.

Already, my (B&N) NookColor shows me variably-priced books as I browse.

Even "Agency Pricing" will fall as the cartel's power decreases in the future.

</comment><comment><USER32> Obviously, value vs. cost pricing is key.

However, ebooks are less functional than physical books in some key ways, at least with current DRM - you can't easily lend a book (the restricted amazon form is pretty weak), and you can't resell it. Assuming "like having a nice physical object" and "convenience of carrying all my books on one device" are a wash, the lack of lending or resale should definitely make the ebook cheaper.

</comment><comment><USER33> because people like to make MONIEs and dont care about you</comment>


Ask HN: What is your favourite unpopular programming language? - <AUTHOR> I'm specifically gearing this toward obscure languages -- in other words, not PHP and Java, because although nearly everybody hates those languages, nearly everybody knows them too. Languages with bad reputations that are no longer common count, though (like COBOL and FORTRAN).
Mine's prolog. <comment><USER2> F#. Beautiful language, clean and concise, encourages functional programming without mandating it, type inference gives the benefits of static typing without the boilerplate. And it's a .Net language so you have the full .Net ecosystem, eliminating most of the disadvantages of using a minority language.

<comment><USER3> I am actually playing with F# quite a bit. It is definitely forcing me to rethink the way I am setting up my C# applications.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Lua is pretty nice. Great memory footprint, easy to embed, and you can use LuaJIT if you want to trade extra memory usage for extra speed.

The best integration so far is probably Nginx:

[https://blog.cloudflare.com/pushing-nginx-to-its-limit- with-...](https://blog.cloudflare.com/pushing-nginx-to-its-limit-with-lua/)

<comment><USER5> We implemented Lua as the quest / NPC scripting language within a "C" based MUD engine and the performance has been incredible. Tens of thousands of individual programs and not a blip, game pulses smooth as ever 8 times a second.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really like Rust.

I suppose its debatable whether it's unpopular, as Rust focused articles on HN tend to be up-voted. But, it does seem "unpopular" compared to Go, and other languages with a much larger following.

</comment><comment><USER7> If popularity is not measured in the sheer amount of code written or programmers, then I would have to say Java. It has to be the most publicly shamed language. It's not really the language itself I enjoy. It's IntelliJ. Seriously, IntelliJ makes writing Java code insanely fast.

<comment><USER8> The latest version of Eclipse IDE (Luna) is actually quite good and possibly better than IntelliJ for Java development.

<comment><USER9> Have you used Intellij? It's quite possibly the best software development tool ever made. Sometimes I just gawk at how polished it is. Intellij IDEA is simply amazing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Smalltalk - the granddaddy of all object oriented languages, and still the 'most' object oriented IMHO. And the only language that I know of that is typically implemented in a system that offers image based persistence, which is very cool (again IMHO).

</comment><comment><USER11> Prolog. Extraordinarily simple model (you can implement an interpreter in a few hundred lines of code); yet extraordinarily powerful for solving many kinds of discrete-math (e.g. parsing, graph theory) problems.

</comment><comment><USER12> Arc - the Lisp that runs Hacker News.

It's a really cleanly-designed language. While it has rough edges, the problems with it seem to be things it doesn't do, not things it does for confusing reasons.

</comment><comment><USER13> Perl, unless you think it's still too popular to count. If not Perl, maybe 68000 assembler.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wasn't sure whether to count perl. Ten years ago, I'd say perl fell into the same category as PHP and Java -- a large user base, many of whom dislike it. But, it's transitioning toward being a language of the past.

<comment><USER14> Perl probably counts.

For newer developers, I feel like even the linenoise/write once jokes are pretty much unknown. For an older set you still see one-liners and text heavy scripts, but no large players are really doing greenfield development in perl anymore.

Which is a bit of a shame, because perl 5.20 is a pretty far cry from the 5.8 I was using those 10 years ago...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Shen. Love it because it's small, easy to implement, nice to optimize and I have a real weakness for small implementations, Prolog and Lisp.

Edit: I really like Mercury [1] but the implementation is so crazy large and complex that I stopped pursuing it. While it's so lovely. I just try to use what I learnt from Mercury in optimising my Shen implementation.

[1] [https://mercurylang.org/about.html](https://mercurylang.org/about.html)

</comment><comment><USER16> VBA. It's nice to be able to write somebody an excel macro that they can run without having to install anything. Sue me.

</comment><comment><USER17> Brainfuck.

Because it's fun.

My favorite Brainfuck interpreters.

[http://brainfuck.tk](http://brainfuck.tk) [http://copy.sh/brainfuck/](http://copy.sh/brainfuck/) [http://www.iamcal.com/misc/bf_debug/](http://www.iamcal.com/misc/bf_debug/)

This is a good IDE for Brainfuck.

[http://4mhz.de/bfdev.html](http://4mhz.de/bfdev.html)

If you are interested, you can contribute to this Brainfuck compiler optimization project.

[http://www.nayuki.io/page/optimizing-brainfuck- compiler](http://www.nayuki.io/page/optimizing-brainfuck-compiler)

</comment><comment> xkcd-sucks mathematica and/or the "wolfram language"

proprierary and slow (bad) but it has a huge, convenient, well documented standard library so it's convenient for prototyping stuff

plus it's really satisfying to implement complicated thing in a single line of code

</comment><comment><USER18> CFML (language behind ColdFusion and open-source variants). Very approachable by beginners. Web console by default, no need to jack with config files. No database connection strings or convoluted models, just put SQL in <cfquery> and get a recordset. Simple data structure. Ease of HTML syntax, but power of c-like scripting if you want it. Backed by JVM, so can extend it in all the ways you'd imagine, and can also write extensions in CFML if you'd like. I do mostly Ruby these days, but I spent a long time doing CFML, so I'll always be fond of it.

</comment><comment><USER19> I like PostScript. When you want absolute control over a vector image, it's the way to go, and if you set up your macros right (that is "procedures") it can be quite easy to modify and reuse.

</comment><comment><USER20> I am burning a candle for Nim, formerly Nimrod. I like the brevity of the code I write using the language. I feel it has very few drawbacks, but I wish there were more of a community around it.

</comment><comment><USER9> Mozart/Oz. Such a beautiful language and system; except the syntax, dynamic typing & sophomoric runtime ;-)

There is nothing like Oz. I spent 2 of my best years just studying its research papers.

</comment><comment><USER21> During the programming languages course on Coursera they focused on SML for the first few weeks - while I haven't done too much with it outside of that course I really liked it

</comment><comment><USER22> Agda; it marries formal mathematics and programming in a very satisfying way. I can't wait to see what comes of it and other intuitionistic type theory–based systems.

