How Did GM Create Tesla's Dream Car First? - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/09/15/technology/how-did-gm-create-teslas-dream-car-first.html <comment><USER2> Tesla fans (e.g over at r/teslamotors) are watching the Chevvy Bolt with interest. Persuading other manufacturers to make electric cars is, after all, consistent with Tesla's mission (accelerate the advent of sustainable transport...). I think the Bolt looks really good, and the recent range announcement is really exciting. I still can't quite believe it is happening, it seems like GM might still mess it up somehow. Will they make the Bolt in large enough numbers? Will the dealerships bury the car and fail to promote it properly? It will be really interesting to see how the launch goes.

<comment><USER2> Also: The Bolt is rumoured to have a 60kwh pack, I'd be interested to know how GM are building those at that price point.

<comment><USER3> A special deal with LG, because they are the one making the packs? I suspect LG gave them a discount because they contracted LG to take care of a bunch of other stuff in the car. A bit like a lost-leader sale. You lose a bit on one thing, but you gain it back on something else.

<comment><USER4> Like, perhaps, their rideshare adventure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Im a fan of what Tesla is doing from a distance. I cant afford any Tesla that fits my needs at the moment. Im not 100% sold on their viability long term, but glad that they are in business if at least to spur the incumbents into innovation.

That said, the Chevy Bolt is not Teslas dream car. That car is ugly, awkward and poorly conceived. It may check out on the spec sheet but there is no passion or personality in that car. Tesla is at least trying to build cars that are desirable as well as efficient, and whether or not they hit the mark, you can see that they are trying to do that.

I understand there is a demographic out there that doesn't care what their car looks like, and maybe that is what they were shooting for when they designed the bolt, but that is not a car I would ever drive. The Model 3 looks upmarket enough to satisfy aesthetics as well as practicality. The Bolt looks like what it is, a frankenstein model that had its ICE powertrain swapped with an electric one. Doing that required design compromises that just don't look good. This criticism carries over to BMW with their i series as well. The i3 is ugly and poor performing, and the i8 is impractical and expensive.

Until GM/BMW/VW/FCA/Ford/ETC start with a real electric platform designed for both efficiency and driving dynamics they will never succeed. Part of me thinks they realize that electrification will largely lead to commoditization and remove a big chunk of the profits that are derived from ICE differentiation, and they don't want that.

<comment><USER6> There are a lot of people (mostly in NA, it seems) who reflexively call every hatch ugly. I guess. Eye of the beholder, and all. But I'll take a _better_ car over a _prettier_ car every day. And that's assuming that I even think hatches are ugly, which I don't.

<comment><USER7> The funny counterpoint to those people is that the Tesla Model S IS a 5-door hatchback! (Albeit a big one)

It IS possible to make a "better" AND a "prettier" car at the same time. They aren't mutually exclusive...

<comment><USER8> Yup, some people get pedantic and call it a "liftback", either way it's got a ton of usable storage because of it.

<comment><USER6> It's not pedantic. Liftbacks sacrifice rear visibility and read headroom for that sedan-like shape.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Author seems a bit biased against Tesla, and pro-GM. First off, no mention of the fact that Elon Musk has said that he wants competitors for Tesla. He wants the entire market for electric cars to expand (more potential customers for them, right?), and they have said that they can't do that all by themselves. This is why he has open-sourced Tesla's patents [1]. Second, the author says Tesla is reaching the limits of its potential. His evidence is that they are unlikely to meet Elon Musk's lofty production goals. If Musk gets to half of his production goals, that will be a huge success. This is how he constantly drives his company forward - by making huge promises that he knows Tesla will not meet, but will still be greeted as a giant leap forward.

It's the market's short-termism that has led to this epidemic of 'If you don't meet our arbitrarily-set profit goals designed to enrich us at the expense of almost every long-term goal, you are dead to us.' Musk is playing the long game, not Wall Street's game.

[1] [https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong- you](https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you)

<comment><USER10> I haven't seen anything biased against Tesla, GM did pull out a "wonder" a 30,000$ car with 200+ miles range (reportedly longer than the Model 3) which is fully electric.

The overall sentiment of the article isn't different than other coverage of the Bolt like from Wired for example:

[https://www.wired.com/2016/01/gm-electric-car-chevy-bolt- mar...](https://www.wired.com/2016/01/gm-electric-car-chevy-bolt-mary-barra/) [https://www.wired.com/2016/09/chevrolet-bolt-range-epa- ratin...](https://www.wired.com/2016/09/chevrolet-bolt-range-epa-rating/)

Effectively GM "beat" Tesla to the punch, while the Model 3 might have some additional features and luxuries over the Bolt they also won't be available for the base 30,000$ model. Without Tesla neither the Bolt nor it's predecessor the Volt would've existed but it doesn't diminish the accomplishment that GM has pulled off.

Also while it's very nice that Musk has published the Patents it's not exactly "open-sourcing" them, they were released for "in good faith use" which is actually a pretty clever strategy that can be used against competition if the need arises, don't get me wrong this is still a huge deal but this isn't a pure altruistic move on Tesla's part either.

<comment><USER11> I dunno, when the article said "Tesla fanboys" that seems like a good indicator that the author is a bit biased against Tesla.

<comment><USER10> No, it's a good indicator that there are "Tesla Fanboys" out there, and they exist and some of them like any other fanboy are pretty fanatical and not all the time logical.

<comment><USER11> That makes no sense. Declaring that there are "Tesla fanboys" is not proof of their existence. Sure, I'll grant you they do exist, but they exist for a lot of different companies/products and are usually a much tinier base of people than the speaker believes, and almost certainly when someone accuses someone else of being a "fanboy" they're wrong and are just using that to try and discredit the other speaker instead of addressing their points.

In this particular case, the author didn't even cite any behavior that indicates being a fanboy, they're just claiming that anyone who points out that Tesla's car has more luxury options, can upgrade to the autopilot, has access to the supercharger network, has brand cachet, and will be more profitable at scale is a fanboy. All of these are legitimate things to say about Tesla and do not require some sort of blind devotion to Tesla in order to point out.

<comment><USER10> I've seen them on HN on more than one occasion.

I once dared to make the comment that one day a Tesla battery pack would catch fire or explode and out of the woods they came with their pitchforks and downvotes explaining in length like why it can never happen and how safe are 18650's and the Tesla power bank, and the car, and how smooth Elon Musk's skin is.

About 3 weeks later just that thing happened, a Tesla caught fire due to the power pack malfunctioning, since then there were 2-3 more similar cases.

There are Tesla and more Elon Musk in general fanboys out there.

And I don't really understand why you are taking offense, no one made those claims here, no one even argued that there are no advantages to the Tesla. However those advantages come at a cost, a Model 3 won't be a 30,000 car, it would be close to it after the rebate, you will have to pay extra for luxuries, as well as potentially access to the supercharger network.

And I'm not sure about the rest of your arguments, profitability is in question here, it's doubtful that the Model 3 will be as profitable, infact it won't be by design, the question would then be how many Model S/X's Tesla can sale because that would be the limiting factor in it's ability actually ship Model 3's as those partially fund it.

As for the brand strength, the brand is considerably more limited than what you think, sure on HN and in a few other circles it has a huge presence but if you think that in the middle of nowhere America, or the rest of the world Tesla has a brand presence you are going to be disappointed, most people do not know what Tesla is. If you ask the average person to name car companies Tesla is about as likely to be named as Alpina, heck i would be that more people are aware of Aplina world wide than Tesla.

<comment><USER11> > _[…] and how smooth Elon Musk 's skin is._

It's really hard to take you seriously when you say something like this. If someone's behavior really is remarkable, then there should be no need to exaggerate. If you exaggerate, it suggests that maybe your complaint isn't legitimate.

> _it 's doubtful that the Model 3 will be as profitable, infact it won't be > by design_

Why do you say that? People seem to be in agreement that GM can sell their car at a loss because they make up for it in the ability to sell other gas- guzzling cars. Tesla can't sell their cars at a loss because they don't have any way to make it up. The people who claim Tesla is losing money on their cars are doing so by including R&D costs as part of the cost of the car, which is nonsense. If Tesla sells 10k more cars, they didn't just lose a bunch of money, they made money on each car. Sure, if Tesla doesn't sell enough to recoup their R&D then they've taken a loss overall, but the idea is that they should sell enough cars to make a profit, which they can then plow back into R&D to make even better cars. And they can take a loss in the short term if it leads to profitability later, what they can't do is take a loss on each unit sold.

In fact, if I search for "tesla model 3 profitability" on DDG, the very first result is a Fox Business article from March saying that a goal of the Model 3 is to be profitable, something the other cars haven't been (I assume here that it means after taking R&D into account, as opposed to being a loss on each unit sold) - [http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/03/31/tesla- counts-o...](http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/03/31/tesla-counts-on- model-3-for-profit.html).

> _If you ask the average person to name car companies_

If you ask the average consumer that cares about electric vehicles, they probably do know about Tesla. The average person doesn't really care much about that, beyond maybe thinking that a hybrid car is a good idea (or even thinking it's a bad idea because those usually compromise on power).

Edit: Corrected "Business Insider" to "Fox Business". Not sure why I mixed those two up.

<comment><USER10> >It's really hard to take you seriously when you say something like this. If someone's behavior really is remarkable, then there should be no need to exaggerate. If you exaggerate, it suggests that maybe your complaint isn't legitimate.

It's also hard to take them seriously, and you to some extent since you decided to take offense about an issue that no one in this thread even raised, usually the first sign of "irrationality" is taking offense when not only it wasn't directed at you, but also wasn't even given to anyone.

>Why do you say that?...

Because even Elon Musk said so, they are banking on the Model S and X to push the Model 3. Overall the profitability of the Model 3 is still questionable, they are using very expensive materials and platform even for the base model, they are betting on state based rebates to keep it close to 30K (which is risky since those rebates can disappear) and their overall profit margins would be relying on the people that buy the premium modules and upgrades for the model 3, as well as of course buying the very expensive Model S and X's especially the higher end models of those like the P100D.

