Where Did Time Come From, and Why Does It Seem to Flow? - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/where-did-time-come-from-and-why-does-it-seem-to-flow <comment><USER2> I can't quite get a feel for the background and slant of some of these new web-only publications. I'm thinking of nautil.us and aeon.co in particular. They are science-focused, but lean toward philosophical topics.

I can't figure out if they are reputable sources that dabble in more abstract concepts, or if they are some kind of pseudo-science platform for crazy founders.

<comment><USER3> I think they're general-interest popular science magazines, with indeed a bit of an abstract slant.

<comment><USER4> I'm the "crazy" founder of Nautilus. We are a science magazine, with a multidisciplinary approach. We want to explore each monthly issue topic from disciplines within and outside the sciences, like philosophy. But we are mostly about telling good stories....science with a literary voice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5>
        The flow of time is an illusion, and I don't know very many scientists and philosophers who would disagree with that, to be perfectly honest.

Oh humbug! I have seen many proofs that rely on time going in a particular direction. For example, when solving the wave equation for electromagnetics it it is customary to discard anticausal solutions.

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure what he means by "flow of time" but I don't think he meant what you argued against. I think he's arguing against the notion that time is like some sort of continuum like a river, or like an axis on a map.

<comment><USER7> I got the same impression. People are assuming that by 'flow' he means uni- directional, as in the arrow of time. He is talking about the fact that 'flow' semantically implies something that moves, but movement itself requires time. So to say that time flows would be circular reasoning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm confused why they spent so much time on the idiom of "flowing" time. It doesn't literally feel like it's "flowing", that's just a figure of speech, a metaphor for the fact that in daily life we don't have control over its direction.

While the implications and meaning of time in a cosmological sense are certainly interesting, the piece's angle of debunking naive common-sense views of time is a bit too aggressive. In daily life, the common-sense view of time is perfectly rational.

Perhaps the audience is physics grad students, I dunno.

<comment><USER9> > _It doesn 't literally feel like it's "flowing", that's just a figure of > speech, a metaphor for the fact that in daily life we don't have control > over its direction._

Huh? The flow of time, and "time passing" is the most universal and common understanding (and feeling) of time.

<comment><USER8> Yes, these are common metaphors. They do not describe the actual perceptual experience of the passage of time. To get hung up on what metaphors people use to describe something utterly intangible is silly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not to plug them or anything, but I found this course on time, entropy, cosmology, etc. absolutely fascinating: [http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/mysteries-of- modern-p...](http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/mysteries-of-modern- physics-time.html)

I kind of suffered through Physics in undergrad but this makes me wish I took more as an elective.

</comment><comment><USER9> > _Where it's particularly striking of course is when people respond > appropriately much faster than the speed of thought. You need only think of > a piano player or a tennis player to see that the impression that they are > making a conscious decision—"that ball is coming in this direction; I'd > better move over here and hit it"—couldn't possibly be. The time it takes > for the signals to get to the brain and then through the motor system, back > to the response, couldn't work. And yet they still have this overwhelming > impression that they're observing the world in real time and are in control. > I think all of this is pretty fascinating stuff._

I see this repeated to point that "hence we are not really conscious" or not really in control of ourselves.

But, to me, an obvious answer is that our "thought" is not just the "talk-to- myself" like thought, but also faster unconscious processes, that still weights things and combines our memories and "personality" biases in the decision making, it's just not like an 'inner-dialogue'

</comment><comment><USER11> For those interested in understanding why we conceive of time the way we do, I recommend Philosophy in the Flesh, by Lakoff and Johnson. Chapter 10 deals with Time.

[http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/l/lakoff- philosophy.html](http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/l/lakoff-philosophy.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> _When you talk about what is the rate of a clock, say, near the surface of a black hole, it's going to be quite different from the rate of a clock here on Earth. So there isn't even a common time in the entire universe._

Well, isn't there a common time for the entire universe? If we ignore being near massive objects, then observers travelling with the expansion of the universe - i.e. those those who don't see a dipole in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) - then the redshift of the CMB acts as a kind of clock. With the usual cosmological assumptions of isotropy and homogeneity, then there's a big clock for everyone to use.

</comment><comment><USER13> Thinking about the entropic explanation of the arrow of time in conjunction with the anthropic principle led me to this fantastic FAQ: [http://preposterousuniverse.com/eternitytohere/faq.html](http://preposterousuniverse.com/eternitytohere/faq.html) and the idea of Boltzmann Brains: [http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2006/08/01/...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2006/08/01/boltzmanns- anthropic-brain/#.VFAFCPl4ok0)

</comment><comment><USER14> _" Suppose I stand up, twirl around a few times, and stop. Then I have the overwhelming impression that the entire universe is rotating. I feel it to be rotating—of course I know it's not."_

According to relativity, isn't the view that the universe is rotating just as valid as the view that you are rotating? It all depends on your perspective, and there is no privileged (absolute) vantage point or perspective.

Isn't that so? And if it is so, how can this physicist be ignorant of this?

[Update: Oops. I missed the "and stop" bit. That's what I get for reading HN while I'm half asleep. Sorry!]

<comment><USER15> No, I think the point is that your mind interprets the universe as spinning when you stop twirling. This is just an interpretation, as is the flow of time.

<comment><USER16> Semantics makes that idea meaningless. "Interpreting" implies time flowing, so its circular.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _And the other thing people contemplate: They think denying the flow of time is denying time asymmetry of the world. Of course events in the world follow a directional sequence. Drop an egg on the floor and it breaks. You don't see eggs assembling themselves. Buildings fall down after earthquakes; they don't rise up from heaps of rubble._

"Events occurring in sequence" is the same thing as "the flow of time", in my understanding at least. What else does "the flow of time" refer to? I fear there's a subtle point being made that I don't quite grasp.

</comment><comment><USER18> I read the book and watched the documentary, "The Fabric of the Cosmos" by Brian Greene.

He gave a good explanation of time. Right before the big bang, the universe was in a 'perfectly' ordered state. Since the big bang the universe has become less and less 'perfect'. What we think of as Time is really just things getting less and less organized.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000XUDGV2?btkr=1](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000XUDGV2?btkr=1)

</comment><comment><USER19> The question that's always in my mind is if the perception of the flow of time is really just entropy. As long as state A is different than state B we have a perception of time.

<comment><USER20> I concur. But not just for entropy, for all movements. Time is a human construction to order sequences of events.

All our "time" measures are based on cyclics _movements_.

Make yourself a question, if _ALL_ movement stop (include atoms), will time pass? will the arrow of time advance?

<comment><USER16> Sure. In a cold vacuum with no atoms at all, those conditions are satisfied (no movement of any kind). But the vacuum continues to generate particle pairs and annihilate them; EM radiation continues to propagate. All on a strict clock.

<comment><USER20> if radiation propagate, there are movement. Imagine if even particle generation and radiation propagation stops.

<comment><USER21> Your premise doesn't make any sense. Those things cannot possibly occur.

It is generally not useful to consider the consequence of falsehoods.

<comment><USER22> It is often useful to consider the consequence falsehoods.

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

I think this one runs some risk of begging the question, though, so unless we make it significantly more precise we're unlikely to get anything useful out of it.

<comment><USER21> Thought experiments generally consider the consequence of something that _could_ be true.

<comment><USER22> I don't think that's true, depending partly on how we define "could", but we're getting off into the weeds. In this case, we're trying to understand aspects of the laws of physics; getting at the consequences if they differed subtly could be tremendously useful - akin to a proof by contradiction.

<comment><USER21> > getting at the consequences if they differed subtly could be tremendously > useful

Sure, but that doesn't describe "What if radiation and quantum noise stopped moving?". That's just a dumb question. We can't really derive anything interesting from its consideration. It's along the lines of "What if you dropped a rock and it didn't fall?" What if?

<comment><USER22> If you dropped a rock and it didn't fall, you could infer that probably either you are outside an appreciable gravitational field or there's some force counteracting the gravitational field you're in.

In any event, I agree that the question is not likely to be useful, but as I said I think that is because it subtly begs the question in a way that isn't likely to be clear without it being stated quite a bit more formally.

 _" That's just a dumb question."_

While "there are no dumb questions" is an overstatement, I think your tone throughout this has been unnecessarily hostile (not toward _me_ , mind you). You could have done more to educate, you chose to abuse, and in a way that stepped into inaccuracy to boot.

<comment><USER21> >If you dropped a rock and it didn't fall, you could infer that probably either you are outside an appreciable gravitational field or there's some force counteracting the gravitational field you're in.

