The End of Windows - <AUTHOR> https://stratechery.com/2018/the-end-of-windows/ <comment><USER2> It isn't really the end of Windows - it's the end of Windows' dominance of Microsoft mindshare.

Windows 10 was the giant step in that direction - an always updating, maintenance mode, single OS that MS will need to support. Arguably until Win 7 dies out they won't be entirely there but once they are, maintaining Windows is a much simpler affair than yesteryears.

None of this means Windows itself is dying - it only means the OS has matured enough for the needs of present and any future needs will be addressed as and when they arise - instead of inventing the future they will abide with it on their own schedule.

This allows Microsoft to focus on things that truly matter for the future without killing Windows or spending a lot of resources on advancing/supporting it. It's not hard to imagine Windows stays a very dominant client OS for a long time to come - even if the overall PC market share continues to decline, because none of the alternatives are there and nobody is going to invest the resources to get them there.

I will also add that Satya's success lies in speeding up this strategy that started late under Ballmer and also in executing so well on it. Considering the scale of what MS is doing - Office ports to iOS, Android, Windows 10 releases, Azure, ton of other Enterprise stuff (Exchange, O365, Development tools, cross platform stuff like .NET Core, VS Code etc) - the change of course and the success they are having with it all - you can't argue it's not a phenomenal achievement.

<comment><USER3> You can see a nice graph showing (Firefox) users steadily upgrading from Windows 7 to 10 from Mozilla's Firefox telemetry:

[https://hardware.metrics.mozilla.com/#goto-os-and- architectu...](https://hardware.metrics.mozilla.com/#goto-os-and-architecture)

<comment><USER4> That hardware report is surprising to me in many ways.

* In 2018, the most popular resolution for users of Firefox is _still_ 1366x768. And only 1920x1080 is making any headway against the dominance of 1366x768. As much as I am surrounded by the culture of multiple 4K+ displays, apparently this is not at all commonplace. 4K doesn't even get listed, presumably lumped into the "Other" category.

* In 2018, the most popular memory amount for users of Firefox is _still_ 4GB, trailed by the also disappointingly small 8GB. In my world, I consider 16GB a bare minimum, but at least with memory I haven't been deluding myself—I know many people economize on memory. Still, I would have thought 8GB was the most common memory size by now.

* A surprising number of people still have Flash installed.

I can barely conceive of the poor experience of running a modern web browser on 4 GB of memory at 1366x768. Can you imagine the user experience of today's modern over-JavaScripted web pages on such underpowered hardware: not simply slow because of their grotesquely large transmission payload but _also_ because they caused your computer to start swapping memory pages to disk?

<comment><USER5> Personally I won't touch anything with less than 32 GB and 1080p, but people that use a PC like a tablet with a keyboard and a larger screen have different needs. They are the vast majority of buyers.

A friend of mine is thinking about buying a new laptop. We were looking together at what's available in the sub 400 Euro range, basically everything is 4 GB and 1366x768. Add some 200/300 Euro and 8 GB and 1080p start to appear in the lists. Guess what people buy most? The cheapest stuff.

By the way, the new laptop must be Windows because anything different will be too difficult to cope with after 30 years of training. He's replacing the old one (only 2 years old) is getting too slow. Probably a malware party but disinfecting that machine it's a hopeless effort. That one and the previous ones were periodically cleaned and/or reinstalled but there is no way to change those ingrained clicking habits. No adblocker because my friend wants to see ads and they could actually be useful in his business. I told him that he'll be back with a slow PC soon and that he's wasting his money, and I've been wasting my time.

<comment><USER6> >I won't touch anything with less than 32 GB

why would you need that much ram? are you running 3+ VMs all the time?

<comment><USER7> I run an IMac with 32gb because I'm a SharePoint developer. A 2012 VM running AD, DNS, SQL Server, Visual Studio, and a SharePoint farm all running takes up 16gb easily. The other 16gb goes to VS Code, XCode, Slack, multiple browsers, Outlook, Docker at times...etc.. Then I gotta shut it down and boot up the SharePoint 2010 VM sometimes which gets 12gb a little less I suppose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I still can't wrap my head around everything that was wrongheaded about Windows 8, and I was working there for most of its dev cycle.

One wonders what would have happened if they just sort of let Windows be Windows. I.e. if they had continued iterating on core stuff but left UI and general philosophy resembling Win7's trajectory and not tried to force people into WinRT/UWP/store.

Even though Win10 attempted corrective action it always struck me that it was still accepting the fundamental thesis of Win8. They still kept with the Orwellian redefinition of phrases like "Windows app" to mean very recent, immature and unproven technology. They were still talking about ARM devices that don't let you do a straightforward recompile of old code. They were still pushing the Store as the only means to distribute software, where even Apple has not succeeded in changing people's habits on the desktop.

I hope that with a weaker organization, people keeping the lights on for Windows will know to not shake things up too severely and ease up on pushing some of these silly ideas. I somehow doubt it. I've been hoping for that for... 7 years?

<comment><USER9> As a developer, the Windows target is baffling. I briefly considered porting a few apps I wrote over to Windows just to re-learn the platform again. Might be fun! Back in the day, the choice was easy: MFC/Win32

Now, I have no idea where to even start! C#? C++? .NET? Win32? MFC? WPF? XAML? WinForms? UWP? What a rat's next! How did MS let the development ecosystem get so muddied? I know I can go online and research all of these, learn the trade offs, and hope I bet on the right horse, but then again I could also choose to simply leave this crazy platform alone and work on more features on the platforms that are more comfortable.

<comment><USER10> Here's how simple I think it is:

Out (but not gone/forgotten): Win32 (hand-coded C, C++ MFC, C++ ATL and related alphabet soup [aka back in the day the choice wasn't easy, either], VB6, .NET WinForms, etc), WPF/Silverlight (a .NET only XAML platform)

In: UWP (C++ with XAML, C#/.NET with XAML, JS with HTML/CSS)

Just three UI platforms to consider (Win32, WPF, UWP), two of which are mostly deprecated and not recommended if you are building a fresh application or porting one to a new UI. The remaining platform (UWP) gives you language choice (C++, C# or other .NET languages, JS), but not UI design framework/markup language choice (XAML, unless JS and then HTML).

If you are doing a fresh port of a C++ application from another platform, the choice seems pretty simple to target the UWP and use XAML to define your UI.

<comment><USER11> Except that with Win7's dominance your UWP isn't going to run on most of your clients for many years. In a corporate environment it sorts of kills it from the outset. I think Microsoft made a big mistake by not making UWP win7 compatible.

<comment><USER10> Windows 7 doesn't have "many years" left. Windows 7 has less than two years left in its support lifetime. (2020 is when extended support ends.)

In the mean time, if you, in a corporate environment, must Windows 7 until the bitter end in 2020, you can use WPF as a bootstrap step towards UWP. The XAML is similar between them and a lot of the coding paradigms are same (MVVM patterns), and if you architect well (.NET Standard 2.0 libraries) you can share 100% of your business logic between a WPF application and a UWP application.

Xamarin.Forms also has an open source WPF renderer if you'd prefer to further go the cross-platform route. (Xamarin.Forms supports UWP, iOS, Android, macOS.)

I agree that I think Microsoft should have had the .NET Standard, XAML Standard, WPF Xamarin.Forms development stories in place sooner to better leverage developers that need to support older Windows, but many of those pieces are in place _now_ if that is what corporate developers were waiting for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This seems like a ridiculous strategy. Who would abandon an ecosystem that they own over 80% of? If they're spending too much money on it, stop adding features and harden what they already have. It's increasingly clear that macOS isn't business-level stable, and Linux isn't polished... No one has an Android device on their desk at work. Maybe if they stopped trying to take over the world they would realize that they already own a huge part of it. If they don't care, they should sell it to someone who does.

<comment><USER13> > macOS isn't business-level stable.

Can you elaborate this assertion? As far as stability goes, macs are top notch. I'd say in the business context Windows machines are prevalent because of successful MS strategies (in terms of marketing, not ethics) in 1995-2005 era, and it kind of stuck around.

<comment><USER14> The enterprise tooling for macOS is woefully insufficient.

Windows has provisions for performing all sorts of tasks across a fleet of desktops. I can automate deployment of a Windows desktop to the point where all you have to do is boot it up and join it to the domain (which makes it easier to hire someone to do it as well).

What's more is that these settings will work across updates. I've gotten really sick of the screwy changes Apple makes to macOS with little warning. Windows goes to great lengths to ensure backwards compatibility between major version upgrades. (For example, did you know VB6 apps still run just fine?) Also, I can get fine grained control of updates to Windows.

But maybe most importantly, I can virtualize Windows and create a virtual desktop environment. Now I can hand out toasters to users and they can just log in to their box from anywhere.

Windows is simply much better at making desktop units fungible.

<comment><USER15> I was going to reply to the original thread with [citation needed], but thankfully someone already did it. The fleetwide maintenance is the issue, not stability.

That said, everywhere I've worked the past 8 years, across 3 jobs, was virtually Mac-only. But yes, the valley is an outlier.

<comment><USER14> > The fleetwide maintenance is the issue, not stability.

From the medium to enterprise range, maintenance and stability issues are often one in the same. Breaking automated maintenance and/or deployment leads to instability.

Keep in mind I don't mean "kernel panic" levels of instability or even "programs crashing" levels of instability. The smallest of changes can cause a mountain of work in large environments. Simply changing the icon of an often used program can cause a deluge of tickets.