</comment><comment><USER23> The most fun I had coding in recent years was writing a couple simple games to run on an Atari 2600 emulator. All kinds of hoops to jump through to get stuff on the screen, but somehow all the effort just made it more fun. I should do some more of that.

Solid intro tutorial here - [http://www.atariage.com/2600/programming/2600_101/](http://www.atariage.com/2600/programming/2600_101/)

</comment><comment><USER24> Rexx - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rexx](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rexx)

</comment><comment><USER25> Elixir, it combines Ruby-like syntactic sugar with Erlangs powerful OTP libraries and distributed systems mojo!

</comment><comment><USER26> I will always have a soft spot for ActionScript - it's what got me into programming in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER27> Haha, I scanned all the comments to see if someone said prolog just to figure out that the OP did :D

It's prolog for me too. Or I guess logic programming in general, but prolog is the main standalone one. I really hope clojure's core.logic takes off.

</comment><comment><USER28> FoxBase+/Mac - so very versatile for an 80s database language.

</comment><comment><USER29> JavaScript :)

(Just because a lot of people use it, doesn't make it popular!)

</comment><comment><USER30> J is mind expanding.

<comment><USER31> So is datura.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Amos (my first programming language), Euphoria (It's nice), Erlang (when you understand the erlang way, you seek it in all the rest of languages, something like with lisp).

</comment><comment><USER33> Tcl

</comment><comment><USER34> Mine's erlang.

</comment><comment><USER35> Net.Data

</comment><comment><USER36> Java</comment>


Serum concentrations of PFASs and exposure-related behaviors in women - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41370-018-0109-y <comment><USER2> Besides containing Teflon, those coated flosses just don't work as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> For me, most dental floss shreds between one particularly irksome pair of teeth in my mouth. So Glide-style floss is the only type that works.

<comment><USER2> I have that problem, too, but I'm not willing to put PTFE in my body over two crammed teeth. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Actual title: "Serum concentrations of PFASs and exposure-related behaviors in African American and non-Hispanic white women"

<comment><USER4> We've updated the title from the submitted "Dental flossing linked with higher levels of PFAS in the body".

<comment><AUTHOR> All good. Of course my descriptive headline was intended to emphasize the findings of the study. The journal article title simply offers that research has taken place -- and thus, is not nearly as useful. It would have been possible to link to a news article that interpreted the study (and had a 'catchy' title), but I thought HN readers would prefer a primary source. Regards!

example catchy title: 'Oral-B Glide floss tied to potentially toxic PFAS chemicals, study suggests' [https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/01/09/oral-b...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/01/09/oral- b-glide-floss-toxic-pfas-chemicals-study/2530661002/)

<comment><USER3> Your "more descriptive" headline was misleading; floss was only one of four itemized factors, the more important of which was coatings on food containers.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Start-up Wants Your Vagina to Smell of Peaches - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/11/start-up-wants-your-vagina-to-smell-of-peaches.html <comment><USER2> The nymag.com article tries to add a funny angle with the selected photo and a wishlist of smells.

Much better article about the founders behind the company and their plans is [http://www.inc.com/jeff-bercovici/sweet-peach-founder- speaks...](http://www.inc.com/jeff-bercovici/sweet-peach-founder-speaks.html)</comment>


Ask HN: How do you avoid co-founder fatigue? - <AUTHOR>

My co-founder and I are close friends.  Startup is going better than it has in months.  But lately, his faults are getting on my nerves.
Right now, I cope by "shutting it down" - just keep my mouth shut and stick to the work.  Even though I'm not trying to be pro-actively mean, I think it comes across that way because normally I'm chatty and making jokes.
What are some things you guys do so that you can deal with your co-founder? <comment><USER2> I think it depends on the faults you're talking about. If those faults in any way impact the business, then it's going to seriously affect how you view him as both a business partner and a friend.

In any case though, you're in a relationship with someone and communication is important. Your co-founder and you should be constantly providing each other feedback in order to be better partners. Be sensitive on how you word it when you bring it up, but if you stress that it's for the good of your friendship AND the business you've started, he should be able to take it in stride.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for taking the time to reply. I can be hypercritical and thought that maybe I just needed some time and space away. So that's kind of where I was going, but...

You bring up a perspective I need to consider. Some faults are simply part of his character and have come up in non-work related settings. Others have revealed themselves through work disagreements.

But you are right in that I should communicate what is impacting work. And try to do it in a way that won't sound like I'm just blasting him. He is a good guy after all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You definitely need to get this out on the table. One thing, though, try using the word "difference" instead of "fault." So say something like "I've noticed some differences in how we work together and I feel like it's affecting my commitment to the business."

Make a list of the differences beforehand and go through them one by one with him. Make an agreement beforehand that if it gets emotional, you'll take a break on the current item and revisit it after you've each had a chance to process it.

Also, ask yourself if there's anything you can do to change how you perceive those faults.

For example, I used to get defensive about my code when my partner criticized it in a certain way. One day I realized that, if I just wait 5 seconds before responding and remind myself that my partner has the best intentions in mind, the emotion drains away.

</comment><comment><USER4> As with most relationship issues, discuss it, but be nice about it. Turn what might be a confrontation into a discussion where your co-founder can voice similar concerns he/she might have about you. Usually when there is frustration it's going both ways.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, jokull. I know that I am not easy to work with at times, and he probably has good feedback for me, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Without knowing more about your specific situation it's tough to give anything but a vague answer.

Partnership is harder than marriage. I think this is part of why HN places so much value on co-founders who get it.

You also learn if your friendships are true friendships where the person is as willing to look at themselves as much as point fingers.

Ultimately you have to get and stay on the same page. Knowing how to disagree, and know who's driving the bus ultimately has to be in place.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for taking the time to reply, j45. The points you bring up are quite astute despite my being vague on details.

Wrt "the person is as willing to look at themselves as much as point fingers", I actually thought I was being overly hypercritical because nothing in the past week has happened that would provoke me. So I just thought I needed time and space. That was what I was looking for wrt replies on HN, but...

Upon retrospect, we have also both been testier ever since our first idea didn't work out. So far so good with the new one, but that first one was 6 months of 0 traction that changed our dynamic.

You've given me a lot to think about, and I will need to think about how to have a constructive conversation that will help us move on.

<comment><USER5> Glad it may have helped, all learnt the hard way.

One thing that's hard is having a dialogue where both people can speak openly and feel heard and understood and respected.

Often when relationships degrade, it turns into monologues crammed down each others throats and jumping to conclusions, instead of giving the benefit of the doubt and asking "what else could this mean?" in a positive way.

It's that much harder with coders who aren't always socially aware or developed as we might need to be.

It will be hard to have conversation about anything if you guys aren't comfortable with each others presence to begin with. What's needed is some form of an emotional breakthrough.