Perhaps my example was not appropriate, because I described something that _could_ happen (which is what might allow us to have a useful thought experiment). I couldn't think of anything to match the irrelevance or off- basedness of the radiation-stopping question.

>You could have done more to educate, you chose to abuse

"Abuse" is quite hyperbolic in this situation. And you're right, I could have done more to educate, but I also don't have infinite time to give helpful and constructive corrections to every stupid comment on the internet. Sometimes you just make it clear that the comment is stupid, so no one else accidentally takes it as reasonable, and leave.

<comment><USER22> _' "Abuse" is quite hyperbolic in this situation.'_

I certainly didn't mean it in its strongest sense.

 _" I also don't have infinite time to give helpful and constructive corrections to every stupid comment on the internet."_

But you have time to give poor responses. I suggest you reorganize your time.

 _" Sometimes you just make it clear that the comment is stupid, so no one else accidentally takes it as reasonable, and leave."_

I don't think that's what it tells people. You didn't explain, in a useful way, _why_ it was unreasonable. So all people know is 1) someone on the internet thinks this comment sucks (which is almost tautological), and 2) comments are more likely to be met with negativity than assistance (which is harmful to our community).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> _Where it's particularly striking of course is when people respond appropriately much faster than the speed of thought. You need only think of a piano player or a tennis player to see that the impression that they are making a conscious decision—"that ball is coming in this direction; I'd better move over here and hit it"—couldn't possibly be._

If it isn't conscious thought and motor signals, then what is it?

<comment><USER24> We might assume it is faster than the speed of thought. Our mind works with and without our help. The same as our breathing.

For example, our mind processes thousands (or millions) of signals coming from our senses without us needing to "think" about it.

<comment><USER9> This dichotomy implies a dualism, as if there's a clear cut "I" and then there's "my mind". In fact, our mind is us, and it working 'without us knowing' is just 'it working without verbalization of our thoughts' which is a different thing I'd say.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I highly recommend this BBC documentary Illusion of Time non youtube.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BjGWLJNPcA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BjGWLJNPcA)

<comment><USER26> I found this BBC documentary to be such an engaging piece. It challenges our perception of time. It is difficult to reconcile it with everyday demands of referring to a clock to guide our progression through the day.

I highly recommend this documentary as well. Thanks for posting it, I will be listening to it again today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think everybody here is trying way too hard to apply advanced physics to what basically amounts to nothing more than a fluff philosophy article.

</comment><comment><USER27> "For example, there are famous experiments in which people apparently make free decisions at certain moments and yet it's found that the decision was actually made a little bit earlier, but their own perception of time and their actions within time have been sort of edited after the event"

This would also be the only way to simulate consciousness in AI. Makes total sense. We're AI.

</comment><comment><USER28> Anyone else kept remembering H. G. Well's _The Time Machine_ while reading the article?

<comment><USER9> The only connection is they both talk about time -- which the article shares with 100,000 other time travel stories.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Does time exist outside of space/matter?

Isn't time (like darkness) merely a description of a state of space / matter?

 _It was /wasn't here, now it's here?_

<comment><USER29> Time, like space, is a relational concept -- e.g. the motion of an entity relative to the motion of another, and the position of an entity relative to that of another. Observe that we measure time in terms of the repetitive motion of chosen entities.

<comment><USER16> But very cold entities - almost not moving. The latest 'atomic' clock uses "spin-polarized, ultracold atomic ytterbium". Its not the particle motion per se that's being measured; its fields around the particle, right? Not at all relative motion.

<comment><USER29> Yes, these electronic transitions are a form of motion, too. Change is not limited to mechanics.

<comment><USER16> Sure; but to define time as motion, and motion as time, is circular and not very useful. It doesn't explain anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Maybe time's just a construct of human perception, an illusion created by...

</comment><comment><USER14> _" Of course events in the world follow a directional sequence. Drop an egg on the floor and it breaks. You don't see eggs assembling themselves."_

The operative phrase here being "you don't see". Of course, seeing is a matter of perception and perspective. It could very well be that time is flowing "backwards" and eggs are in fact reassembling themselves, but we are just perceiving time in reverse.

You know, when I hear physicists try to tackle philosophical problems, it's usually kind of embarrassing. These guys are rarely trained in philosophy and are out of their depth.

As Feinman famously said to his own students, _" Shut up and calculate."_

I wish more physicists would follow his advice, and leave philosophy to philosophers.

<comment><USER31> Shame on you. Nobody should be discouraged from trying to dabble in things that aren't their field.

Having the background of being extremely well-trained in one field gives a different perspective than the typical "echo-chamber" of the elite in any specialty.

If you know something they don't, why not try to start a dialog instead of criticizing and dismissing?

<comment><USER14> Perhaps I'm being too harsh, but I only criticize because they're often given a soapbox (such as in this article) due to the perception that they are specially endowed with the power of "explaining how the world is" to us mere mortals.

Well, that wouldn't be so bad if they stuck to explaining the results of their experiments, but when they stray from that on to philosophical subjects, they're really no more suited to talking about that than any other non- philosophically trained layman.

It might help if they toned down the rhetoric a bit and make it clear that they're speaking about something that they have no training in.

On the other hand, I suppose I should be grateful that they're exposing the general public to ideas they might not have otherwise thought about, even if they do so clumsily and their conclusions are highly suspect.

<comment><USER31> I would contend that having a high degree of education in anything develops certain thinking abilities that are widely transferable. At some point, they transform from being a "layman" into being an "amateur philosopher" simply by virtue of these transferable thinking skills.

Of course being an amateur doesn't lend a high degree of credibility, but certainly more than the average Joe.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


You will know my name is the LORD when I exterminate all rational lambdacalculus - <AUTHOR> http://www.jwz.org/blog/2013/12/you-will-know-my-name-is-the-lord-when-i-exterminate-all-rational-lambda-calculus/

<comment><USER2> Similar chuckles can be sought at Erowid Recruiter: [https://twitter.com/erowidrecruiter](https://twitter.com/erowidrecruiter)</comment>


Obama Nasa plans 'catastrophic' say Moon astronauts - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8565243.stm <comment><USER2> NASA has two options:

1\. Massive budget increases to fund missions to the moon and Mars.

2\. Realign its goals to match the budget they have now.

The Bush-era plan to return to the moon without actually paying for it was the worst of all worlds. Obama's plans may not be inspiring to those who want to relive '69, but I respect that he's willing to tackle problem realistically.

We've also got to face the fact that human spaceflight is a prestige project with no scientific value. It's time to force NASA to focus on science. If people want to fart around in free fall, then that's something for private industry to concern itself with.

<comment><USER3> "No scientific value", eh? If you contemplate the implications of that statement for the briefest of moments you will be staggered by how wrong you are.

Exploration leads to discovery. Medical discoveries of the effects of radiation and low gravity on the crew, previously unobserved properties of things great and small, things that men may notice that instruments are not designed to notice, and unknown unknowns that we can't yet imagine.

Necessity is the mother of invention. Men in space necessitate certain things: filtration systems, radiation protection, extracting water from Mars and the Moon economically, advanced materials, robotics. Terraforming Mars is one of the end-goals of human space exploration. Humans in space are an incentive to do so. Earth has finite resources, and an expanding population. This is science that we ought to contribute to.

Manned space exploration also causes people to be interested in space, to pursue degrees in science, and to contribute to research here on Earth.

That being said, you must surely admit that contributions to science can be indirect as well as direct, and that manned exploration of space provides both.

I am not in any way an expert on space exploration, but there are a great number of highly knowledgeable people who would love to elucidate the situation for you. ##astronomy on freenode has a bunch of bright people in it. Talk to them, or maybe #space, or take a trip to your local planetarium, museum, or university; get an opinion from someone who has some specific knowledge so that you can engage in debate from an informed perspective, rather than, say, rigidly adhering to things you thought up on the toilet while listening to political talk radio.

<comment><USER4> If you throw money at any hard problem you will get technological advances. They are a by-product of doing something hard.

But if you choose the actual task to be one that is useful, you _also_ get the results of the task.

So yes, throwing money at space exploration will get you some advances as by- products. But so would throwing money at, say, fusion research, or extremely high speed ground transport, or nanotech, or, heck, I dunno, synthetic (biological) life... _and_ you'd have the chance of getting something useful as a direct product.

I worked in astronomy, which is also pretty pointless from a practical point of view (and also has close links with space research). A _lot_ of effort is put into making things look pretty and exciting exactly because people believing - for no sound logical reason - that it's a wonderful thing is what keeps the money rolling in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Those old timers don't realize that space is about more than nationalistic grandstanding and sticking flags into moonscapes. If you want to see real activity in space that means that getting stuff out of the Earth's atmosphere has to be significantly cheaper, and the only way that's going to happen is if space becomes a bigger industry than it is today - which means commercialization.