This level of stability and control is something that macOS doesn't even come close to recognizing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'll be interested to see how this bifurcation of the Windows team plays out. Windows 10 has been a mixed bag - some nice new features but also a lot of half baked buggy stuff. The evergreen nature of Windows 10 feels like the right move, but I'm worried they're going to let the OS stagnate. There's already a lot of low hanging fruit they could clean up with an update, but haven't.

I'm not a huge fan of using my tablet or phone for things. I almost always prefer using a "real" operating system. I know that puts me in the minority to an extent, but I'm not the only one. The problem is, neither major desktop OS is moving in a direction I like. I guess I'm just getting old and cranky.

<comment><USER17> Linux on desktop is pretty amazing. Haven't looked back in 3 years.

<comment><USER18> Is there a laptop you would recommend?

<comment><USER19> Dell XPS 13.

Works with Linux out of the box as Dell made all of the driver's work for their developer edition's in Ubuntu. Battery life and and the 3200x1800 screen are phenomenal. Well made and Dell's warranty process is actually fairly good. It's no Apple warranty, but does the job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > Smartphones first addressed needs the PC couldn't, then over time started > taking over PC functionality directly

I still don't understand how anybody gets any real work done on a smartphone.

Has work suddenly gotten so simplistic that most people really don't need a keyboard? They're dragging and tapping and writing IM-like sentence fragments riddled with autocorrect typos? And this is acceptable? Seriously?

<comment><USER21> I think that's the mistake Ballmer made with Windows Phone. He and the other leadership saw the rise of the smartphone and thought "that's the future". The reality is more nuanced; the smartphone _created_ a new market, but it definitely hasn't supplanted the existing "home computer" market, or even really hurt it in any way.

Microsoft should have recognized that, recognized they were late to the party, just let Google & Apple have it, and instead focus on integrating with their products and doubling down on the "home & professional computer" segment they already lead in. But they were late to that as well because of Ballmer's mistake, which gave Apple the in to position the iPad as an up-and-coming product in this segment.

<comment><USER22> > The reality is more nuanced; the smartphone created a new market, but it > definitely hasn't supplanted the existing "home computer" market, or even > really hurt it in any way.

This is demonstrably wrong. The home computer market isn't even a market that exists in many parts of the world. To see that phones can supplant the home computer market almost entirely in Africa and India and say it has no effect here is crazy.

You can already watch it happen. Will people need a computer to do long form typing? Maybe, although for many a tablet with a Bluetooth keyboard will suffice.

Will an average family of 4-5 need more than one though? Will many people just get by sharing a laptop one family member got from work, or an old clunker they use just to edit essays for school? Absolutely.

Will smartphones and tablets kill home computers? No, not for a long time. Will they pretty much cap any growth in that market, and turn them into trucks when they were formerly cars? Without a doubt.

<comment><USER23> > The home computer market isn't even a market that exists in many parts of > the world.

That doesn't make GP's statement demonstrably wrong. The home computer market isn't a market that exists in many parts of the world because it never existed there in the first place.

The smart device market may have affected the growth of the home computer market, but I also believe that it hasn't supplanted its existing users by any meaningful measure. At least, not yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> So are mom and pop businesses using Chromebooks and Ipads to do their accounting now? Last I checked Windows was still pretty dominant in both Enterprise and midsize businesses, though I could see a food truck being run from a phone (theoretically).

<comment><USER25> Windows 10 is really difficult for businesses entrenched in Windows to deal with.

The work that you need to do in order to unwind from legacy Windows stuff like fat apps, IE-optimized websites, and legacy Office-based workflows makes it pretty easy to move to an iPad to Google, etc. The only thing that Microsoft has going for them is that every other vendor is also fucking up client computing in different ways.

<comment><USER26> I know I'm in a minority here, but having used every windows since 3.1, IMO windows 7 was the absolute pinnacle of windows design, and from a ux perspective I think the best desktop os period (could still be improved, there's definitely individual features that are better in other OSes). I really wish they had stuck with the UX/design and mostly just improved performance/added useful stuff rather than throw it all out and start over.

<comment><USER27> You're not as big of a minority as you think. Windows 7 is still the most used desktop OS by quite some margin. MacOS hit its pinnacle at about the same time (Snow Leopard, Summer 2009).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Microsoft is squandering the decades of work humans put into drivers, an OS codebase that is unique and omnipresent, and if they can't see how useless and crap all their other services are without the conceptual core that powered their rise to sucess, then they will die.

\- windows domains \- group policy \- roaming profiles \- drivers written for in-house equipment, ranging from machining to mass spectrometry, done over decades, and basically compatible back to NT 4, until M$ screws everything up...

They just don't know where their bread is buttered, and their bean counting practices are evidently obscuring it, as they keep doing stupid crap decisions like Office365.

They should stabilize and streamline what they already built...

<comment><USER29> It's not the end of Windows. The title of the article is a bit click bait-y.

Without the "we need to dominate the market and be everywhere" people pushing devs to implement feature nobody wants and have to deactivate anyways, Windows will get better for the people that love (and need) to use it.

<comment><USER30> > The title of the article is a bit click bait-y.

The article itself implies the same. It's very clearly a case of putting the cart before the hearse.

<comment><USER31> I don't see anywhere in the article where Windows is going away or no longer being invested in... if anything it's going to get more focused on in terms of a pure client OS perspective than some mixed bag of services + built-in apps + OS.

This should be good for Windows as it will focus on what it's good for.. being the base system for drivers, windowing, app launching, etc. While the services/cloud gets decoupled from it allowing more flexibility for their developers/programs to work across multiple platforms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> When my child gets older and leaves home, I won't be saying its the end of him. He has just matured.

Similarly, this just marks the maturity level of Windows, where there really is no significant innovation in operating systems release after release. Nothing like win 3.1 -> win 95 etc. Its been that way for a while. Obviously its cash that motives this move from Microsoft, however I wouldn't want Microsoft changing the location of the start menu every release just to stir up the market and justify a release (for example) every year.

I remember a cherished time where the next operating system release felt like an upgrade to myself as well as my PC. I could do more than before. No longer. We have it all nowadays and have became spoilt.

<comment><USER31> The more comments I read on here the more it seems people have only read the headline, or have only a surface level grasp of the content, without really understanding what the author is saying.

"The End of Windows" = "The End of Windows as the core foundation of the various Microsoft divisions/services/apps"

It does _not_ mean the end of Windows as an important part of Microsoft...at all.

Rather it's about decoupling Windows from the rest of the other divisions to reflect the reality of today's non-PC centric world where Window's is merely one client among other mobile/cloud/AI/IoT/etc clients.

As others have pointed out, the perfect example is how Ballmer didn't want to release Office for iPad until Windows had a touch screen version to compete with it. It means more flexibility for both the company and for Windows, which is win-win for Microsoft consumers and Windows users.

<comment><USER33> Generally I think we call that "clickbait," no? :)

Headlines like that make some people _less_ likely to actually read the article, especially on HN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Just because Microsoft is desparate to unshackle themselves from a loss-leader doesnt mean its about to happen anytime soon, albeit an announcement like this will certainly goose the stock. The only person angrier about missing the app- store cloud-based moneytrain is likely Larry Ellison whos already furiously trying to saw off the Oracle Database boat anchor.

You're going to need to convince your channel partners this is a thing that has to happen, and you're going to expect a revolt because so many tertiary industries are contingent upon Windows and its licenses. The tear-down for everything from the Windows app-store to the ballmer-era brick and mortar "windows store" is going to be significant. There are also laboratories, power plants, hospitals, and prisons that all rely heavily on Windows, so expect to be on the hook from state level government for quite a while...the "end" of windows also confirms the wastefully squandered effort to get Germany to obsolete its massive and very functional Linux deployment.

You'll also need to have a substantive marketshare in, say, cloud in order to start deprecating Windows. Outside of Redmonds own inflated reporting, Azure isnt exactly a competitor. Most devs would rather walk off a cliff than learn a new API --one that only Microsoft uses-- for cloud that is not EC2 compatible in any way. Conversely there are more than 40 providers of cloud services that all managed an EC2 api for objects.

</comment><comment><USER21> I think its impossible to understate how much damage Ballmer did to Microsoft. That being said: I think Microsoft is in a fantastic position right now under Satya.

Windows isn't going anywhere, and they're accepting the reality that it might just be a "portal" into web technology in a similar vein to Chromebooks. This is a reality Apple refuses to accept, for better or worse. But, Windows still comes with those massively powerful internals that enable more powerful professional experiences for the users that need them.

This is, really, the only platform in the world that champions both. MacOS obviously has those powerful foundations and can run webapps natively, but its not something christened by Apple. iOS is the same way, but with less powerful foundations. ChromeOS? Android? Linux Desktop? They're not even considerations in this world.

Then you consider the massive success of their Xbox and Azure divisions, and I think anyone who bets against Microsoft right now isn't doing it cogently. They have a lot of legacy and Ballmer's strategic mistakes to get right, but I legitimately think they'll come out of the next 5 years in a better financial position than Google.

</comment><comment><USER35> Better title would be the end of the Windows Division at Microsoft. Certainly not the end of Windows - it's an enormous revenue generator for Microsoft. But I believe it shows that they believe the future lies within Azure, AI and Microsoft 365. This will probably help them focus.

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm surprised no one mentioned this but the biggest takeaway for me is that it moves Windows one step closer to becoming open source. We're still many steps away and it's going to be more like the hybrid model of Android or even OSX/iOS/Darwin and but it seems much more feasible now, even if it starts with baby steps.

<comment> w0rd-driven Windows is touted as the largest git repository. What service like Github or Gitlab could handle something that massive? I'm sure they could scale eventually but if that ever happened MS would likely have to house the repository and at that point they might as well keep it closed source or open source with a subscription cost that goes into the infrastructure upkeep.