To that effect, maybe starting with a conversation saying sorry, I hope i haven't been short with you unintentionally, I didn't mean to so let me know what I mean if I come across in a way that doesn't seem positive or productive because that's what's most important. Hopefully you hear the same back from him, and if you don't you can say I want to make sure either of us can talk about how we're working together as well as what we're working on...

Feel free to connect offline if you need. It sounds like you care and that's a good thing, if you can confirm your partner does too there's a chance you can come out of this stronger and have each others backs. Instead of facing each other, you have to face the world together at each others side and let 1+1=11</comment></comment></comment>


The Efficient Cloud: All Of Salesforce Runs On Only 1,000 Servers - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/23/the-efficient-cloud-all-of-salesforce-runs-on-only-1000-servers/ <comment><USER2> Ive long respected the approach of Salesforce: whilst this is new info to me I am not surprised at the efficiency.

Pretty impressive that: 20 tables for all that data! And we are stuck messing with MySQL (etc) and all these new non-relational databases. :)</comment>


BlogBeats- Geo and Time Tagged Blogging Platform - <AUTHOR> The first GeoTime tagged blogging platform,Our mission is to revolutionize the world of blogging by vastly improved discoverability https://blogbeats.me combined with ease of creation, through its unique concept of Geo and Time tagged Beats, so
that everyone can benefit from it. We want every town and city to come alive with real
expressions and information generated by residents, so that everyone can benefit from it.
'Beat' as your heart beats, tag with location and time period and your expressions become
instantly discoverable in your neighbourhood. <comment><USER2> Hey, I get redirected to your welcome page and the "remind me later" doesn't work.

Cool idea though

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://blogbeats.me](https://blogbeats.me)</comment>


Shows HN: Teespring API - <AUTHOR> http://teespring-api.cloudapp.net/ This is an API I built to interface with Teespring. It includes support for specific campaigns as well as searching all campaigns. <comment><USER2> Nice! I love teespring, maybe now I can finally build something using their data.</comment>


A visual Git reference - <AUTHOR> http://marklodato.github.com/visual-git-guide/index-en.html

<comment><USER2> This 'reference' is, at best, full of inaccuracies and incorrect terminology, with diagrams that are overly complicated and ridiculous. For example: <http://marklodato.github.com/visual-git-guide/merge.svg>. What the fuck?

This guide will only make your understanding of Git worse.

It uses incorrect terminology to mislead what Git is actually doing in a number of situations, starting with the first sentence of the first section: _The four commands above copy files between the working directory, the stage (also called the index), and the history (in the form of commits)._

Git doesn't care about files, but _changesets_ so this should raise a red flag with anyone with even a passing knowledge of how Git works. This is either a fundamental flaw in the understanding of how Git works by the OP or intentionally misleading wording.

In the __Commit __section, the OP writes: _It then points the current branch to this new commit._ I don't like this wording because it makes it seem like a branch is something other than a reference to a particular commit (which is available in .git/refs/heads). Really, any reference to "current branch" should be replaced by HEAD, because the current branch is nothing other than HEAD, and HEAD of course is just a commit.

In the __Checkout __section, the OP writes: _The checkout command is used to copy files from the history (or stage) to the working directory, and to optionally switch branches._ This is blatantly false. `git checkout` doesn't "copy files"; it may move HEAD or it may get rid of any changes in the working directory, and in doing so may change the state of the files within the local repo.

In the __Committing with a Detached HEAD __section, the OP writes: _Once you check out something else, say master, the commit is (presumably) no longer referenced by anything else, and gets lost._ This is only partly true. The commit still remains in the reflog and can be retrieved up to the point that garbage collection is run. It's incorrect to tell someone their commits are lost as soon as they `git checkout` another treeish.

This guide should be binned in favor of EdgeCase's Git Immersion (<http://gitimmersion.com/>) and Scott Chacon's Pro Git (<http://www.git- scm.com/book>).

<comment><USER3> I disagree on most of your points.

> Git doesn't care about files, but _changesets_ so this should raise a red > flag with anyone with even a passing knowledge of how Git works. This is > either a fundamental flaw in the understanding of how Git works by the OP or > intentionally misleading wording.

Git absolutely cares about files. It cares about commits too, but a commit is mostly just a set of files with a pointer to its parent. The commands being discussed operate on individual files except for commit, which operates on the entire index (which is, conceptually, a snapshot of file).

> In the Commit section, the OP writes: It then points the current branch to > this new commit. I don't like this wording because it makes it seem like a > branch is something other than a reference to a particular commit (which is > available in .git/refs/heads). Really, any reference to "current branch" > should be replaced by HEAD, because the current branch is nothing other than > HEAD, and HEAD of course is just a commit.

I don't understand your objection to this phrasing. A branch is a pointer to a commit; the statement talks about changing which commit the branch points to. I don't see where it implies anything else about what a branch is. As for "current branch"/"HEAD", using HEAD is more precise in terms of the actual implementation, but "current branch" is just as accurate and more (new-)user friendly. The author does discuss the relationship between the two prior to that point: "The current branch is identified by the special reference HEAD, which is "attached" to that branch."

> In the Checkout section, the OP writes: _The checkout command is used to > copy files from the history (or stage) to the working directory, and to > optionally switch branches._ This is blatantly false. `git checkout` doesn't > "copy files"; it may move HEAD or it may get rid of any changes in the > working directory, and in doing so may change the state of the files within > the local repo.

When used as "git checkout <ref>", this is correct, but that is not what the author is talking about. "git checkout <ref> <file>" or "git checkout -- <file>" does exactly what the author describes, copying files from the given commit or index to the working directory.

> In the Committing with a Detached HEAD section, the OP writes: _Once you > check out something else, say master, the commit is (presumably) no longer > referenced by anything else, and gets lost._ This is only partly true. The > commit still remains in the reflog and can be retrieved up to the point that > garbage collection is run. It's incorrect to tell someone their commits are > lost as soon as they `git checkout` another treeish.

Only partly true, but true enough. The commit isn't irretrievably lost, but the reflog falls more under "advanced usage"; certainly a git beginner shouldn't be making detached commits and relying on the reflog to get back to them.

<comment><USER2> > Git absolutely cares about files.

In a sense. A commit is not a set of files, it is one or more blobs and one or more trees (which may in turn point to one or more blobs or trees.) A blob does refer to a file, both in content and location, but it's the blob that matters. The OP speaks of the files on disk, which Git doesn't copy around. Git does, however, change the state of the working directory to that which matches the trees referenced in the commit. What I don't like about this is that it tries to make it seem like the files on disk matter in a way that they don't from Git's perspective.

> I don't understand your objection to this phrasing.

I had a chat with a coworker and he agreed that my distaste with the "current branch" terminology is perhaps misplaced.