<comment><USER6> Getting stuff out of the atmosphere with chemical rockets will always be extremely expensive. The only way it's going to get significantly cheaper is with alternative lifting methods, such as an electric powered space elevator.

<comment><USER5> One of the biggest expenses in current space operations is ground crew, which typically numbers in the thousands. Under the status quo there is simply no incentive to reduce this number, and there are often incentives to increase it to create new jobs. In the original space shuttle concept the ground crew was supposed to be no larger than a few hundred, but it didn't work out that way.

Commercializing rocketry should mean that ground crew size and turnaround times can be minimized, since there is a direct financial incentive to control costs.

<comment><USER6> Fair, but even if it were extremely efficiently run, even the fuel costs of lifting large masses into orbit and the associated size of the vehicles required, as well as the resultant complexity of such a thing would be prohibitively expensive. Much cheaper, but still not where it needs to be.

In order to do anything serious in space, it needs to become MUCH CHEAPER to put things into orbit. That is what a space elevator could accomplish. Not to say that we're ready technologically... we need to become a whole lot better at producing long carbon nanotubes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In other news, group of people associated with special interest claim plans to restrict or cancel special interest in the face of reality is catastrophic to said aforementioned special interest, not to mention other connected (no matter how tenously) special interests.

I'm not sure that this is really news in the genuine sense of the word. News is Obama announcing the change.

</comment><comment><USER8> _The last man on the Moon, Eugene Cernan, said it was "disappointing"._

I kept re-reading this and saying, what? He thought going on the moon was disappointing?? Ooooooh, "it" == "Obama's decision". :)

</comment><comment><USER9> As wasteful as the proposed Constellation program was at least it would have gotten humans out Low Earth Orbit again.

Is Obama's plan for increased commercialization anything more than moving around the pieces that are already there? Most of the parts for the space vehicles are already made by subcontractors, aren't they just changing how the oversight is done?

Even with those rules changed NASA is still going to be responsible for the astronauts. It'll take years and billions of dollars to man-rate vehicles that we wouldn't have thought twice about using back in the 70s as long as they didn't explode on the first couple of test flights.

Maybe money flowing out of the Space Shuttle program will get us there sooner, but with the US rebooting its space program every time time a new president takes office I'm starting to think the Chinese are our best hope for getting to the stars.

<comment><USER10> Nearly 50% of the money NASA sends to contractors goes to three organizations: Lockheed Martin, The JPL at Caltech, and Boeing.

The rest goes to other Military-Industrial "Usual Suspects," like Grumman and Raytheon.[1]

These organizations are principally interested in maintaining their cushy position and soaking up tax money. They are not particularly driven to push the envelope.

Obama's plan is a "shifting" around of the contracts, yes, but it's shifting away from organizations like Lockheed Martin to organizations like Scaled Composites. Away from fat lazy organizations to ones with some hunger and drive.

That's also the reason why it's probably DOA in Congress.

[1] <http://www.govexec.com/features/0808-15/0808-15s13s1.htm>

<comment><USER11> Lumping JPL/Caltech in with LockMart and Boeing does not make sense. The first is a research lab mainly concerned with conceiving and building robotic (unmanned) missions. The second two are mainly involved with operating manned flight systems. No comparison.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Consider these points 1\. Most of the technology needed for spaceflight may be both developed and tested on the ground. 2\. Therefore, the exploration of near planets without a solid technological base (and we don't have one, do the research: I mean the correlation between developed and required technology) has merely a sign value, and remains close to none practical use for scientists. 3\. Spaceflight and exploration might be a great inspiration for the whole planet of aspiring space engineers, but even I, a space-geek, agree with your administration on this matter. This is not a time to inspire, this is a time to pull up some strings in the economy. And in the meanwhile a competitively set industry private or not might push the technology forward to earn the financing they long took for granted.

Many people fail to separate two things: a) the process of evolving technology and exploring space; b) the process of putting people to orbit. Why do you think the space station will be trashed so soon? It has little to none value, but sucks the resources FROM the technology.

So if we want to 'harvest' H_3 from the Moon surface, why do we need people up there? The fact is that we actually don't. Even modern robotics as simple as it is, may do most of the resource gathering job cheaply. While human presence and life-support will increase the cost and move this perspective even further into the future.

All eyes are turned where there is a prospect of financial gain. Right now, the gain is negative because of the lacking technology that needs investment. That is exactly why we have 3-5 people in space and not a large colony of workers. We use more money on supporting those three, than on making ground for some larger operations.

Where am I wrong?

<comment><USER13> Not, that I can see. Once we have a plan for doing something based on measurables with a stipulated and affordable goal, then we should act. Until then, keep doing science.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> (I made a similar comment regarding a previous article along these lines. The same point applies.)

Even though the "United States gives up on space" narrative is temptingly simple, it's also (in my opinion) simply wrong, and substance-free commentary like this is disappointing. (If you base your opinions on the unsupported statements of old astronauts, you can look at Buzz Aldrin's comments for a different perspective, but I'd recommend doing your own research instead.)

Much of the gloomy commentary on this announcement is uninformed. Canceling the Constellation program is a forward step and an essential step---it makes possible the very dream, bold human spaceflight, that this article mourns. At the very least, read the Augustine Commission's summary report; it's only 12 pages. Note their statement of the goal of space exploration: "human expansion into the solar system". That's cause for excitement, not mourning.

<comment><USER14> Bolden's speech yesterday is (IMO) worth reading, especially the middle section regarding Constellation:

<http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/434022main_bolden_WSBR_20100316.pdf>

Note also the $6B increase in NASA's budget.

</comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 _"I think America has a responsibility to maintain its leadership in technology and its moral leadership... to seek knowledge. Curiosity's the essence of human existence."_

What does exploring space or landing on the moon have to do with "moral leadership"?

</comment><comment><USER15> Do they have inside information on this plan? My understanding is that it isn't going to be released until April 15. All I have seen about it is sort of ballpark speculation based on prior acts/statements.

</comment><comment><USER16> I saw a DVD of the Apollo 11,12,13 landings and it was a joke - just a bunch of guys jumping around and cracking jokes. The automated Mars robots looked dignified in comparison.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd be interested to see what DVD you have of the Apollo 13 moon landing.

<comment><USER16> Correction: Apollo 15-17 (just checked my email for the correct DVD title).

<comment><AUTHOR> <grin></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google and Facebook violate privacy rights - ordered to donate to EFF - <AUTHOR> http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/07/30/google-and-facebooks-new-tactic-in-the-tech-wars/

<comment><USER2> The headline on HN is misleading. The whole article is about how Google and Facebook actually had a role in choosing who the beneficiary of these court ordered donations would be, which allows them to give money to the EFF without showing up as large corporate donors on the EFF's donor list.

The actual text of the article's headline is:

"Google and Facebook's new tactic in the tech wars"

With the subtitle:

"Google and Facebook are using a controversial legal doctrine to channel money to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and other groups that share their hostility to online copyright enforcement."

This quote explains what's happening:

"These payments to the EFF are being made in suits the EFF played no role in bringing, and the defendants themselves -- Google and Facebook, in these instances -- helped select EFF to be their beneficiary."

<comment><USER3> While I completely agree that the headline used on HN is a bad one, I'd argue that this is a case where the guideline of keeping the original headline is a poor one.

"Google and Facebook's new tactic in the tech wars" is far too vague to be at all useful - the problem is that, when you go against this HN guideline, how do you pick a good replacement without making the same mistake we've seen here?

<comment><USER2> A good replacement would be a concise summary of the main point of the article. Maybe something like: "Google, Facebook chose EFF as recipient of unreported court-ordered donations" (77 characters)

<comment><USER3> I wasn't so much saying that this one is impossible to pick one, more just how do you confirm that it's a good headline. For example the original OP of this submission probably didn't write their headline and think "well this misrepresents the story, but fuck it".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks like whoever posted this didn't actually read the article. It's all about how Google and Facebook are using the cy pres legal doctrine to get out of paying members of class action law suits. It seems to be that these institutions and the trial lawyers involved profit unfairly.

The most interesting fact in this article is that Judge Lucy, Koh, of Apple v. Samsung fame, recused herself from the case after an appeal was filed to investigate the chosen charities and to create a more open application process. According to the article she had ties to some of the chosen charities.