That's where the money is some Core i3/5s are effectively Xeons (or the otherway around depending on how you want to look at it) but Intel sells them for as low as under 100$ while their Xeon counterparts go for 3-5 times the price, what Tesla is doing is effectively binning and selling very minor upgrades at very high relative costs (e.g. using Intel again akin to the 6700 vs 6700K same CPU 50$ difference (300 vs 350$) for an unlocked multiplier which is effectively a microcode patch) which may or may not work for cars.

>If you ask the average consumer that cares about electric vehicles, they probably do know about Tesla.

This is an utterly irrelevant question to ask if you want to make a change in the world, even Elon Musk made this same argument, the point of the cars like the Bolt isn't to sell them to people who want to buy an electric car specifically but to anyone who wants to buy a car in general.

This is why range and price point are so important, if you are able to bring an electric car to a range equivalent to a gas car (without refueling) under the 30,000 price point you have yourself the ability to push for real change in the automotive industry and more important a real environmental change both locally and globally.

The whole idea is to make the fact that a car is electric so irrelevant that it would be akin to asking if a car has power steering in this day and age. So pretty much when we get to the point of: >The average person doesn't really care much about that Is when we "win".

<comment><USER11> You're being awfully defensive about this. Yes, I don't like seeing people throw the "fanboy" word around. It's _always_ meant as an insult, and nearly always used with the intention of dismissing someone's argument without actually countering the points made (usually because they can't). I don't get why you keep trying to accuse me of taking offense at something not directed at me, as if that's even relevant to the discussion. Did I even ever say I was offended? I don't think so.

> _Because even Elon Musk said so_

Citation please? I'm not seeing this anywhere. In fact, an article from just 1 week ago talks about how Tesla might achieve GAAP profitability in Q3 - [https://electrek.co/2016/09/07/tesla-tsla-could-achieve- gaap...](https://electrek.co/2016/09/07/tesla-tsla-could-achieve-gaap- profitability-in-q3-says-elon-musk-a-first-in-3-years/)

> _and their overall profit margins would be relying on the people that buy > the premium modules and upgrades for the model 3_

Isn't that true for all cars? If the optional features didn't improve profit margins, dealerships wouldn't be pushing them.

> _This is an utterly irrelevant question to ask if you want to make a change > in the world, even Elon Musk made this same argument, the point of the cars > like the Bolt isn 't to sell them to people who want to buy an electric car > specifically but to anyone who wants to buy a car in general._

One of Elon Musk's goals was to push other car manufacturers into making electric vehicles. The fact that a widely-recognized brand like GM is coming out with the Bolt is exactly what Elon Musk wanted to happen.

<comment><USER10> >You're being awfully defensive about this.

I'm not being defensive at all =) And you were offended, and defensive, you somehow brought an entire argument about why "doing X isn't fanboyism" when no one talked about it, the only thing anyone said is that saying that there are "Tesla Fanboys" doesn't intrinsically mean that some one is biased against Tesla.

Ironically this entire argument is a litmus test for their existence.

>Citation please? I'm not seeing this anywhere.

Every talk he made about the Model 3, including his plans, eventually the Model 3 may become profitable, but if you think they'll beat the profitability of the large car companies you are really off the beat.

>In fact, an article from just 1 week ago talks about how Tesla might achieve GAAP profitability in Q3 - [https://electrek.co/2016/09/07/tesla-tsla-could- achieve-gaap...](https://electrek.co/2016/09/07/tesla-tsla-could-achieve- gaap..).

Did you read the article, they expect profitability before the Model 3 arrives, then it would dip until the Model 3 production kicks into full gear, this is almost utter contrast to your original claims of the Model 3 being highly profitable.

The Model 3 won't lose money, but they expect the profits to come from the add-ons, and the larger profit margins to come from the more expensive Model S and X's this is in Musk's bloody "Plan".

>One of Elon Musk's goals was to push other car manufacturers into making electric vehicles. The fact that a widely-recognized brand like GM is coming out with the Bolt is exactly what Elon Musk wanted to happen.

Which is exactly what I said. The Future of Electric cars isn't Tesla, it might pave the road there, or help push some companies along, but it would be out paced by the giants once the EV scene kicks into full gear, that is OK.

I would still rather own a Tesla because I find it the cooler however living in London considering one costs about as my yearly pre-tax wage (The P90D) and the fact I won't be able to park it anywhere kinda make it impossible.

If Tesla is really lucky it would have the same impact that Apple had on mobile phones, maybe it would come to a point where everyone thinks about Tesla when they think about a "cool car", but still the majority of the world would be driving something else, EV but something else.

<comment><USER11> No matter how many times you claim I'm offended, that doesn't actually mean I was offended. Why do you keep making that claim?

> _the only thing anyone said is that saying that there are "Tesla Fanboys" > doesn't intrinsically mean that some one is biased against Tesla._

Implying that anyone who brings up those legitimate points is a tesla "fanboy" does in fact imply that you're biased against Tesla. That was my original point. The author didn't say "There exist Tesla 'fanboys'", instead the author very strongly implied that anyone trying to defend Tesla is a fanboy (and thus should be dismissed). You'll notice that after making that list of arguments in favor of Tesla, the author then proceeded to address _none_ of them. After all, why should he, when anyone who makes those arguments is obviously a "fanboy"?

And no, I'm not offended. Why would I be? I'm not a Tesla "fanboy". What I am is _annoyed_. This kind of behavior is a pet peeve of mine (as are most attempts to dismiss an argument by evading it instead of addressing the points), and I bring it up because most people don't, or even leap to defend this behavior by claiming "but there _are_ fanboys!", even though that argument relies on a logical fallacy (the existence of fanboys that defend the company does not mean that anyone who defends the company is a fanboy).

> _Every talk he made about the Model 3_

Again, give me a citation. I've searched and found the exact opposite of what you're saying, and linked it. You need to give me an authoritative link, just claiming this repeatedly is meaningless.

> _Did you read the article, they expect profitability before the Model 3 > arrives, then it would dip until the Model 3 production kicks into full > gear, this is almost utter contrast to your original claims of the Model 3 > being highly profitable._

Yes I did read the article. And first off, I never claimed it would be "highly profitable", please don't put words in my mouth. And secondly, you apparently either don't understand the article or don't understand my argument. Tesla's going to have a dip because of _capital expenditures_. These aren't per-unit costs. I said Tesla cannot sell cars at a per-unit loss (which is what I've seen a lot of people claiming over the past year), because they don't have any other way to make it up. But GM can sell the Bolt at a per-unit cost (whether they actually are is irrelevant, I'm not sure we'll know that unless GM tells us) because selling the Bolt allows them to sell more profitable gas-guzzling cars and still meet fuel-economy standards, which is something the article itself even admitted.

> _if you think they 'll beat the profitability of the large car companies you > are really off the beat_

Literally nobody has made this argument. I do not appreciate being made into a straw man.

<comment><USER10> >No matter how many times you claim I'm offended, that doesn't actually mean I was offended. Why do you keep making that claim?

Because you've kicked off something that wasn't even discussed.

>Implying that anyone who brings up those legitimate points is a tesla "fanboy" does in fact imply that you're biased against Tesla.

No one was implying anything, no one was saying anything negative or positive about Tesla.

> Every talk he made about the Model 3

I'm pretty sure you can use Google and hear him talk when he says that the Model 3 couldn't happen without the Model S ;) Like the launch event where he said that the people who buy the Model S effectively are paying the way forwards for the Model 3.

I'm also pretty sure when you know that Model 3 owners have to pay for everything including access to the Supercharger network it's not the same as the Model S.

>Yes I did read the article. And first off, I never claimed it would be "highly profitable"

>Literally nobody has made this argument. I do not appreciate being made into a straw man.

You claimed it would be more profitable than the traditional car companies at scale.

"Tesla's car has more luxury options, can upgrade to the autopilot, has access to the supercharger network, has brand cachet, and will be _more profitable at scale is a fanboy_ "

<comment><USER11> > _Because you 've kicked off something that wasn't even discussed._

How do you think things get discussed? Because someone brings them up. Congratulations for pointing out the origin of literally every discussion ever made.

> _I 'm pretty sure you can use Google_

Seriously, give me a link or shut up. When I ask for a citation, you can't just tell me to Google for it. That's not a citation, and I've already explained that when I search I find many articles that contradict your claim and none in support.

> _You claimed it would be more profitable than the traditional car companies > at scale._

No, not "than the traditional car companies". More profitable _than it is at launch_. And this argument comes straight from the article, it's not actually my argument, I only rephrased it for brevity:

> _And when its battery factory is running at scale, it should be able to > produce batteries at a lower price, bumping up its profitability._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This article insinuates GM is beating Tesla to the punch on the "everyman" electric car as though it's some big surprise that an auto manufacturing giant is able to produce something at scale much quicker than a scrappy upstart. The bigger story is that it took this scrappy upstart and its "[c]ocky billionaire" CEO for this lumbering behemoth to inch their rudder 1 degree away from cranking out SUVs.

<comment><USER13> > as though it's some big surprise that an auto manufacturing giant is able to > produce something at scale much quicker than a scrappy upstart

I'm not sure I'd call Tesla a "scrappy upstart". They're a publicly traded company with a market cap of $28B, versus GM's $47B. They employ 14,000 people. That's a lot less than GM, but it's also not an insignificant amount. At what point does one stop being a scrappy upstart, and start being a mature company?

<comment><USER2> Tesla is truely both an upstart and a startup. They are barely 10 years old and its only in the last 3 years that they've produced more than 10,000 cars a year. Their huge market cap reflects their huge plans, not their current state.

<comment><USER14> "Barely 10" \- the company was founded over 13 years ago, and Musk had been talking about it for a few years prior.

