DotNetAnywhere: An Alternative .NET Runtime - <AUTHOR> http://www.mattwarren.org/2017/10/19/DotNetAnywhere-an-Alternative-.NET-Runtime/ <comment><USER2> I'm the original author of DotNetAnywhere.

For all its flaws (and there are quite a few) it was a very interesting learning exercise, and it worked better than I ever really expected ;)

I don't really intend to ever do any more work on it, especially now that there are open source "real" implementations. But it's been nice to see it used in Blazor :)

If you have any questions about it, please ask.

<comment><AUTHOR> Firstly, thanks for writing it!

Here's my questions (assuming you can remember from 6+ years ago):

1) What was the hardest part of .NET to understand and/or implement?

2) Were there any surprising things about the .NET runtime/specification that you learnt about along the way?

3) Should JIT.c really be called Interpreter.c :-)

<comment><USER2> My memory is a little vague...

But I'm fairly sure the hardest part to implement was the support for generic types/methods. It made all the code that handles types way more complex (as expected I suppose!), and there's definitely a bug or two remaining. Correctly handling open/closed generic types and construction of types from generic arguments was painful. It didn't help that I initially implemented only non- generic type support, then had to hack generics into it. Were I to start again I'd implement the whole thing in a generic-first way.

The design of classes/structs and they they interact with generics is nice. And the `constained` IL prefix is a really neat optimization to avoid boxing. The use of type-agnostic CIL instructions (e.g. `add` can work on int, float, ...) is also a nice touch.

JIT literally stands for "Just In Time". It doesn't say what it's actually doing just-in-time ;) So (in my opinion) JIT.c is correct. It's translating CIL opcodes to dna-internal opcodes, which it does just-in-time just before a method is executed for the first time. The reason it does this at all is because there are many things to resolve when working from CIL that it's much better to do just once rather than every time a method is executed. A simple example is method references, which are by name in CIL, but are a simple pointer in dna-internal opcodes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much for your replies, very informative.

r.e. 'JIT v Interpreted', I should've checked wikipedia, it backs up what you're saying:

> Most often this consists of translation to machine code, which is then > executed directly, but can also refer to translation to another format

From [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-in- time_compilation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-in-time_compilation)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> There are a couple partial .NET runtimes reimplemented in JavaScript rather than compiled to WebAssembly; they are usually tied in with C# -> JavaScript generators.

[https://github.com/nikhilk/scriptsharp](https://github.com/nikhilk/scriptsharp) was kind of the granddaddy of them all, with no updates since 2013.

[https://github.com/bridgedotnet/Bridge](https://github.com/bridgedotnet/Bridge) Saltarelle was acquired by Bridge.NET mid-2015: [https://blog.bridge.net/bridge-net-acquires- saltarelle-c77a9...](https://blog.bridge.net/bridge-net-acquires- saltarelle-c77a9633e384) and seems to be going strong.

[https://github.com/SharpKit/SharpKit](https://github.com/SharpKit/SharpKit) went the other way and is now open source, but original L/GPL/references to licensing for commercial use may have limited growth; it is now MIT.

[http://jsil.org/](http://jsil.org/) mostly demonstrates games, and focuses on translating MSIL bytecode rather than any specific language or runtime.

<comment><USER2> I wrote an CIL-to-JS translator too:

[https://github.com/chrisdunelm/DotNetWebToolkit](https://github.com/chrisdunelm/DotNetWebToolkit)

It's not complete, certainly not usable for anything remotely real, but could handle quite a bit of C#. And was fun to work on :)

</comment></comment><comment> le-mark _What I find most impressive about the DotNetAnywhere runtime is that it was developed by one person and is less that 40,000 lines of code!!_

Nice write up, thanks. I wasn't aware of this project, it is very impressive. Does anyone know of similar projects for .net or Java?

<comment><USER4> There's IKVM, which is a managed JVM written in C# and is also capable of converting Java bytecode to CLR bytecode.

[http://www.ikvm.net/](http://www.ikvm.net/)

<comment><USER3> IKVM is feature-complete enough to remain useful for quite some time (with the full .NET framework), but keep this in mind:

The End of IKVM.NET | [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14174774](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14174774) (Apr 2017, 108 comments)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Had I read an article opening with the sentence: «Here is a .NET runtime alternative which is however 100 times slower…», I would have quickly dismissed it, shame on me. This article is right, the DotNetAnywhere code really seems a gem, well worth to study!

<comment><AUTHOR> > Had I read an article opening with the sentence: «Here is a .NET runtime > alternative which is however 100 times slower…», I would have quickly > dismissed it

I deliberately didn't start with Benchmarks, pretty much for that reason! Plus I put a huge caveat in before I showed the results.

> This article is right, the DotNetAnywhere code really seems a gem, well > worth to study!

Glad you think so as well, that's exactly the reason that I wrote about it. It's relatively unknown and if nothing else it's a really useful resource (whether it's suitable for production is another matter)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> run .Net in your browser via DotNetAnywhere in wasm: [https://github.com/aspnet/blazor-hackathon](https://github.com/aspnet/blazor- hackathon) (interpreted) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiLAE6HMr10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiLAE6HMr10)

<comment><USER7> Great suggestion, this is probably the killer app for this. I heard that the Mono and .NET teams are working on a new linker that should also help bring down the bloat, and help make .NET via WebAssembly less ridiculous in terms of overhead.

I have no idea if it would be compatible with DotNetAnywhere

[https://github.com/dotnet/announcements/issues/30](https://github.com/dotnet/announcements/issues/30)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The memory issues with DNA are frighting. If Chrome didn't hog enough of your ram before... it will NOW! Bwahahahahaha!

<comment><AUTHOR> > The memory issues with DNA are frighting.

Which memory issues do you mean? The items that are covered in this section [http://mattwarren.org/2017/10/19/DotNetAnywhere-an- Alternati...](http://mattwarren.org/2017/10/19/DotNetAnywhere-an- Alternative-.NET-Runtime/#garbage-collector) ('Garbage Collector') or something else?

<comment><USER8> Yeah, trusting the GC - reading the original author's comments on it:

> Mind you, the whole heap code really needs a rewrite to reduce per-object > memory overhead, and to remove the need for the binary tree of allocations. > Not really thinking of a generational GC, that would probably add to much > code. This was something I vaguely intended to do, but never got around to. > The current heap code was just the simplest thing to get GC working quickly. > The very initial implementation did no GC at all. It was beautifully fast, > but ran out of memory rather too quickly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, the GC code is certainly not optimal (in terms of memory usage), but I don't know if that means you can't trust it.

At least in the simple tests I did it behaved as expected, but I know that testing a GC for correctness is not a simple task!!

<comment><USER8> >What I find most impressive about the DotNetAnywhere runtime is that it was developed by one person and is less that 40,000 lines of code!! For a comparison the .NET framework Garbage Collector is almost 37,000 lines.

Keeping the code base small is a double edged sword. The trouble with everything going web-based these days is that script kiddies (myself included) should have some awareness of how memory is being managed and when to worry about holding IEnumerables in memory. Your write-up here is interesting and it's the first I've heard of Blazor. This is all very fascinating you have me reading the codebase now.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Face Detection jQuery Plugin - <AUTHOR> http://facedetection.jaysalvat.com/# <comment><USER2> While the plugin is probably awesome, there are two things that really suck here.

1\. Lack of a real demo. This is the sort of thing that will not convince me until I can click "upload" and have a detected face on my own crappy image.

2\. There is no clear link to the actual plugin. I know we're all web guys and can extract links from source, but _come on_. Even the "source on github" text isn't a link ...

edit: the word Github is a link, but there is no visual way of distinguishing it from the rest of the text, which leaves me dazed and confused.

<comment><USER3> I tried to replace the image, but not being a jquery wizard, I may've done something wrong. In the end, it said there was an issue with the image. Using the jquery selectors plugin, I ran (with the first SFW image I could find):

$(img).attr("src", "[http://www.accesshollywood.com/content/images/82/300x300/821...](http://www.accesshollywood.com/content/images/82/300x300/82170_the- celebrity-apprentice-season-2-cast-revealed.jpg))

<comment><USER4> I think you'll find it won't work with images loaded from other domains.

There is a cross-domain data protection feature on Canvas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This uses the face detection library here: [http://badassjs.com/post/1461943420/face-detection-in- javasc...](http://badassjs.com/post/1461943420/face-detection-in-javascript- via-html5-canvas)

Which has a link to upload and test your own pictures here: <http://liuliu.me/detect/detect.html>

</comment><comment><USER6> Detection is the easy part -- recognition has always been the stumper!

<comment><USER4> Detection is pretty useful though.

Combine this with something like [http://nicklothian.com/blog/2009/12/15/using-flash-to- shim-a...](http://nicklothian.com/blog/2009/12/15/using-flash-to-shim-a- webcam-to-canvas/) and you might be able to do facetracking in Javascript

<comment><USER7> I actually worked on a face-tracker using Python and a webcam mounted on servos as a research project on a quad-core. I highly doubt the Python added much overhead (we were using OpenCV, which is compiled), and it still wasn't very elegant; however, you make an excellent point. Once we can push web technologies to make JavaScript capable of computer vision, or use other technologies/plugins that empower computer-vision in-browser, simple applications like video surveillance will get much more interesting.

EDIT: Just a thought, wouldn't it be cool if we didn't have to ring doorbells anymore? There'd be a webcam instead of a lens on the door, and a small computer that notifies you when someone's at your door. It could even tell you who they are if we create adequate recognition technologies.

<comment><USER8> Actually, I've worked on a hand gesture recognition thing on web for quite some time (<http://api.alii.tv/>). The unfortunate part is, that is a plugin, and it is really hard to make a plugin compatible with every machine in wild.

