Basic skeletal animation with geometric algebra - <AUTHOR> https://www.jeremyong.com/klein/case_studies/ga_skeletal_animation/ <comment><USER2> I'm the author of Klein and was surprised to see a sudden burst of traffic so I checked the usual suspects and ended up here :)

My goals for authoring Klein was to provide a library for performing all manner of geometric operations using the language of Geometric Algebra. The benefits are that the formulism is exception-free (meaning, for example, parallel planes have a well-defined line of intersection, that projections to higher/lower grade entities make sense, etc), and works equally well on points, lines, and planes. Practitioners coming from robotics/animation will also find the entirety of the Lie algebra/group inside GA as well for smooth interpolation, etc.

As a graphics engineer, I found most libraries out there unsuitable because of performance reasons. We're used to having nicely packed SIMD optimized quaternions for example. Klein fills this gap and (hopefully) in a manner where you can use it even if you don't understand the Geometric Algebra (yet!). Over time, I'd like to round out the documentation to explain the underlying theory, which I find unreasonably elegant and has shifted my thinking in the last few years.

Let me know if you have any questions about Klein or geometric algebra!

<comment><USER3> I saw a post in the last month or so on the front page of HN that linked a video lecture and a paper/presentation on GA, it's still sitting in my watch/read folder unfortunately. So, since you volunteered for questions, I'll ask a few:

\- is there a generally accepted, or just personally approved, set of introductory materials on GA, to get one up to speed? I have a decent mathematics background, but I have been focusing on other areas recently so I am a bit rusty.

\- I think your goals for Klein look interesting, and since you are a graphics engineer, I assume you are aware of the prior art (your comment indicates this is correct), so, is the main draw of using GA as an implementation theory the elegance of the underlying math alone, or does the math create a new space for potential optimization in the graphics space (I am assuming that your mention of performance penalty in existing implementations is due to a lack of focus on performance not unsuitability of GA to a performance domain).

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the questions.

> re: introductory materials

The 3 links I compiled here ([https://www.jeremyong.com/klein/references/](https://www.jeremyong.com/klein/references/)) I consider an absolute must for starting to consume GA. The book (ref #3) has one chapter undergoing revision regarding the usefulness of the degenerate metric for modeling projective geometry. My understanding is the chapter will be released for free once finished. From this alone, I was able to piece together enough to write one working implementation of GA that I was able to use to verify the computations and my understanding. Klein is my third GA library which I wrote once I was pretty sure I was comfortable with the formalism. Another great set of resources is anything posted on bivector.net.

> re: question 2

The elegance of the math does help me identify better optimizations in a number of cases, but in other cases, it makes a whole series of operations well-defined (for which there was no good analog before). I posted some examples in another comment, but essentially, quats and dual-quats generally only work on points, and in a somewhat awkward manner. I can't easily compose 2 rotations, a translation, a dual quat, and a quat, and then expect it to work on a line for example. In GA, this is ... completely trivial. And because it all fits nicely in the framework, all the above benefits from the same SIMD optimizations.

I believe the reason GA was not considered well-suited for production/perf reasons is twofold. First, prior art focused on GA with arbitrary dimensionality/metric (results in either increased compilation time, or reduced performance). Second, there wasn't much overlap between practicitioners of GA, and graphics/animation engineers on the other side. I view Klein as "low-hanging fruit" in that sense, and consider myself fortunate to have come across the theory in the manner I did. I had written it off as just "an easier to understand Quaternion," but once I realized how much I (and perhaps some of my colleagues) were missing, I opted to actually try and productionize GA to "fill the gap" so to speak.

(FYI tried to send this over an hour ago but HN keeps rate limiting me :( )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How do you write an article on skeletal animation, and have zero examples of what that skeletal animation looks like?

<comment><USER2> Working on them! That said though, the audience of this article was originally meant to be animation engineers that have already "earned some stripes" and wanted to see the GA formulation.