It may not seem like much of a difference, but when you're trying to spin as a new arrival...

Similar to the DPR / Silk Road case, where Ross's attorneys tried to paint him as "just a young kid making some silly mistakes". "Youthful indiscretion".

Ross was about to turn thirty.

Not the "same" thing, but how many teenagers do you know who wouldn't be offended by being called "barely 10"?

<comment><USER2> 13 = barely 10 is OK in my book, when we're comparing to GM which is 108 years old.

<comment><USER15> You mean barely 80 years old right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If I'm going to buy an electric car, I don't want to buy a hatchback or something weird looking.

Compare this: [http://blogs- images.forbes.com/brookecrothers/files/2016/01/...](http://blogs- images.forbes.com/brookecrothers/files/2016/01/chevy-bolt-front-small.jpg)

to this: [https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/images/model-3/gal...](https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/images/model-3/gallery/gallery-1.jpg?20160401)

In my opinion that's why Tesla has big fans. It's not because people are rallying around the "little guy", it's because we want a car that looks nice and actually has technology from this decade in it.

Edit: I don't mean to knock on the hatchback in particular. I can't articulate it, but this car just communicates the typical EV look. As opposed to something more serious imo.

<comment><USER17> The Bolt looks exactly like about half of the cars on the road here (Netherlands, but it's about the same anywhere else in Europe), that alone should be a pretty good indicator of its potential. I'm not so sure things would be different in the US, maybe they need to make a saloon at some point but other than that most cars I've seen on the road in the US are hideous as well...

As an aside, I personally think the Model 3 is absolutely hideous to look at. The Model S is very good-looking on the outside but not more so than most non- EV saloons in the higher segment. I don't think 'good looks' are going to save Tesla.

<comment><USER16> In my opinion, if you want to win over people who think ev's are a joke, the car at least needs to look good. It can't be another wonky toy that a large company threw out there for PR points. The car looks like something they're taking seriously.

Plus, Tesla's usually have a lot of technology packed in them as well. So it's not just good looks that are going to save them.

<comment><USER17> >> _It can 't be another wonky toy that a large company threw out there for PR points. The car looks like something they're taking seriously._

I agree, but my point was that the Bolt actually _does_ look like something people take seriously, as demonstrated by the fact that the roads here are crowded by cars that look exactly the same. I'm 100% convinced that if you took a Bolt for a drive here, almost no-one would even notice it. It may surprise car enthousiasts, but that's a very powerful property of car design in the mid-range segment.

I never understood why hatchbacks are so unpopular in the US, maybe that's the reason you think it looks like a 'wonky toy'?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Everyone should watch the documentary: who killed the electric car

People loved the EV1. It had its limitation due to the battery tech at the time. If they had kept up the program up we would probably have a $35000/200Mile electric car by now.

<comment><USER19> Could that GM afford to keep the program running? It went out of business 8 years ago.

I also wonder how much impact selling money losing electric vehicles would really have had on battery research (vastly better batteries are the big difference between 2002 and now...).

<comment><USER20> The documentary mentioned above implies that the car was killed, not because it was uneconomical, because the law that insentivised them to make the car wasn't worked out properly and the car companies found killing the law insidiously, and the car, a better option than complying with it.

The company truly was enthusiastic about the electric car, but then the law played unfavourable and they had to kill it.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, but it was massively uneconomical. They were leasing it for less than $500 a month and producing it at a cost higher than $50,000. Of course people thought that was great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm really rooting for Tesla here. "Tech start-ups", like Tesla, are disrupting lots of companies that have been doing seemingly nothing for consumers because they haven't needed to or, when they did, things it were half-assed.

Tesla is much an example of how Tech People can make things better. What makes me worried is they're not taking the high road. They're pumping out cars and not following the smart approaches. They're making mistakes that have already been made (thats not innovation or iterating fast...). They may screw up the narrative.

I'd still rather use my ok Honda Civic while I wait for a Model 3 in the future than get the Bolt.

<comment><USER22> Tesla is a "tech startup" that cannot even include support for Android Auto or CarPlay.

<comment><USER21> Yea I also have my issues with Tesla. I'm rooting for them, but I'm hoping they fix the obvious problems they have too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The author docks Tesla for being unable to meet demand for its Model 3 and notes that GM will easily meet demand for its Bolt. No mention of what that demand is likely to be.

I don't have pre-order stats, but if Bolt sales are anything like Volt sales, which recently crossed 100,000 after years on the market, meeting demand shouldn't be that challenging.

[http://media.chevrolet.com/media/us/en/chevrolet/home.detail...](http://media.chevrolet.com/media/us/en/chevrolet/home.detail.html/content/Pages/news/us/en/2016/aug/080116-volt.html)

<comment><USER24> There are no preorder stats for the Bolt because GM doesn't do preorders. Bolt sales start this year when they arrive in dealerships. It's quite possible that Bolt sales (actual cars in actual dealerships) can (will?) eat into Tesla Model 3 preorders, especially because they may be "car keys in hand" well before the Model 3 wait list catches up to many potential buyers.

Also, comparing Volt sales to Bolt sales is a bit like comparing Model S sales to Model 3 sales; different target markets and different price points entirely. At this point I don't think anyone has a good idea (except for projections that may or may not be accurate) what the Bolt demand will be until the Bolts start showing up in dealerships soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> By the time the Tesla 3 is generally available these Bolts will be available, used, with unsexy GM depreciation. I look forward to picking one up then.

If you're curious what unsexy GM depreciation is, check out used Volt prices. Here's what I found in 20 seconds of searching: [https://www.cars.com/vehicledetail/detail/675207037/overview...](https://www.cars.com/vehicledetail/detail/675207037/overview/)

</comment><comment><USER26> Isn't GM the same company that knew about a faulty(possible fatal implications) ignition system and let it be because it wasn't cost effective to fix it publicly? I grew wary of GM the moment I read that news and watched Jon Stewart butcher them on Daily Show. I'd buy a Tesla definitely for their effort to improve safety more than the "coolness/tech" factor. If only I had so much money.

... flies away from HN to do the daily job ...

</comment><comment><USER7> The New York Times has a longstanding anti-Tesla bias.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/automobiles/stalled-on- the...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/automobiles/stalled-on-the-ev- highway.html)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/11/business/tesla-motors- mode...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/11/business/tesla-motors-model-s- suspension.html)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/02/business/a-fatality- forces...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/02/business/a-fatality-forces-tesla- to-confront-its-limits.html)

Personally, I think we need as many Electric Vehicles as possible, so my kids' kids will be able to swim in the coral reefs and climb glaciated peaks. I don't care much for the hit pieces - I want BOTH Tesla AND GM to succeed.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'd argue that these comparisons, while obvious to make, are missing an absolutely critical piece of Tesla's long-term plan: autonomous driving capability. This article and others are merely drawing comparisons based on price and range.

GM has fielded electric cars off and on for 20 years now (going back to the EV1). The field is maturing quickly, but the Bolt and other cars like it are really just electric versions of existing ICE platforms. In the case of the Bolt, it's the same platform as the Buick Encore and Chevy Spark in the US. There are very few platform-specific updates that serve to differentiate the Bolt from its siblings. That's not a criticism in and of itself, but it serves as an illustration of how GM's approach differs dramatically from Tesla's.

What Tesla is doing by creating entirely new platforms is ensuring that they are engineered not just to be electric vehicles but - more importantly - to be autonomous vehicles. This article is overlooking just how important that functionality will be in Tesla's vision for the Model 3 (and all of their other future offering). Musk has made no secret of this. So, no, the Bolt is not Musk's White Whale.

</comment><comment><USER28> Without supercharging infrastructure, this vehicle will be bound to relatively short distances and then a long charge time.

I'm glad there's a bit of competition, though.

<comment><USER2> I think there's going to be an SAE combo option for the Bolt, which will mean about 90 miles range recharged in 30mins. Not as good as the Tesla supercharger, but not terrible.

edit: coverage is good in europe but not so good in the US from what people are saying elsewhere in this post

<comment><USER28> The US is behind on charging infrastructure, largely because gas is so ::cough:: subsidized ::cough:: cheap.

Superchargers are, more or less, the only game in town. There's apps that tell you where other types of charges are though, like ChargePoint stations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I don't see how this is getting "his wish, in the worst way".

Wasn't one of their stated goals "to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport?" ([https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong- you](https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you))

It sounds like that goal is finally starting to become successful. We should all be grateful at the economic pressure Tesla applied to change the market. I hope that our next milestone is to see more EV sold than Combustion vehicles.

</comment><comment><USER30> It's really not surprising that established manufacturers can create worthwhile products if they choose to, it is just that they typically won't bother to try.

<comment><USER31> Exactly. What this article misses is that part of Tesla's stated goal is to force the hands of established manufacturers into doing precisely this. As much as the author wants to paint this as a win for GM and an upset for Tesla, the Bolt is a win for both.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I think the automakers, and the business reports, are missing the point of the Tesla (again). They think it's about simply making a car that has a better {thing} than Tesla, whether that is range or the size of the touchscreen or even the number of cars they can pump out. It's not. There is a reason that Tesla had 400,000 pre orders for the Model 3 and it's not because it has a cool key. Tesla is bringing all of the pieces together in a way that no current automobile manufacturer will. Could an existing car company (Toyota, Chevy, Porsche, etc.) beat the Tesla at the EV game? Maybe. But I think its far more likely that we are witnessing a paradigm shift and the existing companies are like the carriage makers in the early 1900's trying to compete with the Model T. How many vehicles to you see on the road built by the Frey Carriage Company?

</comment><comment><USER33> Quit grumbling about the Bolt's exterior form factor. GM is starting with something mainstream. As the article mentions, the Bolt is being built on the same Gamma platform line as gas cars. There are about a dozen cars built on the Gamma platform, and they're selling well. GM can put different sheet metal on top of electric drive if they see a market.