What exactly is Koh's deal, there has Ben lots of speculation about her partialness in the Apple v. Samsung case as well. Somebody needs to investigate her.</comment>


Microsoft launches Outlook.com, a clean, fresh take on webmail - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2012/07/31/microsoft-launches-outlook-com-a-clean-fresh-take-on-webmail-that-puts-it-back-in-the-game/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=share+button&utm_content=Microsoft+launches+Outlook.com%2C+a+clean%2C+fresh+take+on+webmail+that+puts+it+back+in+the+game&utm_campaign=social+media <comment><USER2> It isn't really a new approach to [web]mail it is just a redesigned Hotmail that looks like Office 2013 and works better with touch devices.

Also I wish Microsoft would ditch the whole folder approach to mail. Labels can work just like folders if you wish but are so much more flexible and just makes so much more sense IMHO.

<comment><USER3> I'm pretty sure "categories" == "labels".

<comment><USER2> Yeah the categories are labels however they still have the folder system as the primary way of sorting your mail. I would like the option to totally remove folders from the equation and just use labels.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow. Very interesting. At first glance, the interface looks very mobile friendly and also very simple.

I'm incredibly impressed. The only feedback I would give is that the buttons in the top bar could stand out a bit - maybe a different shade of blue or a slight border. It wasn't immediately clear to me where 'send' was.

The ads are a bit more obtrusive than Google Mail ads, though I think that would just take a bit of getting used to.

I'm impressed as fuck, though. I can't explain how impressed I am.

<comment><USER5> > the interface looks very mobile friendly

How did you get to that conclusion? I'm looking at this main screenshot: [http://cdn.thenextweb.com/wp- content/blogs.dir/1/files/2012/...](http://cdn.thenextweb.com/wp- content/blogs.dir/1/files/2012/07/2012-07-30_16h56_09-520x239.jpg)

<comment><USER6> That's not what the site actually looks like for me. I just get the first 2 columns, and the second column changes to look like the 3rd one in the screenshot, when I click on a message to read.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In the HTTP headers, I see:

      X-We-Are-Hiring: firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER8> There is also:

      X-We-Are-Hiring: firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Horrible. They don't sprite their icons, and it takes forever to load. This is Microsoft's idea on a "clean, fresh take on webmail?" _close_

<comment><USER10> They definitely do sprite some of the icons:

[https://secure.wlxrs.com/$live.controls.images/h/command2.pn...](https://secure.wlxrs.com/$live.controls.images/h/command2.png)

<comment><USER9> Oh wow, four icons. Give me a break. Look at the Google Page Speed score for that site, then tell me I'm wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "As you expected, given Microsoft's criticism of Gmail's ad policy, the product doesn't scan the bodies of your emails. However, it does tailor ads based on the email address of the sender, and the subject line of the email"

What kind of advertising-friendly info can they glean from the sender address? Ads for competitors when you get newsletters/signup email?

<comment><USER12> Maybe they tailor the advertisement based on whatever information they already have on the sender. Maybe if the subject line indicates the the sender and receiver are friends, it is assumed that they have similar interests?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does anyone know anything about storage limits? Is it counting towards Skydrive bytes, or this is very first large scale webmail for free and without any space limitations?

Edit

Found on [http://www.engadget.com/2012/07/31/outlook-preview-email- ser...](http://www.engadget.com/2012/07/31/outlook-preview-email-service- microsoft/):

The service is open to the public as of today and _you get virtually unlimited storage_ , along with 7GB of SkyDrive space if you create a new Microsoft account. ((Microsoft uses the word "virtually" to hedge itself against spammers who might otherwise use limitless storage to game the system.*)

</comment><comment><USER14> You may run into problems if you log in via your Xbox account (which uses, let's say, your Gmail address). Try sending your Gmail account, via Outlook.com, a message and let the authentication fun begin.

</comment><comment><USER15> More discussion going on here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4317923>

</comment><comment><USER16> It obviously is a remake with the new design philosophy which i like, i think the calendar and other live products will follow soon.

</comment><comment><USER14> Looks quite fresh at first glance. Although I did have a momentary dip in enthusiasm when, after clicking "New" I discovered it was somehow leveraging Silverlight. But the cleanliness of the UI is encouraging.

</comment><comment><USER17> Redesign? Maybe. Just 8 years later than GMail.</comment>


Bauhaus: Last Rites - <AUTHOR> https://the-easel.com/essays/bauhaus-a-failed-utopia-3/ <comment><USER2> And that is not "Bauhaus". The building in question definitively looks like a Corbu clone.

[https://www.archdaily.com/806115/ad-classics-master-plan- for...](https://www.archdaily.com/806115/ad-classics-master-plan-for- chandigarh-le-corbusier)

I've always admired Nervi's concrete works: [https://www.google.com/search?q=nervi+concrete+buildings&btn...](https://www.google.com/search?q=nervi+concrete+buildings&btnG=Search&hl=en&tbm=isch)

</comment><comment><USER3> Meis dismisses the Breuer and Nevi church which is shown at the opening of the article: "It is a sheet of concrete that pretends to be nothing else. It looks more or less like a giant sidewalk lifted up and placed horizontally across the sky."

Strikes me as manipulating criticism. The author freely admits to having not visited the site, so his criticism is really about his impressions of the photograph.

Of the Eiffel Tower, it's said French author "...Guy de Maupassant ate lunch everyday at the base of The Eiffel Tower, because that was the only place in Paris from which he could not see it..."

I've not visited this church, but I can fully imagine if you stood underneath the bell tower would cast a most unique shadow and not have the same impression of lifted sidewalk. Pfft!

Now, Breuer's Norton Shores church? Looks like a hideous bunker (in the photo). Haha</comment>


The Evolution of Writing - <AUTHOR> https://sites.utexas.edu/dsb/tokens/the-evolution-of-writing/ <comment><USER2> while this tries to present a nice tidy picture and dump all progress and technological development to somewhere near the holy land of certain peoples even a wikipedia lookup would reveal serious flaws

indus script dates back to nearly the same as sumerian and egyptian around 3200 bc with some potsherd markings dated further back to 3500 bc

if indus script was related to sumerian it wouldnt be undeciphered till now

the first evidence of brahmi is from lanka which is probably as far from levant as china

it is funny that the intrusive nature of the alphabet amidst the syllabaries is not remarked upon but just accepted especially since the other intrusive party of the time 1500 bc are indo europeans and most likely indo aryans in the mitanni and kassite eras

the near complete further non development of the alphabet to better fit the languages indicating the borrowed nature of it

as opposed to say brahmi or chinese

no mention of the tale that the phoenicians gave greeks the alphabet or dicussion of their origin which is still unknown herodotus or someone said they were of the african coast i believe ie not native but everyone pretends this is just fake

the strained efforts to relate everything back to egyptian heiroglyphs because europeans want that heritage too

<comment><USER3> The Indus Valley Script is a really tough thing to place because there's so little evidence to go on, and India has a particularly nasty problem with nationalistic cultural appropriation.

Deciphering unknown scripts is insanely difficult. In fact, all of the big scripts started with use of a bilingual inscription: Egyptian via the Rosetta Stone, cuneiform via a bilingual Akkadian/Persian inscription, and Mayan via a (botched) bilingual alphabet. There's nothing of the sort for Indus Valley Script, and the texts themselves are too short for even cryptology to be of much use. It's not even clear that Indus Valley Script is true writing as opposed to proto-writing, i.e., if it was capable of encoding full utterances within the language spoken of the time.

The link between the Phoenician abjad and the Greek alphabet is quite well- attested, not least of which is the order, shape, and phonetic correspondence between the letters is damn near perfect. Compare the correspondence of Phoenician and Greek versus Linear B and Greek, say. It takes pretty big blinders to say the Greek alphabet couldn't have come from Phoenicians.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article mentions how writing evolved through several stages: (a) clay tokens, (b) replaced with 2-D signs, (c) evolving into phonetic signs, (d) settling into two dozen letters each representing a single sound.

Over the past 50 years, another stage has occurred via the keyboard. They allow the 95 Ascii symbols to be entered easily, and control keys enable changes to the fonts, sizes, colors, or even tokens displayed. The pinnacle of this change is the IME's for Chinese and Japanese, enabling people to type in spoken sounds (pinyin or kana) with a selector, but allow Hanzi or Kanji to be displayed. Quite useful for tiny smartphone screens.

</comment><comment><USER3> The point I expected this page to say that it doesn't really mention is that there's a fairly clear progression in the development of writing. Early writing systems all seem to start with some sort of pictography. This runs into the problem that not every word can be represented with a clear pictogram, and the solution ends up being some sort of phonetic punning mechanism (i.e., the rebus principle). Even Chinese hanzi evidences these sort of mechanism, as the vast majority of its characters are based on combining a phonetic component with a semantic component.