<comment><USER4> That's exactly why I wrote my flash shim thing.

(Although, for real usage you'd actually have to do it in Flash still because of a Webkit memory leak)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> ... sure, if you consider the mouth as not really part of the face :-/

</comment><comment><USER10> He's not using that money to buy beer..

</comment><comment><USER11> where is the download link?

<comment><USER12> where it says "source on github"...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is awesome.</comment>


Typode - A font that can be reshaped - <AUTHOR> http://moebio.com/research/typode/

<comment><USER2> Isn't that how all vector fonts work?</comment>


Show HN: flickr downloadr for Windows - <AUTHOR> http://flickrdownloadr.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello people, The author of the app here. Would appreciate any feedback and comments. Thanks...</comment>


Venture capital picks up the Moneyball strategy - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2012/11/09/startup-algorithm/

<comment><USER2> "Team size: Solo founders take 3.6 times longer to reach scale stage compared to a founding team of two people or more."

This seems to quantify the benefit of having a cofounder...</comment>


Apply HN: Melt – API for Physical Gifting - <AUTHOR> Melt: http://melthq.com
Demo: http://melthq.com/dashboard
Problem: Companies are always looking for ways to engage with and delight their customers. Sending small gifts to customers is not scalable. Generic postcards and mailers are ineffective.
Solution: Melt is an API that devs can effortlessly tie into and trigger gift sending based on whatever conditions they want (customers bday, purchase amount, 10th purchase, etc.) Small gifts can be customized with customer info. We handle the production, customization and mailing and figuring out how to scale. Small gift ideas: chocolate, giftcards, flower(s), handwritten notes, whatever to delight your customer.
About us: I'm a developer and previously built and maintained a large hosting company's billing and customer service APIs. I'm a two time startup founder and also built a real estate company to mid six figures income while still in college. My partner is at Wharton working on her MBA. She previously scaled an ecommerce food startup from $45k MMR to $105k MMR in six months and worked at Uber doing operations and logistics.
Vision: We want to build a platform for anyone to send physical goods, seamlessly. What stripe did for payments we want to do for, say, chocolate bars and flowers.
Market: We're targeting client based businesses initially as they already send gifts to customers. Think Realtors, Brokers, Lawyers. Eventually any company looking to improve customer engagement and relationships would benefit from Melt.
Progress: I've been working on the code since late February. API MVP is about 75% complete. Web app is about 25% complete. We have ~35 signups from a small reddit post I threw up a month ago. Surprised to have had a few CEOs from large companies sign up, one of which is a YC company. Partner and I have talked to nearly 25 lawyers/realtors about their use case.
If you have any questions, comments, feedback, or interest in the project reach out. We'd love to hear from you! <comment><USER2> OK, I like this idea - as a business owner I can definitely see the use case. Your home page presents the idea very simply.

One thing I instantly want when reading your site is a gift :) -- you say "try it out" but I think it would be pretty magical if you'd just send me one if I type my address, or something like that. Obviously you'd want some way to prevent abuse.

Second thing I want when reading the site is to see the pricing on the homepage. I'm not in the business and have no idea how much these gifts are going to cost, so an approximate range (or, even better, github style "plans" showing various gifts and how much they would cost) would go a long way towards getting my email address.

Lastly, you could probably get away with an insanely simple "api" for your mvp that just let the person upload a CSV of addresses, and then dumped them onto a stripe checkout. You could build that in a day and (I'd guess) go pretty far.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment and suggestions. I'm actually working on a lightweight CSV uploader for some of our early users who are Realtors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like this. Currently sending e-gift certificates is the closest thing.

Would be nice if you could engrave the products as well. Like if a business wanted to send swag they could.

</comment><comment><USER4> Imagine I was running a small company and I heard about your product but I'm skeptical of the value I'll get from using it. How can you convince me that spending money on gifts for my customers is worth it? What evidence do you have that sending a gift will net me more income in the long run?

How big is this market? In the $10 to $100 MM range? How do you grow past that?

<comment><AUTHOR> The question I'd ask you is if you could afford not to use Melt as a way to delight your customers. Gifting your best customers with surprise tokens of appreciation (~$15), especially if your company's products are in the high end range of say $500+, you'd have to send out 33 gifts without a single subsequent repurchase to lose out, thats without taking into account the boost in social media, word of mouth, reviews, etc.

Our initial users will serve as case studies and we'll write up blogs about how we improved their bottom line.

And, If you're still on the fence, I'm sure receiving a random gift from us might help sway you.

The gifting market is huge if you include sub markets such as flowers, chocolates, corporate gifts. We'd be introducing a lower price point of < $15 gifts which would expand the market. While not entirely B2B, Harry & David had $300m revenue in 2014, Things Remembered - $315m in 2011. It's reasonable to say $100m is doable.

Customer engagement is not about hash tags and pop up notifications. It's about establishing relationships, something tangible. The companies who can do that will win. Melt allows brands to do that.

</comment></comment><comment> d--b This is a great idea. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER5> Your blog is down :/</comment>


Who Is Eduardo Saverin? Early Facebook Investor Peter Thiel Opens Up (VIDEO) - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/19/eduardo-saverin-facebook_n_786174.html

<comment><USER2> "His job was to sell advertisements for Facebook and he was not remotely doing that job."

"involved and had helped in some small financial ways in getting the site started at the very beginning at Harvard."

He probably put up ALL the money needed to start facebook, but later when you're rich you can post-rationalize that he "wasn't really necessary, it was a small amount". Money tends to warp memory a lot. Particularly where money, ego and ownership intersect.</comment>


Linode upgrade plans to match with DigitalOcean - <AUTHOR> https://blog.linode.com/2018/05/17/updated-linode-plans-new-larger-linodes/ <comment><USER2> The lower end tier gets some more disk space, it is only the higher end gets CPU and Memory upgrade. Now the Dollar / Memory is the same across low and high end Standard Plan. I have always wondered why it wasn't the case in all previous years. Shouldn't the higher spec / memory / CPU, the cheaper it is per CPU / Memory ?

The other news not mentioned in the post is the switch to AMD EPYC CPU. I guess that is what offers much more memory and CPU core per "slices".

It is also interesting that DO decided their Non Standard Plan are CPU focus, while Linode is Memory Capacity focused.

I am not sure if Linode has improved their security, which damaged its image quite a bit. And if they have finally shipped their new Control Panel. UX was one reason why many went with DO.

Otherwise, Linode is still faster in CPU, Memory Speed, Disk I/O, Network Capacity, Network Speed, Latency. I don't know if all these are still true with new EPYC Sever. But sometimes I don't understand why Linode is not getting the similar attention as DO.

And similarly, I don't understand why everyone everything has to be on AWS. And why DO / Linode type of Cloud Services haven't moved up the ladder.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Old plans

[https://web.archive.org/web/20180414185804/https://www.linod...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180414185804/https://www.linode.com/pricing)</comment>


For a small fee, you can become a digital Estonian - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20190718-e-residency <comment><USER2> I wonder what the true benefits and drawbacks are... and not just the marketing speak.</comment>


Mashable lays off staff in 'strategic shift' toward video - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/07/media/mashable-layoffs/ <comment><USER2> What a bummer, I've usually thought of Mashable as just a quick-hit blog site but had been noticing longer pieces in the wild. Of all the specialty blogs, Mashable IMO had one of the best ideas. Social media will long be one of the biggest businesses in tech and requires its own specialized comprehensive coverage. From what I could tell, though, Mashable never got technical enough in its coverage...Moz made a name for itself and then a SaaS business through SEO, and social media is at least as big if not bigger than SEO these days, particularly in the mainstream mindset. Given Mashable's lead in covering social media, there was an opportunity to do SaaS and consulting...the amount that government agencies pay for shit social media consultants and software could easily fund a business where Mashable's news coverage is its loss- leader.

Edit: Apparently the head of the video team was let go just as she was about to start a shoot and was left stranded in Ohio because her company email was cut off. This is the harshest "I'm sorry to say I've been let go but I've had a great time working with my @COMPANY collagues"

[https://twitter.com/nadjao/status/718099008657440769](https://twitter.com/nadjao/status/718099008657440769)

> _Well at least now we know this company has no fucking vision except total > garbage click bait production._

<comment><USER3> I'm sad she is turning this into sexism though. I liked the goodbye message.

[https://twitter.com/nadjao/status/718119373328760834](https://twitter.com/nadjao/status/718119373328760834) > Interesting that all the people they fired were intelligent, skilled journalists and producers. This is what happens when bros run media.

[https://twitter.com/nadjao/status/718134509921779712](https://twitter.com/nadjao/status/718134509921779712) > Also let's take a moment and see that majority of the editors and producers who are now gone are women.

<comment><USER4> How are you sad if you don't know if it's true or false?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Video is extremely overrated as a medium. It's not searchable, it's not quotable, and it takes forever to consume compared to reading. I read a dozen(s) or more articles in a day, and generally watch zero videos per week.

<comment><USER6> What age are you? Millennials watch a lot of video on Facebook/Instagram/Snapchat.

<comment><USER7> WTF has his age to do with it? He made valid criticisms of video as a medium. Everyone from little kids to grandmas watch a lot of video, but it has its drawbacks.

<comment><USER8> Because he/she made a pretty broad statement about video as a medium and then used their own experience to validate/support that statement. I think it's probably relevant to ask about their age to be able to discuss whether their personal experience is a useful data point in support of the statement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Since my ad blockers are preventing this article from loading, I'm just going by the Title: bad move Mashable.

I suppose that millennials consume the most videos, but power users rely on text, especially for consumption and sharing.

Advertisers always poisoning things.