I'd honestly love for more portions of Windows to become open source and slowly work up to the full repository. I think there would be an immediate influx of 0days as people find holes but I would hope they would close quickly. It's still a very big gamble to let go of something you've literally built your foundation on but I do hope that instead of Windows silently going into oblivion that they'll open it up for the masses, even if they would no longer have the resources to support it. I feel like someone or company would step up.

Having said all that, I'm going on 4 years in mostly macOS. The missteps in High Sierra are pretty abysmal but not the end of the world. I hope Apple really changes their processes to keep the OS stable but I see this downward trend in just about all PC-like operating systems. It's like everyone sees the end of the line coming and they're just half assing every move they make. I think Meltdown/Spectre was a major blow that has probably single handedly slowed all momentum to a standstill. Granted my sample size is very small but I really hope I'm just looking at this big lull right before an evolution/revolution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Early Windows was a great platform for the users that it served. But every few years, the Windows product itself had one of those "off years." It arguably started with NT 4.0 for workstations, then again with Windows ME, then Vista, and then arguably 8.

This interleaving strategy was okay when they were the only market player, but now that there's actually good competition in the computing space (read: smartphones and chromebooks), it's not so good. All of the little sacrifices that Windows has to make to move itself forward are cuts that make people reconsider using it in the first place.

I honestly wonder what world it would be if every Windows release had "stuck the landing." If we had a super solid Vista and a super solid Windows 8, would Microsoft even be in remotely the same position as they are now? Probably not, because it would actually have been the preferred choice, and not just the default.

<comment><USER38> Unarguably 8! My mother owns Windows 8 laptop and she is still stuck every time she falls into "blocky start" menu or or any of Metro apps.

She just doesn't understand what is happening anymore, and how to exit this mode which she never asked for. What helps here is that all those apps are absolutely useless.

It's a disaster disaster disaster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> i would have stopped using windows years ago if i could get games to run decently on linux.

<comment><USER40> There are many games that run well in Linux, including a large portion of the Steam library!

If you meant a specific game to run, well then you need to weight your pros and cons and stop whining when you make your decision.

Alternatively, dual boot.

<comment><USER41> Alternatively, grow up and stop playing games.

<comment><USER42> That's not really what "growing up" means.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> To read things like this and everyone's comments, you would think that Microsoft isn't making a mega-ton of money every quarter, which they are. Everyone keeps talking about Azure and AWS like there isn't room for both and that Azure hasn't been growing like crazy.

Amateur tech punditry at its finest.

</comment><comment><USER44> I would love for Microsoft to launch it's own Android-compatible ecosystem, starting from the open source base of Android and building alternatives to Google's proprietary technology (location & mapping, email, browsing, app store etc.). They are one of the few companies who have the capacity to do that and already have products in place to cover 80% of what is required.

While I'm not exactly a fan of Microsoft, there is nothing I dread more than a closed platform controlled by a single company, and Google is moving more and more aggressively in that direction. There is now a whole industry dedicated to installing hacked Google products on devices Google does not approve of.

<comment><USER45> I'm always baffled whenever someone comes up with these wacky Google Android replacement suggestions. It's as if they selectively choose to ignore history and the billions, that would be futilely squandered, pursuing something that has absolutely zero chance of ever succeeding or even being profitable. I'm not sure what fantasy world you reside in, but replacing Google's proprietary apps and services with Microsoft's proprietary apps is not only a significantly less value proposition for the consumer, but there's absolutely no incentive for the consumer or OEM to even remotely consider such a platform. You will never have the ecosystem and you will never have the developer support and whatever developers and OEM's you do manage to bribe over they'll quickly abandon the platform once the payola dries up.

>There is now a whole industry dedicated to installing hacked Google products on devices Google does not approve of.

I think you meant to say there was until Google closed that loophole.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Microsoft's Windows and Office products are now in the product position of commercial trucks. Every business of any size has some commercial trucks. Businesses buy them, use them, maintain them, and replace them when necessary. They're not exciting, but they get the job done. Nobody thinks about them much.

Microsoft should just accept that they sell a commercial product for businesses and make a good solid product that needs little attention and gets the job done. Like Mack trucks.

</comment><comment><USER47> You can have my windows when I can game properly somewhere else (and no, no you can't).

<comment><USER48> Xbox and PlayStation. The "problem" is that you want to game on your PC, not that there isn't another viable option.

<comment><USER49> Can you point me to the console version of Dota 2?

<comment><USER50> I mean, that particular game does run exceptionally well on Linux. I think, even quite a bit better than on Windows, unless your GPU's drivers for Linux happen to be shit, of course.

But yeah, the overall point still stands. If you have a particular game that you don't feel like you can substitute and it's not available on a platform that you'd like to switch to, you're probably not switching to that platform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> What I don't understand is, with Apple and Microsoft moving to "services" business-models, who do they see as providing the hardware for this future they envision? I don't think we are near the point where either laptops or phones are a commodity. If nobody want to make hardware their first priority, how is anyone going to ensure the best experience for the customers using their serviceS?

<comment><USER52> Apple is not moving to services, they are very much a hardware company. Services are for them more like a thing to make the hardware more attractive.

Microsoft has not really been in hardware space before (except consoles, otherwise it was mostly accessories). I believe they jumped to laptops, tablets and desktops to have full control of the user experience.

<comment><USER10> Right, given the *soft in the name, Microsoft has never seen itself as a hardware company and every move it has made into hardware (except Nokia) was reluctant and to fill a need for software they couldn't convince hardware friends to make at scale for them.

Microsoft started building mice because they wanted to add a wheel to them to make working in Office applications better.

Microsoft started building 2-in-1 tablet laptops (Surface) because they'd been calling it the future for a decade and no one was paying attention.

For the most part Microsoft's hardware strategy is at its best in "if you build it, they will come (and copy it as soon as they understand why you built it)" mode.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> So clearly the market has chosen, and walled gardens where users don't have the freedom to run their own code or apps, their own OSes prevented with locked bootloaders, locked apps (no ability to interfere with apps running on YOUR device, e.g. read their data), ... and so on is now the default policy.

Never again will one app be compatible with others without a business agreement between them ... because that just can't be allowed (dixit $100 million per year+ managers at these huge companies, and I'm sure it's 100% coincidence that this would allow small companies to compete with them. Totally unrelated to this decision). Can't work in the cloud, can't work on android, can't work on IOS. And for that matter, can't work on UWP.

And of course let's not forget that the massive cost, that everyone's data is now 100% accessible to law enforcement and civil courts (and thus to anyone with the money to sue you) is just acceptable damage. After all, that doesn't affect $100 billion plus companies much at all.

Their argument is that it can make web banking unsafe. Yes ... that's true. It can.

What is does 99.999% of the time however is enforce the market dominance of really large players.

But, like people walking into a camp during WWII, nobody holds a moment of silence when they enter the compound with the large barbed wire. Nobody regrets what's happening when they lock the gate. Only years later, when all the bodies are found ... then we stop and think.

This is them locking the gate. Now comes years and years of really really bad applications, and exploiting the lockin.

And yes, the only system not in a locked ecosystem is the PC ecosystem (needless to say, this is the ecosystem that ALL of these large companies use, MS, Google and Apple, for themselves. And now they're locking it for the rest of us)

</comment><comment><USER54> Windows desktop was always driving demand for Windows enterprise, why else would you need exchange servers and CIFS/SMB file servers? Who would buy MS SQL server licences without the larger lock in effect? Maybe they think that the cloud has broken this dependency, but I think they are bringing ruin over the house of Redmond (in the long run)

</comment><comment><USER55> About that reorganization :

"Today, I'm announcing the formation of two new engineering teams"

"Windows: Joe Belfiore will continue leading our Windows experiences and will drive Windows innovation in partnership with the PC and device ecosystem"

How does this exactly means they are giving up on Windows ?! Seriously, wishful thinking much ?

<comment><USER56> They are not giving up Windows. They just adjusted the organization to reflect the fact that Windows itself is no longer as important as in the 90s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Windows is still a mess... inconsistent interface, multiple ways to configure the same thing, the registry.....

I know it's not the same market circumstances but this feels alot like the decision to stop development of ie6 after Microsoft beat Netscape.

</comment><comment><USER58> Windows used to be the biggest market differentiator for Microsoft. What does Azure do that Amazon or Google can't? What would make Microsoft uniquely different if it had no Windows?

</comment><comment><USER59> Microsoft really should have pursued creating a version of Windows specifically for gaming. I imagine there are lot of users who only use Windows for that purpose.

<comment><USER60> They do have the Xbox..

<comment><USER59> Yeah, I meant for PC gaming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> I think it would be better titled :- windows is dead, long live windows!

I think this article better explains things [http://www.zdnet.com/article/heres-how-and-why-microsoft- is-...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/heres-how-and-why-microsoft-is-splitting- up-windows-in-its-latest-reorg/)

</comment><comment><USER62> No mention of Windows popularity as crypto mining server OS, due to superior GPU driver SW.

</comment><comment><USER63> Ballmer must be the #1 executive who has gotten the farthest on the least intelligence.

<comment><USER44> Ballmer had a perfect 800 score on his SAT math section. He kept the company expanding revenue and profits for a decade and a half, which is an eternity in Internet time. His Windows on mobile strategy was a few years late from being a huge success (agreed, that is also an eternity).

<comment><USER64> Are we seriously equating business intelligence with a high school aptitude test that covers rudimentary mathematics?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> There's a book "Zone to Win" by Geoffrey A. Moore that describes these various transitions for Microsoft and it suggests that it's intentional to transition one business unit at a time.