The real achievement is range. GM finally got good range at a low price point. That's what's needed to make electric cars go mainstream.

(YC-type business opportunity: get public charging points to report their status (available, in-use, broken) and transmit that to cars and phones. There are maps of charge points, but not enough status info.)

Tesla no longer deserves a market cap half that of GM.

</comment><comment><USER34> GM Chevy Bolt or Opel/Vauxhall Ampera-e should help with the electric car adoption in the US and Europe which I look forward to. While TM3 may be worth waiting, Tesla is going to be slow meeting the domestic demand, not to start going internationally. Affordable, high mileage electric cars is what we need to speed up the transition from ICE powered cars to electric ones. Apart from Nissan Leaf, BMW i3 or Volkswagen e-Golf are not really helping much this segment (source: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQelhFzK3Po](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQelhFzK3Po), translated "The electric car fairy tale"), so it's awesome to see an affordable, high mileage electric car.

</comment><comment><USER35> I think it is great that the Bolt exists. We need as many as possible electric car offerings. And I do think that Elon Musk also welcomes more electric cars from other manufacturers. The article is a bit negative about Tesla though. It is obvious that a car manufacturing giant like GM could bring a car quicker to production than a small company like Tesla. It also seems, that GM is just responsible for the bodywork and suspension, anything electric seems to be of LG make. There are also rumors, that the production is limited to 20-50k cars per year. So much less than Tesla is already building, and an order of magnitude less than planned for the Model 3.

</comment><comment><USER36> Seems to be a pretty obvious piece of advertising. As I recently commented elsewhere, I really want there to be non-Tesla options at this price point, but GM:

-Probably won't have anywhere as good of warranty service

-Probably has a much less nice interior

-Probably has much worse control and media electronics for the driver

-Probably isn't nearly as fast

-Lacks access to the Tesla superchargers

-Doesn't have advanced features like Autopilot

-Won't receive anywhere near the same level of ongoing software support and updates

For only potentially $5k less, I'll pass. GM has in no way made a competitive alternative to the new Tesla.

<comment><USER37> Don't forget safety!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Without reading the article, I'm gonna go with "100+ years of experience designing and building cars".

</comment><comment><USER38> you mean this car? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5dpQaakHwI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5dpQaakHwI)</comment>


Ask HN: What's the current least bad solution for storing personal photos? - <AUTHOR> I was all ready to switch all my photos to Everpix. But after its well-publicized shut down, I'm now a little hesitant to trust that kind of service.
Dropbox seems like they're making a play for photo storage, but I'm not sure they're quite there yet. And I guess there's also services like Google Drive or iCloud, but these always seemed opaque and poorly designed to me.
Anyway, I'm curious to know what people use. I've got 50GB of photos sitting on my hard drive and I need to do something about it! <comment><USER2> Do you need them online for any particular reason? At 50GB, I'm assuming it's all your raw camera data, so obviously not all of it needs to be shared with friends?

If so, buy yourself a small NAS with two 500GB or 1TB drives in it (it'll cost you less than $200), and configure them as RAID-0. This will give you redundancy (not backup), and availability on your network. Get another 500GB or 1TB portable drive, and backup your NAS to that once a week, or once a month, depending on how often you add photos. Ideally store this drive offsite, or in a safe or similar, because this is your backup drive. Most NAS drives will also allow you to share the content, but due to security concerns I would probably not recommend that. If you need access to them away from home, setup a machine with SSH access to your home network, and access the drive that way via VPN (although this is a completely different topic).

Generally, with technology being cheap, I'm anti storing any valuable personal data in the cloud. If you do need or want to share some of the photos, find a service that allows that (there are plenty), but definitely don't use it as your primary storage or backup service.

Note that the above is pretty much my setup, and it's been serving me well for a few years now (with a similar amount/size of photos).

</comment><comment><USER3> Dropbox just upped the "Pro" account from 100GB to 1000GB. That's more than enough to store all the pictures you'll take in the next few decades. The benefit of something like Dropbox or its various copycats is that the file is stored on _each of your computers_ as well as being stored in the cloud. So you really aren't putting all your eggs in one basket either locally or remotely.

But you should also curate and print out some of your photos. This was discussed on HN just a couple of weeks ago: ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8129457](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8129457)). The linked article ([http://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2014/08/prints.html](http://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2014/08/prints.html)) reminds us that we're living in a "digital dark age" that's likely to leave few traces in history. Furthermore, even if your great-grandchildren _could_ read the photo files you store today, do you really expect them to look at all of them?

</comment><comment><USER4> Flickr is actually not a bad option. It's been around the longest and Yahoo is actually finally putting some weight behind it. Compared to general file storage services like Dropbox, Flickr offers 1 TB of space. You don't have to worry about hitting the ceiling on limits. Also, although many people associate Flickr with professional & public photos, it is very easy to make pictures private by default.

</comment><comment><USER5> Use [https://www.famipix.com](https://www.famipix.com) Disclaimer: I founded this site in 2005, and I still run it today. You can also order very high quality prints, for archival backups.

</comment><comment><USER6> I have been using MEGA since its launch, and have been quite happy with the service.

[https://mega.co.nz/#fm](https://mega.co.nz/#fm)

<comment><USER7> Isn't it a bit dodgy? I would be afraid for my photos to disappear without notice.

<comment><USER8> _Any_ web service could disappear without notice. Never trust a company/service to have your back. They enable convenience, not security / peace-of-mind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Pre-encrypt -> Amazon S3. Easy-peasy.</comment>


Show HN: I made $9000 posting on Hacker News about my microstartup - <AUTHOR> I spent last 6 months trying to build Simple Ops [1] to democratize website performance monitoring so anyone can use it.
A year back, while I was trying to measure performance for Visa List as it became a huge content website with more than 100K pages. Also as data is changing very frequently, it's very hard to keep doing this manually. I searched on google and found that all the solutions are just uptime monitoring and nothing and none of them truly measure performance. So I decided to build one for myself. But it turns out website performance monitoring is not so simple after all and with the pandemic, I had very little motivation let alone travel anywhere. It took me 3 months to do research and plan out the architecture to the last detail.
I looked at some of the B2C bootstrappers offering a lifetime deal and getting success. That's possible because they don't have a huge recurring cost with each customer, but in B2B SaaS, you have a recurring cost with each customer.
But I thought let me add and see how it goes. So added a lifetime deal with for $199. At that time I posted it on Hacker News [2] and it made it to the front page and all the lifetime deals were over in 12 hours. Then I added $299 which got over during the week. So far I made over $9000 and got more than 25 customers.
Even though it might not be profitable in the long run, I got the cashflow and customers in less time and it removed the pressure to chase customers. Now I can focus on the product.
One of the biggest challenges of a SaaS startup is to acquire the first 50 customers. I have seen many startups achieve this over 6 to 12 months, some even a few years. But with this initial business model, I have cashflow for a year which is the best thing that can happen to a B2B SaaS. Lifetime deals can be a powerful way to get initial customers especially when you are getting started.
[1] https://simpleops.io/
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23880071 <comment></comment>


Drug Cartel Murders Another Blogger - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/drug_cartel_murders_another_blogger.php#.TrxUUaMaIPE.hackernews <comment><USER2> Legalize all drugs and all of this ends tomorrow in the blink of an eye.

<comment><USER3> That's a useless oversimplification of the problem. Such immediate solutions have enormous pitfalls.

For example, in Europe, cocaine got significantly cheaper and rather easy to find. This led to a a considerable increase of its popularity during the last three years or so. Cocaine is starting to take 'market' from cannabis based drugs which are much less dangerous and carry much softer consequences.

'Legalize drugs' is a too naive statement, the drug situation needs to be carefully analysed and adequate solutions need to be put in practice based on as much factors as possible.

That said, generally, in developed countries I think consumption decriminalization is a positive thing at present time. It makes room for advances in thins like hygiene, medical treatment of addicts, etc. without creating easier access to drugs.

<comment><USER4> I agree that "legalize all drugs" is problematic, and probably not a good idea. "legalize all drugs less addictive than coffee" is a better option, that allows cannabis and mushrooms. (some people argue "all drugs less addictive than alcohol", but that would include cocaine). However, that still has the problem that customer won't know for sure what they're buying without some sort of FDA control, and small kids getting their hands on the stuff too easily. So as a third revision I propose "Regulate all drugs less addictive than coffee to be legally available to adults". Not very catchy.

<comment><USER5> Who gets to decide which drugs are addictive? The main claim by anti- legalization politicians is that cannabis is addictive.

Giving any small group of humans the right to decide which properties drugs have and how important/dangerous those properties are is EXTREMELY dangerous. This is not kids stuff. Millions live and die by these decisions. Who do we trust to make such decisions?

<comment><USER4> Yes, I know that is complex, that's why I sidestepped the issue by saying "less addictive than coffee". That's pretty easy to determine in a controlled double blind and most people agree with it intuitively.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It looks like the author at RRW didn't read the article well. Rascatripas was not hung from the infamous overpass. His body was dumped in town at the base of a statue where other bodies have been dumped in the past.

The actual article is located at [http://www.chron.com/news/houston- texas/article/Blogger-murd...](http://www.chron.com/news/houston- texas/article/Blogger-murdered-and-beheaded-in-Nuevo-Laredo-2260814.php)

<comment><USER7> The past tense of "to hang" when referring to a human being (as in "by the neck until dead") is "hanged" - i.e. "Rascatripas was not hanged from the infamous overpass."

<comment><USER8> No it's not, or more correctly, that is a rather recent development. The Middle English account of a man punished given on Wikipedia uses _hung_ (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanged,_drawn_and_quartered>), in fact this punishment was referred to as "hung, drawn, and quartered".