<comment><USER5> I'm in the intended audience group then, as a game developer who works on animation regularly but only has a passing familiarity with geometric algebra. You could say I am "GA curious". But I'm afraid I didn't get much out of that article. I had hoped I would get more information about the benefits of using GA over standard matrix and quaternion methods. Instead, at the first mention of something GA related (which was motors) it was glossed over, as a hand wavy "don't worry about this". Later, pages of difficult math (which I skimmed over trying to find the punch line) were devoted to, if I understood, trying to do the equivalent of slerp that everyone is familiar with and is easy with quaternions (though perhaps just as complicated to derive). What I would have liked to have seen is an article that starts off with some motivation about what benefit one gets from looking at skeletal animation through this lense, for example, are there problems that vex people using standard methods which just don't occur when using GA?

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the feedback. You may find [https://www.jeremyong.com/klein/geometry- potpourri/](https://www.jeremyong.com/klein/geometry-potpourri/) more approachable but I admit I don't have finalized material I'm completely satisfied with showing yet :(

The math is definitely more easy to grok if you've seen/used Lie Algebra/Group formalisms before so that's another shortcoming, but the main thing GA gives us here is a "dual-quaternion slerp" which I literally could not find an implementation of anywhere! The formula for a quaternion slerp is actually not too hard to derive, but a dual-quaternion slerp is far more difficult. Part of the point of the post was that this was somewhat surprising to me (both that GA makes it approachable, and that dual-quaternion slerp implementations didn't exist in the wild).

<comment><USER5> Thanks! I'm curious what motivated you to want to use a dual quaternion or why you want a slerp algorithm for that. I have yet to run across a use for a dual quaternion. Wikipedia says that they are used in mechanics to represent rigid transformations. That sounds useful for animation but most animation or computer graphics people would represent a rigid transformations with a quaternion and a translation vector, and if interpolating a rigid transformations they would slerp the quat and linearly interpolate the translation. So I'm not sure what the advantage of a dual quaternion would be in this context, or do you use dual quaternions in some completely different way?

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the questions. Indeed many animation libraries store the quaternion and translation as separate components. There are a few reasons I use dual- quaternions in my own code. First, because I can "slerp" them, this means that when I compress keyframes, and can perform better quality fits (potentially less error and fewer keyframes needed). The dual-quaternion has uses in skinning which I'm sure you're aware of, but if the base transformation is a dual quaternion, I can more efficiently morph neighboring vertices as well (I've ported the dual-quaternion application to shader code as well). One optimization that GA makes clear is the ability to factor out terms when applying a dual quaternion to a number of entities all at once which makes it almost as efficient as a quat-translation while conserving energy as well.

Finally, the dual-quat representation is beneficial when modeling kinematic motion specifically (not necessarily artist-authored) which can be useful in contexts beyond games (e.g. robotics, deep-learning, computer vision), but also inverse kinematics (which unfortunately I haven't had time to write about yet)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Geometric algebra looks cool, and this library seems like exactly what is needed for graphics programmers to use it.

What I'd really like to see is a comprehensive cheat sheet with formulas for common tasks in computer graphics with an absolute minimum of theory and jargon; even less than this article. Of course it's great to learn the theory too, but most people just call slerp in a quaternion library without learning the theory of quaternions. It should be possible to use a geometric algebra library in a similar way.

<comment><USER2> Original author here, it is absolutely my goal that the library should be usable without needing to understand the ins and outs of GA. To this end, I've started adding a bunch of "helper" functions that do tasks like projecting a point onto a plane, or identifying the line through a pointer parallel to another line, etc.

I've been (slowly) working on additional documentation in the meantime and didn't expect to see the animation article hit the frontpage :). That said, in the meantime, there is a GREAT cheatsheet for all the relevant formulae here: [https://bivector.net/tools.html](https://bivector.net/tools.html) (scroll down to the bottom). You can get the PDF version here: [https://bivector.net/3DPGA.pdf](https://bivector.net/3DPGA.pdf)

<comment><USER7> I was wondering, once you've abstracted from the GA bits enough, is there any point of using GA at all? I like GA as well, just wondering what it gives you once you've abstracted it away. Or in other words, are there aspects of GA that cannot be abstracted away like that?

<comment><USER2> Yes actually :)

It took me a long time to actually decide to invest in GA because the sentiment I had was "it just replaces what I already know" and what I knew at the time was matrices, quaternions, and dual quaternions.