<comment><USER10> You say it's a bad move, but are simultaneously pointing out that you've removed their source of revenue. How is it a bad move if their goal is to pay the bills and survive? Do you have an alternative solution?

<comment><USER9> Sure. I didn't remove their source of revenue - their content still displayed for me, minus nefarious tracking, malverts and poor targeting. The solution is to stand up to ad-tech and advertisers and do ads the right way - one that respects UX. Until that happens, publishers are in a no-win situation. Videos won't solve their problem. They will cost more to produce and many will skip them or head to other places with plain text. Millennials are still going to be picky on what they watch. Maybe that generation is still learning the ramifications of ad-tech but this survey from Realtime Generation is interesting. What makes them unhappy:

\- Organizations sharing data with third parties (60%). \- Movement tracked in-store via personal device for marketing purposes (41%). \- Online habits used to provide targeted ads and promotions (50%). \- Location data used or shared (54%).

Advertisers are responsible for the current state of declining revenue for publishers because they never understood UX. Ad blocking usage is going to rise and publishers will die or eventually address the issue with advertisers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does anyone know why Mashable's twitter post links use the address "[http://on.mash.to/?"](http://on.mash.to/?")

What is the purpose of using link shortening if you add superfluous characters that don't make sense "on"?

What does "on mash to" mean?

</comment><comment><USER11> In other words, "more ads." Video ads pay so much it's silly.

</comment><comment><USER12> Idiots it was all click bait anyway</comment>


Show HN: Hotcold Typing – Learning Touch Typing Smartly - <AUTHOR> http://hotcoldtyping.com/ <comment><USER2> Does it support other keyboards than a US one? I use a Danish keyboard and need ÆØÅ (plus some of the keys on the top row are different than on the US keyboard).

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now no. In the future, I will try to support more keyboards other than the US one.

<comment><USER2> I'll see you in the future, then. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Works in Chromium, doesn't work in Firefox.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, It should be working in latest firefox. Anyway, thanks for the info, so that I will look into the issue</comment></comment>


The latest chapter for the self-driving car: mastering city street driving - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-latest-chapter-for-self-driving-car.html <comment><USER3> Everyone seems really concerned with the edge cases right now. What about insurance and liability? What about when X happens and it's raining? These are (usually pretty minor) technical challenges, and I haven't heard one yet that we won't be able to overcome with today's technology.

Under given circumstances the car will be safer than a human or it isn't. The moment it crosses that threshold (for most conditions) the world is going to change for the better. From there it's just a matter of optimization until a human watcher isn't even required.

Self-driving cars are worth every penny of research. They will some day be safer than human drivers. With a full network of communicating cars and fail- safes we could almost eliminate traffic-related injury and death. Some day your insurance company will probably charge you more per mile you choose to take control of your car.

Beyond safety, this could make life way more convenient and make living far more convenient. We won't need to waste 4-10%+ of our entire lives staring at the road doing nothing. That's huge! Once the cars are safe enough, you'll be able to read, write, or take a nap.

Life also gets a lot more efficient. We won't all need cars. Think about the social ramifications. We won't need all that parking space we waste at home, work, at grocery stores, or downtown. Rather than needing 2 cars for me and my wife, I could send it back to get her once I get to work - or maybe just sign up for a service that completely eliminates the need to own.

<comment><USER4> There's the simple issue of legal liability, though. If you crash into someone, it's your fault and you can be taken to court for it. If a Google driverless car crashes into someone then it's Google's fault. That's an extremely large number of potential crashes and legal challenges.

Absent any higher concern, Google has to be very careful about this out of their own self-interest.

<comment><USER3> I hear people fretting about liability as a "problem to overcome," but it's actually much simpler than the technical challenges.

People have to drive the same distance regardless. Whether it's human or computer error leading to the accident is irrelevant to your premium. To a car insurance company it's all about rates and risks.

Assuming driverless cars are shown to be safer than humans - and they'll have to be in order to get approval - your car insurance company would be stupid not to cover them. From their perspective it's simple economics. The accident rate is lower, thus the potential liability is lower.

If your insurer isn't willing to insure your driverless car, you'll switch to someone who does. If no established provider insures driverless, that's a no- brainer company to start. Similar payments in a high-margin industry with lower average payouts? Yes, please.

Liability is the easy part.

<comment><USER5> The problem is your insurance company. If you get in an accident, they're not going to want to pay for it, and they're going to go after Google for the damages. Now we're right back where we started.

<comment><USER6> No. Current driver-based insurance policies might be based on the ability to hold the driver personally responsible if they are negligent.

Insuring a vehicle is just figuring out what the likely payout ratio across a cohort of those vehicles is going to be, then working backwards from there to come up with a premium that will cover the claim amounts, administrative costs and provide a pool of funds to invest.

Lots of things are insured today with no interest in who is operating them. Automated cars are no different to that.

Essentially you're imaging a current situation (where a driver is insured) and transferring that to a situation with no driver. That's wrong.

Insurance companies don't care - they just want to be able to predict what the likely payout rate is. And that's how much it will cost. If that includes cover for buggy code, it just means a higher premium. Essentially younger drivers have buggier driving code, and that's why they cost more to insure.

<comment><USER7> Also, in terms of regulatory capture, it's almost certain that the legal requirement to hold insurance for your car will continue. But the combination of the fact that payouts will probably move towards class action against software bugs (where class action suits usually have a lower per-person payout, and will be paid out by massive policies held by the car companies) and the fact that in general fewer of those people will ever need a payout thanks to safety improvements (especially as we move into most cars on city roads being driverless) will mean insurance companies will have to pay out less.

I will never understand why people think insurance companies will be a barrier to adoption. Insurance companies are going to love this. I think the tipping point will be when insurance rates on driving your own car skyrocket.

<comment><USER6> >I will never understand why people think insurance companies will be a barrier to adoption. Insurance companies are going to love this. I think the tipping point will be when insurance rates on driving your own car skyrocket.

Yes. The logic goes like this. 'Currently I'm an insured driver'. I will have a car with no driver. It therefore cannot be insured.

Where I live cars are _already_ insured for third-party personal damages, regardless of who is driving them. It's a fixed-cost premium attached and paid at vehicle registration time. Thus, if you are injured in a motor vehicle accident, regardless of who is at fault, you (or your heirs) will be paid compensation in a regulated environment. This is a functioning market which doesn't adjust for driver age or experience, but instead collectively insures all vehicles on the road, and pays out when a claim is made. Periodically, when more than one insurer is involved, they will negotiate an 'at fault' percentage in order to work out which ratio at which the claims are attributed to each insurer. This may involve discussion of the drivers actions (to determine fault), but the payout is always made - because the _vehicle itself_ is the thing that is insured.

In this system, the only way the driver can become liable for the claim is if they specifically and deliberately engaged in a criminal act, such as driving an unregistered vehicle, or driving under influence. Mere speeding or red- light running doesn't void the insurance (as these are traffic infringements rather than criminal acts). And in these cases, the insurance company still pays out the compensation, but may proceed to recover the compensation from the driver that broke the law.

This type of system would easily be translated to driverless vehicles. The owner of the vehicle would pay a registration fee, and a portion of that fee would be passed onto the owners choice of insurer (or a valid certificate of insurance would need to be presented for registration, which is the same thing). As long as the insurance was paid, then third-party personal and property damage would be paid out to any accident claimants. If the insurance company then decided someone was directly liable for causing the claim (such as tampering with vehicle systems or negligent coding) then they could recover the claim money.

Such a system would be a vast improvement on the current situation, whereby it's the driver that is insured, and because of the various risk factors, insurance premiums are all over the place. As a result, the riskiest drivers also tend to be the ones lacking insurance, which is the worst case for someone who needs to make a claim.

But then insurance is one of the most misunderstood products around, so I guess it's not surprising that ignorance of how it works abounds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In this discussion I very rarely see mentioned how heavy are cars. Since when do we need multi tons machine to move a being that is usually below 100kg from a to b? Here in northern China, many people have very small egg-cars, which are nothing more than an electric bike with a thin shell for the cold, and this is much less likely to kill someone by accident.

I think we have been under a very strong brain washing so that we all believe a nice car is big and has this and that. Maybe these car ads will be seen in 20 years the same way we see cigarette ads right now: dangerous brain washing by a lobby gone crazy.

(Edited slightly to avoid unfortunate pun)

<comment><USER9> because it is a multi-purpose vehicle. i drive a car to work, single passenger. i drive the car to buy stuff, with my wife, 2 passengers, plus hauling stuff in the trunk. i drive the car to various places on the weekend, wife plus kid plus shit in the trunk.

i bought it to cover multiple transportation scenarios I encounter on a weekly basis. it also has a certain size to protect me in an accident. bumping into something at 30mph needs a certain amount of crumple zone to make it survivable. physics are hard to beat.

and I haven't killed anyone so far with my car - and I've driven on multiple continents, on and offroad.

no lobby needed.

<comment><USER10> Actually, with self-driving cars, it's likely that those four activity could be handled by different vehicles that you would only rent for the time you need them. If the law allows them to drive empty, they could go to the next user on their own, and reduce both waste parking, and inefficiencies like the ones you describe.

Such plans are however more likely to happen in areas where those issues are more dire (concentrated living) and where non-ownership is already commonly accepted: bike-sharing already exists in NY. Not sure where you are, but I'm assuming you don't have city-car-sharing there. This discrepancy can come off as a result of lobbying: car companies typically appear hostile to selling a lot less cars to sharing platform operators. I know for a fact there was a lot of lobbying involved in some cases, but I doubt that was the key issues in most places where 'transportation alternatives' isn't used.