> When used as "git checkout <ref>", this is correct, but that is not what the > author is talking about. "git checkout <ref> <file>" or "git checkout -- > <file>" does exactly what the author describes, copying files from the given > commit or index to the working directory.

Of course, the files that are being copied are not the files that the OP is talking about. The files being copied are the trees and blobs, not the files in the working directory. The effective result is the same, but thinking in files on disk will not improve one's knowledge of Git.

> Only partly true, but true enough. The commit isn't irretrievably lost, but > the reflog falls more under "advanced usage"; certainly a git beginner > shouldn't be making detached commits and relying on the reflog to get back > to them.

Shunning the reflog doesn't do anyone any good. The OP not even mentioning the reflog is in poor taste, and makes the statement in the guide untrue.

I did a bit of research into the reflog after some questions arose and should update my prior comment about it to say: Any commit that Git determines to be unreachable (a list of which that you can see with `git fsck --unreachable`) will only be removed from the reflog after both the reflog's unreachable expiration time has passed (by default, 30 days for unreachable) and `git gc` has ran. At the very least, without mentioning the reflog, the OP should state that unreachable commits will remain for 30 days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Awesome! Very clear and well-written reference.

I wish someone would make a reference like this for remote branches and repos, I always keep forgetting commands for setting upstream branches, checking out remote branches and having them tracked, etc.

</comment><comment><USER5> Very nice set of diagrams.

But every time I see something this I have to ask myself again why I'm just not using CVS (or SVN, i.e. a simpler tool).

<comment><USER6> My opinion in the svn vs git debate:

Unless you are working across multiple groups with developers in different time zones and a choppy set of releases you'll see almost no benefit from git.

However, if you are in that situation the benefits are large and immediate.

<comment><USER7> Well, if you enjoy 'log' pulling info over the network (slowly), .svn in every single folder, barely useable branching, no reabase, no stach, no… well maybe you have the point. Otherwise not even comparable. When I first saw Linus' talk on git where he was very harsh toward SVN uers I thought "WTF". Then I tried git and had to admit that the man was right.

<comment><USER8> Since Subversion 1.7 (2nd half of 2011) it keeps only one .svn folder in the root folder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Excellent stuff. Maybe one quick feedback would be to show actual terminal examples to complement what's in the paragraphs.

</comment><comment><USER10> A nice example that good tech reference doesn't need much stylistic formatting :)

</comment><comment><USER11> This is cool, but every diagram I've seen for git history uses arrows pointing to the past instead of the future, which is a bit confusing.

<comment><USER12> Just think of it as a commit having a pointer to its parent.

<comment><USER2> This, in addition to knowing that a commit may have multiple parents (a merge commit, for example).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Not cool, or even HN worthy, it's just good documentation (assuming it's accurate). Tech writers (assuming they're good) can help a lot.</comment>


Postmates' new IPO delay indicates Wall Street is turning against Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/10/8/20903393/postmates-ipo-market-wall-street-silicon-valley-direct-listing-wework-uber-unicorns <comment><USER2> Comparing direct listings to IPOs always seemed odd to me. An IPO is a _fundraising event_. A DPO does not raise any money for the actual business, but it gives liquidity to existing shareholders. The reason we're seeing them now is that there are companies who don't need an IPO to raise money, but have shareholders who have waited 10 years for liquidity.

<comment><USER3> While yes indeed some employees have waited many years for a liquidity event and want a payout for their hard work, the other shareholders are LPs with a venture capital target date on their funds.

This means that the company will either need to keep raising money to buy out earlier investors that need to hit their fund target dates (Rather than raise it all for themselves), or they'll need to go public at some point, even if they don't need the money per se. Keep in mind that investors get lot's of sway via their board seats.

If you're in the business of losing money, this game of hot potato becomes harder and harder to play over time.

(Someone correct me if I'm wrong.)

<comment><USER4> > This means that the company will either need to keep raising money to buy > out earlier investors ...

Isn't this the literal definition of a Ponzi scheme? Isn't using new money to pay old investors technically illegal?

<comment><USER5> In a Ponzi scheme there isn't an actual business occurring, or only the facade of one. If they make money, they can stop raising from investors.

The line can be a little fuzzy, since some Ponzi schemers pretend to be an honest business and some real businesses end up being, functionally, a Ponzi scheme.

<comment><USER4> Makes sense, thanks for the clarification!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Or turning against bullshit business models. The growth for taking egregious commissions on takeout and losing money while doing it is a finite market.

<comment><USER7> 20 years ago we had the dotcom craze it was all bullshit business models. F'ed company and all that. Wall street never really cared about any of the tech, it was always about the money. In most cases anyway.

Some of the companies that have IPOed recently can only be destroyed by massive investment. Uber for example, should be sized like Craig's list connecting drivers and riders, not 20,000 employees with billions in valuation doing autonomous car bullshit.

<comment><USER6> In that era I worked for a company that pivoted from a software developer to what we'd call a SaaS. They had incredible margins but had to spend some capital to expand... and they had the ability to take big share in some lucrative areas.

But they had a hard time raising money because they were too big and were profitable. They ended up being acquired by some big dumb dotcom conglomerate and the spun back out at a 5x return to a big evil company who was smart, invested in the platform and makes a lot of money.

IMO it's an example of the "bulls run, pigs get slaughtered" idea... these funds have to swing for home runs, then panic when rough times loom.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is some hit-piece reflecting anxieties in the Bay Area in the wake of the WeWork fiasco, rather than a meaningful appraisal of value that you'd see from a publication with credibility from Wall Street's point of view. Don't buy the hype!

</comment><comment><USER9> Might it have something to do with the fact that so many companies have waited so long to go public that there's basically no realistic upside left for retail investors?

<comment><USER10> that is 1 huge difference between the IPOs of now and even 10 years ago. you could buy stock in companies like Google or Salesforce that were still nowhere close to their maturation stage. sure it was hard to find that 50x bagger but at least it was possible. Now I doubt those exist

<comment><USER11> Markets are efficient. You could also have bought Pets.com.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Craft.io says they have raised $900 Million. They want to IPO at a valuation just barely _double_ that amount after 8 years of trying. That seems very desperate to me, especially considering the onslaught of competition, declining revenue growth.

There's no moat. It's easy to create hyperlocal competitors. There are many. This market is saturated.

I can't see how postmates can continue to grow wealth for investors. Neither can the public markets. They are barely better than index funds with _way_ more risk.

<comment><USER13> Looks like they're buying their bankers' bullshit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What would Wall Street care? All that matters is that a company goes public while there is still some (perceived, at least) upside for retail investors. If the main company of going public is to give investors / employees liquidity, then of course they are going to bomb. If the company has real upside, then it will be fine.

<comment><USER15> Retail investors represent at most 5% of trading, most likely 1%. And even then most of them are in index funds. The game today was consolidated into huge players, almost all are institutions.