Now, if that is the case, how to explain the title of the Wikipedia entry, i.e. the usage of _hanged_ in place of _hung_. This is the common phenomenon of regularization of irregular verbs, that has been going a loong time in English, eventually almost all of them will be regularized. This article ([http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-486935/How- irregular...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-486935/How-irregular- verb-drived-extinction.html)) gives some details and explains that there are about 98 irregular verbs left in the language, compared to 177 in Old English.

You can see this process today in the "driven-drove" dichotomy, different people choose one or the other. Eventually _drove_ will disappear.

<comment><USER9> It's a little more subtle than that. There are usage differences between the perfect and imperfect tenses in both "hung-hanged" and "driven-drove," between active and passive constructions[1], etc. Unfortunately, most native speakers aren't any more savvy to this than they are to what remains of the English subjunctive.

1\. It will always be "I drove to the store" and "I was driven to the store" and "I am a driven person," never "I driven to the store" or "I was drove to the store" or "I am a drove person."

<comment><USER10> Not only that, but neither "driven" nor "drove" is a regular past-tense form. That would be "drived", a use I haven't heard from anyone over two years of age.

<comment><USER9> Yes and no. Some people call ablaut verbs irregular, but almost all of them are in fact regular. They only seem irregular because there are relatively few of them left to group together [1]. But I'm not aware of any language with a single pattern of conjugation. Many have 10 or more.

1\. Ex.: Drive-drove-driven, write-wrote-written, ride-rode-ridden, etc. While they follow a different conjugation pattern, most ablaut verbs are perfectly regular.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is there no options but an uncorrupted and highly trained military unit to start marching and cracking down on the cartel? What if the cartel members hide? Or will they fight?

<comment><USER12> The cartel is largely run by highly trained elite ex-military. One unexplored option is to acknowledge that drugs are a medical and social problem and not something for the police, or God forbid, the military to solve. Legalize drugs and allow them to be distributed through reasonable channels with medical supervision if necessary. It's worked wherever it's been tried.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What I don't get is how come there are no such violence problems with drug cartels in the United States where surely they must be as large if not larger since the drugs get somehow distributed there (I'm assuming there's where most drugs handled by Mexican cartels end up).

<comment><USER2> The US police/government/courts are less corrupt and have more resources to crack down on the more visible violence.

There is more violence in America than most people realize. It's considered mundane so you don't see it in the news as much.

The US is selling arms to the cartels in Mexico, so their violence is escalated there.

Mexican cartels aren't larger in the US than in Mexico because their supply sources are in Mexico, they lose momentum over distance and face domestic competition as they move across the US.

<comment><USER13> I didn't mean Mexican cartels in the US, just cartels in the US in general. I don't buy that it just doesn't show up in the news, if people appeared decapitated or hanging from overpasses in the US I think you would see it mentioned in the news. The corruption and incompetence of Mexican police makes the problem more obvious since the government has to put the army and federal police on the streets to keep some control.

I think maybe in the US the cartels have reached some equilibrium that allows them to operate without so much violence and be discrete enough that they don't get bothered so much by the police.

<comment><USER14> really? so, when did you read about this: <http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/132405488.html>

a mom and kids gets caught in the crossfire. this was an accident, and how much news coverage does it get? had you heard about this story before?

the war is outside your house right now and you don't even know, because the casualties are almost universally poor people (okay maybe not outside _your_ house because you might not be in the USA)...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Associated or unassociated with the press, this "blogger" body comes from somewhere. Corruption is simply a fact of life in Mexico. The most effective conduit of corruption anywhere is complacency, and lack of inherent disgust. Traveling a few hrs through some neighboring (Mexican) states? Then carry a few extra fifties so that you can minimize the average time spent pulled over on your trip.

That didn't sound repulsive to my little ears, it was simply how things worked. I learned that bit of travel advice from listening in on the adult dinner table at about the same time I learned to ride a bicycle in that very same city (Nevo Laredo).

</comment><comment><USER16> Powerful entities don't like to be messed with. See the condition of this blogger and of Bradley Manning and Julian Assange.

</comment><comment><USER17> Is there a service where one can tweet and post on social media, with industrial strength anonymity?</comment>


Sarah Lacy, SXSW, And The Art Of The Interview - <AUTHOR> http://howtosplitanatom.com/news/sarah-lacy-sxsw-and-storms-in-teacups/

<comment><USER2> Blah, this is no news. This isn't TMZ for hackers. Her interview doesn't change the industry, and it's not interesting technically.</comment>


Bitcoin Risk Management Study Spring 2014 - <AUTHOR> http://www.scribd.com/doc/221502374/Bitcoin-Risk-Management-Study-Spring-2014 <comment><USER2> The document makes valid points, but fails to emphasize the biggest risk to bitcoin: lack of consumer adoption. It's not about merchant adoption. It's not like consumers are just dying to find a way to spend their bitcoin. They obviously aren't, because well they already have a system that works very well for them in most cases (the CC system).

Bitcoin, like many new innovations before it, may "die" in the chasm. [http://www.linuxjournal.com/files/linuxjournal.com/linuxjour...](http://www.linuxjournal.com/files/linuxjournal.com/linuxjournal/articles/066/6629/6629f1.jpg)

Not because it's not being adopted by _merchants_ (merchants couldn't care less about bitcoin, they receive fiat currency), but because it doesn't solve a problem for _consumers_. Consumer adoption is the real metric we should be keeping track of. And seeing that transaction volume is stagnant or even declining, that metric is not in good shape. Merchant adoption is just pure marketing at this point, and I believe that companies such as Coinbase and BitPay that are pursuing merchant adoption aggressively are in the wrong business.

Bitcoin is really, really struggling to find a relevant use case, especially with consumers. Regular consumers have absolutely no reason to use bitcoin. The "1-click" payment and 1% price discount are not appealing enough to the average Joe who already gets 1-2% cash back, airline miles, and consumer protection on his credit card (and 1-click checkouts on many e-commerce platforms). And more regulation isn't helping the "crypto-anarchist" decentralization angle either.

Bitcoin is great, for _merchants_.

But payments is a two-sided market. A winning product must appeal to both sides, the buyer and the seller. Bitcoin appeals to the seller at the expense of the buyer. Even if the blockchain technology overcomes all of its flaws, we would have bootstrapped a value exchange system that does not offer greater benefit over the one that exists today.

Many are making the flawed and simplistic analogy of comparing bitcoin/blockchain technology to the early days of the Internet... That analogy is not valid. When it comes to money, consumers actually want a central authority. They want to be insured and cuddled and protected and not run the risk (however small) of being criminally liable for transactions and have someone to speak with if they make an erroneous transaction or have their card stolen. And they can already do all that, which makes it tremendously difficult to compel them to change the habits they've had in forever to adopt a system that does not provide them with significant advantages.

I've been in bitcoin since 2011 and used to be a big believer, but I don't see bitcoin or blockchain technology gaining traction with consumers, because it simply doesn't solve a problem for them.

It could be destined to eternally remain a store of value (like gold) or find targeted applications (like machine-to-machine payments). The underlying blockchain technology could be of more use if adopted by the banking system, for example, but that is still far in the future.

<comment><USER3> Well drugs. As much as people want to dismiss drug culture because it's illegal (not necessarily meaning that it's immoral). Even if you dismiss the use case of drugs, it's hard to deny how successful these sites are at pioneering nearly p2p marketplaces compared to something like Amazon.

There is also the case of having a safe storage of funds. The seizures of bank accounts in Greece and the actions some governments are taking to stop capital flight speak to the use of bitcoin as a way of storing value.

Gambling is another huge use case. Anyone who has a lick of experience dealing with deposit/withdrawal from gambling services know how inconvenient it is to actually move money around.

Online sales are another use case. It's far easier to verify buyer information and funds. You also save the 10%+ in fees that you would pay using a service like ebay.

<comment><USER2> > Online sales are another use case. It's far easier to verify buyer > information and funds. You also save the 10%+ in fees that you would pay > using a service like ebay.

Do you mean using the blockchain as an escrow service? True, but that's not "bitcoin the currency", it's the blockchain.

The rest of the use cases run a huge regulatory risk.</comment></comment></comment>


Restoring defocused and blurred images (part 2) - practical issues and solutions - <AUTHOR> http://yuzhikov.com/articles/BlurredImagesRestoration2.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> It's the next part of previous article: <http://yuzhikov.com/articles/BlurredImagesRestoration1.htm></comment>


Convert any standard multi-page website into a single page app - <AUTHOR> http://prperold.github.io/jquery-onepage

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone.

This is just an experiment to convert your old multi-page apps into a single page js app. It is very simplistic, basically just replaces the body of the old page with the body of the new page.

I know there are similar projects, but what I attempted was to simplify the process, where a developer can basically just include the script file and call the simple function.

The biggest missing puzzle piece in my opinion is handling form submissions. Nothing will break currently, it just wouldn't do an ajax post.</comment>


How my Julia coding style changed - <AUTHOR> https://tamaspapp.eu/post/2019-09-07-coding_style_retrospective/ <comment><USER2> Clearly one can learn a great deal from this kind of analysis of one's past coding practices. Great article.</comment>


Video footage shows Saudi operative in Khashoggi's clothes after he was killed - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/22/middleeast/saudi-operative-jamal-khashoggi-clothes/index.html <comment><USER2> According to the article, Mustafa al-Madani was supposed to be used as decoy for Khashoggi. He even put on a fake beard and glasses - but somehow he failed to remember that he had full grown black hair on his head. Maybe it's just me, but that would be the first thing standing out. Assuming the killing was planned, it was a really botched job - yet one that unfortunately will probably be still worth it for the Saudis.</comment>


Project management for small teams - <AUTHOR> https://gmelius.com/project-management-guide-sme/ <comment><USER2> Sadly, most tools are a little overwhelming for small teams. And a small team may have very different actors who would find value is very different tools.

As a dev/tech founder, I use GitHub Boards and Projects for pretty much anything. The rest is Google Calendar, Gmail, and Docs. These are all the "productivity tools" I need.