<comment><USER9> sure, but this why ownership as a concept is actually quite nice - i can decide _right now_ to do something with _my_ car. i don't need to plan ahead. i am not dependent on anybody else. i gladly pay for that luxury.

<comment><USER11> Yes, and surely some people (particularly in less dense suburbs and rural areas) will continue to own cars. They will just be self-driving cars, because manually operated cars will be illegal.

<comment><USER12> You write: > because manually operated cars will be illegal.

I have a question for you. How many years after the introduction of the gasoline powered automobile did it take before horse-drawn vehicles became illegal on the roads?

Near where I live (eastern Pennsylvania, USA) one still encounters a horse- and-buggy occasionally, especially near Amish areas. And a few roads (interstates and limited access highways) are specifically posted for motor vehicles only.

I posit that there will be a LONG period in which manually operated cars will share the road with self-driving cars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Question for self-driving car aficionados. When I'm driving and encounter a strange or dangerous situation these days I often try to think if a robocar will be able to handle it properly. One situation came up the other day that made me nervous. I was driving on a relatively empty highway at high speed (70mph) and there was a piece of debris in one of the lanes. I spotted the debris far ahead and safely changed lanes.

For an autonomous car, the car will a) need incredibly far range to see this debris in time and b) will need incredibly precise lidar/radar to see the debris if it is small. At a far distance, a small piece of debris covers a minuscule solid angle on the sensor. At high speeds, you have a twofold problem that tests the limits of the onboard sensors and collision avoidance systems: objects approach rapidly, and small objects can cause catastrophic damage or cause other collisions. In the case where other cars are on the road, the problem seems straightforward since the robocar can probably see all the other cars ahead of it changing lanes in a pattern. On a deserted highway however the car is in trouble unless it can spot the debris from a very far distance, it seems. Any thoughts?

<comment><USER14> Humans have a tendency to focus on the bizarre while dismissing the average. Perhaps a self-driving car will not see this debris, although I would be surprised if that was true. The robot car has far superior sensors, compared to yours, and it never looks at anything else. Probably the consequences of hitting the debris would have been minor anyway.

On the other hand, meat-drivers are constantly murdering hundreds of people every day. A robot-driven car won't do that. It would even be acceptable if the robot car stuck the debris in the roadway at full speed, every single time, as long as it wasn't mowing down little kids at the local farmers' market every Sunday.

<comment><USER15> Your basic argument is that, although robots will make mistakes, we'll let them kill just a few of us to save many more. That seems like it's not going to go over well with most people.

And I would say that mowing down little kids at the local farmer's market would be one of those 'bizarre' incidents, unless there has been a rash of farmer's market mow-downs that I'm not aware of.

I've never hit anyone, and I'd rather not let a robot wreck my car and endanger my life in a situation that would have been easily avoidable, should I have been in control. There's your counter argument.

<comment><USER16> I think you misread. He's saying that it's better for everyone if a robot hits debris every now and then vs a human driver that causes 100ish deaths a day.

According to [http://www.nhtsa.gov/NCSA](http://www.nhtsa.gov/NCSA) a pedestrians is killed every two hours and injured every 7 minutes. A robot car would reduce these rates to near zero.

<comment><USER15> I'm still not sold that "A robot car would reduce these rates to near zero" as you claim. Your statistics give: time of day; weather conditions; area (pedestrian or motor vehicle designated); alcohol consumption; and state/city data;

BUT I don't see conditions predicating the crash.

I would be very interested, and would be sold more on the idea of self-driving cars if the advocates who make your claim could point to examples that would reduce these rates. How many accidents are caused by drivers swerving to miss something? How many are caused by driver inattentiveness? How many are caused by mechanical error? Without these numbers, saying that a robot car would reduce these rates to near zero is on the same footing as anyone who wants to claim that self-driving cars would kill more people, because we can plan ahead. I hope that makes sense, I'm having a hard time with the language today.

By the way, I love the concept of self-driving cars, I just don't think they're the cure-all most advocates, such as yourself, claim them to be.

<comment><USER14> You're acting like one of those people who say that we don't have all the evidence on global climate change yet. There's no mystery about what causes motor vehicle collisions. Here is a huge report from the administration to Congress on the causes of motor vehicle collisions.

[http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811059.PDF](http://www- nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811059.PDF)

The majority of crashes occur in daytime, in clear weather, while the car is moving in a straight line. You'll note that substantially all of these causes would be solved by a computer-driven car.

""" About 41 percent of the driver-related critical reasons were recognition errors that include inattention, internal and external distractions, inadequate surveillance, etc. Of these, the most frequently occurring critical reason was inadequate surveillance that refers to a situation in which a driver failed to look, or looked but did not see, when it was essential to safely complete a vehicle maneuver. This critical reason was assigned to drivers in about 20 percent of crashes. Internal distraction as a critical reason was assigned to drivers in about 11 percent of the crashes. About 34 percent of the driver-related critical reasons were decision errors that included too fast for conditions (8.4%), too fast for curve (4.9%), false assumption of others' actions (4.5%), illegal maneuver (3.8%), and misjudgment of gap or others' speed (3.2%). In about 10 percent of the crashes, the critical reason was a performance error, such as overcompensation (4.9%), poor directional control (4.7%), etc. Among the nonperformance errors assigned as critical reasons to drivers in about 7 percent of the crashes, sleep was the most common critical reason (3.2%). The effectiveness of vehicle-based countermeasures used in mitigating the effects of various driver performance, recognition, and decision errors could be evaluated using this information. """

You'll note that "vehicle problem" is the critical pre-crash event for only 1.2% of crashes. Therefore if the computer _only_ solves the sleeping driver problem, and even if it is twice as bad as humans at handling vehicle mechanical failure, society is still reaping a net benefit. But, of course, computer-driven cars can solve nearly all of these causes of crashes: inattention, misperception, distraction, sleeping, driving too fast for conditions, and on and on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's amazing how new technology is meeting old technology again. For example, the horse drawn carriage.

Typically, the carriage driver doesn't steer the horse but points it in the direction they want to go. The horse and it's little horse brain negotiates the terrain and immediate obstacles.

You never had to steer the horse to avoid driving over the cliff, it was smart enough to know self preservation. The modern mechanical car doesn't even have that level of avoidance systems. This left the driver to manage more strategic tasks. There were downsides obviously. Horses could freak out and run over a crowd of people.

</comment><comment><USER18> As a city cyclist, the Google solution looks _way_ safer than the current status quo...

<comment><USER19> Even before we get self-driving cars, autonomous braking should be mandated so that cars and trucks are literally incapable of coming too close to a cyclist.

<comment><USER20> I'll back that as soon as a system to force bicyclists to abide by traffic laws is required.

<comment><USER21> I have a feeling that the general populace of hacker news will disagree with us, but I am with you 100%.

I live in a small-ish town on the outskirts of Philadelphia that happens to be in the middle of some sort of really popular biking route. Unfortunately, we have a ton of really small streets with cars parked on both sides.

I understand and appreciate that cyclists have no other place to ride then in the street, and they as much a right to the road as drivers. But it can be quite frustrating to be stuck behind a cyclist who is making no effort to pedal quickly on a road where it is impossible to pass them.

The really frustrating thing though is that they completely ignore traffic rules. If you have to ride in the street and I have to treat you as part of traffic, fine. But why do you get to creep up the side of the street at red lights, then positioning yourself in front of more cars to slow down. And why do you get to run red lights? It seems it needs to be one way or the other. Either you are a pedestrian, and you should be trying to avoid traffic, or you are a participant on the road and you should obey the traffic laws.

<comment><USER22> Why I pull in front of the line of cars stopped at the red light on my bike is because otherwise a car will clobber me. It's not a matter of if but when and the consequences will be severe for my family and me. On my commute I am minimally wearing a bright neon green penny over my clothing. When I have stopped in the line of cars at the light I have had cars almost rear end me. Also when I get to the intersection drivers do not seem to notice me there and turn right directly in front of me or a car from the oncoming lane decides to turn into me. So I crawl to the front. And do you know what happened here a handful of time? Even when I make eye contact with an oncoming car, the moment the light turned green, the driver forget I was there and tried to turn left as I was crossing on the green. So for my safety on this particular intersection on my commute I crawl to the front, wait for the light for the cross traffic to turn red and verify that all the cars are slowing, then I book it across before the light turns green for me and the other people barely awake behind the wheel. In this way I am not there anymore when another car starts going. I know it's illegal, but it is the only way I have found to get to and from work safely as it is the only entrance. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know why I do that. Some people that do not ride bicycles enough just don't have the experience to appreciate what other things might be going on when not in a car.

<comment><USER23> In the UK this is actually enforced, and we have ASLs ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_stop_line](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_stop_line)) allowing cyclists to move in front of other traffic at junctions, and start ahead of them. Is this sort of thing not part of the road system i9n the US?

<comment><USER22> It's quite rare here in US, I've only encountered it sporadically near some universities. I think they make a lot of sense and wish they were common. Typically here there is enough room for a bicycle and then some ahead of the stopped cars, so it makes little sense to me why the extra markings are not painted on the road - possibly lack of familiarity?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is amazing, but if anything it's made me more wary of some of the challenges the project faces.

\- What if the cyclist fell off his bike in front of the car? How quickly can the computer process the real-time imagery and react compared to a human with their peripheral vision. \- What if the cyclist swung from the pavement on to the road. A human driver will probably have spotted the hazard (we all train for that kind of thing when learning to drive) earlier. What are the limitations of the peripheral vision of the car when checking hazards? \- What if a fire hydrant bursts on the side of the road 50m in front of the car and makes the road ahead really wet? Can the cameras determine and detect quickly enough the need for different driving (and probably braking) due to a change in surface?