It turns out, I was pretty wrong in that respect. For example, in the current predominant formulism, it's awkward to rotate a line with a quaternion, then identify the dual quaternion that maps that line to yet another line, then apply that dual quaternion to a point. In GA, this just works (mind exploding gif). Or, I can construct a line between two points, then find the quaternion that maps a different line to that one, and convert it to a matrix to do "look at" transforms in a shader. Also just works.

I think the more I use GA, the more elegant I find it, and it takes me well past the formulism I used to know (which is still useful from time to time, but far less expressive). While I could provide helpers for all the common operations, the operators in GA will always have their use because... there's just so much you can do with it. At some point, the library will just because unwieldy/large. I haven't necessarily found the sweet spot yet for size/convenience, but I hope to converge there over time. Provide enough to be usable for most people, while at the same time being a launchpad for learning more about the abstraction itself.

From an implementation point of view, I've found a number of optimizations that were made easier (or even possible) with GA that I hadn't identified despite working with quaternions for years before.

<comment><USER7> Ok, thank you, very helpful. So I guess your opinion on this is, if you know enough GA, then GA becomes the best library you could think of.

<comment><USER2> Yup, now that I've "swallowed the red pill" so to speak, I can't even look at quats/dual-quats in the same way. They are very much a small cross-section of something much bigger (more expressive/powerful/etc).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just a heads up - @ninepoints let me know he got rate limited and will answer as soon as allowed again ;)

</comment><comment><USER9> Ninepoints is getting repeatedly rate-limited. He invites anyone with questions to ask questions in the Klein discord ([https://discord.gg/gkbfnNy](https://discord.gg/gkbfnNy))

<comment><USER2> The mods emailed me a couple hours ago and said my account was mistakenly flagged as a "spam" account but its been since corrected. Thanks!</comment></comment>


SpaceX set to re-fly a Block 5 rocket for the first time tonight - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/08/tonight-spacex-to-reuse-its-first-block-5-variant-of-the-falcon-9/ <comment><USER2> > It is worth recalling that SpaceX only flew a "used" booster for the first > time in March 2017.

It's amazing this happened just a little over a year ago.

<comment><USER3> It was a epoch defining change. It does feel like a ton of time ago, and everyone in the industry (most notably ULA, Arianespace and the Chinese) are trying to figure out what they do now that the SpaceX steamroller is in full force.

<comment><USER4> > _It was a epoch defining change_

Not yet. Costs haven't fallen. The epoch-defining change would be back-to-back commercial launches with the same booster in a short period of time with zero or little retrofitting.

<comment><USER5> > Costs haven't fallen.

I disagree. I highly doubt reusing a booster has been more expensive to SpaceX than building new boosters. It is also speculated that at least the first few customers of reused boosters were given a discount.

If you are saying customer cost has not fallen, you may be correct. I would counter with the fact that SpaceX is already a low cost provider, lowering their price more may not increase their overall profits.

> The epoch-defining change would be back-to-back commercial launches with the > same booster in a short period of time with zero or little retrofitting.

The booster SpaceX plans to reuse today is a "block 5" booster. This is basically the design that SpaceX hopes will enable that zero or little retrofitting reuse.

<comment><USER4> > _I highly doubt reusing a booster has been more expensive to SpaceX than > building new boosters_

Well, they are. Which is natural, because the program is still R&D more than mass production.

> _This is basically the design that SpaceX hopes will enable that zero or > little retrofitting reuse_

When that rapid re-use is demonstrated, it will mark the epoch. We could retcon to the original re-use, or even booster recovery. But that's premature.

(I'm still super excited about everything SpaceX does.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This blows my mind and I have naive questions. How can the materials withstand such forces? Is a piece inside replaced (he said without taking it apart)? Is ablation a factor at all?

<comment><USER7> It's important to note that the first stage (which is about 70% of the rocket) is the part that is being reused. The top of the rocket (the second stage, the fairings, and the payload) are not reused (At least not yet. They are working on recovering fairings and there are rumors of second stage reuse).

When the stages separate, the first stage is going about 1.5 - 2.5 km/s. Then the second stage takes the payload the rest of the way to orbital speeds of 7+ km/s, and the first stage returns to earth.