</comment><comment><USER66> So Windows will basically keep on existing to run Office and Visual Studio?

</comment><comment><USER67> People are still loyal to Windows, because that's what they are used to. And PC's and laptops still has Windows pre-installed.

</comment><comment><USER68> Mac OS is far closer to death than Windows.

</comment><comment><USER69> Still the best desktop OS, sadly.

</comment><comment><USER70> If windows 10 is the end then i think It's safe to say I will never be returning to windows for as long as I can help it.

Between it's spyware and its tendency to just do things without telling you, without giving you an easy way to stop, it is just not something that feels comfortable enough to use anymore for power users.

It feels like whatever I gain in convience, is lost when trying to figure out what windows is doing with all that CPU/RAM/Network usage or how to disable some new service that I have 0 interest in.

</comment><comment><USER71> Dear Microsoft,

If you're not using the PC, can we have it back?

— General Purpose Computing

<comment><USER72> General Purpose Computing using PC's is a thing _because_ of Microsoft (and IBM). Without those two there would have never been a PC in the first place.

The forces against general purpose computing are to be found on 1 infinite loop and 1600 Amphitheatre parkway.

<comment><USER73> I rode a PC wave that nearly completely bypassed IBM/Microsoft:

1\. The "home" computer boom: ZX Spectrums, Acorn, Commodore, Atari with maybe an Apple II or a CPM machines for more serious use. 2\. The Atari ST or Amiga wave. WIMP and productivity software as well as gaming and content creation 3\. At this point I did switch to Windows but I could just have easily switched to Mac. Apple didn't cease to be a force at any stage. They maintained a strong base in home use and content creation only losing the enterprise.

In our alternate history there was also room for Next or BeOS. You never know.

Now what MS/IBM did enable (accidentally to some degree) was an open hardware platform. However if they weren't around then other players might have stepped in. Maybe CP/M succeeded in going 16bit, GEM might have caught on or the Apple clones might have found a way to legally survive.

On final reading I realise you might have meant "PC" in the narrow sense. If so then you're correct in a trivial sense. If not then I disagree.

<comment><USER74> > Apple didn't cease to be a force at any stage. They maintained a strong base > in home use and content creation only losing the enterprise.

They almost went bankrupt around 1994.

If it wasn't for Microsoft money and the merge with NeXT bringing Jobs back, they would have been gone.

Up to iPod's success Apple was meaningless pretty much everywhere outside US.

<comment><USER75> It's amazing how much they nearly lost it all. In the late 80s early 90s apple was a fairly common sight in education, 10 years later it was windows everywhere outside of degree level STEM (where it was *nix of some sort)

<comment><USER72> Given the context of this thread note the irony that Microsoft actually bailed out Apple to polish up their image for anti-trust reasons.

[https://www.wired.com/2009/08/dayintech_0806/](https://www.wired.com/2009/08/dayintech_0806/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> Offtopic: What font is used on that webpage? It's very comfortable to the eye.

<comment><USER77> Firefox Dev tools say Freight Sans Pro

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> The end of Windows is the year of the Linux desktop

<comment><USER79> Linux desktop will never thrive. I'm sorry to tell you that.

it's more likely that some other player just releases a completely new OS to replace Windows. just like Chrome replaced IE (and not Firefox).

<comment><USER78> _Linux desktop will never com_

Exactly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> I'm excited by the end of Windows, or really the end of dominance of desktop OSes. This means we will have the freedom to innovate again and do some really wild things.

</comment><comment><USER81> I won't support OSes such as Windows and MacOS until they give me the same core user freedoms that you get with GNU/Linux.</comment>


Google Gmail purchase history can't be deleted - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/05/google-gmail-purchase-history-cant-be-deleted.html <comment><USER2> This sounds weird. When CNBC broke the story a month back, I'd :

1\. gone around deleting every invoice from my GMail inbox

2\. Noticed it wasn't getting removed after waiting for 24 hours.

3\. Reached out to the reporter mentioning google might be not deleting it properly.

4\. Waiting a couple more days and calling off the alarm when google did finally delete it.

I wrote about it at [https://captnemo.in/blog/2019/06/01/cleaning-google- purchase...](https://captnemo.in/blog/2019/06/01/cleaning-google-purchases/). My purchase history still shows 0 results, more than a month after my cleaning spree.

3 weeks still sounds too long for this information to linger around.

<comment><USER3> I always assume there's a backup somewhere in Google or Facebook that's old as hell but has the old emails, I would assume some of these places have cold storage options for backing up legacy data, but then again, there's the time myspace wiped a bunch of old data and nobody seemed to have cared.

Surprised to this day that many other sites have shut down, but MySpace keeps on kicking.

<comment><USER4> I can assure you that Google goes to great lengths to ensure ancient backups of your user data do not still exist.

No backup of user data exists more than 30 days there, typically less.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The reporter never says they deleted the e-mails from their trash, and the "3 week" time period is less than the 30 days it takes for the trash to automatically empty.

I wouldn't be surprised if that's the entire, innocent, explanation here.

(I still think you should be able to turn off purchase history separately...)

<comment><USER6> If it was in the trash, then the link to the email the system provided should probably have still worked instead of redirecting him to the inbox

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> That sounds pretty illegal over here in Europe.

Or did they fix it for European users?

 _Edit: Why am I being downvoted for asking this question?_

<comment><USER8> Sounds vague... What law are you referring to? Why would it be illegal? Is that reasonable in this case?

 _Please don 't comment about the voting on comments._ [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER7> > What law are you referring to?

GDPR. It requires that the person whose personal data is processed must give explicit permission about what data is processed and allow the purpose for which the data is processed. And it must be possible at any time to withdraw that permission and to delete the data.

At least as far as I understand those rules, ianal.

<comment><USER9> > It requires that the person whose personal data is processed must give > explicit permission about what data is processed

> and allow the purpose for which the data is processed.

> And it must be possible at any time to withdraw that permission

> and to delete the data.

No it doesn't.

There are several lawful bases for storing and processing data. User permission is only one of those bases. It's usually not the best one to use. [https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/gdpr- resources/lawful-b...](https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/gdpr- resources/lawful-basis-resources/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've seen this happen as well.

There's purchases I've deleted emails (and emptied the trash for) only for it to still be in the purchase list. Clicking on the purchase does not lead to the email.

Similarly, I believe the gmail search cache also has some lingering cache issues. There are emails referenced in the drop down in search that I've long deleted.

It is frustrating

</comment><comment><USER11> I have worked at well known tech companies and I personally dealt with some less-valuable-but-still-PII. We didn't store the PII because we cared about exploiting it or because we wanted to somehow sell this data to outsiders, that's not how we made our money. We took and continue to take the security and privacy of our customers very seriously. We made sure we were GDPR compliant as well.

Instead, the small PII we had was used for fraud signals and for logging/debugging. Very frequently we would get complaints about things not working and we would have to go digging through logs to figure out exactly what happened, and without that data it was hard to figure out exactly what happened if something went wrong.

Most of the data was TTLed in our logs between 7 to 90 days so that took care of most of the issues. Other data that got logged into a data warehouse needs to be deleted via Spark jobs, which takes several days to scour all the data.

Like I said, the companies I've worked at don't need user data for its primary product and even then it took time to fully delete a user's data upon request, so I can imagine it taking a lot of time for a company like Google where extensive use of user's data is widespread throughout the company.

</comment><comment><USER12> Previous thread on the previous article: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19942219](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19942219)

</comment><comment><USER13> What does 'deleted' even mean? Deleting an email from all sources is non- trivial.

</comment><comment><USER14> Is Office 365 any better - or am I stuck running my own mail server if I really want privacy?

<comment><USER15> Fastmail

<comment><USER16> I was going to recommend Fastmail as well. I'm a paying customer and very happy with it.

<comment><USER17> Just don't miss a payment or your email address will be up for grabs again. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> gmail can also stay open for months without session expiration.

</comment><comment><USER19> Yes but did they go in and perm delete the Trash label/folder? They still are alive for 30 days. Three weeks is inside that window.

>It also says you can delete this log by deleting the email, but three weeks after we deleted all email, the list is still there.

<comment><USER20> Yes, otherwise the links to the emails would've worked.

<comment><USER21> The links don't work for trashed messages. They lead to a page that says "the requested conversation has been deleted" and links to the inbox.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Sounds normal to me.

Is there any company that deletes their customers' purchase histories?

And doesn't the IRS prescribe that this kind of information should be in the books?

<comment><USER23> This is not the purchase history of Google product/services, it's anything you buy and use your gmail address. Example, if you use your gmail account for Amazon, your entire purchase history will be stored by Google and you can't delete it.

And yours isn't the first comment in this thread who's question can be answered if they bothered reading the article. Some are quick to defend the actions of a corporation.

<comment><USER24> > Example, if you use your gmail account for Amazon, your entire purchase > history will be stored by Google and you can't delete it.

not anymore. amazon has stopped putting product information in notification emails for just this reason. Notifications are now generic, "your order confirmation" etc. you have to login to amazon to discover the order that was confirmed etc. makes email receipts much less useful but avoids the 3rd party privacy issue.

and also, TFA is wrong. if you delete the email AND empty the trash, or wait 30 days for auto-empty, the purchase is forgotten by gmail.

even with this in mind, amazon chose to remove specifics from their notifications.

EDIT: except for the first 1click notification.