The sad truth of this is that whilst it's an interesting technical challenge, I really can't forsee a situation where a computer could react to all the different things that could happen when driving a car as well as a human.

<comment><USER25> Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but Google cars still can't drive in the rain or in the snow. Not even on a wet street. They have driven all those thousand miles in Mountain View, Calif. in good weather.

Generally lidar's don't work well with rain or reflective surfaces.

<comment><USER26> My understanding is that it uses vision processing algorithms on a camera nowadays, and works just fine in rain. Snow is an issue because the car can't see the lane markings through the snow -- a human drives through snow by remembering where they were or making a guess.

<comment><USER27> There's a relatively simple fix for lane markings, that would help autonomous cars even in good weather. You know those reflective lane marking doodads they embed in the road surface? We start replacing them with magnetized nails that are pounded into the asphalt in intervals. Sensors in the car could recognize the lanes even in deep snow or pea-soup fog. And homeowners could easily outfit their driveways with a trip to Home Depot.

<comment><USER26> They don't use the embedded ones in most parts of snow countries like Canada, because it's hard to get them flush with the road so that they work with snowplows. AFAICT, Toronto still uses just plain old paint on most of its roads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I love how the car understands the cyclist's hand signals. The self-driving car is going to have a gigantic impact on the world, I can't wait to see it commercialised.

<comment><USER10> As a cyclist, I was shocked to see the cyclist change his mind like that —unless he was a tester too, that's how you get bumped– but I really hope Google Cars learn that most cyclists actually don't signal their turn that well.

Cars don't bother either, and the last frame show how most non-car drivers get killed: don't notice what passing just being, shift in gear, swerve and… bang. Seeing how Google taught its car to behave literally had me shout in joy an dance at my desk.

<comment><USER29> _don't notice what passing just being, shift in gear, swerve and… bang_

Can you rephrase this? I can't understand it.

<comment><USER10> At the very end of the video, you can see a common situation: a car waits at an intersection to turn right. Nothing seems to block its way. Actually, in the US, cars seem to turn right even when the light is red, for instance.

Anyway: what they show is that, just behind the car, just at its right, there is a cyclist. But it is in the dead spot. That cyclist is most likely going steady because the path is clear: cars were waiting at the intersection, but what was blocking them just passed, so you can move along. My experience is that cars _always_ forget to signal they are turning, and they never think about check the deadspot.

This is how most cyclists die.

It was notoriously how the first death involving a Vélib, (Paris' free bike scheme); it actually happened meters away from where I was at the time.

More importantly, this is something that most car drivers don't care to check: they _always_ blame the cyclist for "showing up out of nowhere" and usually do so violently. They completely neglect that the don't have the right of way at all, nor that it would make no sense for them to pretend to have it if the vehicle was anything else than a bicycle: I've seen them always apologise profusely when they caught a motorbike in the same situation.

I was living in a very busy street (the largest in Paris, actually) where there are dozens of such intersections, and it used to happen to me everyday. By 'happen', I mean that I had to bang on the car side to prevent the blow daily; there was visible damage to either the car or the bike weekly. I had to drop my bike at the last minute, letting it be crunched by the car wheel, or jump on the car front/engine to avoid being crushed almost every other month. That's why I rapidly switched from my beloved bike to Vélib, to be able to afford such frequent accidents. I was hit badly twice, fell on the macadam both time: the first time, my front teeth cut my lip open (still have a scar, and one front tooth is still visibly broken in half); the second time, I busted my knee and couldn't walk for a month. I have less of a limp now, but I can predict the weather quite accurately; and I can't play tennis, basketball, ski, skate or do anything remotely fun, really.

In a dense city, there is nothing you can do to prevent it, except never cross a street: cars would come out and turn at any time when the light is green to cross. You are inches away from the car (because that's how much space city planning grants you) and a ton of steel is going full Bruce-Lee finger-length punch on you. It's very hard to describe the feeling it gives you: imagine a car willingly crushing you to death. That's about as reassuring at that. It's unexpected, sudden and overwhelmingly violent.

This is why cyclists insist one staying one meter away from deadly machines as much as they can. Most drivers reaction is "I didn't touch you! Why do you care?!" -- including when the bicycle wheel was torn under the car front wheel. Taxi drivers are particularly violent in that circumstance -- and their parent company don't care, at all, when you mention the problem, and a need for training.

Out of principle, I refused to yield and stop cycling around: I felt I was right, and should be respected for it. Once you've experience Paris with a bicycle (and I had for a decade) walking in painfully slow, metro stinks and driving is absurd on every level.

I've asked several Police officers to do something, from warning, surveilling the most common intersection; offer training; all those I talked to (including a Commissioner' aid) felt clueless and said that they only thing they can do is scrape away the leftovers… I never dared to ask how much gore was in those. Official statistics purposely downplay the issue. I've challenged every local 'Open data' initiative to let me cross-reference hospital, morgue and police reports and sort death by vehicle driven and exact location — in vain.

Someone in my family worked on car electronics, and I did challenge him to implement a side radar on the right side to prevent it -- his reaction was the usual, dis-heartening reaction from all drivers and car makers: it doesn't threaten people inside the car, why should I care? I've called this the "I have a tank! Fuck You!" mentality.

Notice how until couple of years ago, not a single security feature, or even measurement was about people outside the car? That's how you ended up with a ton of reinforced metal with narrower and narrower windows, up to the point now where standard cars are actually stronger than the first armored tanks.

I have banged on car side windows at the last minute as much as I could, but my life remained in constant danger. After seeing that the Police was powerless, I have investigated the idea that in this particular situation, my life was expressly at stake; no public authority could do something. I even asked them to sign affidavit confirming that was what they told me. Therefore, I believed I was left in a state of nature, i.e. a legal void in principled law systems, meaning should be allowed to defend myself using deadly force. I had started to learn how to use a firearm, and working on a campaign saying that cyclists were now armed, would not hesitate to shoot in that particular case. I considered some scary premiss around the idea that the blood would stop being ours, and start being those of the actual culprits.

I considered the very likely scenario that would lead me in jail for manslaughter, i.e. for a decade. As someone who had taught classes at the local security jail, I knew what that meant: daily, violent anal rape; possibly forced drug addition if I wasn't cooperative.

This is something that made me have nightmares for years. Imagine having bruises from living your worst dream on a regular basis, and contemplating rape for a decade as your only way out.

The friend who showed me how to shoot noticed I was more scared of the gun that beginners usually are; I was more scared _after_. I mentioned why, or rather, I said that I wasn't sure I could stop a car swerving by killing the driver -- which was true; that just wasn't the main reason holding a gun scared me. He thankfully pointed how far I had gone -- ignoring the main extent of it.

I realised how this had repeatedly triggered very problematic psychiatric issues over the years. It's strange and yet very empowering to have a paranoia directly triggered by a perfectly rational inference from regular lucid experience.

This is the actual reason why I left Paris, the city I spent my life in, and whom I will always love. I have swore to not come back until taxi drivers, by far the worst offenders, are gone.

That's why I'm so supportive of Uber, other similar services, and Google Self driving cars: there offer a working solution. I can recognise the tiny license Uber cars have, and they have consistently respected road rules. I never considered owning a car myself, or even moving around in such a violent mean of transport. But those became the only ways for me to come back home without having crippling, yet rational, nightmares.

That last five seconds, that "side death", has been a haunting companion for years. This exact situation, so let me answer your question precisely: a car turns right without checking there is a bike there in the blind-spot (one that actually has the right of way, and more importantly a body about to be crushed).

Detecting it, and waiting for the bike to pass first might be some engineers' couple of month of work, but it is far more to me.

I have never mentioned this to anyone. I just though the discrepancy between what that means to cyclist and your misunderstanding mattered.

<comment><USER30> In the US, that situation is called a "right hook", and it's indeed very dangerous for cyclists. Once you know about it, though, it's pretty easy to ride defensively and avoid it: just refuse to pass on the right of a car that might turn right. Get behind them instead and wait for them to turn (or go straight). In California, at least, a cyclist is legally entitled to take the lane at any intersection where a right turn is allowed.

(In practice, I admit that I don't do this 100% of the time. I never pass to the right of a car with a right turn signal on, but if a car is waiting at a red light without a turn signal, I'll sometimes pass on their right, always stopping well in front of the front of the car, so that I'm confident the driver sees me.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is hardly city driving. Try driving in a European city. (I love this project and can't wait to buy or rent a self-driving car)

<comment><USER32> Harder yet, Southeast Asia. Hundreds of pedestrians, tons of vehicle variety (some entirely makeshift), uncontrolled intersections, very little regard to any regulations.

<comment><USER33> In my mind structured road conditions are a prerequisite for driverless cars.

I've been in many situations where conservative driving according to the rules of the road is not possible. In the West this is more limited to dense cities and exceptional situations. In India, though, this is the rule.

If you waited for pedestrians to finish crossing or for cars to clear intersections, maintained a safe following distance, signaled before turning, waited for other parties to yield, etc, you would never leave your driveway.

It's difficult for me to imagine a computer deciding to gently nudge pedestrians with its bumper in order to proceed through a green light, which I've had to do several times while driving there.

<comment><USER34> @zimbatm (because there isn't a reply option at this level)

I'm also sure there are screenwriters already working on incorporating such scenes into movies. Likely we'll see it on the big screen before we see it in real life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> There are lots of subtleties in in-town driving. For example, the Google car will crawl its nose forward just a bit to indicate when it thinks its turn has come at 3 and 4-way stops. This is a strong signal to the other drivers that the car is about to make the turn, and reduces the frequency of contentions inside the intersection.

It's a nice touch to have the robot replicate behaviour that most people are not even aware they are using.