So the first stage is going fast (several thousand miles per hour) but not as fast as things that re-enter from orbit. It still does need heat shielding, but not as much as the space shuttle or a capsule.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Have they realized their cost savings yet? Or are the teardowns and smaller redesigns still keeping the launch price up? Basically, are we in the future yet?

<comment><USER9> The refurbishing costs of even their first reused booster was less than half the price of a new booster [1], so something above 50%*70% = 35% saving assuming that the booster is 70% of the cost of the launch. The new block 5 version rocket is supposed to reduce that refurbishing cost by a lot.

However, they have development costs of something like a billion dollars to pay back, and no reason to lower the price drastically at this point, so new launches on reused rockets are going for ~50 million instead of 62 million.

[1] [https://spacenews.com/spacex-gaining-substantial-cost- saving...](https://spacenews.com/spacex-gaining-substantial-cost-savings-from- reused-falcon-9/)

<comment><USER8> From that link. Holy cow: ""Looking forward for reusability, we don't believe it really, really counts unless you can turn it around rapidly, or almost as rapidly, as you turn around an aircraft,".

I had no idea they were aiming for this level. That is just mind boggling how drastic a change it's going to be.

<comment><USER10> Musk's Mars plan depends on reducing the marginal costs of launching so much that SpaceX could with minimal expenditure chuck dozens of rockets at Mars every year loaded with supplies and crew.

This is important to keep in mind when wondering why a corporation would continue pushing its costs down after obtaining an effective monopoly. As long as Mars is the goal SpaceX won't turn into a ULA or Ariane. But if for some reason SpaceX ceases to pursue Mars then it would likely recapitulate the same business decisions of every other spacefaring corporation.

<comment><USER11> On the other hand, one might argue that SpaceX has already permanently changed the space game. If SpaceX fails to keep moving society forward, it would do little more than create a major vacuum that could be filled by companies such as Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, or other new players.

I think this in particular is really the hugest benefit of privatizing space. When we had the government in charge of space, it living or dying was really subject to nothing more than the whims of a gaggle of politicians. As space has become a prominent part of the private industry with ever increasing competition, you remove that aspect of a single point of failure. I think the odds of us entering into another era of stagnation come regression are rapidly approaching 0, and that's incredibly exciting!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> OK I get that booster reuse cuts down costs, but the fact is the 2nd stage is still not reused, which limits the economic benefits needed to open new markets. We get a 50% reduction in costs, instead of the 95% reduction in costs.

You can get a 50% reduction in costs just by going to India for launch..

Is SpaceX going for 2nd stage reuse at all? That's going to be a lot harder than booster stage reuse, since you're returning to land at orbital velocity.

And then there's the whole issue of increasing reliability of the 1st stage for reuse hundreds (or thousands) of times needed for new business models...

<comment><USER3> The first stage represents about 75% of the cost of the vehicle, not 50%. This represents the actual cost of the metal on the launchpad, but not the services around the rocket, including launch control costs, etc.

You can't take a rocket to India and you can't manufacturer that rocket in India (Skilset, US based corporation, ITAR) so you can't achieve your savings that way.

Even Russia - which is using a very old tried and true rocket design - can't match prices at this point. In addition, the budget cuts in Russia have resulted in a massive reduction in reliability, which has blown up their insurance cost recently.

In terms of second stage re-usability, they are looking at that for FalconX, and it's designed in at the start for BFR. Landing something from a second stage is as difficult comparatively vis-a-vis landing the first stage, as landing the first stage was compared to the suborbital hops that Blue Origin is doing.

The latest SpaceX idea (judging by Elon's tweets) appear to be some sort of Ballute based approach.

The first stage re-use should be good for 10 flights without a overhaul, with a complete tear-down on flight 10.

<comment><USER13> "You can't take a rocket to India and you can't manufacturer that rocket in India (Skilset, US based corporation, ITAR) so you can't achieve your savings that way."

Out of curiosity -- can they _fly_ a rocket to India (maybe have a booster return to India instead of a drone ship ? Too far/out of the way ?

That may not help much since stage 2 would still have to be shipped around, which is probably not cost effective, and there might be other regulations that make it infeasible to launch anywhere but in the USA.