The problem here is that of pricing (and nothing more).

Wallstreet wants to pay X, but VC wants 5X. This is why the "window" is closing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I think the most fascinating thing about Postmates is how they are behind is almost every market but for some reason have an abnormally high market share in Los Angeles.

Apparently they had early partnerships with celebrities like Kylie Jenner and it created a loyal following that stuck?

I guess I assumed in the age of the internet you wouldn't see something like a delivery app only "work" like that in one city, primarily due to local marketing efforts.

</comment><comment><USER17> Two examples is a trend.

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't understand why "food-delivery startup" counts as a "tech company".

<comment><USER19> Delivery of this kind is a three-agent problem: the company needs to coordinate between the restaurant, the driver, and the customer to make the whole thing work. This includes matching the customer to a driver who is in a good position to deliver on time. Keep in mind that the dispatcher, restaurant, driver, and customer may have no prior relationship.

You can do that at a small to medium scale without a lot of technology, e.g. taxi dispatch in a city can be operated by a small group of people in an office. But to scale such a service across an entire country, or the world, operating 24/7, is a massive coordination problem where technology can have a huge impact.

<comment><USER20> Well, you can watch 100km from point A to point B. Or you can ride a horse. If you're rich enough, you can get someone to carry you on their back or you can buy a car to make the whole thing easier because of the technology breakthrough in transport.

That doesn't make Ford or Honda a tech company. They're automobile companies and Postmate is a delivery company.</comment></comment></comment>


Meet the New Math, Unlike the Old Math - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/20161005-commoncore-math-ngss-science-education/ <comment><USER2> FTA: "Traditional math teaches an algorithm. Common Core teaches the concept of 'proportionality' [over a period of six years]"

My 11 and 13yr olds are dealing with this Common Core bullshit right now. This article might give an insight into why CC is so bad, yet they think its so good. Like when we demo a software product that we've all been working on for six months, and discover that users can't figure out how to make it work: it only works for us because we've been using it continuously for six months. Maybe Common Core can teach Proportionality if you sit down with a kid and give them all six years of it over two days. What happens in reality, is that my kids (a) don't understand the confusing ways its presented and (b) don't make the connection between the different expressions of the same underlying concept. Its not useful. Its actually immensely frustrating for everyone.

I think they have it exactly backwards. Teach the algorithm. Rote practice. Then teach the concept.

I'm reminded of my first year thermodynamics lecture at Imperial: "We're going to teach this to you every year. The first year you wont understand it. The second year you'll think you understand it. The final year you'll realize you never really understood it, but at least you'll be able to use it."

<comment><USER3> My daughter went through this in Canada; same basic concept and she did not like it and neither of us could make sense of a lot of it.

My theory is that this version of Math is designed by people who hate Math (English teachers). It's all about estimation and fuzzy thinking. Everything that I personally liked about Math as a kid seems to have been stripped away. In my opinion, children who want to become computer programmers, scientists, and engineers are probably not well serviced by this type of teaching.

I'm not saying the old method was perfect either; mostly because if you're just teaching algorithms then there isn't much understanding about why they actually work.

<comment><USER4> One of the things machine learning has taught me that for many complex algorithms, I don't know how they work, and ... no-one does, and here's the great insight : it's not important, it is in fact a very good thing that I don't know what they're doing. It wouldn't make any difference if I did, and it would in fact be more limiting than not knowing. Having the ability to execute and design them is all that's important.

The issue is that machine learning, at least in the modelling domain, is exceeding the maximum complexity the human mind can contain. Attempting to analyze neural networks is fun, and it's what you do as a researcher. But no amount of study is going to tell you what more than 10 neurons are doing to any reasonable amount of detail, no matter how smart you are. Machine learning algorithms suck at explaining what they're doing mostly because what they're doing is far more complex than what we do. And yes, I can build toy examples like a 100 bit binary adder where I do know, I'm talking about non-obvious cases.

Therefore: rote is all that matters. You should be able to execute these things, forwards and backwards and take it's code apart and put it back together again. That's all there is to it. And if machine learning does indeed conquer the world, that's all there will be to anything.

<comment><USER5> That may apply to machine learning, but not to anything you'd get in a grade school math education. Or a graduate one for that matter. Moving from rote implementation of something else came up with to figuring out how to approach problems where the steps aren't already laid out for you is a big speed bump in university education for mathematics majors.

Also, unless our current machine learning algorithms just need bigger computers to take over the world, _somebody_ is going to have to develop more. If some kind of guiding intuition isn't a part of that process, the universe will hit heat death before we build an AGI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > "[Teachers] are woefully unprepared [for] engaging in inquiry driven > lessons. [...] instructional changes entailed by NGSS are too big to > internalize in isolated chunks of professional development.

I think this is currently the main obstacle with the CCSSM and NGSS. The structure and logic of the news standards are good, but they're new so it will take some time for teachers to adjust. We need better course plans, better textbooks for teachers, better textbooks for students, and better exercise frameworks.

We can't look to mainstream publishers to provide this, because they're large, slow, and extractive organizations. Therefore, this seismic shift in the structure and material taught represents a tremendous opportunity for OER to come in and eat the big publishers lunch, e.g. [1].

Our company (Minireference Co.) is currently focussed on university-level textbooks so we can't "attack" the high-school market, but we're happy to share technology and insights with anyone out there who is working on OER for primary/middle/high school.

[1] State-sponsored content push to create common-core-aligned textbooks for high schools: [http://k12oercollaborative.org/](http://k12oercollaborative.org/)

<comment><USER7> > but they're new so it will take some time for teachers to adjust

It's actually much worse than this, the only math teachers that actually understand how to teach this material are math teacher teachers and their newly graduated students who have gone through their curriculum. It's going to take a literal lifetime to actually meaningfully execute the new methods even if you manage to get the textbooks in every classroom.

I really truly hope the kinds of resources you're developing can help existing teachers transition, because as it currently stands the outlook is bleak.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> My daughter is a senior in high school. She used to love math. Then they switched to Common Core. Now she hates it. Having looked at her textbooks, I don't blame her. Confusing concepts presented quickly, with no depth, and it's unclear how those concepts solve the problems presented. Say what you will about the old way to solve for "b", at least you learned how to do it.

<comment><USER9> If she mostly learned the old way, get her old books your self and finish the job?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Experimenting with education is what broke the system in the first place. We can't very well go back to how anything was in the 1960s because times have changed, but that's not to say those methods are completely broken. Common core is a hideous atrocity that has been proven to hurt young children's minds and cause them to do things in redundant or roundabout ways. I've been experimented on throughout my school career - some of it good most of it bad. Taking education out of its broken state is important, but breaking it more helps no one. Proceed carefully and think things through before possibly ruining the education and, by extension, their lives. Education is seriously important. It takes a lot of work to rewrite your brain after being taught wrong.