</comment><comment><USER36> somehow the current scuffle between uber and regular cabs seems to miss the joke. we're going to need a plan for the eventual unemployment of a lot of cab drivers, regardless of how the cab is hailed.

<comment><USER37> Even New York City seems to only have tens of thousands of cab drivers ('seems' because I just looked at wikipedia for a minute), I don't think they are that big a percentage of the population.

<comment><USER38> I think the real markets are long haul trucking and small delivery van for the last miles. All in all it is probably a significant portions of job.

<comment><USER33> I don't understand why subways and trains aren't implementing. The universe of possibilities is so incredibly limited in these situations that it seems like a piece of cake, compared to city driving.

"Can you see that the track is clear of obstacles? If not, stop!"

<comment> jon-wood They are, often on a huge scale. The DLR[1] in London is entirely automated (although sometimes the ticket inspector will sit at the front with the backup control panel open, presumably so they can pretend to drive a train), and the Central, Northern, and Jubilee lines also run semi-automated, and I'm pretty sure the bits that aren't automated are due to union lobbying rather than any particular need.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docklands_Light_Railway](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docklands_Light_Railway)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I assume that someone has done an analysis of how the sensors will interact when there are many self-driving cars on the road?

Because many of the primary sensors are active (radar, lidar), will they work when they're surrounded by 50 other cars also blasting out the same signals?

<comment><USER40> When 50 other cars are nearby actively communicating with each other about the road conditions that they each see, only a representative subset of those cars need to correctly identify road conditions and report them to the entire group as a road-conditions map. Cars in the group validate the observations and risk-factors reported by other cars. Then each car independently makes its driving decisions based on this shared-data based on its relative position in the group.

In this way, being surrounded by hundreds of other cars is a plus, and leads to more data by which to determine safe self-driving behavior.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> It won't be able to drive around New York if it follows the rules so strictly. It will never be able to turn. They'll have to add a setting for aggression...

<comment><USER42> That's funny, but probably a very real challenge. As a (human) driver, it happens that we come across ambiguous, contradictory or just plain impossible constraints and we overcome them by deliberately breaking the rules. I wonder how they would cope with that?

<comment><USER43> This is part of the larger problem of roboethics—prioritizing and balancing a set of conflicting objectives and requirements. There's a neat introductory article with some video of example scenarios here:

[http://footnote1.com/what-should-a-robot-do-designing- robots...](http://footnote1.com/what-should-a-robot-do-designing-robots-that- know-right-from-wrong/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> What happens when some asshole with some knowledge of the algorithm decides to troll commuters? For example, standing around an intersection, pretending to move forward/backward, forcing cars to just stop there.

<comment><USER45> Standing in the middle of the intersection is going to be an effective way to stop cars even if they have human drivers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> > Jaywalking pedestrians.

There was a episode on this on the 99% invisible podcast: [http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-76-the- modern-...](http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-76-the-modern- moloch/)

The above page has photos and a full transcript of the episode, I very highly recommand it.

This piece reminded me of the 'problem' of jaywalking because the complexity the self driving Googe car boast to be able to handle, could also be instead reduced or anhilated by adequate urban policies. There are movements to get the car out of urban areas [1] or at least make the pedestrian the 'owner' of the street, and I think self driving cars should be positionned more as an auto-pilot for long distances, rather than attempt to make sense of the current chaos in high density areas.

[1] [http://i.imgur.com/v3ff7FY.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/v3ff7FY.jpg) ("you are the traffic", a Roumanian poster seen in /r/bycicling)

</comment><comment><USER47> I think the coolest thing about self-driving cars is they can create a mesh network with one another. If I'm driving to work and a traffic accident occurs 2 miles ahead on my route, with multiple self-driving cars present at the accident, those cars can share traffic information with all self-driving cars in the area. My car will then plan an alternative route around the accident before I've even seen it.

Communication would be encrypted of course to prevent tampering.

<comment><USER48> > Communication would be encrypted of course to prevent tampering.

There's little purpose in encrypting a signal like this. You're still proposing to trust random cars you've never met before, so how would you know which messages are fake and which aren't?

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Apparently Mercedes Benz has come quite far regarding autonomous driving.

In September 2013 they let one of their S-Class models drive the historic route from Mannheim to Pforzheim in Germany with some journalist(s) on board[1].

On this route the worlds first long-distance (194km/121mi) ride in a motorized car was undertaken in 1888 by Bertha Benz, wife of Carl Benz, who developed, what is known today as the worlds first modern automobile.[2]

This route contains interurban as well as urban parts. The prototype car nicknamed "Bertha" is not easily recognizable from a standard S-Class model, which already contains most of the systems necessary to enable autonomous driving.

[1] Google translation: [http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=de&sl=auto&tl=en&pr...](http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=de&sl=auto&tl=en&prev=_dd&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spiegel.de%2Fauto%2Faktuell%2Fautonomes- fahren-unterwegs-mit-einer-s-klasse-auf-autopilot-a-920803.html)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertha_Benz_Memorial_Route](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertha_Benz_Memorial_Route)

<comment><USER50> I see no Lidar. What are the sensors?

"With sensors Bertha analyzed their environment [...] detailed and peppered with additional information navigation map"

I suspect a front-radar, camera and a detailed navigation map with GPS points especially for this route.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I saw an interesting comment on the blog post. Is anyone keeping tab on the project knows if Google in working on some sort of communication between vehicles on road. That will make the self driving cars much more accurate. Lot of 'sudden' circumstances will be predictable by the car.

<comment><USER52> What fun it will be when someone figures out how to fake the signals and, for example, force other cars to slow down or stop.

<comment><USER53> You can do that now already, e.g. pretend to quickly step on a road while a car is approaching and watch the human drives hit their brakes. Yet I don't see that happening because the majority of people aren't jerks.

<comment><USER52> Doing so physically, that is, driving erratically or aggressively, or giving false signals, is both visible to other drivers and illegal. It can also be recorded on camera. Electronic signals are not visible, and fewer people have the ability to record and analyze the signal traffic.

While the majority of people aren't jerks, consider existing cases of people/jerks who use traffic signal preemption devices for personal gain - <USER2> [http://boingboing.net/2006/04/18/man-fined-50-for- usi.html](http://boingboing.net/2006/04/18/man-fined-50-for-usi.html) for an example and some discussion. See also [http://www.statter911.com/2012/04/05/preempting-the- preempte...](http://www.statter911.com/2012/04/05/preempting-the-preempters- california-town-cracks-down-on-citizens-with-signal-changing-devices/) .

I believe this shows that is a non-trivial population of people/jerks that will be interested in traffic shaping for personal gain.

Note how the defenses against those signal devices include state and federal laws and the addition of auditing techniques. The latter is possible because the transmitters and receivers are effectively controlled by the state. This is harder with cars.

<comment><USER51> Errr... wouldn't it be easier to record such 'jerks' electronically? I mean isn't it difficult to catch a number plate in dark while it would be lot easier to record someone doing it if there is a communication along with an ID for each vehicle?

<comment><USER52> In the traffic signal example, the lights can be programed, with a whitelist of all IDs which are allowed to change the signals, and where the signals can be reprogrammed, to mitigate cloning.

I presume that any sort of illegal device which modifies car-to-car communications for other than safety reasons would not be tied to an id registered to a specific car. If only because those devices may need to be replaced, making a registration headache.

I also presume that there won't be a global upload/download of the message traffic for centralized analysis, so who do you think will be doing the recording and analysis?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> We need a DIY Lidar or a cheap Lidar. Any ideas or existing projects?

(the 3D scanning device on top of the Google car, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidar](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidar) )

The Lidar that Google uses costs 80k dollars, more than most cars.

</comment><comment><USER54> Reading a lot of comments here, the theme seems to be that the benefits will trickle down to the average consumer. I can see immediate cases where it's just going to go to those with sufficient economic muscle.

Less need for a garage means smaller houses, and more of them (for example).

Improved insurance? Probably the same insurance premiums (inflation adjusted), with a higher premium for more human miles driven.

If there is money on the table, it will get taken by those with the wherewithal to grab it.

<comment><USER55> Which is why all the wealth generated by the Industrial Revolution went to the feudal lords in their castles?

As a trivial counterexample, since automated taxis will be considerably cheaper than human-driven ones, they'll become an affordable commodity usable for day-to-day travel, instead of a rare luxury used only when absolutely necessary (or somebody else foots the bill).

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> I'm wondering how much self-driving cars will improve the system?

far less accidents, much faster, less traffic jams, more efficient, no traffic light, different speed limits etc...

<comment><USER57> 0 day exploit kills 300 in a pileup on the freeway...

<comment><USER58> Almost 100 people a day die by motor vehicle in the US right now so while your above example would hit the media hard, unless it's a daily occurrence it's probably improving on the current situation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> I still think that the best application for computer controlled cars is to have humans driving and computers handling the safety, braking when they detect danger, stuff like that. Lots of accidents like hitting pedestrians, cyclists or other cars could be avoided, and it's not as high level and difficult as what they're currently trying to figure out.

</comment><comment><USER60> Looking forward to see how self-driving cars can handle traffic in a city like Mumbai or Cairo.

<comment><USER10> Indeed…

I just hope that problem is the same as when someone asked them, 15 years ago, how their crawler could handle websites with "tens of thousands of pages" fearing libraries would put their ressources on-line, overburden and halt their effort.

<comment><USER60> In my experience driving is much more interactive and not so much rule based in those cities. You have to judge other drivers - there aggression and willingness to drive into your lane, there willingness to let you sneak in in front of them.

Taking traffic from all sides into account might be something that works better for self-driving cars. Knowing when its ok to force someone else to slow down might be harder. I don't expect this to be just a question of scaling up. It will require new concepts and models. You might have to choose the country like you can now choose the language for predictive typing on your phone.