<comment><USER25> Amazon still lists the first item of a purchase for me (e.g. an order of X and Y shows up as "X and 1 other item"). Google then lists that on my purchases page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is silly. Of course Google still has your purchase information if you haven't deleted the email. It's like complaining your email search index can't be deleted without deleting the indexed emails.

<comment><USER7> They already deleted the emails. From the article

> _When I click on an individual purchase and try to remove it — it says I can > do this by deleting the email, after all — it just redirects to my inbox and > not to the original email message for me to delete, since that email no > longer exists._

<comment><USER26> As the top comment already noted, the email still exists in Trash, where messages get removed 30 days after they are deleted unless the user manually empties their trash. Emails in trash are obviously still indexed. (They show up when I search for "in:trash".) There are multiple other people who have said that deleting emails removes them from their purchase history.

<comment><USER20> In the test, the trash was certainly emptied; otherwise, the links to the emails would've worked.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A minimalist real-time framework for tomorrow's apps - <AUTHOR> http://feathersjs.com/ <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11290577](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11290577)</comment>


Dark Matter Sighting Gets a Reprieve in New Analysis - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/dark-matter-gets-a-reprieve-in-new-analysis <comment><USER2> Can someone please explain how dark matter, which can't be directly observed, is mathematically any different than adding an arbitrary parameter to the equation and tuning it to fit? I can't help but think of von Neumann's elephant.

This isn't me trying to be clever, I'd really appreciate some clarity on this.

<comment><USER3> It's probably worth considering this question from the perspective of how we know most subatomic particles are real. They can't be directly observed either - the LHC and other particle accelerators only ever observe electrical disturbances in their sensors following a pattern of results from decay product interactions. No one sits down with a microscope and says "yep that's a gluon".

EDIT: Consider that the Higgs boson wasn't "directly" observed till very recently but was assumed to exist for decades prior for the exact same reasons - you needed to add an additional term to the equations to break the symmetry and cause particles to have mass, which in turn implied a pervasive field throughout the universe we hadn't observed yet. Which in turn implied it should exist discreetly under high energy conditions as a particle, which became the Higgs.

<comment><USER4> I thought the extra term was added so the equations didn't result in probabilities outside the 0-1 range.

> "The Higgs boson gives mass to other elementary particles such as quarks and > electrons, and its existence is necessary for the theory to give sensible > results (i.e., the probability of processes to occur cannot be greater than > 100 percent)." > [https://www.albany.edu/news/87798.php](https://www.albany.edu/news/87798.php)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It seems like the title should be something like "Dark Matter Sighting Get Reprieve". Dark matter is pretty well established, it's just a supposed direct sighting that now seems to be getting a second look.

<comment><USER6> Right. The article doesn't explain why an electromagnetic sighting is better than the gravitational one.

<comment><USER7> That's because it isn't "better", it's just different.

The unspoken assumption is that two different types of evidence are generally better than just one type, not that one type is better than the other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> wouldn't it be crazy if dark matter turned out to be Dyson Spheres ?

<comment><USER9> This is basically impossible unless someone has figured out a way to break the laws of thermodynamics. And if that's true a whole bunch of stuff goes out the window.

Basically a Dyson Sphere is about the least subtle thing a civilization could do and would be detectable from hundreds of millions of light years away. All energy ends as heat. The only way to get rid of heat in space is to radiate it away. It radiates away in a predictable way based on the temperature of the object. At any sort of temperature we're talking about this would be a massive glowing infrared cloud with the energy output of a star. It'd be hard to miss that.

Think about this: a Dyson sphere here would be absorbing the energy output of a star. That energy has to go somewhere.

Another point against it is the Elapsed Time Argument, which can be used to effectively disprove many such hypotheses. The argument goes like this: if a given phenomenon is artificial it should be less common the more distant you look. At the edge of the observable universe we're looking at a universe significantly younger than ours. Because of this something artificial should be less common further away because less time has elapsed there. If that's not the case it's almost certainly not artificial.

It's also worth pointing out that dark matter out-masses regular matter by 10-to-1 or more. That's a lot to attribute to Dyson Spheres. That would make the universe an extremely populated place where we somehow still can't detect anyone.

<comment><USER8> Hmmm, your response is amazing. I was just sort of pondering a far out idea. But the amount of time and energy you put into your response is awesome. So cool that you thought about my dumb idea that much. Not trolling just thinking about far out ideas. I like your response a lot.

<comment><USER10> You'd need an awful lot of Dyson Spheres, and they'd all be in places you wouldn't expect suitable stars at all, and then you'd have to hide them from searches for brown dwarfs and black holes as components of Dark Matter. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_compact_halo_object](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_compact_halo_object) for a brief overview.

The killer problem is that stars bright enough to gather up energy via Dyson Sphere mechanisms aren't seen around any of the many thousands of galaxies we've looked at. Moreover, in order to account for an appreciable fraction of the halo masses, there would have to be at least hundreds of millions of Dyson Spheres for every galaxy in the sky. The Dyson Spheres would also have to be very very old because, thanks to gravitational lensing by foreground galaxy clusters, we have decent enough views of galaxies billions of light-years away that we would see large numbers of not-yet-Dyson-Sphered stars well outside galaxies. The most distant spiral-type galaxies in particular would look very different than much closer ones, and that is not the case. Have a look for yourself: [http://legacysurvey.org/viewer#IC%203556](http://legacysurvey.org/viewer#IC%203556)

Bright stars only form in regions where the dust and gas is sufficiently dense to collapse gravitationally; those regions are generally found only within galaxies or in "low points" of gravitational potential within clusters of galaxies (the dust and gas gathering in such points may form a new galaxy). Dust that doesn't fall into galaxies or into cluster "low points" becomes too diffuse to form even the dimmest stars.

By comparison, dark matter tends not to fall into galaxies or cluster low points because collisions between dark matter particles, or between them and ordinary matter, does not produce radiation. Radiation from particle collisions carries off the angular momentum that keeps the particles on higher orbits. Ordinary dust and gas collisions release light (and radio and so on) which enables gravitational collapse into stars. We can see the light (and radio and microwaves and so on) with telescopes.

This tendency of dark matter to stay on high orbits well above the luminous matter in galaxies leads to a greater angular momentum than expected in the outer reaches of the luminous matter. That angular momentum excess is how dark matter was discovered. Why don't the fast-moving stars and dust fly away from their galaxies? Because dark matter throughout the galaxy adds more mass than is seen electromagnetically, so there is a sufficient tendency to fall inwards counteracting the excess momentum. Why doesn't the fast-moving luminous matter collide more often, throw off more radiation, and collapse into the centres of galaxies more rapidly? Because the shell of dark matter well outside the bright parts of galaxies holds it up, somewhat like a scaffold. It's a balance, but not an especially fine one; it seems to be pretty generic for a collisionless, cold, non-self-interacting (except by gravitation), non- radiating, microscopic dust in which the visible components of galaxies are immersed.

Let's ignore the other responders' concerns about not being able to keep the Dyson Spheres as cool as the background to all observers (how would a Dyson Sphere builder in a galaxy 100 million light years away know that _we_ might be looking from our galaxy, and so decide to cloak themselves _only_ from us?). Let's also ignore whether such things would be transparent, or would occlude optical emissions from the galaxies they surround. We can't however ignore their gravitational influence: these Dyson Spheres have to "hold up" the non-Dyson-Sphered stars they surround, to stop their host galaxies from collapsing. You can't do that with only a few Dyson Spheres, and as you add more, you'd expect to see more small gravitational lensing distortions.

Although our telescopes aren't good enough to probe many galaxies, there are no such (gravitational lensing) distortions around our own galaxy, or Andromeda, and yet both galaxies' luminous matter's behaviour essentially requires an abundance of dark matter.

(There also isn't a dust eclipsing distant sources of light, which we would expect for a very dim but not exactly invisible Dyson Sphere would; there also isn't a large number of pointlike sources of deep infrared or radio in our or Andromeda's galactic halos, which one would expect if a Dyson Sphere builder were extremely energy-efficient. We also don't see excited dusts and gas around galaxies suggesting accidental "painting" with lasers or the like being shot out of Dyson Spheres if their operators decided not to radiate unused energy in every direction).

Finally, there is a hierarchical problem here: not only does dark matter surround galaxies and affect their structure gravitationally, it also surrounds whole clusters of galaxies. Without lots of dark matter hanging around waaaaay outside galaxies within a galaxy-cluster, clustering would be very different from what we see in the sky. Moreover, we know from Einstein lensing that the bulk of the magnification done by clusters is not traceable to the luminous matter in the galaxy cluster.

So you'd need to have lots and lots and lots of invisible Dyson Spheres many tens of thousands of light years outside galaxies. By lots, for a cluster similar to ours, this would mean a few hundred trillion Dyson Spheres, all very carefully engineered _and positioned_ to mimic cold dark matter in areas where stars are not naturally seen. Also all evidence of towing stars, or generating new stars from scratch, has to be hidden from view in tens of thousands of galaxies over a span of a billion or more years, and somehow no galaxies known are older than the completion of the Dyson Sphere project, or somehow undisturbed early galaxies look identical to much more recent galaxies.

The engineering challenges would be outright cosmological, not just astronomical.

Wanna scare yourself with sci-fi thoughts? If this type of engineering is all done by a single culture, what would make them want to _hide_ so carefully?

<comment><USER10> PS: I wrote the long reply above because it's refreshing in these comments to see someone asking "crazy questions" honestly, rather than advancing some crazy idea as if it were fact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> MOND is epistemologically far superior to the hack of Dark matter. What does Dark matter explain that MOND can't?