<comment><USER11> No, what broke education is a fundamental misalignment in motives between the folks advocating for, paying for, and running education, and the actual children who go through with it. The things the decision makers are optimizing for are so very far removed from the actual experience of children. Like, how exactly does administering a multi-day standardized test help children? It's clear how it helps parents - they get to send their children to "better" schools. It's clear how it helps administrators - it gives them political cover for the decisions they make. But the actual children involved? Pretty damn near pointless, and the test is just the tip of the iceberg really.

I don't have high hopes for education reform movements, either. The direction education needs to go to get better is simply "less", and there's no incentives for doing so. (After all, how can you get credit for "helping children" if you're not actively doing anything?).

<comment><USER4> In my experience, what Common Core is really doing is allowing (and giving cover for) teachers who don't know the subject they're teaching. They cheat, because the only alternative is to actually become decent and fast in the subjects themselves, and that requires more knowledge and work than they'll ever put in. My kids math teacher tried to defend for >20 minutes to me that you cannot ever differentiate an equation with matrices instead of numbers. Well ... I made sure my kids double check with me if something sounds odd, and I'm forcing them to go through khan academy exercises.

This is probably exactly what administrators want, though. Cheap teachers, and damn the consequences.

<comment><USER12> _> This is probably exactly what administrators want, though. Cheap teachers, and damn the consequences._

Are you kidding? Administrators live or die on test scores, and the non-brain- dead ones realize that good teachers are the best way to get those test scores.

They don't really have a choice, though -- they work with what they're given in tax money and in many states don't even have any autonomy in compensation (NEA).

IMO the problem is way earlier in the pipeline, anyways. Even if administrators deeply cared about quality, they'd find a shallow pool. As a good rule of thumb, people who are good at mathematics _don 't become teachers_. They become engineers or go into finance and consulting or write software.

And it's all about pay and quality of work environment. I'd teach high school math in a heart beat if the working conditions were more reasonable and it paid even half as well as my other options.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have a son now, and I was sort of considering trying to introduce him to abstract algebra and category theory kind of early, because it seems like something that might be easier to understand if you know less about math than if you know more about it.

<comment><USER12> Abstract algebra seems doable at a young age for a typical child (say, somewhere b/w late middle school and late high school depending on the kid). I've done bits of group theory with kids in that age group before. It usually gets pretty well, but we never get past the first chapter or two. Basic proofs, but it's a good introduction to what "real" math is like.

IMO category theory would be a waste of time without first going through a mathematics undergraduate course of study.

Getting past the preface of a reasonable book on category theory requires internalizing the idea of a natural transformation. If you can't get that far, you won't get anything non-superficial out of studying category theory.

Understanding what a natural transformation is requires at least one example you can relate to. Understanding why it'd be useful to abstract away from that particular example requires knowing enough about at least one other example.

And to do anything even moderately interesting in category theory you need a fair bit of mathematical maturity, which means being able to write and read proofs together with a bit of knowledge about modern logic, analysis and algebra. Without that, a lot of the motivation for category theory is kind of lost (and probably most of the available exercise aren't even comprehensible. And learning math without exercises is close to impossible.).

<comment><USER14> There's quite alot you can do with _finite_ categories. Along the lines of "a group is a category with one object". etc. I'm pretty sure a sharp 12 year-old could get this.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, I suppose that's true.

You'd have to pick your topics carefully and probably reformulate a lot of definitions. And you'd need the student to think it was cool for its own sake. But I could see this working out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Unless you remove the concept of a teacher and replace it with a person who helps you with your school work when you get stuck, schools won't be fixed.

<comment><USER16> I like the idea of reciprocal teaching. You view well made lectures from home, and practice at school, where an expert can help you when you stumble.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Tom Lehrer: New Math [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfCJgC2zezw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfCJgC2zezw)

<comment><USER18> I enjoy this song, but it is rather dated. The new and confusing way of doing math he describes is the way I learned it in the 90s. It's mostly confusing in the song because it's done quickly and the visualizations added in this version are intentionally obtuse.

The song is occasionally used as an argument for going back to the old way, but it seems somewhat contradictory when parents of school-aged children aren't old enough to have experienced the old style of math instruction he advocated for. New math was a trend from the 1960s, so you'd have to be pushing 70 to have experienced elementary school math before it.

<comment><USER19> What the "New Math" was about as I remember/understand it--I suppose that's what I went through we also did plenty of arithmetic drill--was a lot of emphasis on simple set theory, doing arithmetic in different bases, etc. As he jokes in the song, the focus was on certain types of mathematical theory as opposed to being able to add, multiple, divide, and subtract.

Of course, this sort of tension is present in a lot of academics. Focus too much on the theory and students can't actually do anything useful; and many will be completely lost. Focus too much on the rote learning and the students don't actually understand any underlying principles (and, in the case of arithmetic, can't actually do anything a $5 calculator can't today).

<comment><USER20> If you don't understand arithmetic, a $5 calculator will inevitably produce the wrong answer for you.

Sometimes people question the value of teaching math to kids. But I can say anecdotally that the people I've met who did not understand arithmetic correlated strongly with people who were disasters with their personal financial affairs.

<comment><USER19> Oh I fully agree. For Example, I can still remember having an argument with someone who just couldn't understand that it wasn't some banking conspiracy that you paid mostly interest at the beginning of a loan. I also tutored for an economics class and the lack of understanding of really basic mathematical concepts was frightening.

<comment><USER20> College econ textbooks also dumb down the math for their audience. Makes you wonder about the quality of the economists' work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I just read this National Review article [1] criticizing common core, but it all kind of makes sense to me. I get that when you have 6 of soemthing and visually move 4 away, two things remain. IS there something more insidious I'm missing here? Is the idea that 82 is 0 hundreds, 8 tens, and 2 ones all the crazy? I kind of like it. But, I don't have kids and the only thing I ever taught kids was how to tie knots and sharpen an ax at summer camp, so what do I know.

[1] [http://www.nationalreview.com/article/373840/ten-dumbest- com...](http://www.nationalreview.com/article/373840/ten-dumbest-common-core- problems-alec-torres)

<comment><USER22> Some of that is just bad material (#3, shapes that should be shaded are not shaded). Others try to explain how at least I do arithmetic mentally (the particular example 7 + 7 feels silly because the answer was drilled to my brain in primary school, but the idea of decomposing number to parts that easier to sum together is sound -- and it feels like nice intuition to algebraic way of thinking). On the other hand, insisting in drawing graphical representations might be boring and feel silly if you already got it.

In other words, the Common Core seems to get flak because some of the material is simply bad and sometimes seems not to have good idea how to convey the Common Core ideas.