After you start phonetic punning, most writing systems drop the pictographic portion and become solely based on phonetic constituents (Chinese being the major exception, although Japanese did evolve the next step into kana). These constituents are usually roughly based on a consonant-vowel pair and writing systems in this phase are called syllabries, but they're often not really full syllables, and there are tricks for representing more complex syllables (for example, Mayan uses the principle that the syllable pattern CVC is represented with CV-CV, where the vowel is the same in both characters.).

Now, in Phoenician or thereabouts, an interesting turn happened. Because of the nature of Semitic languages, the syllabry form dropped all of the vowels and just represented the consonants (what's now termed an abjad). The Indo- European speakers (principally Etruscan and Greek) who borrowed from this alphabet repurposed some of the letters which corresponded to missing consonants (such as the glottal stop in 'aleph) to represent vowels instead, as vowels are rather more important in those languages. Other languages that borrowed from abjads indicated vowels with systematic vowel marks, such as Devanagari or Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics; these are known as abugidas. Virtually every alphabet, abjad, and abugida known to exist is believed to derive originally from this first "wrong" turn when developing syllabaries.

An interesting point when discussing the history of writing systems is the development of the Cherokee script. The Cherokee script was invented by Sequoyah, who developed it entirely on the basis that he knew that the white settlers had a writing system that could be reliably read and a copy of the Bible but without any other knowledge of writing. He originally attempted to develop a mapping of word => character, but realized that the mapping is too complex, especially since the text he had got by with much fewer characters. Instead, he chose a syllabary, borrowing some of the letter forms from Latin script but not their phonetic mappings (which is why ᏣᎳᎩ is actually pronounced "tsalagi").

<comment><USER5> With regard to vowel-centric versus consonant-centric languages, English tends to be consonant-centric, and that's partly why our spelling is difficult. For example, "flutter" could be spelled "fluttr": we don't need the 2nd vowel and thus wouldn't have to guess whether it's spelled "fluttur", "fluttor", etc. English could use a refactoring. Examples: [http://wiki.c2.com/?RefactorEnglish](http://wiki.c2.com/?RefactorEnglish)

<comment><USER3> What you're referring to is essentially schwa-reduction. Unstressed vowels in English get reduced to a neutral vowel sound (represented by schwa, an upside- down e), and different letters are used to represent that vowel depending more or less on linguistic history.

But vowels do matter in English. Consider the following words that differ only in the vowel they use: bat, bait, bit, bot, bite, boat, boot, butt, bet, beat, bout. Furthermore, all of those words refer to very different things. Semitic languages are based on a triconsonantal scheme, where three consonants define a root, and the choice of vowels implies inflection. Dropping the vowels in Semitic languages does not impair meaning all that much.

<comment><USER5> I didn't intend to imply _all_ vowels can be dropped or wild-carded in English. As far as schwa, if we do refactor English, we should probably stick to _existing_ "normal" letters rather than introduce symbols such as an explicit schwa. I agree this risks either ambiguity, or some potentially non- obvious rules to remember.

As it is, I feel sorry for non-native English learners; English's spelling is a mess. The only saving grace is that being semi-phonetic means one can often make a decent guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Re: _With state formation, new regulations required that the names of the individuals who generated or received registered merchandise were entered on the tablets. The personal names were transcribed by the mean of logograms...pictures of words with a sound close to that desired (for example in English the name Neil could be written with a sign showing bent knees 'kneel')._

Seems like a chicken-or-egg conundrum here. How can you create a regulation for something that nobody knows how to do? (No jokes about a dysfunctional Congress, please.) Somebody must have realized the logogram technique BEFORE suggesting or making an edict.

</comment><comment><USER6> > _clay tokens representing units of goods were used for accounting (8000–3500 > BC). ... The token system had little in common with spoken language except > that, like a word, a token stood for one concept. Unlike speech, tokens were > restricted to one type of information only, namely, real goods. Unlike > spoken language, the token system made no use of syntax._

That is, for 4.5ky Sumerians had a form of abstracted accounting record very unlike a writing system proper, and it was used on a large territory where people likely spoke different languages / dialects.

(In a sense, it was an early era of digital communication.)

<comment><USER7> These symbols are non-unique identifiers for physical objects. More like a digital trading floor: price _is_ syntax.</comment></comment>


Kernel Sound ID decodes brain activity; quickly identifies what you're hearing - <AUTHOR> https://www.kernel.co/hello-humanity#esi <comment><USER2> good</comment>


Ask HN: need help, trademark infringement for using known TM as part of domain - <AUTHOR>

Hello Everyone,
I have just recently received a kind of informal cease and desist letter (only a couple of lines, no laws quoted, not even addressed to my full name) from a big messaging company.
I'd like to understand if what the company is claiming is legit.I hope you can help me with this.
Here are the facts:
Here are the full facts:
- I bought a domain name consisting of a popular messaging app name, and the generic word "groups" (.com). For example: telegramgroups.com or groups-for-telegram.com where Telegram is one messaging app.
- As soon as I registered it, I started hosting just a simple forum on it, for people to exchange their contacts for that messaging app in order to let them find likeminded people for creating chatting groups on that messaging app.
- The domain name includes the messaging app name but the forum makes it clear that the users could exchange any other kind of contacts they wanted too (other messaging services).
- I put a couple of Google Ads on the forum, not related to any messaging apps at all.
* Being a bit naive on legal matters (don't laugh please), and thinking I was not doing anything wrong, I contacted the messaging app directly, asking if it was ok if I used their name in a Google Ad-Words Campaign to advertise my website on Google. Shortly after that, I received an informal short email from the company, telling me that I was not allowed, and that I should also immediately stop using the domain name too, because it's representing a trademark infringement.
- I am from Europe, The messaging company is based in the U.S., and the hosting-provider/domain-name-registrar is based in Canada.
So what do you guys think? I'd love to hear your opinions. I apologize if this was so long and I thank you already for having followed me till here.
Thanks a lot. <comment><USER2> You need to talk to a lawyer, not a random assortment of anonymous HN readers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Given this is all about rights concerning the Internet and that HN has usually and obvsiouly been very keen on these matters I thought it could make for an interesting discussion, at least.

Also who tells you there are no chances of a lawyer reading?

And what would be wrong in trying to get in contact with a lawyer with a deep knowledge of this industry through here?

Of course I'm not gonna be interested in potential unrelevant discussion. Thanks, but I knew that already.</comment></comment>


Mac Dev Notes: iOS and Android Development Compared - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/apple/mac-dev-notes-ios-and-android-development-compared/

<comment><USER2> I have found the android simulator to be dog slow (takes 2-5 minutes to install a project and boot) and basically unusable so add to the right hand column of costs an unlocked android device right off the bat if you don't want to pull all your hair out and would like to be at all productive.

<comment><USER3> To be fair, the android simulator once running performs OK for the crucial Run to test-Modify-Run to test cycle. We rarely use 'Debug', usually use 'Run'.

We find that running on the hardware is not as necessary during feature development - as it slows down the iterative cycle. Running on hardware is critical, of course, for testing layouts, how the app handles incoming calls, being killed etc.

As a plus, the emergency-break-is-on-like performance of the simulator is pretty slow - in contrast to the iOS simulator which runs as fast as your development machine will let it.

It encourages unit tests - as a way of avoiding the simulator.

./adb uninstall com.yourcompany.package is a good shortcut to remove an app

When we do release an APK, we usually use Dropbox to make it look more professional when we send it out to client's beta testers (but nowhere as good as <http://testflightapp.com> for iOS)

<comment><USER2> I still find the simulator way too slow to be useful but I guess I am just spoiled by the Apple development tools. I agree that adb is really really useful for uninstalling and for the all important test of your APK files right before you submit to the market. It's also very useful for testing on older android hardware that you might have difficulty installing to using the eclipse plugin for whatever reason or can't get to connect to the market place.

We are also using DropBox to distribute the APKs amongst the team for our own testing purposes and that's been a really great workflow for sure.</comment></comment></comment>


Walmart stumbles with its 'last mile' package delivery plan - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-walmart-lastmile-workers-insight/walmart-discovers-why-the-last-mile-is-the-hardest-idUSKBN1KK0DD <comment><USER2> Again, extreme cost management ahead of comon sense never makes sense.

Policies that shortcut compensation for the labor resources the company is trying to leverage can only damage the program from the outset.