<comment><USER10> > What does Dark matter explain that MOND can't

MOND _describes_ , it doesn't explain. By adding a simple function to Newton's law of universal gravitation, it does a very good job of describing the momentum-deficit in the bulk motion of large optical and radio sources in a variety of galaxies compared to the predictions from Newton's unmodified theory. That it does so, and with such a simple modification, is interesting. Milgrom's function in MOND is almost certainly the simplest post-Newtonian gravitational term extending Newton's theory consistent with observations. (There are other adaptations of Newton's theory to add post-Newtonian elements, for example to describe motions within the solar system. These are generally much more complicated than MOND [see [1] for a quick overview].)

In practically any post-Newtonian term expanding Newton's law of universal gravitation, one will discover a greater mismatch with observation as the relative speeds of material participating in Newtonian gravitation increase. One has to "patch" with additional terms and counter-terms, resulting in something comparable to a Taylor Series. One generally experiences obvious failure with this approach as the relative speeds of the masses become comparable to tenths of the speed of light.

MOND doesn't describe the momentum-deficit in the motion of large clusters of galaxies, nor the momentum-anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background. It doesn't describe large mass-flows, or especially relativistic mass-flows as seen in Seyfert galaxies and a number of galaxy clusters. It doesn't describe fast binary objects. It doesn't accurately describe the _fine_ details of the bulk sources that it describes very well. It also doesn't accurately describe our solar system; one has to "patch" MOND with additional terms, and it quickly becomes easier just to discard MOND as a contribution to solar system dynamics altogether. MOND also doesn't abolish the need to use General Relativity to describe the angle-brightness-redshift relationship of the reddest galaxies (and the supernovae within them) visible in the sky. MOND does not provide sufficient post-Newtonian correction for GPS and other orbiting satellites with very precise frequency generators on board, nor for the results of experiments in MESSENGER [3] and numerous other spacecraft.

Let's return to what MOND does do very well: describing the relative angular momentum of slow-moving inner and outer bulk bits of galaxies.

Attempts to adapt MOND so that it accurately describes relativistic galaxy/cluster components have generally resulted in adding a field to standard General Relativity [3], and it is mostly cultural history that keeps MOND from being properly promoted as a source contributing to the stress- energy tensor. That would put it on identical footing to dark matter _in the bulk_ , focusing minds on the question: "what are the microscopic details of the beyond-the-Standard-Model-of-Particle-Physics contributions to the stress- energy tensor?".

> epistemologically far superior

What is Newton's explanation for his law of universal gravitation, which MOND slightly modifies in a very specific way? What is the modern explanation of gravitation, which can encode MONDian behaviour in various ways?

\- --

[1] [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327607544_Post- Newt...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327607544_Post- Newtonian_satellite_orbits)

[2] [https://pgda.gsfc.nasa.gov/products/66](https://pgda.gsfc.nasa.gov/products/66)

[3] Chapter 7 of [http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2012LRR....15...10F](http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2012LRR....15...10F) (arxiv version: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1112.3960](https://arxiv.org/abs/1112.3960))

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >"The galactic center shines too brightly, like the glow of a metropolis at night where maps show only a town. [...] The new study, along with two others that came out in March, reopens the possibility that space-based instruments have found the first direct evidence of the elusive "dark matter" thought to pervade the universe."

Please give an example of what dark matter cannot explain.

<comment><USER4> I am serious. This is what I have seen:

      Galactic rotation curves exactly as predicted: explained by dark matter
      Galactic rotation curves not as predicted: explained by dark matter

      Area of sky brighter than predicted: explained by dark matter
      Area of sky dimmer than predicted: explained by dark matter.

<comment><USER12> Not entirely sure what you'r referring to by area of the sky but as to rotation curves it's:

-Galactic rotation curve not as predicted by relativity: explained by dark matter

-Galactic rotation curve exactly as predicted by relativity: _allowed_ by dark matter, not explained by theories that propose a different uniform law of gravity that also explains case A.

<comment><USER4> This is not my point here, but the galaxy you refer to is consistent with MOND: [https://tritonstation.wordpress.com/2018/04/04/the-dwarf- gal...](https://tritonstation.wordpress.com/2018/04/04/the-dwarf-galaxy- ngc1052-df2/)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Is Computer Science Enrollment So Low? - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com/why-is-computer-science-enrollment-so-low-dea064c2f7f0 <comment><USER2> I'm not sure if enrollment is the correct word. At my college, enrollment in the introductory CS course is at an all time high, over 1200 students who sign up. A result of this is that the CS department is now financially constrained and a high GPA cap has been set in place. But going back to the discussion, why is the number of CS graduates -- I think that's what the author intended to state -- constant? I'd like to offer a student's perspective.

First, CS is hard. Perhaps not from our point of view, us who practically grew up with a computer. But for the majority of people, it is. I notice that the students who tend to do well either have prior experience (if AP CS qualifies as that) or come from a background that emphasizes logic and abstraction (e.g. math, physics, philosophy). However, this rule of thumb fails for one group -- students who are willing to work hard, attend lecture, go to office hours, and are not afraid to ask for help from other students or GSIs. If we tried to persuade students to enroll by depicting CS as simple as making a peanut butter sandwich, I'd think we would be setting them up for disappointment -- somethings are just hard and boring, and you just have to get through it.

Second thing, a lot of college students are not willing to fail or take risks with their GPA. Maybe this has to do college admissions; often times I hear "at least you were smart enough to get into _______". The effect is that students are pressured to maintain an image of academic perfection. And the easiest way to do that is to only take courses you are comfortable with. When I tell my friends to at least take one CS course before graduating, the common response is "it's hard and I don't want to get a D" \-- though that is rarely the case based on the public grade distributions.

The point is, CS is hard but doable. But hey, I got some of them to enroll in Data Science.

<comment><USER3> For me, it seemed like everyone around me in my CS classes just got it. There were definitely times I felt stupid because of it and it was demotivating to see so many people having an easy time while I struggled. When your assignments are taking you 8 hours and other people are getting them done in 3 hours, you start to think, "maybe I'm just not cut out for this". Eventually I started to get it and it became much easier for me, but it took a while. Who knows? Maybe I'm still not cut out for this.

<comment><USER4> There will always be people who are just "better". They'll learn faster, remember more, and generally make you feel inadequate by comparison.

There are also people who seem like that, but aren't. These people have prior experience and memories that accelerate the speed at which they learn, and leave fewer remaining new concepts to memorize. Over time you'll catch up to this second group, if you apply yourself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Maybe because a lot of people don't think they need a computer science degree? I mean, look at the tech scene. The general 'message' running throughout is of people who dropped out of school to focus on their startup or picked themselves up by the bootstraps to learn to code to escape a more mundane career.

There's a general assumption (rightly or wrongly) that programming and general tech skills are self taught, and that may lead to people thinking the idea of a degree for the 'theory' side is useless.

Is this picture right? Eh, maybe, maybe not. But I'd say it's definitely how the tech world is perceived, leading to a lots of kids thinking other degrees are more useful (in case they decide to switch to a different career later in life).

This may also explain why computer science enrollment is much higher in countries like India too. There's still a heavy focus on education in the culture there, and people from the region might see a computer science degree as being as necessary for a tech worker as a law degree is for a lawyer.

</comment><comment><USER6> Most of the information here is at least 4 years old. Using numbers from 2015, the number of people graduating is above 2004 levels and by all accounts rising rapidly. You can build the graph yourself here: [https://ncsesdata.nsf.gov/webcaspar/TableBuilder](https://ncsesdata.nsf.gov/webcaspar/TableBuilder)

I don't think it's surprising that in 2013 there weren't that many CS grads. If assuming 4 year degrees(which is probably more like 5-6) then people who got awarded those degrees would have graduated High School in 2007-9. No one I knew even knew what computer science was in those days. The "computer science" course in high school consisted solely of typing and learning how to use Word.

<comment><USER7> When I started undergrad in 2011, CS was just another science major and you took whatever you felt like.

By the end of college, every 200 level class had a waitlist and the whole process was micromanaged in order to make sure everyone in the major could at least take one class each term.

Glad I avoided most of that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> For "Question #1: Why, in spite of high wages and cultural/economic importance of tech, has the number of CS majors has been basically flat for 15 years?":

The interesting metric for employees is not wages, but "wages minus cost of living". As long as the costs of living are that high in the Bay Area, the wages with respect to this metric are not that large.

For "Question 2: [...] What motivates males to pursue CS?"

An important factor for me was hacking into the machine more deeply than any human has gone.;-) (just kidding, but it should bring over the mentality). With all the legal hurdles against Reverse Engineering, DCMA, show trials against Phil Zimmermann and Aaron Swartz, hacking has become too dangerous. Also with all the standardization (Web standards, POSIX, WinAPI, ...) instead of "being able to do things on your own" it has become much more boring. Finally I am annoyed by "a new bandwagon every year" (is this a sensible translation of the German "jedes Jahr eine neue Sau durchs Dorf treiben") in particular in the web community instead of thinking long and deeply about the best way to solve a problem.

</comment><comment><USER9> Not too many comments yet. I'll try. My opinion might be controversial, but IMO 100% accurate.

So let's look at some of the top companies who might hire CS people. Not everything I mention is CS, but the overall company philosophy doubtlessly pervades everything:

\</comment><comment>----

Google:

90% (give or take) of their revenue is from advertising, most of which simply annoys people. The more information they can vacuum up about everyone in the world, the happier they are. Most jobs are mundane if not soul-sucking, but if you can't invert a binary tree on a whiteboard you can fuck off.

Interesting projects are constantly being released into beta, but invariably abandoned on a whim a few years later.