<comment><USER21> That's my read on it as well. Funny that you mention 7 + 7 which I've always visualized as 5 + 5 + 2 + 2, or reduced to 10+4 in my head. Whenever I add 7 to anything that doesn't end in 3, I quickly add 5 and 2 instead of 7. With respect to base 10 math, 7 is awkward.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It seems like a lot of parents these days are appalled when schools actually make their kids do work. Sure it's not fun at first, especially when you're not used to having anyone tell you what to do, but once you get the hang of it, work is fun. It's not about an oppressive system making you in to another drone. Kids should be encouraged to think for themselves but the humans that came before us have a lot of beneficial knlowedge to share. Teach your kids to not take advantage if this and to play all day at their peril.

</comment><comment><USER24> How about this for a "reform": small, incremental improvement to the system year be year. Because we have one of these "revolutions" in education approximately 1.8 times per decade since 1970. And no matter how noble the ideas, they almost always turn to nonsense by the time the hit the classroom.

</comment><comment><USER25> Meanwhile in Finland.....</comment>


Show HN: ffpass – Import and Export Passwords for Firefox Quantum - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/louisabraham/ffpass <comment><USER2> Fine work, might try later. Any clue why this is not a built-in feature anymore?

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe it is because they were developing Lockbox.

However, it seems they decided not to support it officially anymore 3 days ago: [https://mozilla-lockbox.github.io/lockbox- extension/release-...](https://mozilla-lockbox.github.io/lockbox- extension/release-notes/)</comment></comment>


81-year-old Japanese woman launches her first app for iPhone - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/shareables/2017/02/28/iphone-app-81-year-old-woman-japan/#.tnw_76QNajGC <comment><USER2> Since I'm first I'll bite:

The article didn't specify what role she had in the creation of the app, so I will assume that she designed the interaction model (at least loosely) and worked with someone else to actually build it.

Anyway, if my slightly pessimistic/cynical view is correct: that's still nothing to sniff at. My lovely and relatively tech-eager 73 year-old mom hasn't gotten to the app-producer role yet. :)</comment>


Google's Parisian Love Superbowl Ad - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnsSUqgkDwU <comment><USER2> Great commercial, but the main message for me is that the Bing team has been doing something right.

The quality of other search engines has caught up to the point where brand is an important factor in the fight for search market share. Google's product is no longer clearly better than the alternatives.

Notice how most of the rest of the commercials on are for things like snack food, beer and cars where the image and consumer perception of the product are more important than the product itself. Those companies products don't do enough to differentiate themselves, so brand advertising has to do it.

This could be a sign that the search (really the information discovery) market is maturing and that product innovation will slow down as the major players focus all their attention on marketing and battling for market share. I hope not. While Google Search is good, it's nowhere near good enough yet.

<comment><USER3> From pg's article (<http://www.paulgraham.com/bubble.html>):

 _...have you ever seen a Google ad? Something is going on here.

Admittedly, Google is an extreme case. It's very easy for people to switch to a new search engine. It costs little effort and no money to try a new one, and it's easy to see if the results are better. And so Google doesn't have to advertise. In a business like theirs, being the best is enough._

Now we are seeing Google ads. So I guess Google is starting to get worried about competition, and the ease of switching search engines.

<comment><USER4> Maybe this is just what you do when you've got a lock on 95% of your market, and you're massively profitable. Defensive maneuvers make more sense when you're executing flawlessly on the offensive front, and you've got resources to spare.

<comment><USER5> I'm inclined to take Eric Schmidt's blog post on this at face value, i.e. Google had a YouTube video with an overwhelmingly positive response and $20B cash in the bank, so they figured they might as well run it as a SuperBowl ad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Beautifully executed. The music was just right. Did a great job of showcasing the features that they have added to search (especially translations and flight status).

It was such a stark contrast the other ads, really shows how well Google knows themselves. We find you information, and we make it incredibly simple.

<comment><USER7> The Batman one was awesome. Too bad I can't find it anywhere. It was hilarious.

<comment><USER8> CBS has all of the ads at cbs.com.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In addition to building up the Google brand, this ad introduces many viewers to uses of Google they weren't aware of (finding how-to's and advice, tracking flights, translating phrases, etc). Remember, a large number of people still don't realize you can use Google for more than simple keyword searches:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/8hthy/anybody_els...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/8hthy/anybody_else_find_yourself_somehow_pegged_as_a/)

<comment><USER10> Yes! I'm surprised that more people haven't commented on this.

I believe this is the main reason why they even considered running an ad. Most of the examples are contrived to show off little-known but useful Google features. Why else is she in Paris?

Otherwise, the ad is largely celebrating how Google has entered almost every part of our lives. It doesn't really tell us anything we don't know, just associates it with pure gushy sentiment. I guess that's the branding part.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This ad caused more than one girl at our superbowl party to exclaim "OMG I'm going to cry!" By that measure, I think it was quite effective.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think this ad absolutely exemplifies why Google so utterly dominate almost everything they turn their hand to. The ad is utterly simple, to the point that there is practically nothing to subtract; This elegance of form reveals the magic of the substance.

Compare to recent ads by Yahoo and Microsoft: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqbaZcX67L0> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vl2OXiX5esE>

The ad by Yahoo is particularly poor, but they both make the same mistake - lots going on, but very little content. They're dancing around the subject, almost as if they're ashamed to talk about their product. Lots of glittering generalities, but no specifics. The ads could be for any old crap. They are the crudest of branding exercises - show vaguely positive images and slap your name on them.

The Google ad takes a simple narrative and uses it to show you their product and what it can do for you. They don't talk about wonder and joy and 'bringing people together', they just get on with making it happen. Google say "This is our product. We think it is magical and wonderful and profound. We credit you with the intelligence to come to your own conclusions.".

Google know that their product is so powerful and elegant that it needs no explaining. They understand the implications of their technology on a deep and fundamental level. They can talk about search so beautifully as to make people cry. That is as great a commercial advantage as I can possibly imagine.

<comment><USER10> Dude, did you see the Chrome ads? A lot of them were terrible.

You're right that this piece did achieve "Googliness" in an ad context. Maybe they've found their message finally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does anyone know why the flight number changed from this ad and the REAL one that aired during the superbowl (flight status of DL 8601 vs AA120)? It's also strange that the date stayed the same but the time changed.

Perhaps it's because there are trivial results (see the "old" ad)? The old one has results for atlas sound and acrylic adhesive.

I don't know why this point stood out to me - are there any other changes I didn't notice? <http://www.hulu.com/adzone/watch#50032769>

<comment><USER14> yep, that definitely must be it.

if the reason they're advertising is to sell the brand, and it's a brand competition with Bing who claims Google has sometimes irrelevant search results, then of course they need the most relevant search results possible in this ad

even though the focus was on the flight status up top, the search results for sound parts are bad results. so i guess they switched it up in case anyone noticed that.

interesting find!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> A minor observation, but I appreciate how they show the user highlighting text in one of their search results for truffles. Having done some usability work and watched users work on their computers, highlighting what is being read is such a common behavior, it's cool to see Google so in touch.