Is cost cutting the _only_ thing they teach in B school anymore?</comment>


There is no health benefit from the seven-day hormone-free interval - <AUTHOR> https://www.fsrh.org/news/fsrh-release-updated-guidance-combined-hormonal-contraception/ <comment><USER2> TL;DR: for oral contraceptives for women: paper suggests that taking hormones month-round and avoiding periods altogether is safe.</comment>


Bitcoin is a Ponzi Scheme - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/view_from_chicago/2013/04/bitcoin_is_a_ponzi_scheme_the_internet_currency_will_collapse.html

<comment><USER2> I yield to no one is my disdain for bitcoin, but this article is just stupid.

"Bitcoin is a ponzi scheme"?

First, the article isn't specific to bitcoins; it applies to gold, silver, and a large number of other similar currencies.

Second, the article isn't actually arguing that bitcoins are a ponzi scheme; it's just saying they won't work as a currency.

So a more accurate headline would be "Law professor claims gold cannot work as a currency; ignores theory, history, and evidence."

If you want to criticise bitcoins, knock yourself out. (Want some suggestions? I can rant for ages about the sillyness of bitcoins.) But please refrain from arguing that since bitcoins are just like gold, it's a ponzi scheme and thus literally _cannot_ work as a currency because the value will fall to zero. Because if you do this, someone will then point out that you are a flaming idiot who is embarrassing himself, the school he teaches at, and his family name.

</comment><comment><USER3> If we're going to be wading through multiple Bitcoin posts per day, can we at least limit it to ones that aren't full of glaring factual inaccuracies and misunderstandings?

</comment><comment><USER4> Do a find/replace in that article, replacing 'bitcoin' with 'gold', and all the points are equally valid. This demonstrates that the reasoning used in the article is flawed, as we know that gold has not suddenly lost all of it's value due to a more or less fixed supply.

Additionally, you can replace 'bitcoin' with anything with a fixed supply, say 'us dollars pre 1950', and the logic of the article remains unchanged. Again, this demonstrates that the reasoning used in the article is incorrect.

Perhaps bitcoins will be worth a lot, the same, or nothing tomorrow. This article sheds absolutely no insight to help us figure that out.

</comment><comment><USER5> "Until central banks were invented in the 17th century, the money supply was unregulated even if governments did stamp coins. Other unregulated or private currencies have emerged from time to time—think of cigarettes in prison camps. "

They didn't have the same conditions as we have with highly networked computers, so this is not a fair comparison and thus can't be solely relied upon to produce accurate statements about the eventual long-term result of the usage of the currency.

"True, bitcoins cannot be manufactured beyond the limits set by Nakamoto. But there is no way to prevent future Nakamotos from creating bitcoin substitutes—say, bytecoin, or botcoin. If merchants are willing to accept bitcoins, they will be willing to accept the substitutes, especially as bitcoins become scarce and consumers scramble for substitutes."

Is this reasoning not flawed? Bitcoin has built a certain level of brand equity and track record, in addition to the fact that its difficulty to produce via mining damps the rate of its injection into the market. By the time any alernative virtual currency has caught up, it will have its own reason to exist – either by virtue of how it's mined or because some entity is backing it financially. The question of whether computational mining has a problem is not being pointed out concretely so there's no proof to verify that there's a more favorable virtual currency. So, if the other virtual currency is of equivalent quality and Bitcoin's integrity and existence (stability) remain then would not the users of the currency just as easily jump TO bitcoin than from it?

<comment><USER6> "Bitcoin has built a certain level of brand equity and track record"

I think the speculators have done a pretty good job at altering both of these, no matter the general merits and benefits of use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I read yesterday about a cloud hashing service. You paid $150 in BTC for a 1G/Hash slice of a 1T/Hash machine for a year. Or paid $250 (in BTC again) of ever. With an expect return of 5 BTC per year and 6 BTC per year respectively. The site offered 6000 slots available and the machine would be up by June.

My problem with that is it seems just like a scam. They are making $900,000 up front in an untraceable currency. They are proposing that you'll get an annual return of $720 at yesterdays rates.

My gut tells me that if its sounds too good to be true it generally is.

Gold has value in that it can be made into something, bitcoins have value only because of the perceived value. How is bitcoin different from the ponzi membership badge I have? What is going to make bitcoin still worth something in 10 years time, as in what's holding its value up other than perception?

</comment><comment><USER8> What a timely and unoriginal hit piece.

<comment><USER5> It might have even been written beforehand in case a Bitcoin 'crash' occurred.</comment></comment>


Launch HN: Wifi Dabba (YC W17) – Low-Cost Wifi in India - <AUTHOR> Wifi Dabba provides super cheap, super fast internet at tea-stalls and bakeries in Bangalore, India. We built Wifi Dabba because mobile data is still expensive and also because getting wifi at the local bakery is just downright cool. We focussed on chai wallahs and bakeries because they're everywhere and practically everyone in India gets chai at least once a day from these stalls. We have 3 plans, Rs.2 for 100mb, Rs.10 for 500mb & Rs.20 for 20GB (edit: whoops, that should say 1GB. Someday we'll hit that low of a rate!). We don't have any free trials or ads because we think the Rs.2 price point is something that everyone can afford. We've got 100 locations so far, if you're reading this from Bangalore, check out our coverage map on http://www.wifidabba.com to try us out at a bakery near you. Our grand plan is to have Bangalore totally covered by the end of this year.
I'm Karam and my co-founder is Shubhendu, Wifi Dabba is actually the result of 6 painful years of building 32 different apps and watching them fail before we found something that had product/market fit. I've lurked on HN for years now and its a mini-daydream come true to be part of YC. We're both happy to answer any questions about Wifi Dabba or even just to commiserate with you on just how hard building products is. <comment><USER2> > I'm Karam and my co-founder is Shubhendu, Wifi Dabba is actually the result > of 6 painful years of building 32 different apps and watching them fail > before we found something that had product/market fit. I've lurked on HN for > years now and its a mini-daydream come true to be part of YC. We're both > happy to answer any questions about Wifi Dabba or even just to commiserate > with you on just how hard building products is.

I just want to say congrats on persevering, getting in, finding a fantastic idea, and good luck on growing!

</comment><comment><USER3> My God, this is such a good idea and I have so many questions.

a) I'm guessing you are expecting people to use this WiFi on their smartphones? Are your prices coming under the usual Indian telecom data prices?

b) If Facebook comes to you tomorrow and tells you they'll help cut your margins by 75% if you favour their traffic. Would you do it? You'd be able to pass on the price drop to other Indians.

<comment><AUTHOR> A. We're entirely focussed on the 10 minutes when you're standing at the tea stall drinking your tea and flipping through your phone. Our prices are 5x cheaper than mobile data.

B. Favour their traffic? No way.

<comment><USER4> Shouldn't we be encouraging few minutes of peace instead? Like, we will take away your phones for next 10 minutes for Rs. 2

<comment><AUTHOR> :) We're planning to offer charging services too. Plug in your phone and sit in peace while it charges.

<comment><USER5> That would rock! Smart phones are not "smart" with batteries.. there were number of times i visited bangalore and my mob was out of charge :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Seriously 20 rupees for 20GB?!?

For context, that is about $0.30.

In any case, this is awesome. Any plans to expand to other cities soon?

An unrelated question (that I think you might have a good answer to): When I've been to India, I've noticed that there is a lot of free WiFi around (in Mumbai, at least), but ALL of it requires that you have an Indian phone number that you have to register in order to get access.

Why is this? The cynic in me assumes that this so that network traffic can be tied to a real human being (since your phone number is tied to your person).

I guess a followup question: were there any interesting regulatory hurdles you had to jump through for this? Also what does the backhaul look like? Are you reselling 4G data? Building your own wireless backhaul maybe?

Cool project!

<comment><AUTHOR> The phone number requirement is a government thing, it's not really from the provider's perspective. The good news is that the government is rethinking this and TRAI has recently recommended stopping it.

Our backhaul is 100mbps fibre lines.

<comment><USER6> Really cool. Are you guys running custom hardware in the yellow boxes or is it something off the shelf?

<comment><AUTHOR> Custom. We've also got some nice processing power & storage in our Dabbas for future plans.

<comment><USER6> Can you share any details of what the hardware is?

<comment><USER7> I am willing to bet it is something very trivial like Raspberry PIs connected to dongles.

If you look at the map a lot of the locations are very concentrated; this is likely because there are shit tonne of "Chai Wallah" places in India :). However, looking at the outliers, I am not expecting a device that is creating something similar to a net nor a wifi extender.

It would be way cheaper than having some other sort of a receiver.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Congratulations Karam and Shubhendu!