Plus they're lobbying for more H-1B to help keep wages down.[1]

\</comment><comment>----

Facebook:

work for a sociopath ("They 'trust me', dumb fucks"), who also wants to vacuum up as much information as possible about everyone in the world.

His lobbying group wants more H-1B visas, because, as his buddy says, Americans "don't work hard enough".[2]

\</comment><comment>----

Apple:

work for a famously paranoid company. Don't dare tell anyone where you work or what you do.

Neglect many multi-billion dollar product lines for years, because the corporate organizational structure won't allow product development continuity. Be completely oblivious to how douchey this behavior is: "Can't innovate anymore, my ass".

But they do have the "courage" to make minor "improvements" such as dropping a headphone jack and dropping a MagSafe connection.

\</comment><comment>----

I could go on and on. It's not just CS, it's all STEM jobs. People who do them don't get much respect from companies or from Americans in general.

What something to do? Go figure out how many in Congress are STEM vs lawyers! I don't need to do that I already know just how skewed the numbers are.

America as a country just doesn't care about STEM much any more. And there's feedback in the system to keep it that way. Why hire US graduates when Indians and Chinese and Russians and countless others are fungible and are available at much lower cost.

Why should American kids be cannon fodder in the global race to the bottom?

[1] [https://qz.com/969280/with-h-1b-under-threat-alphabet-is- the...](https://qz.com/969280/with-h-1b-under-threat-alphabet-is-the-only-big- tech-company-to-ramp-up-immigration-lobbying/)

[2] [http://www.breitbart.com/big- government/2015/05/15/venture-c...](http://www.breitbart.com/big- government/2015/05/15/venture-capitalist-h1-b-avocate-americans-dont-work- hard-enough/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Now that I'm learning computer science on my own I realize I enjoy it and have a knack for it. But when I was in school I was intimidated by it. Computer science was presented to me like something that required tons of complex math to do even the simplest thing. It also had a reputation as the smart people thing to do which scares off a lot of people, especially when they are young, not so confident and easy to scare off.

Even the article presents this sort of idea when it suggests that maybe the average student doesn't really have the aptitude for CS. Really? Do you really need to be smarter than average to code or even to code well? I think not.

Now most people here are smarter than average and most know how to code. It does seem like tech attracts smart people, but you don't have to be smart to know how to code. I think we can all admit that learning code doesn't require tons of intelligence. IT just takes a bit of patience and determination. Kinda like learning a language, or learning to dance you don't need a really high IQ to do it, just gotta apply yourself and be patient.

Maybe it does take alot of intelligence to program well. But really most projects don't really require you to write magnificent, perfect and complex code. A lot of it is not that hard.

I think tech just seems to attract smart people because of the stereotype that only smart people can do it. It's a bit of a feedback loop.

Computer Science was never presented for what it is, which is basically a skill you can learn just like carpentry or metal working or the many other skills which require you to apply a set of gained knowledge.

I also wish people would highlight the symbolic logic, and learning processes and steps aspect of programming, because that would get philosophy major types and also hands on trades types more interested in it.

At the same time, I think if I had gone into CS through traditional schooling, I probably would have been terrible at it and probably would have hated it. Learning it on my own by doing means I learn only what I need and get to apply it to projects I want to do and see a purpose in. That is very different from the classroom style learning. Also computer science is very procedural and steps oriented, it's the kind of thing you learn best by doing and not through lectures.

A classroom setting seems like the worst and most difficult way to learn programming, kinda like trying to learn how to dance by sitting in a room listening to someone lecture you about dance steps. The fact that anyone learns it this way is just a testament to how hard some of these students work.

So maybe the issue is that computer science is mislabeled as a science and put along-side career paths like maths, sciences, engineering, when really it would fit much better as a skilled trade and put alongside other trades like plumbing, or heavy equipment repair. Because really it's the same sort of thinking and skills that are being utilized. Computer science is nothing like science or math, it's more like a skilled trade. You learn to plug in code in a specific way in the right steps to create a result. That's like what a plumber does not what a scientist or a mathematician does.

<comment><USER11> I think you are failing to differentiate between computer science and programming. In my mind computer science is to programming as fluid dynamics is to plumbing. I know next to nothing about computer science, I don't think I've ever opened a computer science textbook or read a paper on computer science but I can program fairly well (at least I think so), in fact, almost all of the neat tricks I know seem to have something to do with statistics... not computer science. In the same way, I know absolutely nothing about fluid dynamics except that it is probably the study of how fluids behave but I can fix my shower and operate a hose and set up an drip line for irrigating crops.

From this point of view you might ask the reverse of the articles question. Why are so many people enrolled in computer science when it seems to be such a specialized subject that might not even be useful to the average programmer?

<comment><USER10> >I think you are failing to differentiate between computer science and programming. In my mind computer science is to programming as fluid dynamics is to plumbing.

Maybe but Im just following the articles lead in conflating the two - from the article:

>There's ostensibly more demand for programmers than ever, yet CS degrees haven't even recovered from their 2004 high.

The article seems to make the assumption (and I think the right one) that lots of people get computer science degrees to become programmers.</comment></comment></comment>


US, Taiwan seek 'like-minded' democracies in supply chain shift from China - abc-xyz https://www.reuters.com/article/us-taiwan-usa-trade/us-taiwan-seek-like-minded-democracies-in-supply-chain-shift-from-china-idUSKBN25V1DC <comment><AUTHOR> Somewhat related - look at the largest companies in Taiwan - a large number of them are in the advanced electronics manufacturing space (Pegatron and TSMC for instance).

TSMC - Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing is arguably one of the most important companies in the world, manufacturing chips for Apple, Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm and many more. The barrier to entry for semiconductor fabrication is so ridiculously high, not even Apple owns its own foundries. Intel has been struggling with 7nm processes (now delayed), while TSMC is already churning out chips using the newer EUV 5nm process for Apple's upcoming ARM devices (including some iMac and Macbook models). The US recently struck a deal with TSMC, pressuring it to drop one of its largest Chinese customers (Huawei) in return for opening an advanced foundry in the US (a $12B dollar project with enormous tax breaks for TSMC).

Due to its critical positioning in advanced electronics, I genuinely believe the US would get involved if China were to "mess with" Taiwan. A sobering realization is the increasing significance yet fragility of the global technology supply chain - something the pandemic recently exposed. There are geopolitical risks to the United States having a dependency on other nations for something as critical as semiconductors. It's increasingly becoming a matter of national security.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/19/business/economy/china- ta...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/19/business/economy/china-taiwan- huawei-tsmc.html)

</comment><comment> v-yadli To some deleted comment --

I believe there are many Chinese people, visiting HN everyday to discover and share cool stuff, and look forward to conversations that are intellectually beneficial to the participants. If anything, I hope I'm one of these good people, not a troll.

When the situation started to get tight, the meaning of word "we" here is shifting to "we Americans", but you see, unless HN put up a rule to block Chinese users, they will be here. Still looking for fun stuff, but end up seeing the theme turning to "tension", "conflict".

They think differently. Some views may seem unfair, or don't make sense to them. They usually just keep quiet, hide the entries and move on. But sometimes it gets too annoying, so they'll also raise a few points.

It is you who thinks defending China is not ok. So in converse, there will be people who think it is.

It doesn't make one troll because she's not speaking in your favor. I thought this was all fine? Can we just, sit down and compute?

</comment><comment><USER2> Decoupling our economies, if successful (a big if), is a recipe for war.

Unfortunately, the last few remaining adults interested in and capable of doing the hard work of political and economic diplomacy, and domestic industrial policy left in 2016. Most had retired already as they were old enough to have lived through either WWII or the Korean War and thus knew what the stakes were. Taking their ball and going home was never an option for them no matter how much the opponent cheated--the task at hand was constant engagement, which however difficult and seemingly pointless was preferable to the alternative.

<comment><USER3> I don't know. Our economy was almost completely decoupled from the Soviet Union and that never turned into a shooting war. What's different this time that is going to overcome MAD and allow for a conventional war?

<comment><USER4> Even at its peak, USSR economy was only almost as big as the US (half the size, irrc). China is almost certainly going to surpass the US in term of total economy.

<comment><USER5> China is at or near its 21st century peak (getting old before it gets rich), and the US has a massive number of strong friends and allies, including a European Union increasingly wary of China.

It's a different Cold War from the USSR, but democracy may still again prevail against a totalitarianism.

<comment><USER6> The EU is also increasingly wary of the US.

<comment><USER3> The EU was always wary of the US. But when it comes to picking between China and the US, there's no chance they pick China without some kind of massive currently unpredicted Chinese reforms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Don't buy things from China. Vote with your wallet. I've personally done this for the past year or two. At least to the extent that it is possible. Would love to see a USA made mobile phone though.

<comment><USER8> Actually. I avoid buying products made in the USA if I possibly can. I don't like supporting aggressive militaristic regimes.

[https://i.imgur.com/Lt5akKR.png](https://i.imgur.com/Lt5akKR.png)

[Feel free to swap North Korea for China in that graphic. The end result is pretty much the same.]

<comment><USER9> The graphic is inaccurate And clearly has an objective. North Korea often invaded South Korea after the war ended

> A total of 3,693 armed North Korean agents have infiltrated into South Korea > between 1954 and 1992

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_border_incidents_inv...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_border_incidents_involving_North_and_South_Korea)

<comment><USER8> So, instead of 44-0, the USA is a mere 44-1 up on the aggression front. And as I said, since we're talking about China here, swap China for North Korea. How many countries have China invaded, bombed or staged coups in, since the end of the Korean war?