<comment><USER14> As soon as it lands you have violated ITAR, so no.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Chrombinator - Chrome Extension for HN (parent highlighter and inverted title) - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bldhjkmbdomhijjjnmckgchocnfhkpnd

<comment><USER2> Can it do something about the "Unknown or Expired Link" message?

<comment><AUTHOR> No... but it will, that error is really easy to fix (well, easy to work around, just getting an actually valid link). I will have some spare time this sunday and will work on that.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi, i am the author, it just change 2 simple things.

1) A button to highlight the parent comment (of any child comment)

2) The title for every news page becomes "$TITLE | Hacker News" instead of "Hacker News | $TITLE"

You can check its source code here: <http://pastebin.com/CzfTGuJM> (its uses jquery and its very simple so i think github is overkill)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Well... looks like this didnt get any attention... feedback about it?</comment>


Observable Playground - <AUTHOR> https://beta.observablehq.com/playground <comment><USER2> I have been playing with Observable for a few months now, and it is the programming environment of my dreams.

There have been many times in the past I wish I could preview the results of a computation when tuning parameters or data, and this allows me to do it and without restricting my expressiveness or domain. Note: I am predominately thinking of graphical and data exploration use cases.

An example where I think observablehq has allowed me to go beyond the status quo is my port of Wave Function Collapse [https://beta.observablehq.com/@tomlarkworthy/wave- function-c...](https://beta.observablehq.com/@tomlarkworthy/wave-function- collapse) (early stages). I added the ability to mask individual tiles in the tilesets dynamically and the effect on the generated images is non-intuitive but very satisfying. Manually editing the tilesets in XML which is what the original requires would be too laborious, so its a domain where observablehq really shines. I have more work to make it truly idiomatic of observablehq but the sign that its a genuine force multiplier is there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the encouragement!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like everything about Observable but the editing experience. In 2018 no one wants to write code like writing txt files.

Is there any plan to adopt Language Server Protocol so at least users could get auto completions? But with the custom syntaxes to JS I guess Observable can't just use plain TypeScript Language Server.

<comment><USER4> Hey there - have you tried hitting Tab while editing code? We've implemented dynamic code completion that works in a surprising number of cases where no other completion can work - for example, completing properties of API responses, based on the real values in the environment.

But, of course we have a long way to go, especially relative to the VSCode/TypeScript ecosystem.

<comment><USER3> Never know that existed! Maybe you can improve discoverability by doing that on typing a dot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You are a unique innovator Mike, I am not really into visualization but I am a big fan of yours.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is really neat! Is there a way to embed these cells into another site, so they could be used in a blog for example?

<comment><USER7> There sure is!

Here's the introductory post, explaining how you can download or link Observable notebooks as ES modules, and use the open-source runtime to evaluate notebooks or just render specific cells: [https://beta.observablehq.com/@jashkenas/downloading-and- emb...](https://beta.observablehq.com/@jashkenas/downloading-and-embedding- notebooks)

Here's an example of a toy notebook being embedded on another domain: [http://ashkenas.com/breakout/](http://ashkenas.com/breakout/)

Finally, because Observable notebooks are of course, themselves, web pages, here's an example of a notebook embedding itself: [https://beta.observablehq.com/@jashkenas/ouroboros-a- noteboo...](https://beta.observablehq.com/@jashkenas/ouroboros-a-notebook- embeds-itself)

<comment><USER6> Thanks so much!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love Observable.

Word processors? Spreadsheets? PowerPoint? I see a shift towards interactive notebooks. So weird to me that this innovation of Mathematica took twenty-five years to gain traction, but yes please!

</comment><comment><USER9> Wow, this is cool, especially the tweet import. Can see this as being a vastly improved Jupyter notebook for JS.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! The ability to reuse code across notebooks—making notebooks analogous to ES modules—I hope is one of the most powerful and interesting features of Observable. You can see a few more examples of reusable notebooks here:

[https://beta.observablehq.com/collection/@observablehq/libra...](https://beta.observablehq.com/collection/@observablehq/libraries)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Seeing this on HN, almost thought it's no longer beta ;) (in the URL)

</comment><comment><USER11> Hey Mike! Thanks for d3, etc. Is the playground newly released today?