Two questions:

1\. Does this mean you are an ISP? If so, how did you go about registering as an ISP.

2\. Most other WiFi (ex: at Cafe Coffee Day) requires one to register via SMS and pay by credit card. So the mobile number and Credit Card number becomes the primary key for our Government's Big Brother program to track the person. Have you side-stepped that by selling tokens that one can purchase anonymously using cash?

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. We are an ISP, we've applied for the license from the Department of Telecom

2\. The Telecom Regulatory of Authority of India has just recommended stopping the use of OTP. We really like that.

<comment><USER4> > The Telecom Regulatory of Authority of India has just recommended stopping > the use of OTP

Was there any article regarding this?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've linked to the paper below, the money quote is "Authentication through OTP should be done away with"

[http://trai.gov.in/sites/default/files/Press_Release_18_0903...](http://trai.gov.in/sites/default/files/Press_Release_18_09032017.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Karam and Shubhendu, congratulations. I knew about wifi-dabba a couple weeks ago from a stray comment on HN, and some co-workers and I were universally impressed.

I head the tech-committee for a local housing-welfare association in Bangalore, with a well maintained central park which sees a lot of foot traffic.

If you guys are interested we could pilot your dabba at the park (the tokens can be sold at the attached HOPCOMS). My email is in my profile if you'd like to get in touch.

Congrats on the launch again. Cheers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Outstanding. We'll be in touch very soon. Hopcoms ftw!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hey Karam!

First off, congrats! It's great to see you out here posting, and although I've yet to launch anything on HN yet - I'm sure there are parts that are nerve wracking. Regardless, it's a big deal to have something out that people are using, so again - congrats!

I just wanted to ask a couple questions about where Wifi Dabba stands when looking at something like Reliance's Jio? What exactly are the differences?

Secondly - I just wanted to know how you got your product out in the hands of users in Bangalore? My family currently lives in Gurgaon , but I've grown up outside India and whenever I look at startups in India I am amazed how they are able to organize themselves amidst the chaos that is India :P. Especially when looking at chai wallahs, is it just a manual process of going person by person, or could you share how you've grown?

<comment><AUTHOR> Reliance seems to be heavily focussed on their mobile network. They're talking a lot about their planned hotspots but there seems to be more smoke than fire at the moment. Once they launch, we'll see whats what. Our users seem to be wary of switching their phone numbers to Reliance and at the moment a lot of their phones don't support 4G as yet. Also, our service is 5x cheaper than mobile data, so users like that.

Rolling out Wifi Dabba has been a 'feet on the street' exercise, there's no shortcut to this. On the other hand we now have a waiting list of a few thousand stores, word gets around fairly quick because Dabba is good for business. It generates additional revenue, brings in new customers and store owners just think its cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great stuff!

What's the Wifi range of each of these "Dabbas"? Little tuck shops, bakeries, and tea stalls in India don't always have places to sit or hangout. Would people be able to sit a little distance away at a bus stop or something be able to use Wifi? Would also be cool if you could expand into small restaurants.

<comment><AUTHOR> The range right now is about ~50ft. We're working on improving that dramatically, it's our top priority.

<comment><USER12> Any estimate on what your future range would look like ?

<comment><AUTHOR> We're hoping the next version should hit about 100ft, we're aiming to improve in small steps and often.

<comment><USER12> i remember reading about NYCLink , they achieve a great range , maybe 400ft.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> You know Indian govt is busy building such infrastructure at Railways and villages with the collaboration with Google. Around 150 railway stations are equipped with free wifi. Govt is pushing optical fiber network in villages so that it can promote Digital India.

In my opinion you should contact govt for more help and I am sure your ideas can be utilized.

[http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/transportation/...](http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/transportation/railways/free- wi-fi-service-now-available-at-100-railway-stations-across-india-400-stations- to-be-covered-next-year/articleshow/56197708.cms)

[http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/pune/Amazon-sets- up-...](http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/pune/Amazon-sets-up-free-WiFi- zones-in-Pune/articleshow/48187178.cms)

</comment><comment><USER14> I had the exact same idea about 2 years ago, but never got a chance to follow through on it because I immigrated to Toronto. Definitely a novel and much needed problem that requires solving, and makes me super happy that it's being executed on! Well done guys!

Do look into Microtik hardware, hopefully these boxes can solve a ton of your problems: [https://routerboard.com/](https://routerboard.com/) I know back when I was envisioning this, Microtik and RouterOS was on top of my list.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much for the link, will look into it fo sho.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Lots of these kind of "coffee shop wifi" things have not really been very successful in the US. Is India just a fundamentally different market, or do you guys have a different approach?

<comment><AUTHOR> Our unit economics are good. The average unit breaks even in a couple of months. This is a lot like AirBnB, there's a market here that nobody is paying attention to. All the big companies are talking about it, but very few are doing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Love the name. If the main usecase is for ~10min of chai sipping time, then easy/hard is the onboarding? ie., agreeing to terms & conditions, login, payment etc. Will this require them to download a new app or will it just appear as WiFi network with a loginportal?

It would seem if the time frame was longer (say a train journey or cab stuck in traffic) the process might be worth it.

Did u guys explore movie theaters, local trains, cabs, city to city buses etc where time spent might be more, so users might be willing to buy more.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, its a simple login portal, no app, no fuss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The dabba reminds me of Old STD, ISD, PCO dabba. Good concept. My guess is secondary and tertiary cities benefit more than metros like B'lore. Why 24hr validity on tokens ?

<comment><AUTHOR> We're starting in Bangalore only because we know the city well. We're most definitely going to roll out in tertiary cities as soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Are you guys incorporated in India , or the US, or both? Asking this because the yc requirements page suggests that every company would have to incorporate in the US.

</comment><comment><USER19> Karam/Shubhendu,

Really kicked to see something from my neck of the woods with great potential out in the market. Congratulations on the launch.

I'm assuming it will take significant volume to make this profitable (should be easily doable).

I had noticed recently fibre now being strung from trees in Bangalore much like how ethernet cable used to be ten-years-ago and figured we're on to something big now.

</comment><comment><USER20> Cool idea no doubt. But wouldn't the need for such a thing go down as 4g/3g becomes more pervasive in the cities? I see this being more useful in places where residential and mobile internet are still not the norm. i.e. villages where people use the dabba as a communal well. Also what kind of access points/ router are you using inside the dabba?

</comment><comment><USER21> That looks really cool, it's like the Starbucks/McDonalds wifi points, but for every shop for a really cheap price.

I'm curious about a few things:

How fast is super fast ?

How does it work? Is there a 4G hotspot hidden in the yellow box? or do you require your bakeries partners to install some specific router at their location (i.e. the bakeries must have a pre-existing internet connection setup) ?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's super fast because we draw a 100mbps line to each store. We install our own routers. It's totally free for the store owner, we charge nothing up front. We split revenue with the store owner 80-20.

<comment><USER22> Where are you getting fast Ethernet pipes to stores there?? Having been there I find it hard to believe that infrastructure is there.

<comment><AUTHOR> You'd be amazed at the amount of fibre that's already been laid. We work with 5 different ISP's to get the best connection possible.

<comment><USER22> Well I am very impressed. I had no idea fiber was literally everywhere down there. Kudos to you man for making it work! My wife is from the NCR region of Delhi, I hope you take over bangalore and then Delhi and make a fortune! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I don't understand one point. Bakeries and petty shops are not the places where people sit or spend more than a few minutes. Even if you were to,you are busy grabbing a coffee or a cigarette. Even though the number of people is very high, I dont see myself going to a petty shop ,buying a token and using the internet.Would love to know your counter.

<comment><USER24> The website says the token is valid for 24 hours, if the user is going to have 2-3 coffee/cigarette a day he doesn't have to get a token every time. Also If this token is valid across all the Bakeries and petty shops then the user can go to any shop for a chai and use the internet. Soon people might give you a token as change ;-)

<comment><USER25> I hope Token as change thing takes off

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Congrats Karam! Good to see your public launch. I wonder if you thought of building your dabba on top of an Android phone. The Android Things platform combined with COSU mode in Android 6+ would make this kind of hardware very developer friendly...with remote management and updates built in for free !

It's something I have been wondering about lately. YMMV.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's actually the first thing we tried, but then discovered pretty quickly that the unit economics don't work if you use a phone. Android is great way to prototype the idea, but sadly that's as far as you can go.

<comment><USER26> Really ? I was looking at 40$ phones at retail. Night be even cheaper in bulk.