Some SaaS friends use ASANA, GitHub Projects and Atlassian to "glue" it all. And they are 15 tops. They are thinking of revamping it all to only use a single tool.</comment>


Google buys $1 billion plot of land for new central London HQ - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/18/3889818/google-relocates-uk-headquarters-to-kings-cross-london

<comment><USER2> Overall, a good location.

The office will be a stone's throw from St Pancras station, where you can hop on the Eurostar and get to Paris or Brussels in a few hours.

Getting to Old Street (aka Tech City) and Shoreditch is pretty easy by bus or tube. Same for Soho (film, media, fashion) and Covent Garden, which you could walk to in 20-30 minutes.

There are some rough old pubs in the surrounding streets, which hopefully will survive gentrification, as they do add a bit of character to the area.</comment>


Protestors use laser pointers to bring down police drone - <AUTHOR> https://boingboing.net/2019/11/13/protestors-use-laser-pointers.html <comment><USER2> > That's awesome. Why are the lasers effecting the drone?

> Turns out they don't. Which I didn't find out until someone in the crowd got > in touch

[https://twitter.com/MisterKeitel/status/1194707969818021888](https://twitter.com/MisterKeitel/status/1194707969818021888)

<comment><USER3> Dereferencing that a couple times leads to this:

> i been close like 2 mts from this scene and happened that the owner of the > drone are in the middle receiving the drone. was a controlled descent. Here > is the video

[https://twitter.com/matiasojedam/status/1194665625278468096](https://twitter.com/matiasojedam/status/1194665625278468096)</comment></comment>


MacOS Finder Shows Zero-Size Folders - <AUTHOR> https://macperformanceguide.com/blog/2019/20190220_1030-macOS-AppleCoreRot-Finder-ZeroSizeFolder.html <comment><USER2> I've been a user of macOS for years and never seen this in HFS, much less in APFS.

Someone that needs to write anything to fill his blog of a narrative of "Apple is dying".

Also, I'm 100% sure in the old days, it had an indication it was calculating the size when the number wasn't final.

<comment><USER3> Heck I see this bug on Windows and Linux too. It's just how File Managers work in other OS' they're not perfect. If I know a directory is massive, I don't go by what the OS immediately tells me. A few TB sounds like it would take a long while to fully update, but I bet there's a time out limit.

<comment><USER4> > I see this bug on Windows

What do you mean? The "Size" column is completely empty for directories.

If you right click and open properties on a directory, it will show a size that grows four times per second, very blatantly a calculation in progress.

How do you get this bug on Windows?

<comment><USER3> I mean the size column can be misleading sometimes while the File Manager figures itself out. Yeah Properties seems to work a little better. It's usually due to larger file sizes. Unlike the OP of the article it doesn't bother me enough, I've just seen it happen across OS' and have not had issues with it, if I need to know a file size, I have other means like the command line, of course sometimes the command line is another culprit of not showing a directory size as well. Like only showing 4 KiB for every directory at least on Ubuntu.

<comment><USER4> > I mean the size column can be misleading sometimes while the File Manager > figures itself out.

On windows? How are you getting that column to not be permanently blank on directories?

<comment><USER3> I'm on Ubuntu at work and my Windows laptop's at home but there's others who've ran into what I'm talking about:

[https://answers.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/forum/windows_10...](https://answers.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/forum/windows_10-files/wrong-calculation-of-folder-size-by- windows/2da61a1b-d2fd-472a-ae12-a17a4cc8f7e2)

Basically: You see one file size on a parent folder, and when you drill in further it changes. I'm surprised these explorers don't try to cache some of the info somehow.

<comment><USER5> This sounds like someone doesn't understand how Windows calculates folder sizes. It will never show the size unless you look at the folder properties; and even then, there's no indication when it's done calculating. It might be obvious sometimes because the number is continuously changing, but if it hits a lot of very small files, it won't visibly change for a while.

Edit: Actually, apparently there is a bug related to this in recent versions of Windows, but it's still a behavior that can happen even without a bug.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > I know Apple engineers are pressed for time by calendar-driven deadlines, > but sloppy work is sloppy work.

This seems to occur only on Softraid (and maybe SD card) filesystems.

So it's just an edge case that probably never was considered or only manifests until certain circumstances.

Hardly a guaranteed symptom of sloppy work.

<comment><USER7> Especially with APFS adding fast directory sizing, it's ultimately the responsibility of each individual filesystem driver to calculate directory size. And the driver is also the only code that can tell whether the last returned size is still correct. Which for some filesystems (SMB) it should be impossible to know without traversing the entire subdirectory tree again.

<comment><USER8> Except Apple doesn't use fast directory sizing...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> My wife suddenly lost a ton of photos in her Photos app. I tried finding them, and eventually saw they still existed in the file system, but not in the app. No idea why. Continued researching this. After a few days, they disappeared from the file system too. Makes no sense. Running Sierra. So confused.

<comment><USER10> Try this (after doing a full backup of your wife's ~/Library folder):

Option-Command-O on the /Applications/Photos.app. It'll go into repair library mode and might fix things.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, tried that already, no dice. :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Something like this happens in Linux. With most graphical file managers, folders containing maybe 10^4 files will take a _long_ time to open. At least it doesn't report zero. But you may end up killing the file manager, and working in a terminal.

<comment><USER12> Not to make application bugs sound acceptable, but if you're dealing with that many files, you should probably have started in the terminal anyway, whether it be Linux or macOS.

It is also a good idea to try to organize your way out of large directories (that is, directories with many immediate children). Some filesystems dislike large directories performance-wise, and manual workflows rarely deal well with very long file sequences.

<comment><USER11> I've since learned that :) What can I say. I was a n00be, from Windows. And I should add that Debian terminal had no problem with 10^4 or even 10^5 files per directory.

For what it's worth, I was massaging several GB of Newsgroup data into SQL. As I recall, I used grep to decompose the data into components. I crunched one year segments. For each year, each type of header, and message bodies, went into a subdirectory, tagged with the message ID. So in each of those subdirectories, there was one file for each message in the data segment. I did it that way, because each type of component needed custom regex to become SQL fields. In the end, the header types and message bodies became tables, indexed and linked by message IDs.

So anyway, there were _lots_ of temp files.

Why did I do that? You might ask. Well, there was this notorious troll, who was on a vendetta against friends and I. He didn't just post trash. He spoofed our messages, making fun of us, and trying to sow discord. So it was virtually impossible to filter out his shit.

So basically I identified many of his personas, going back a decade or two. And eventually I found posts that included unobscured IP addresses and meatspace email addresses. So I emailed him, and threatened to dox him, if he didn't stop trolling us. So he did. And I never actually doxxed him, because that would have violated his privacy.

It was Ari Silverstein, by the way.[0] None of my personas posted there, but people were aware of my work.

0) [https://www.velocityreviews.com/threads/tracking-ip- addresse...](https://www.velocityreviews.com/threads/tracking-ip-addresses- and-usenet-posts.741347/)

<comment><USER11> Edit: And in case you search about this, just about everything you find will be Ari Silverstein's word salad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Well if we're complaining about the finder ... I was recently searching for photos on a network share. Had Finder in "Show as Icons" mode.

I don't know what the actual bug is. Either Finder doesn't show files for which it has not generated an icon yet (ie, it doesn't show a placeholder) or it just for some reason takes forever for the finder to get a list of files. I know getting the the actual list for files for any one folder should not take more than a moment (can do so from terminal to test)

The result is it was basically unusable. I'd scroll down and the finder would be adding and reshuffling the layout of images for 1 to 2 minutes making it impossible to actually use to find things. There's no way to know when it's finished. I'd start to select stuff thinking it had settled down and stuff would shift under my mouse still.

If you look closely here you'll see as I'm scrolling down the files keep shuffling around [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdAoe- urFrQ#t=0m30s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdAoe-urFrQ#t=0m30s)

</comment><comment><USER14> This doesn't seem like a huge deal, it happens on Windows and Linux too, if the underlying filesystem is slow, and the data hasn't been cached, which is the best behavior - considering the alternative is to display nothing till all the data arrives.

<comment><USER15> Previous versions (maybe the new ones too, I haven't seen it yet) of Windows was updating the size realtime when it was still calculating. You could still see the approx size and know it's not the real size.

EDIT: only when opening "properties" dialog

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> While there certainly are long-standing issues with Finder, this rant is just lazy and sensationalist. No wonder why, looking at the metric ton of ads on the page. This is basically clickbait. The other articles are in a similar tone and spirit. If macOS is really that bad, why use it for servers and do so much with it? Apple has no true enterprise strategy and never had. Whining about something one feels one somehow deserves does not make it so. The other comments are correct: the shown behavior is just how file managers work – especially when dealing with spinning disks over a network share and 7 TB worth of small files.

</comment><comment><USER17> I seem to find different coloured folders and inconsistent line spacing when listing folders in column view but not this problem.

</comment><comment><USER18> Was just able to reproduce it on a stock MacBook Pro 2018 SSD, system volume, Mojave. Showed zero bytes until it calculated the size. I think this is a newer bug, it used to say "Calculating…" IIRC.

Update: for other folders, its showing "Calculating size" as it should, so its either an intermittent bug or has some sort of specific trigger.

</comment><comment><USER19> Few days ago encountered similar bug: Finder reported size of direcrory as about 300 Mb, but actual size was 9 Gb. There were no hardlinks or something like that, content inside was generated by script. This was on apfs, and size was reported instantly, so it might be bug in filesystem, not Finder.

<comment><USER19> Update: seems that "fast size" feature was cancelled or is not yet ready: [https://eclecticlight.co/2019/02/06/how-big-is-that- folder-w...](https://eclecticlight.co/2019/02/06/how-big-is-that-folder-what- happened-to-apfs-fast-directory-sizing/), [https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/79901](https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/79901)

So the problem is likely with size caching in Finder.