<comment><USER10> Indeed. I actually believe — or rather, sense, because that tends to be a fairly instinctive appreciation for me, after modeling things for so 15 years — that aggressivity is a fairly straightforward parameter in driving style: basically, it's the margin you allow yourself to touch, or the acceptable risk you'd take. Choosing "the country", on a vehicle with more GPS captors that anyone could remember is probably not something difficult, but there are major and new ethical issues around that point, precisely: what do we let the user control?

Can, should, will Google include a 'Don't abide to local driving laws' mode? How explicit should it be? Modern ethics tend to surround several though exercices, most of which are centered around transportation accidents, namely one involving throwing, or letting fall, or pushing a button to release a lever… to have one obese man fall and prevent a car or a train from hurting three other people; those may or may not be relatives, have been careful in their behaviour, etc. What used to be theoretical questions, used to classify philosophers in their principles might become soon electronic options. Should your car, detecting a swerving vehicle is about to hit a child running after his ball, run that car into the nearby wall (after checking in 10 ms that it has working airbags) and stop the accident? Whose insurance pays the damages?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> The interesting problems are:

\- tracking thousands of objects' trajectories to avoid as many threat- weighted collisions as possible. (think NYC times square)

\- not going too fast when visibility is blocked

FYI: When I was at Trimble Nav, there were self-driving farm equipment demonstrated c. 2000.

</comment><comment><USER62> Autonomous car in the Berlin city center (2011): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZqL6j2D5H4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZqL6j2D5H4)

</comment><comment><USER63> Between truck drivers, bus drivers and taxi drivers, that's 3 million people who should look for another line of work when this starts to happen.

</comment><comment><USER64> I wonder how that deals with potholes or roads that lack the proper markings or one way streets.

Chicago has both of those.

<comment><USER65> Probably the same way humans do, only better. Computers do have memory, as well as access to external information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Are their cameras visible spectrum ones? How will it work at night? Night vision? IR?

<comment><USER67> Night, hell tell me how it works in snow, with fully covered roads. I would love to see how they make that leap that people do when looking at situations where the road is fully obscured, but you know exactly where its at based on objects your used too (like mailboxes/trees/etc) GPS ain't that accurate.

<comment><USER65> Computers can remember more objects better, recall them faster and calculate your position against them with much more detail, as well as apply inference rules to correct for any missing/moved objects much better than humans can.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Genuine question, can anybody answer how these cars will: 1) Allow for situational aspects of driving eg I need to get there quickly so might drive faster because I'm running late? 2) Protect from people intentionally take advantage of safety mechanisms eg cutting in front, stepping out onto the road?

<comment><USER69> My guess is that it won't cater for either of those cases. It seems unlikely that Google would program their cars to break the speed limit just to save you a few minutes (speeding probably saves you a lot less time than you think it does). Also, I cannot see why anyone would deliberately and continuously take advantage of the automatic safety mechanisms on self-driving cars such that the problem would be common enough that it would cause a passenger any irritation.

<comment><USER70> Ever heard of trolling?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> I'm wondering how a robot car is going to park in a driveway -- or in a parking lot.

<comment><USER58> Very easily. Not to mention that storage will be simpler as cars will be able to park closely together without requiring doors to open before moving to where you can enter them, or in elevated storage.

At some point in the future, most people will be unlikely to own a car (just use one on demand) so their driveway will go mostly unused and their garage will be used for something else also.

<comment><USER71> The issue comes up somewhere like a townhouse complex. Maps does not contain detailed data on assigned parking spaces and the like for these areas.

This is not an issue if everyone is using self-driving cars. But when only some people are, I don't see how you'd avoid the need for cars to take over in these instances.

Same with street driving really, you already have self-parking cars, but the car would need to be able to not only determine where the parking spaces are (and deal with issues like faded parking lines) but also determine whether or not there are any laws restricting the use of that space -- not only handicapped spaces, but also time of day and week.

Again, not an issue when everyone is in self-driving cars because most of these rules seem designed to optimize traffic flow, but until that point (and maybe for a time after) these laws will remain in affect.

<comment><USER58> I imagine that eventually cars will park themselves in dedicated areas or move on to another job and most of us won't leave a car in a particular place and expect it to be there when we return.

Most apartment owners would probably elect to use their parking space for a storage capsule and then subscribe to a robo-car service. The car would be waiting when they got downstairs and leave to go elsewhere when it returned them home.

Eventually, street parking will disappear. If I still want to be driven to work, the car will drop me at the front door and then head elsewhere. In the evening, a different car will likely arrive for pick-up.

Any cars not on a job or driving to a job would head to a depot for charging, service or storage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> Inspirational.

</comment><comment><USER73> Given that the NSA will likely have a backdoor into any automated driving system, is this really a technology you'd like to see become all pervasive? "We don't like this guy's ideology - ok, let's arrange for him to have an 'accident'".

<comment><USER74> They control killer robots in the sky with missiles... It doesn't really get worse than that...

<comment><USER73> That's a much more obvious way of doing away with someone though. Having a car experience a 'software failure' and driving you into a wall at 80MPH, is less so.

<comment> sean-duffy If the government was willing to pull those kind of tactics to have you killed, I'm pretty sure they could do it without self-driving cars.

<comment><USER57> Your government maybe. What about North Korea's government?

<comment><USER58> They also have many methods at their disposal - North Korea's government can throw you in a labour camp easily enough.

In the US, a car accident in an environment where accidents are less common (presumably the case with robo-cars) will stand out more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> The next step is highways!

<comment><USER56> as a theoretical problem highway should be much easier because few types of "street agents" can access them (i.e. no bicycles, no pedestrians, no traffic lights)

<comment><USER37> As far as I know, they already have a pretty good handle on limited access roads.

People use 'highway' to describe all manner of roads, I wonder if the gp is thinking about major 2 lane roads that have higher speeds but still lots of intersections to deal with.</comment></comment></comment>


My Demo Video for Faysee, a Reaction Capture Messaging App - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9G41VY-iTw

<comment><AUTHOR> Faysee solves a problem I have with Snapchat: giving my friend feedback on whether I thought their message was funny or not, and worth posting on Facebook or Twitter, for example.

Faysee makes it easy to get feedback from multiple people easily, or to see if you can make friends/family laugh.

Does the video explain the app clearly?

Does it make you want to try the app?

How could we improve the app or video?

Thanks for any feedback!

Joe Laws (hn: jlaws) built this app with me. Jon Collins (hn: jonathancollins) helped fix some bugs. Jordy Clements (hn: JordyClements) is the funny Snapchat-sending friend, wearing the crustacean hat in the linked video.</comment>


Windows 10 Desktop: Physically building and photographing the logos (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://gmunk.com/Windows-10-Desktop/ <comment><USER3> Cool process, but honestly this wallpaper has looked dated from day one in my opinion. The fog, depth, etc. give it a very 2008 feel. By 2015, skeuomorphism was already out and flat designs were in. It's extra jarring surrounded by the rest of Windows 10 which has such a modern look.

<comment><USER4> Yes. Overusing light, shadow and smoke effects was done when those things were hard. Now, when they are cheap and commonplace, we have gone to find beauty in minimalism.

The piece doesn't become better because it was all done by hand. In fact, they kind of ruined it by cleaning it up so much that it looks like just another stock digital creation. If they had left it 'analog' looking, maybe it would have looked cool. Maybe.

Seems like someone needed to burn through a big budget and then come up with reasons why. As always, this needs a reference to the classic Pepsi logo design case.

<comment><USER5> > In fact, they kind of ruined it by cleaning it up so much that it looks like > just another stock digital creation.

This was what disappointed me the most. They went to all that trouble to be able to take a photograph of a physical object then modified it so much that it ended up looking like a generic render from a Windows forum.

While the XP wallpaper is obviously iconic my personal favourites were the ones with Windows 7. They had many weird and wonderful ones in that collection :)

<comment><USER6> Right? Any of those photos that they composited together into the final would've been great, or to just release them as a collection of wallpapers. Instead they took them all and rammed them together into something that looked _less_ interesting.

This is really a good demonstration of the law of diminishing returns relative to art. Sometimes less is more. A more complicated and weird process doesn't always, and in fact very rarely, increases the value of the output work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Theres a great talk from gmunk that goes into the inspiration and process for a lot of his projects. And some general good life advice for anyone that creates with a passion

[https://youtu.be/F93CP8UjRxk](https://youtu.be/F93CP8UjRxk)

</comment><comment><USER8> A background for 1 billion - <USER2>

The first thing I do in Windows is replace the background image with a solid black

<comment><USER9> I use the Windows 95 desktop color because it reminds me of a time when I liked computers.

<comment><USER10> Windows 2000 (and Server 2003) changed from the 95/98 dark cyan to a shade of azure/sky blue. That's another choice that might be quite popular.

<comment><USER11> It's actually called "teal" in X11: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X11_color_names#Color_name_cha...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X11_color_names#Color_name_chart) — It's also available on Windows 10 by default where it's called "Seafoam Teal"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Much more work than I expected.

How can I replace my tired light-blue Windows logo with the red/magenta logo they show? I like the richer colors.

<comment><USER13> I too prefer the purple + green lasers over the cold blue. AFAIK, the best you are going to get is the version they show off on the page like W10_Process_Beauty_r2.

1\. Click on the logo that you prefer. 2\. Right click -> save as 3\. In windows explorer, right click on the image -> set as desktop background

<comment><USER12> Cool, thanks! Now I just need to eradicate the plain blue version on the bootup screen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The image looks lo-res and full of noise regardless of screen resolution and color settings of any monitor I've seen. Why it required such complex engineering is a mystery... Not even talking about the quality of it as a graphic design/art work - just the technical aspect.