But you're the expert obviously.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Hi There,

       Congrats!! I'm from Bangalore and the idea impresses me. Pls. add this to all the bus stops' chai dabbas. People waste a lot of their mobile data in bus stops and in buses. If you can get corporate's buses to pay for decent wifi, you will get 1000 buses in Bangalore for sure.

      Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER28> This is awesome, great way to support the segment who can't afford a regular plan or who doesn't need one. I've heard from many auto rickshaw wallas that they don't make enough from cab services like Ola. Any thoughts of leveraging your network to provide value added services for them?

</comment><comment><USER7> Can you talk a little bit about how you power the Dabbas and refresh the tokens if they are only valid for 24 days.

Do you guys function like "doodh wallahs" in that you visit the locations every morning to reset power and tokens? Would seem like a hassle but convenient from the point of view of the chai wallahs.

<comment><AUTHOR> The dabbas are plugged into the wall for power, practically all tea shops tend to have a power line of some sort even if its not obvious at first glance. We provide a battery backup too. Our software handles refreshing of tokens, so no need to visit the store that often for maintainence.

<comment><USER7> The tokens seem to be physical. Does that mean you print them on the spot?

Edit: Addendum: Also, if they are physical, why did you consider physical over simply displaying them on a tiny screen? I can think of one reason, I can buy a token and activate it later at home.

Danm.. I remember going to Chai-wallahs and reactivating my dongle. Cost me a lot of money for very little bandwidth usage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> How do you plan to scale to other cities? Franchises, distributors, technology support vendors?

<comment><AUTHOR> We're getting at least one inquiry a day with regard to franchising, it's something we're looking into, but QoS would be a challenge...maybe. We're trying to figure out something that's one step above a franchisee model, I'm sure there's something there, but I can't quite put my finger on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Can you give us a (as long as possible) tldr version of how you went from Idea to execution? Did you have relevant background around ISPs and or telecom? How did you investigate which ISPs you could partner with and how did you partner with them?

</comment><comment><USER31> I really like this. I am wondering why you chose not to target the Coffee days, Barista instead? Last I checked, none of them had wifi. At the same time, maybe it's because they are not very friendly if you sit and work there :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> We've chosen to go the streets because thats where most of India lives. The middle class of the country is well catered to by technology companies, the poorer among us aren't.

The average Indian doesn't have access to wifi at home or at work and data is too expensive for them. There's literally no place they can go to get cheap internet access.

We want to fill that need.

<comment><USER31> You are most likely correct. Middle class can probably afford 3G. This is a really good niche. If you manage to make it work, it would be awesome!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Why does the refunds page ([http://www.wifidabba.com/RefundPolicy.html](http://www.wifidabba.com/RefundPolicy.html)) look out of place? Are you offering any other services?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yikes, thanks for point that out, we'll fix it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I would like to see Wifi Dabba as a platform where I can build apps for the community without running them centrally (high bandwidth ones - involve video, or local gaming, etc). Is that a part of your vision?

<comment><USER34> Simple answer. Yes.

</comment></comment><comment> aman-pro Hey Karam and Shubhendu, congratulations for the launch. I have a few questions:

1\. What is the setup cost? 2\. What are your expansion plans, specially in remote areas of India? Will the model still be profitable?

</comment><comment><USER35> Good going. : ] Any plans for expansion to other cities or is it a trial run at Bangalore? Also, since you are an ISP, how do you keep costs down on network equipment & fibre laying.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're definitely going to expand to multiple cities as soon as we can. We've partnered with a whole range of providers to lower the cost of physically connecting each location.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Does these Dabbas require maintenance? How do you plan to handle that? What if some dabba is down for some reason unknown the chaishop walla? How are you handling these repair requests?

</comment><comment><USER37> How much do you make off those 2 rupees? Even with a 30% margin it's just Rs 0.6. Is that big enough even at scale (given your installation, servicing, acquisition costs)?

</comment><comment><USER38> This is so cool! Never knew about this being a resident of Bangalore; I'm so happy you got into YC! Congrats on the launch :) Would love to connect!

</comment><comment><USER33> Also this was a part of Aam Aadmi Party manifesto - to launch city wide Wifi. Is this something which can come up in Delhi?

</comment><comment><USER39> Cool idea, I think you can also install it in cabs and public transport. People spend more time in traveling in Bengaluru.

All the best.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hahaha :) You're right, the traffic has now hit levels of insanity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> How does a customer pay and use the service? Pay the panwallah and he gives customer a code which is used to bill?

<comment><AUTHOR> The customer pays cash and gets a paper token with a token number on it. They connect to the wifi and enter the token number to authenticate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How can you fundamentally with first principal approach provide a lower rate than say Airtel?

<comment><AUTHOR> With enough scale, we can connect directly to the fibre cables entering India from the sea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Awesome! All the best guys.

</comment><comment><USER42> What about people using it for torrenting specially 20GB for 20RS ?

<comment><USER8> He has clarified that it is 1GB for 20 Rupees.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Is Rs.20 for 20GB a Typo? If not then I am stunned at those rates.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for spotting that... it should read Rs.20 for 1GB. Someday we'll hit that low of a rate :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Awesome.. Idea.. will try out next time I come into Domlur..

</comment><comment><USER45> congratulations to WifiDabba team. This is great progress for Aam Aadmi. To the founders - Why did you decide to join YC?

</comment><comment><USER46> Are you guys planning to launch in Delhi NCR?

<comment><AUTHOR> We've gotten a really strong level of interest in the NCR, we're looking into it for sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> How will people pay for the Wifi ?

<comment><AUTHOR> The customer buys a token from the store with cash. They connect to the wifi and enter the token number to authenticate.

<comment><USER48> What a great idea, congrats on executing! Some quick Qs;

1) What kind of security exists on the wireless network?

2) Your privacy policy keeps talking about credit cards and Razorpay (a payment processor) yet in this thread you are saying one can hop onto the network using a cash-purchased token. Where exactly do Credit Cards fit in the workflow?

3) Please consider switching your website over to SSL, Lets Encrypt certs are free, other certs are cheap (GoDaddy charges only like $30/year or so) :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Nice concept!

</comment><comment><USER50> an awesome idea !!</comment>


GNU-FSF Cooperation Update - <AUTHOR> https://www.gnu.org/gnu/2020-announcement-1.html <comment><USER2> Sounds like a lot of words amounting to nothing...

<comment><USER3> Yeah. Some of us GNU hackers submitted concrete proposals to the FSF back in December: [https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-misc- discuss/2019-12/...](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-misc- discuss/2019-12/msg00026.html) . Radio silence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is this related to the perception, accurate or otherwise, of rms's failure as a leader of the free software movement? I have my own opinions about it but it seems that lots of people have their own that either align or oppose mine; things he has done recently have been quite polarizing (whether or not in 50/50 proportion TBD).

A lot of these sorts of press release style posts are more implication than statement, written into a context or situation created by current events that is almost never written about explicitly in a post or statement, leaving one guessing at the implied context to which it is a response. Is this such a response to the rms drama? Is it unrelated?

<comment><USER5> It's hard to imagine this /not/ being related to the two organizations no longer sharing Stallman as President/Dictator/whatever. It's not really clear to me who actually cares about the GNU project specifically, or even FSF, or how they plan to "cooperate." Developers that like the GPL will continue hacking using it; developers that don't will continue hacking without it. Maybe I'm out of the loop.

<comment><USER6> GNU is more than a license, there are many important projects that are all under the GNU umbrella that are still governed by the organization.

Examples: gcc, coreutils, glibc, bash, r, ...

<comment><USER7> True, and gcc is still immensely important. But we used to live or die by gcc. It was imperative that we had it and it was important that it got decent updates.

Now, with LLVM, the world is just a little bit more relaxed on that front.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


VAYU- Ultra secure cloud - <AUTHOR> http://vayudrive.com <comment><USER2>
        script src="//localhost:35729/livereload.js"

I sense a product in very early development.

</comment><comment><USER3> "We know your data security matters that is why go an extra mile to make sure your data is fully protected from prying eyes. All your sensitive files are secured with ultra secure triple DES 1344 encryption when at rest. When in motion VAYU uses SSL and HTTPS protocols for ultra secure transmission."

3DES? Why not AES or Salsa20/ChaCha20 or some other modern algorithm?

Also loads of other questions: whose keys are used, where is encryption/decryption performed, etc.

Sounds like just cloud storage with an encrypted drive on the server side but where the server side keys are also stored by the cloud provider, which means the encryption almost might as well not be there.

<comment><USER4> Especially if they're going to make claims like "Ultra Secure", it makes no sense to use 3DES... while it's not completely broken, it's certainly not the best option.

AES would be both faster and inherently more secure.</comment></comment>