I tried getattrlist on my system, and ATTR_DIR_ALLOCSIZE is always 0 and ATTR_DIR_DATALENGTH is some unrelated small number (probably size of directory entry in FS, not size of its files).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've seen this fairly regularly for years across hfs and apfs on spinning disks and ssds. I've always /assumed/ it must be some caching bug or what not, though I thought APFS was meant to provide O(1) folder and file size values so wouldn't be necessary.

</comment><comment><USER21> Finder sometimes has _Disappeared_ Files when browsing NAS drives, whether it is using SMB or AFP. But reconnection will make those files reappear again, and it has been going on for years I sort of gave up reporting. Luckily no data is loss.

</comment><comment><USER22> File a Radar.

<comment><USER8> Which is a black hole where nothing happens</comment></comment>


Blip: A bytecode compiler for Python 3 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bjpop/blip <comment><USER2> The succinctness of the README in this project makes me wish more READMEs were written like this.

<comment><USER3> I agree: it was a pleasure to read. Very unusual, that. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Generally speaking, what are the advantages of such a compiler vs. the standard interpreter?

<comment><USER5> None. Standard interpreter automatically compiles modules to bytecode on the first import and stores them in .pyc files. Compiling specific files is also possible. I am assuming this project is simply an exercise on the author's part.

edit: precision

<comment><USER6> Well it might be possible for this one to implement a better bytecode optimiser and a better "stack flow", the standard interpreter only has a fairly simple peephole optimiser so it will e.g. store to locals to immediately reload the same local, or repeatedly load a name from the local or global scope rather than load it once and dup it:

        >>> @dis.dis
        ... def foo():
        ...     print a
        ...     print a
        ...     print a
        ...
          3           0 LOAD_GLOBAL              0 (a)
                      3 PRINT_ITEM
                      4 PRINT_NEWLINE

          4           5 LOAD_GLOBAL              0 (a)
                      8 PRINT_ITEM
                      9 PRINT_NEWLINE

          5          10 LOAD_GLOBAL              0 (a)
                     13 PRINT_ITEM
                     14 PRINT_NEWLINE
                     15 LOAD_CONST               0 (None)
                     18 RETURN_VALUE

I don't know how much value the optimised bytecode would bring though, likely not much outside of specific tight loops, and even then it's still only interpreted cpython, for little more cost you can integrate scipy solutions (e.g. numba) which'll likely have a much more significant impact.

<comment><USER7> This is required due to Python's semantics. You can't optimize that away unless the code is written to explicitly turn a global into a local.

<comment><USER8> Here's an example of why mborch's statement is true:

        class A:
            def __init__(self, value=0):
                self.b = value
            def __str__(self):
                if self.b == 0:
                    global a
                    a = A(1)
                elif self.b == 1:
                    import __builtin__, __main__
                    __builtin__.a = 2
                    del __main__.a
                return str(self.b)
        a = A()

        def foo():
            print a
            print a
            print a

        foo()

This generates:

        1
        2
        3

but it's a different 'a' in all three cases; the last isn't even from the module's namespace.

<comment><USER9> pretty sure that produces 0,1,2

<comment><USER8> Good catch!

Yes, the output was from my first version. I rewrote it to be more explicit about changing the 'a' each time, and forgot to update the output section.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> (In Haskell)

<comment><USER11> I would be interested to see codebase comparison with CPython compiler.</comment></comment>


Microsoft: Shop our Scroogled Products - <AUTHOR> http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/cat/Scroogled/categoryID.67575900

<comment><USER2> I thought this was a joke but it looks like you can actually add these to your shopping cart.

These items seem mean-spirited and I'm not sure what its supposed to accomplish.

I like how they use the Chrome logo in a bunch of places. Not like the IE brand set developer productivity back 10 years or anything. Not to mention resources lost to dealing with IE 6/7/8.

<comment><USER3> _...and I 'm not sure what its supposed to accomplish._

Reframing the competition. You know, it's not voter suppression, it's anti- voter-fraud. Etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I guess they are resorting to selling apparels to make up some revenue.

Who knows, in 10 years, Microsoft may becoming the next Gap.

</snarky>

</comment><comment><USER5> I think these are kinda neat. Looks like something sold by the FSF rather than, um, Microsoft. Surprised that they don't feature IE/Office365 logos anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER6> Love it. Hope someone is making Microshafted merchandise.

</comment><comment> mkr-hn All I see is a signup form and some meta links.

</comment><comment><USER7> note, these don't show up on mobile

<comment><USER3> They don't show up on my phone, but they do on my ipad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hope the new CEO puts an end to this nonsense and invests the money into improving Bing instead.</comment>


LinkedIn for Gmail - <AUTHOR> https://business.linkedin.com/sales-solutions/blog/linkedin-sales-navigator/2017/11/sales-navigator-lite-for-gmail <comment><USER2> This looks really interesting, for users in and out of sales. Getting LinkedIn profiles inside a Gmail client is a no-brain integration.</comment>


Ask HN: YC alumni to email? - <AUTHOR>

Dear YC friends, I've read that its a good idea to contact YC alumni regarding their helpfulness in application and interviews. I was wondering if any alumni here would be so kind as to look over our application.
I tried googling individual companies and investigating their blogs/etc to find their contact info, but its pretty inefficient.
We just need someone with fresh eyes and experience to look it over. Your help is appreciated, feel free to contact me at coryliu[at]gmail or post your email here and I can get to you.
Thanks guys! <comment><USER2> I have no idea if it will help you, but if you want to meet YC guys, show up at the hacker dojo in mountain view. see <http://hackerdojo.pbworks.com/> \- plenty of them around.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good suggestion, but I'm not in California so no dice for now. Thanks though!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You checked their twitter accounts?</comment>


See How Well Google Knows Your Circle of Friends - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/s2/u/0/search/social#socialcircle

<comment><USER2> _Your social circle as determined by Google is currently a blank slate._ – excellent.

<comment><USER3> A well aimed arrow if ever there was one

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Google is missing the thing that Facebook does well here, _"identifying real people"_. [0] When I looked at the _"Friends"_ google identified it was really just connections I'd made with Twitter, flickr and various other services. Very few I'd met or consider a friend. Parsing data to find friends isn't as good as being sucked into the human _"social graph"_.

Identifying real people is a core concept at Facebook. and something they have got right (identity) and google will find difficult to replicate.

[0] I wouldn't have realised this point as quickly had I not read _"The Facebook Effect"_ ~ [http://www.amazon.com/Facebook-Effect-Inside-Company- Connect...](http://www.amazon.com/Facebook-Effect-Inside-Company- Connecting/dp/1439102112) which despite its flaws gives some useful insights. Excerpt: <http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/06/facebook-david-kirkpatrick/>

<comment><USER5> The title of this post probably mislead you, but identifying friends is just a subset of what Google is trying to do here.

If I'm searching for a good online backup service I care more about the opinions of people I follow on twitter than those of my non-technical friends and family, etc.

<comment><USER4> Good point I hadn't considered the real purpose of the service. But one thing I can't understand is why google - the kings of simple - want to include such messy data? When I see _"do more"_ I smell failure.

<comment><USER6> Google doesn't mind messy data at all. Their goal is to get _more_ data, even if it's not perfect. If they can get massive amounts of data, their statistical accuracy will improve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not much, apparently.

It knows my Twitter network, of course, and that's helpful for search results (someone I follow on Twitter blogging about some arcane JRuby tidbit I'm searching for is great).

If this is what Google's leaning on for their new social graph stuff, though, they're in trouble: it knew very little about my real-life friends. In other words, the friends that Facebook knows about. You can't glean that from Gmail contacts necessarily, since I don't really use email for that type of correspondence. If they really do want to flesh out a social graph of their own to combat Facebook, they have to roll their own social network. Maybe it's coming, maybe it's not; I just think they're only getting part of the picture right now.

<comment><USER8> My Facebook network is not my real social network. It mostly contains people i know, not the ones i interact with. My real social network is in my Android powered phone. I am waiting for a better merge with the contacts on my phone and the rest of social circles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Returns the same old bogus "I emailed them once" people listed in my Google chat, apart from one person. Since I haven't given Google or YouTube my Facebook info it can't be so accurate.

</comment><comment><USER10> 128 Direct connections that include all of my close friends.

121 Direct connections from links... which duplicate some of my close friends and then contain a load of bogus entries I don't recognise. These are all based on Flickr apparently.

3905 Secondary connections that do contain acquaintances, some good friends and lots of people I don't recognise.

It didn't do a bad job, but given that I use Google Chat and Calendar to organise stuff, that I use Google Contacts because of Android and that I have a lot of history in Google (email loaded from 1996) I'm not surprised that they have such a complete picture.

Edit: Just read up on it... it's figured out so much as I'd added sites to my Google Profile and it's followed those to determine the rest.

</comment><comment><USER11> Google doesn't have a lot of content about my friends. In fact, none, other than some names, many of which I don't even recognize.

But, interestingly, I got a 404 when I logged out.

[http://www.google.com/s2/u/0null?continue=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.g...](http://www.google.com/s2/u/0null?continue=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F)

Edit: actually, I can't log out. Fascinating, I know.

<comment><USER12> Yep - logout is broken for me there.

Just go to some other Google site (docs, gmail, maps) and logout from there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> My problem with the Social Circle stuff is that it apparently never ever removes anyone that it's pulled in through external services.

People I haven't followed on Twitter or Flickr in a year still show up in the 'Direct connections from links that appear on your Google profile' section.

</comment><comment><USER14> 386 secondary connections. Impressive. Is there an API to access these infos?

<comment><USER15> Yes, it's the Social Graph API: <http://code.google.com/apis/socialgraph/docs/>

<comment><USER14> Great, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So, my questions are will this be used to alter search results - eg this person is well connected in this field and regularly visits these domains, hence we'll add a bit of authority to those domains? Seems they should probably try it.

Also are they using meta data like XFN and microformats to garner some of the data or is it just internal Google social links?