<comment><USER16> People really do that? I had no idea. Why do they highlight what's being read? I'm confused and intrigued.

<comment><USER17> I do it to keep track of my position when I scroll a document.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I was surprised the ad didn't end with the person clicking on "I'm feeling lucky".

<comment><USER19> I think that is because of reproducibility. People are bound to repeat the searches in the ad and they will usually turn up sufficiently similar results to make them think "it works". On the other hand, "I'm feeling lucky" is much less likely to yield the same result.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Cheesy, but cute, and not nearly so misogynistic as what seems to be the norm this year.

</comment><comment><USER21> The rest of the ad campaign: <http://www.youtube.com/searchstories>

</comment><comment><USER22> Eric Schmidt has posted to the Official Google Blog regarding the Ad...

[http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/love-and-super- bowl.h...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/love-and-super-bowl.html)

</comment><comment><USER23> Probably the least expensive super bowl ad too, fyi

<comment><USER23> screencasts <3

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Am I the only one that finds this ad kind of scary? 58 comments so far and not one mentions privacy. Google can tell a lot about a person from their search history, and this ad illustrates the point well.

<comment><USER10> Shut up geek, can't you see this imaginary couple _is in love?_

I think you touch on another unstated reason for this ad. You could see it in the Youtube comments... people were saying things like "yeah, Google will take over the world, but when they do I will be cheering it on... they're awesome".

People are clearly struggling with this increasing unease they have about Google and online services while embracing them more and more every day. This ad helps them get in touch with their positive feelings. Which is not exactly a lie, but it serves Google's interests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I am not a fan of Google at all, and even I must admit the ad was pretty good. I'm interested in what's behind this reversal, though. I read that Larry and Sergey had previously vetoed any kind of Super Bowl advertising. I think albertsun and others here are right -- Bing is now a serious competitor.

</comment><comment><USER26> Just noticed that the version posted on Hulu has a flight from Delta Airlines come up in search. The one posted here has a flight from American Airlines. Seems that Google put some effort into remaining airline neutral.

<comment><USER13> It's way more likely that the results that came up for the AA flight were not exactly what was requested (although 100% what I'd want to see if I was searching for one of the other items on the page).

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Posted for no reason whatsoever. The greatest marriage-related ad ever:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97X9huy7pHQ>

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm wondering what made them go with this oversimplified ad rather than one of their other glorified ones such as this one:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jC8ogWwZxwQ>

<comment><USER29> Probably because the ad you linked is ... a lot more confusing than the other one. It's very fast-paced and shows a lot of various products, which to the average person watching the SuperBowl might be a bit much. The ad they aired showed not only how simple Google is, but also how powerful it is. I think it was a great mix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Copy with HTML5 version (for those of us living in the future): <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=et_BFRbgoSs>

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm surprised they advertised search, and not, say, the Nexus One or any of their newer products. Still, definitely one of the best commercials I've seen.

<comment><USER32> Search is where they make their dough.

<comment><USER31> Yep, but at this point, Google is literally synonymous with search. Android, however is still much less recognizable than the iPhone. Then again, marketing to that many people is something of a science, and I admit to not understanding it well.

<comment><USER33> Google may be synonymous with search. However, huge portions of the population have not integrated search into their lives as tightly as you and I have (Google says I've done 19k searches and averaged about 550 a month last year -- I rather doubt my typical customer has). Evangelizing search to the rest of the population makes Google serious amounts of money -- that is one reason they've been dumping a lot into advertising search as a desired behavior this year (in Japan at least).

Both the US and Japan are rich countries with ubiquitous net access and mature Internet markets, right? What do you think was the growth in the number of searches last year for each country? Pick a percentage.

Here's the real numbers: <http://bit.ly/aFdenY> (I used bit.ly only because the URL gives away the surprise.)

I don't think we're anywhere near Peak Search, either. (For example, I'm seeing YOY growth in the 50% region on some very popular queries for non- techie customers like, e.g., [halloween bingo cards].)

<comment><USER34> One thing to consider: Google has a market share of 38% in Japan vs 72% in the U.S. [http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp- content/uploads/2010/02/Plan...](http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp- content/uploads/2010/02/Planet-Google.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> If Google does a Super Bowl ad next year, what about using AdSense in the commercial? This way they can offset the cost by providing an ad within an ad.

</comment><comment><USER36> This was the one ad I saw tonight where I _didn't_ feel like I'd been given the brown acid by a bunch of desperate ad agency creatives.

Nice one, Google.

</comment><comment><USER37> Seemed like a first draft ad to me. Seriously, that was an afternoon of work.

<comment><USER38> How would you improve this ad with more time? It seemed fairly well polished, for a simple premise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Do you as an English-only speaker, really want to marry and have kids with a French-only speaking woman when you don't even know how to say "you are cute" in French?

So the premise seems a little dumb.

<comment><USER40> When I first met the German woman who is now my wife, she could barely speak a coherent English sentence, but we managed. Two weeks later we were a couple, a year later we were married. That was 7 years ago this month.

I still don't know how to say "You are cute" in German.

<comment><USER41> Sheesh, try google!

([http://www.google.com/search?q=translate+you+are+cute+into+g...](http://www.google.com/search?q=translate+you+are+cute+into+german&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t))

<comment><USER5> There's also Translated Search:

[http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&tbo=1&tbs=clir:1&...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&tbo=1&tbs=clir:1&q=you+are+cute)

<comment><USER40> Thanks guys, I'm aware of my options. :P

I wonder if there's been a noticeable spike in search terms related to that ad, e.g. people searching for how to say "you are cute" in French.

<comment><USER5> Not noticeable enough to show up on Trends:

<http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends?sa=X>

Though everything else related to the Superbowl has managed to show up. People continue to be enamored of The Who, and the Call Barney Stinson guy seems to have gotten his money's worth.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Piers Sellers has died - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/NASA.GSFC/posts/10155604140445898 <comment><USER2> Pancreatic cancer. Sally Ride also died from this. It's the one cancer that when you find out you have it, it's usually too late for treatment.

Almost 9 years has passed since Randy Pausch spoke before Congress and the survival rate has not improved: [https://youtu.be/BaD1TsjGR0w](https://youtu.be/BaD1TsjGR0w)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's kind of disrespectful for Facebook to literally shove in my face a "Sign Up" billboard on something like this.</comment>


How to Move You Google Play Library to YouTube Music - <AUTHOR> https://nxttechy.com/youtube-music-library/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hurray while you can! Google Play Music is soon going to be removed from all android devices</comment>