<comment><USER9> Tibet and Vietnam come to mind. Hong Kong most recently (violation of treaty). here is a full list for you

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_P...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China)

Also, as a democracy the US has released information about those events. We don't expect the PRC to release evidence they behaved poorly (since they already forbid talking about TS)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Probably be easier for usa to do that if they didn't keep starting random trade wars with other democracies.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'd like to see the US lean heavily into this and cut out any country that doesn't formally recognize Taiwan as an independent country too.

<comment><USER12> You do know that US itself have not given full diplomatic recognition to Taiwan?

<comment><USER11> I do, what's your point?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't see how Taiwan and the US are like-minded at all. Taiwan is a democratic country with a decently levelheaded approach and fantastic manufacturing that led to a good coronavirus approach.

And the US is run by a wannabe dictator, authoritarian loving, narcissist that was obviously elected by a significant portion of the US population and that has a pretty reasonable chance on getting reelected. And yes, while the mail- in voting mess might have an impact on it, it is by far not the only reason.

Like-minded democracies might be the European states, but while they actually still have a lot of american products banned for food safety reasons, similar to Taiwan, Taiwan has actually caved to White House pressure on something I would hardly call a trade deal but more a bully forcing its way on country such as Taiwan, South Korea and Japan.

It's funny how the US talks about moving manufacturing out of China, when their approach to Taiwan seems to be to bully them to build manufacturing plants in the US.

<comment><USER14> >I don't see how Taiwan and the US are like-minded at all.

We can start with a shared adversary.

>It's funny how the US talks about moving manufacturing out of China, when their approach to Taiwan seems to be to bully them to build manufacturing plants in the US.

Honestly, I think the long-term plan here is relocating as much of Taiwan to the US as possible so that there's not that much left for the PRC to take in an invasion/annexation. That means everything short of actual physical territory, from people (scientific & industrial expertise) to patents, materiel, and industrial capacity.

Denying valuable personnel and equipment to the PRC could potentially be as significant as the advantage that the US gained over the Soviet Union from Operation Paperclip, where the US got the "best and brightest" Nazi scientists, and the Soviet Union got the leftovers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Anything connected to the Trump administration is going look pretty dumb by default to most, and the politics of the U.S.-China spat are certainly a mess. However, there are compelling economic reasons for manufacturers to move operations to new places (Note: Likely not the U.S.).

Just for one example, compare the population age pyramid of China[1] to that of India[2]. The way in which China's long standing (but now retired) one- child policy has shaped their population pyramid into a top-heavy column is truly unreal. They have a huge cohort entering retirement age and another big cohort entering their late 30's where they're experienced rather than _cheap_ workers. If you want young, cheap labour in China, the supply is about to start contracting

Meanwhile India's age pyramid really is a pyramid. As China's cheap labour pool shrinks, India's is set to grow _massively_. Factory wages in India are currently about one fifth of China's too. If you're building a shiny new iPhone factory that will need a multitude of the cheapest human hands money can hire, they're not in China anymore. The gap is going to widen substantially over the next decade or so too.

It will take a lot to break up existing supply chains and pry them out of China, but the economic incentives exist today and will become more irresistible each passing year.

Automation is, of course, a wild-card, but what might work to keep factories in China will work to bring them back to places like the U.S.. Automation works in any country, but demographics no longer favour China when it comes to the one thing that has attracted manufacturers looking to make things as cheaply as possible: cheap labour.

This may be why we've seen China becoming increasingly aggressive over the last few years. Their economic base is peaking and decline is in sight. Now is the time to grab as much power, territory, and influence as possible and try to solidify it before that economic base melts away.

[1][https://www.populationpyramid.net/china/2019/](https://www.populationpyramid.net/china/2019/)

[2][https://www.populationpyramid.net/india/2019/](https://www.populationpyramid.net/india/2019/)

</comment><comment><USER16> Like-minded = being a puppet of the US

</comment><comment><USER17> But it is clearly not happening - is it?

China is the only major economy that is projected to grow this year. And Corona-virus crisis is under control there whereas in eg. India it is still escalating.

<comment><USER18> Is this propaganda? Yes, production is shifting to Taiwan and other countries from China. No, it won't happen overnight, it'll only happen when it needs to. And China may still grow overall, but companies are leaving too and eventually the trend could overtake the growth.

<comment><USER17> No doubt that the US administration wants this.

But given how 2020 has unfolded. If I were a business owner and I had the option of building a factory in say India or China; then China surely has proven more stable.

Of course could I place the factory in Spain or Japan for the same cost, I would do so. But that has always been the case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Remember when the US government successfully formed a partenrship agreement with 13 countries called the TPP that would have been a strong counter to China's growing influence but Trump threw it in the trash as soon as he got into office. Making us weaker just for political purposes.

<comment><USER20> TPP seemed like a triumph of corporatism, though. A way to push legislation down our throats that no one wanted except large companies. Trump killed it for petty reasons, but well, "no one except large companies" is a very large group, and Trump and his clientele are part of it.

<comment><USER10> Isn't that how international trade agreements work generally? You sacrafice local autonomy and independence in the hope for better economic outcomes.

<comment><USER20> Check out #1, #5 and #8 (some of the others are pretty dumb) here and tell me that it's not a win of corporations against the rest of the world:

[https://inthesetimes.com/article/tpp-free-trade- globalizatio...](https://inthesetimes.com/article/tpp-free-trade- globalization-obama)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The United States' grip on the world is starting to get much looser. A strong China is seen as the reason, but there are many more.

The US is trying to build up an alliance against China, but I guess a lot of countries will want to stay neutral in that conflict. The Chinese government is doing horrible atrocities, but the US also isn't the paragon it portrays itself to be.

<comment><USER22> The US has a long history of hypocrisy and has its share of shameful actions, but equating it to China is just ludicrous.

That said, there a lot of countries that have their own issues with authoritarianism, persecution of minorities, privacy violations, etc and they have a partner in China that is willing to look the other way for profit. It's going to be difficult for an increasingly weak US to force those countries to isolate a cheap source of goods to placate their masses.

<comment><USER21> It was not my goal to equate the two - I'm not a native speaker so maybe I expressed myself imprecise.

America being the good and leading the fight against evil was always just a story told to the masses. In reality you were gaining a lot from aligning to one of the blocs in the Cold War and a lot of countries had common enemies with the US. All this is missing now. Already with the Iraq war unanimous support by allied countries was not there anymore and with the Trump administration the US stopped to be a reliable partner.

I don't think you can easily say that other countries abandon their willing to try to change China. They just keep on the diplomatic way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's possible that we may have been able to find some in Central and South America, if they weren't squeezed by the war on drugs on one end, and state- actor-sponsored regime changes on the other.

But one does reap what one sows.

</comment><comment><USER24> They'll have hard time doing so as their time has passed. They should evolve or they will be obsoleted like dinosaurs.

<comment><USER24> Better get out of the comfort zone: [https://fort-russ.com/2016/03/dugin-what- is-wrong-with-europ...](https://fort-russ.com/2016/03/dugin-what-is-wrong- with-europe/)

Denial of reality and downvoting the comments won't change anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> "Like minded" probably means either "white" or "vassal" states of USA. USA had a great opportunity to play a constructive role in Latin American and use their vast manpower for its benefit while benefiting those countries as well. Mexico, Brazil could have done what China did. However USA constantly tried to destabilize its neighbors and focused on playing petty games instead of constructive allies.

<comment><USER2> As of 2019 Mexico had about the same per capita GDP as China, and Brazil was only slightly behind. Brazil was ahead of both but the past 5 years have been rough. See [https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=BR- CN-MX)

China does have faster growth. Only time will tell if that continues.</comment></comment>


Rust language bindings for TensorFlow - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/google/tensorflow-rust/ <comment><USER2> Why not just port tensor flow to Rust?

<comment><USER3> Because people are subconsciously aware that an unstandardized language will never be appropriate for systems work. Rust is also hard to learn, very few resources, small community, disreputable maintainer and without an incentive to exist and make money like Oracle or Google, it's future is hopeful at best.

<comment><USER4> I disagree on all counts. Hard to learn? As opposed to what? C++? Please. The only thing that's really hard to learn is the borrow checker. But that's because you are paying the cost upfront: your code just won't compile. Whereas in C, C++ and many other languages, you can get something obviously broken to compile and even run. But that will keep you awake late at night trying to debug issues that you don't understand, because you haven't actually learned how to manage memory properly yet.

Very few resources: What kind of resources are missing? I'm learning Rust myself and the available documentation is amazing for a language that young.

Small community, again, as opposed to what? The freenode #rust channels are packed. There is a huge amount of libraries already.

Disreputable maintainer: Please clarify.

"Without an incentive to exist" I'd say there's plenty of incentive: people doing systems programming that are dissatisfied with the available options.

There's some overlap with Golang and there Google's resources could be enough to push Rust out. But that's it.

Frankly, this sounds like baseless ranting.

The bit about standardization is very amusing too. C++ was always standardized. The standard was full of undocumented behavior, so different compilers would often compile the same code in different, sometimes broken, ways. All the while conforming to the standard. When they conformed at all.

Rust has one standard: the reference implementation. Would you be happier if the community formed a committee?

Disclaimer: I'm in no way involved with the community or affiliated with Mozilla. I'm just an interested observer.</comment></comment></comment>


Research reveals inner workings of liquid crystals - <AUTHOR> http://exactlyscience.com/archives/11446.html <comment><USER2> Blogspam of

[https://news.uchicago.edu/article/2017/03/17/research- reveal...](https://news.uchicago.edu/article/2017/03/17/research-reveals- inner-workings-liquid-crystals)

with author credit (Greg Borzo) stripped out.</comment>