<comment><USER15> The part that uses the Social Graph API: <http://code.google.com/apis/socialgraph/docs/> is based on crawling XFN rel="blah" links from all over the web. The canonicalisation layer that's used is opensource: <http://code.google.com/p/google-sgnodemapper/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It doesn't know much and what it knows is based on one other person who is connected to many other things. Poor Google.

</comment><comment><USER18> I wish I could turn this off or edit it, it's a bit creepy and never really shows me anything relevant.

<comment><USER15> It's all based on public data gathered using this: <http://code.google.com/apis/socialgraph/docs/>

You can always just edit your contacts on the original sites where the information came from and either wait for a recrawl or force a recrawl using: <https://sgapi-recrawl.appspot.com/>

<comment><USER18> Some of it is from people I've exchanged emails with over GMail, which shouldn't be public data, unless Google has leaked it out somehow.

<comment><USER15> Did you see this: [http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...](http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=165228) especially the bit about the difference between Public and Private connections?

<comment><USER18> I'm sorry my point is that I don't want to see private connection results myself in addition to no one else seeing them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Yeah... I just stumbled on that recently (like 5 minutes before) in a google search was doing. Wild. Too bad google seems to really only know one of my connections and all that they are linked to. Also too bad that that connection is really a weak one to me.

</comment><comment><USER20> My "secondary connections" seem to be a bunch of cosmetic companies.

<comment><USER21> Mine are a bunch of restaurants, again all through one primary connection.

Considering that I am the ONLY person on Facebook with my firstname/lastname, and that my 522 Facebook friends are publicly accessible, how and why is Google _not_ indexing Facebook? Is it just a matter of pride?

<comment><USER16> Do FB allow that sort of indexing in their ToS?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> 6 people... not impressive at all.

</comment><comment><USER23> [http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&...](http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=165228)

</comment><comment><USER24> Testing...</comment>


Show HN: Use your USB ports to play 'music' - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/anfractuosity/synth <comment><USER2> Mildly funny, but of course a terrible idea as this will wear out the lid and the USB ports. Sorry. :)

It got me thinking, is there a theremin-style music generator that uses wifi, bluetooth and other sensors? There must be.

edit: found only this: [https://github.com/protocol7/foliehatt](https://github.com/protocol7/foliehatt) . the one second latency on wifi scan updates sound unfortunate, I bet there is a better way to get ambient data.</comment>


Ukko Mobile From Helsinki Eliminates Data Roaming - <AUTHOR> http://www.arcticstartup.com/2013/03/27/one-sim-card-to-rule-them-all-ukko-mobile-from-helsinki-eliminates-data-roaming-forever

<comment><USER2> The problem with this, which I learned the hard way with my first startup, is that roaming costs are not high because of some horrible inefficiency in the telco's charging them, but because they all benefit from the status quo.

My first company was an ISP, and we thought the then current dial up prices (1995) were insane, and quickly worked out we could offer packages at 25% of the largest competitor and make a profit with only 1500 or so users. Problem was, the largest competitors could _also_ make a profit at 25% of their then- current prices, and had large established user-bases. We were inexperienced enough in business to not worry too much about _why_ their prices were to high - we assumed without thinking that their prices reflected their cost base. Instead it reflected their belief about the market at a time - they'd rather sell at that price with a ridiculous margin, than cut the price and grow the total size of the market.

We went in cocky about a big competitive advantage, and it took about 3 days after launch before the incumbent dropped prices to match ours, and while we kept growing, it obviously made things a lot harder.

This company might find the same in the mobile data market if they get any traction at all: Many of their competitors can drop the roaming charges massive pretty much over-night, have large warchests, and have roaming agreements in place that can quickly be re-negotiated if they and their partners start seeing this startup as a threat to their revenues. The massive benefit they can provide now, and the seeming headstart they have on their competitors can evaporate pretty much overnight.

<comment><USER3> Wait, you guys dropped the price of dialups for customers by 75% nation-wide and you're still disappointed?

<comment><USER4> Yes, sounds like the free market worked great for the customer!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I use Tru (formerly Truphone) which covers UK, US and Oz, I assume through the sorts of deals that these guys have pulled off.

It's a fabulous idea but badly executed (despite the fact that they have raised oodles of VC money) with poor call quality and slow (2G) data speeds. Still, _so_ much easier than buying a SIM in the US. Also, has the wonderful property that you can call someone who is physically in the US on their UK mobile number for free for both parties - for which incoming call (for those of you who don't know how backwards the US cell market is in comparison with regulated Europe) a US cell customer would normally have to pay!

That said, if you mainly travel to the US and don't want to deal with T-Mobile or Virgin or whoever, I heartily recommend them.

<comment><USER6> I've been playing with toggle (www.togglemobile.co.uk) as it covers more countries than Tru. They use their parent's MVNO network (Lyca Mobile), and actually manage decent prices in a number of European countries (and free incoming calls in a number more around the world).

The data offering isn't as wide spread, and they currently only offer per MB outside UK; but still a better deal than roaming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This sounded very cool for a minute -- I'm mostly based in France, sometimes the UK, but now I'm in Malaysia for a month, and will be in the US probably later this year for a chunk of time.

...but the title was seriously misleading (just Europe, and not even specifying which countries yet); I'm still going to have massive roaming charges if I don't switch SIMs.

How hard is it to put "...eliminates European data roaming costs forever"?

My current solution is multiple SkypeIn numbers -- you can call me in the US or UK, for example, and either number will forward to my current (local) mobile number, which I don't give out.

The only serious flaw with this approach is SMS -- SkypeIn can't accept (and/or forward SMS), even to my Skype account.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point about the title. But to answer your question, as far as I know Ukko told me that they want to expand quickly to the US and also countries such as Russia from the Eastern side.

<comment><USER8> Canada would be nice, although dealing with the Rogers/Bell/Telus troika might be difficult.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting, but their site seems light on details. Under Coverage, they just have "throughout Europe", which doesn't tell much (Europe is a rather poorly- defined concept).

In any case, 40+€ seems expensive unless you travel a lot.

<comment><USER10> 40-80 EUR is not that bad compared to many single country subscriptions in Scandinavia. Depends on whether it includes data traffic, free talk etc. If this works as advertised I believe it will be a game changer.

The EU maximum roaming charges[1] have to some extend compensated for the lack of competition but this would be even better.

1: [http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/roaming/t...](http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/roaming/tariffs/index_en.htm)

<comment><USER11> What? I pay 13€ / month for unlimited 15Mbps 3G in Finland, and kids have 5 € / month unlimited 0.5Mbps 3G. They all include some text and voice, and the coverage is spotless for daily commute and holidays. Where do you consider 40 € / month to be "not that bad" for similar connectivity?

OTOH, roaming fees while traveling can easily burn through several hundreds of euros, making 40-80 € / month a good plan even if you travel only once a year (but need data while traveling). Just the downloading the maps for navigating from airport to hotel and checking your email may cost more than a hundred euros (been there, done that).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> How does Amazon accomplish their free 3G with the Kindle and why aren't they selling this service? <http://client0.cellmaps.com/tabs.html#cellmaps_intl_tab>

<comment><USER12> > How does Amazon accomplish their free 3G with the Kindle and why aren't they > selling this service?

It's not "free 3G", it's "free ebook shop browsing and delivery via 3G" - relatively small files, and Amazon directly profits from each one. Thus they can afford to pay for it, and they're big enough to negotiate reasonable prices. But note that it's very limited: audio books are not delivered via 3G, nor are files sent in by the user for conversion (actually I believe you can pay for that service). And for their 70% royalty option, delivery is actually charged to the author at 15 cents per MB: [http://andrewhy.de/amazons-markup- of-digital-delivery-to-ind...](http://andrewhy.de/amazons-markup-of-digital- delivery-to-indie-authors-is-129000/)

<comment><USER13> Still, 15 cents is a price I would pay for data worldwide...</comment></comment></comment>


Targeting a rogue T cell prevents and reverses multiple sclerosis in mice - <AUTHOR> https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-10-rogue-cell-reverses-multiple-sclerosis.html <comment><AUTHOR> Via [https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/10/4/1890110/-Boston-C...](https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/10/4/1890110/-Boston- Children-s-Hospital-researchers-seem-to-have-pinpointed-the-cause-of-multiple- sclerosis)</comment>


Connect phpMyAdmin to Remote Amazon Lightsail Database - <AUTHOR> https://danielleskosky.com/connect-phpmyadmin-to-remote-lightsail-database/ <comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing! How are you finding Lightsail? I've recently separated the database used by my WordPress installation onto a Lightsail managed database. Working good so far!</comment>


MapBox redesign - <AUTHOR> https://www.mapbox.com

<comment><USER2> Was about to write a comment along the lines of:

"Beautiful site, looks awesome, but at an initial glance it doesn't tell me why I'd choose it over something like OpenStreetMap."

Is there any reason for the split in name/branding between the two?

<comment><USER3> They actually use OpenStreetMap's data, last I checked.

They aren't in the same market. They seem to provide a rich API overtop of their custom tilesets. (Keep in mind that OpenStreetMap has numerous tilesets!)</comment></comment>


Popcorn.js 0.2 Released: What You Need to Know - <AUTHOR> http://bostinnovation.com/2011/01/17/popcorn-js-0-2-released-what-you-need-to-know/

<comment><USER2> When I click Play on the demo it wants to start a Java applet. WTF? We are willing to use Java but the Flash Player is somehow dirty? Maybe I'm missing something..

<comment><USER3> Hey Pan69, the video is a screen-toast I took of my screen. The software, screencast-o-matic, uses an annoying Java plugin to play the video. hope that helps

<comment><USER2> OK. Maybe this is what I didn't understand. You're saying that the video is a screen-capture of how to use Popcorn, the video itself isn't played with Popcorn? Man, this is confusing...</comment></comment></comment>