<comment><AUTHOR> We deployed it yesterday and announced it today.</comment></comment>


For progress to be by accumulation and not random walk, read great books (2010) - <AUTHOR> https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ufBYjpi9gK6uvtkh5/for-progress-to-be-by-accumulation-and-not-by-random-walk <comment><USER2> I've had multiple arguments with people recently in which people have recommended _not_ reading classic books on the grounds that the author held "toxic" views --- even when the work being recommended had nothing to do with these views, when the views were very common at the time (e.g., imperialism can be good), or when, upon closer inspection, the author didn't even hold these views at all, and just "lived in a structure that profited from them".

This anti-classics argument is distressingly common and it's impoverishing us intellectually. This style of argumentation is a lazy and formulaic way of dismissing practically any greater thinker. It's petty and shortsighted to cast aspersions over useful and influential work on the grounds of insufficient wokeness on the part of the dead.

<comment><USER3> Ah, yes. I recall the first time I encountered this in the form of a trigger warning placed by Wilder Publications in _Kant 's Critiques_ (which collected Kant's _Pure Reason_ , _Practical Reason_ , and _Judgment_ ). It advised parents to talk with their kids about the way we believe differently today than Kant did two _centuries_ ago before _allowing_ them to read the old German philosopher.

I've since seen and heard about so many more instances of this, that I wonder how on earth any allegedly adult college student can make it through a philosophy course anymore. Or history, psychology, sociology, literature, etc. I can't think of many significant figures in the whole of human history who didn't hold some kind of position that was a byproduct of their time that could be judged objectionable in some way by today's standards--and that now seems to be used as all the reason needed to completely disregard engaging with someone who is recognized as having had a transformative impact on history and thought. It's all very disheartening.

<comment><USER4> > It advised parents to talk with their kids about...

Was the implication that parent would read Kant for their kids? Or what is going on here?

Edit: A bit of googling shows that apparently this publisher only publishes texts old enough to be public domain and just include this warning as a standard boilerplate regardless of the content. So this have probably nothing to do with Kant or any book in particular.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for doing the legwork on this.

It's still a dumb warning, but at least it's being applied in the dumbest way possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "A classic is something everybody wants to have read, but no one wants to read." \--Mark Twain

It's amazing how much low-hanging fruit there is in classics. When I read Darwin's "Origin of Species", I found that a huge amount of it was devoted to this thing called the "Knight-Darwin Law" which was extremely important to Darwin but which seemingly vanished out of all knowledge around the turn of the 20th century, as if no-one was actually reading the book since then. Then I wrote a couple papers related to that Law, which ended up being my most successful work so far.

<comment><USER7> For anybody else not familiar, the Knight-Darwin Law is the idea that plants do not self-fertilize exclusively (many plants have both male and female sex organs). Darwin goes on at length in On The Origin of Species about the mechanisms that plants employ to avoid self fertilization.

My own take is that this makes a lot of sense. Male and female sex organs are pretty sophisticated adaptations. Features which are that complicated generally don't evolve unless they are useful and there are easier ways for an organism to clone itself than self fertilization.

<comment><USER6> Darwin actually articulates a much-more-precise law (which serves as a cornerstone of his whole book). I've argued in my papers that the KDL is in fact an infinite-graph-theoretical statement (remarkable because infinite graph theory was not a mainstream "thing" until well after Darwin).

Let G be the graph of all organisms (past, present and future), with an edge directed from u to v if and only if u is a biological parent of v. The spirit of the KDL is: "G does not contain any infinite directed path consisting entirely of vertices with only one parent". Or equivalently: "Every infinite directed path in G necessarily contains a vertex with two parents."

For its time, the above statement is _astonishingly_ mathematically sophisticated. If anything, Darwin is still greatly underrated.

<comment><USER8> It reads like you are adding the mathematical sophistication to an intuitive idea. An "an infinite directed path consisting entirely of vertices with only one parent" is simply a chain.

<comment><USER6> Compare König's lemma [1] ("every infinite tree contains a vertex of infinite degree or an infinite simple path"), often considered the first example of infinite graph theory. It wasn't articulated until 1927, almost half a century after Darwin's death.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%B6nig%27s_lemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%B6nig%27s_lemma)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The characterization of philosophical delight as "progress" is a downer.