<comment><USER15> Windows handles wallpapers specially and always transcodes wallpaper images to JPEG (I think the default in Windows 7 was at 60% quality setting) even when the source image was PNG - or when a PNG version would be both smaller and have less errors than the JPEG version. There's a registry setting you can tweak to change the quality and I think you can configure it to not transcode PNG images now - but I don't think it's the default.

As for the reason why - I think it's to do with users using high-res photos (like 10megapixel) as wallpapers which would bog Windows down if used as-is - and users on roaming profiles causing a 10MB+ BMP image bring copied over the network every time they logon. Probably. I speculate.

<comment><USER16> macOS has been using 10-bit 5K wallpapers worth tens of megabytes at full quality for years now.

<comment><USER17> But they cache them as a GPU texture, don't they?

<comment><USER15> Windows does something similar now too. It used to be that USER32 (which owned the windowing system/window manager since Windows 95) would render the wallpaper - but ever since a semi-recent release - either Windows 8 or Windows 10, Explorer.exe became responsible for rendering the wallpaper - and there's definitely some tie-in with the DWM too (you can see this because whenever you kill your session's explorer.exe your desktop wallpaper will disappear). I'm curious what goes on, exactly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > with Picard and Munkowitz wife-swapping the teams to keep things moving and > the team extra productive

There's a way you could say the same thing without being weird. "Swapping" would have sufficed!

<comment><USER19> I think 'swapping' isn't quite the same (it implies whole teams being swapped, rather than members), but I agree that something like "swapping some members between teams" would be just as clear and less creepy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This reminds me of the old BBC and RTF Television logos:

[https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2017/05/when-tv-logos-were- ph...](https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2017/05/when-tv-logos-were-physical- objects/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14391993](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14391993)

</comment><comment><USER21> Well, I appreciated this post! I've gone through random creative spurts, not for any reason what so ever, through arbitrarily long processes in the past. Glad to know it's a "thing" and not just my neurons firing wrong!

</comment><comment><USER11> Am I the only one that thinks this is just absolutely crazy and a complete waste of money and time?

<comment><USER22> Same here. I'm kind of shocked that it was not done by a single 3D CGI whiz in a week or two. It's corporate waste at its finest.

My second impression, watching the lead designer speak, is that his job is more than 50% about bullshiting. I.e. you design something that is passable, and then give an elaborate story, full of emotions and grandiose ideas, that make it easier for the decision makers to OK it - they in turn need the story to justify their decision (esp. if some higher ups question it later). Man, corporate world has so many people doing pseudo-work and playing out their bullshit roles in exchange for a comfortable middle-class life. I'm so glad I'm almost out.

<comment><USER23> I am living this life. I work in "UX" (read: turn this PSD into a web interface), thankfully in the engineering side more than the design side. I'm being paid way too much. I'm trying to get out of here because I realize this is a job where people are desperately trying to find problems to solve. Nothing is fulfilling about making a prototype of a context menu and watching researchers ask laypersons what their reaction is to it (yes this is real).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Super interesting, didn't know they physically built that. The purple Windows logo is a wallpaper candidate even without Windows!

</comment><comment><USER25> I am reminded of the epic HBO "Feature Presentation" intro (insofar as it was physically constructed): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agS6ZXBrcng](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agS6ZXBrcng)

</comment><comment><USER26> Much respect to you sir! It's refreshing to see that your wallpaper wasn't just created out of thin air by some photoshop guru. Loved seeing your process!

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm not sure if 'overengineering' is the right term here.

Certainly in the world of modern art it's often all about process and little about the art itself. But most people watching the result when they log into Windows don't know or care about this.

This could have been done by a single artist in a VFX software, art directed by gmunk.

But as they say: "If all you know is a hammer ..." ;)

</comment><comment><USER28> Someone should try to use a raytracer and other software to recreate the image to see how it compares with a purely digital version.

</comment><comment><USER12> Here's some logo history: (Win 1.0, 3.1, XP, Vista, Win 8 Metro style)

[https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2012/02/17/redes...](https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2012/02/17/redesigning- the-windows-logo/)

</comment><comment><USER29> This is the first desktop background I have seen that physically burned in and damaged a non-CRT flat screen monitor, this was because of the too-bright white elements.

Looks like this has now been corrected in the latest update.

<comment><USER30> LCD or OLED?

<comment><USER29> A Dell 24 inch LCD over 10 years old which was in perfect shape, originally about a $1000 monitor.

Works fine but you can still see the pattern with some graphics or backgrounds, and it only burned in for a few dozen hours before I noticed it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I feel like I am missing something here. I see much more complex work on reddit by individuals (/r/highqualitygifs). And the final result is just an animation of a static logo with light show?

</comment><comment><USER32> This is one of those projects that seems complex and expensive for the sake of being so. I doubt the final image is any better than what could have been created purely digitally. This would have been cool to see in the 1950s or 60s before CGI was a thing, but now it just seems over the top.

<comment><USER33> I agree - It would be ridiculously easy to do this today with CG. Not just easy, but a few-magnitude-orders easy/fast. It kind of leaves a bad taste about the whole thing because most people don't know how easy it is to do in CG.

I could probably do this in an hour or two, including the fog (which really makes the image) - probably sounds condescending, but I cannot emphasize enough about the triviality of generating this wallpaper in CG. Most people don't realize what today's CG software can do, just look at the new features in Houdini: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIcUW9QFMLE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIcUW9QFMLE)

<comment><USER34> Cool tech, yet every single one of those images look extremely unnatural.

I think people get used to seeing CGI so much they simply get used to it. Take the faces in frozen, they are intentionally stylized but in a way that looks utterly freakish. It's not even that the animators messed up. Somehow rather than people seeing something deep in the uncanny valley most people simply don't have a problem with this kind of distortion.

<comment><USER33> You're making an argument that CGI doesn't match reality - that's true and hardly surprising.

<comment><USER34> Not quite, I am saying CGI looks similar to other CGI. Thus, if you're going for something memorable and artistic that's a problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Cool but hard to care about when the OS itself sucks so bad.

<comment><USER36> Not sure what you're talking about. Windows 10 itself is an excellent OS. The only real problem with it is all the adverts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Those clips could be outtakes from the TV show Silicon Valley.

</comment><comment><USER38> So useless and not interesting! How did this finish first on HN compared to more interesting topics?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you really want to know, it was totally unfair dictatorial overreach. I got an email from dang:

> [original_posting] looks good, but didn't get much attention. Would you care > to repost it? You can do so here: [repost_link].

> ... the software will give the repost an upvote from the mods, plus we'll > make sure it doesn't get flagged.

> This is part of an experiment in giving good HN submissions multiple chances > at the front page. If you have any questions, let us know. And if you don't > want these emails, sorry! Tell us and we won't do it again.

As you can see, my posting started out with a whole one extra vote and thus the system was completely gamed. You were right :)

/s [edit: email is real]

<comment><USER39> I don't see how this is worse than most other things that hit the home page. It's interesting, is an in-depth article, is tech-related, and is something most people recognize. And the fact that it's not just cgi is interesting, regardless of whether you think it should be or not.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's what I thought, and why I posted it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


15 year old creates the next big thing - <AUTHOR> 15 year old, self-taught UI/UX designer, Simone Simmons from Perth has assembled a team of 6 to build Comblie - one app to rule all your social networks.
Comblie will be released December 1st, but the exclusive private beta will run from 1st of November - 30th of November.
Sign up now to get an invite!
www.comblie.com <comment><USER2> Instead of marketing jargon, you should focus on actual facts and ideas. It's plain stupid that the "next big thing" is still going to have to go through a beta phase, not to mention that the idea itself is implied by the person who is the author of the product.

<comment><USER3> I like your first sentence a lot, but please don't be mean ("plain stupid") when responding to new work on HN. If you know more than someone else, help them learn.

We'd like HN to be a place where 15-year-olds get helped by more experienced peers, not flamed.</comment></comment>


Soji Yamakawa: "Vulkan Is a Crap" - <AUTHOR> http://ysflight.in.coocan.jp/main/e2020.html <comment><AUTHOR> Full quote:

> _Vulkan is a crap. I want to ask Vulkan people, if you want that much > performance, why don 't you write in assembly? Probably less than 1% of the > programmers who can use OpenGL will be able to use Vulkan. Absolutely not > for education. Vulkan is a crap._

Dr. Soji Yamakawa (aka 'CaptainYS'), mechanical engineering research scientist working for Carnegie Mellon University[0], has a wide list of publications, some of them listed on his website.[1]

Most known project of his programming skills is free cross-platform flight simulator _YSFlight_ [2], that use own open-source GUI lib[3] built on top of OpenGL and DirectX.

He also keep few classes on learning computer graphics and took part in _DemoSplash_ demo parties (winner of 2017, 2018 and 2019).[4,5,6]

[0] [https://twitter.com/cmu_mech/status/784391682343182340](https://twitter.com/cmu_mech/status/784391682343182340)

[1] [http://ysflight.in.coocan.jp/publication/publication.html](http://ysflight.in.coocan.jp/publication/publication.html)

[2] [https://ysflight.org](https://ysflight.org)

[3] [https://github.com/captainys/public](https://github.com/captainys/public)

[4] [http://www.demosplash.org/2017/compo_entries/results.txt](http://www.demosplash.org/2017/compo_entries/results.txt)

[5] [http://www.demosplash.org/2018/compo_entries/results.txt](http://www.demosplash.org/2018/compo_entries/results.txt)

[6] [http://www.demosplash.org/2019/compo_entries/results.txt](http://www.demosplash.org/2019/compo_entries/results.txt)</comment>