<comment><USER10> I'd even argue that exploring ideas with per-planed intent is going to limit readers to concepts they already have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I agree that by reading I can more quickly understand some things but I try to balance my time by setting aside large blocks of time for thinking about my own philosophy.

I have never spent much time reading this Less Wrong web site but recently I did buy the 50 hour Audible book 'Rationality: from AI to Zombies' to list too when working in the kitchen, etc.

<comment><USER3> I've found Less Wrong to be quite a fantastic read over the last decade. The Rationality series is great, as is the Quantum Physics Sequence.[0]

[0]: [https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/hc9Eg6erp6hk9bWhn/the- quantu...](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/hc9Eg6erp6hk9bWhn/the-quantum- physics-sequence)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Here's an archive of the blog post the broken link points to: [https://web.archive.org/web/20100307015535/http://www.infini...](https://web.archive.org/web/20100307015535/http://www.infiniteinjury.org/blog/2010/02/25/reading- originals/)

</comment><comment><USER13> The world is certainly mad, and this is a good post. What was the article that prompted this post? The link is broken.

<comment><USER14> Here's the archive.org snapshot of the blog the broken link references:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20100307015535/http://www.infini...](https://web.archive.org/web/20100307015535/http://www.infiniteinjury.org/blog/2010/02/25/reading- originals/)

<comment><USER15> IMHO, the archive article makes the better point -- that if a subject wants to advance (e.g. economics, biology, psychology) no scientist today should require the primary teaching texts in academia to be the first ever written on the topic, a century or even a millenium ago. But economics and philosophy, and even parts of cognitive science and psychology still do exactly this.

No, a more productive pedagogy should begin with texts written as recently as possible, perhaps to build on early principles but more importantly to add as much to them as possible while revising all errors and omissions.

Today nobody learning biology or medicine begins with Darwin, Galen, or Hippocrates. But economics and philosophy still expect their neophytes to read with care the scrolls of ancient dead white men as if their words had been written on clay tablets by the gods.

Surely _that_ is a point worth reconsidering.

<comment><USER16> I disagree, classical philosophy is what sparked the enlightenment, and the fact that so few scholars read those texts today, is probably why we are heading into a new age of stupidity.

Obviously you can get great in the field of physics or mathematics without reading Plato, but you really shouldn't, because the works and thoughts of Plato are the foundation of our free society. And that's just Plato, you really should enrich your life by reading classics of your field as well as philosophy, classic literature, arts and history.

In my country we have a word to describe this, it's called "dannelse", and I can't find an English word for it. The closest thing I've been able to come up with to describe it is: _"give people a broad, general basis for developing their talents to the maximum and growing into strong, open and multi-faceted individuals who can assume their responsibility in society to the full."_. In my country, you can't attend the university without a minimum foundation of classical philosophy, because you can't do science if you don't understand how knowledge is obtained, but I've never met an actual scientist who didn't actually delve deeper into those aspects of life, because they offer so much in return.

Another example is programming. Who would you rather hire? Someone who is self taught, or someone who's educated in best practices and patterns? The latter, because they won't repeat the mistakes of the past 25 years. Every science is like this, and if you don't educte yourself on the past, you're really just wasting your time, making someone else's mistake.

The real irony of the original story is that it excludes history from this. History happens to be my field, and unlike most other sciences, our classical works are mostly full of lies. Because they weren't written to keep track of history, but to further the authors political agenda at the time. We use them only because we have to.

<comment><USER17> > I disagree, classical philosophy is what sparked the enlightenment

The rediscovery of classical philosophy spurred the _Renaissance_ , the Enlightenment was later and, though it built opon the Renaissance, not really directly stimulated by classical philosophy.

<comment><USER13> If you read "Africa, Asia and the History of Philosophy" you'll see how this whole story of "Ancient Greeks were great philosophers but then their knowledge was buried during the Dark Ages by Muslim conquerors and when their knowledge was recovered during the Renaissance by Jesuit scholars the torch of wisdom lit bright again and the world found Enlightenment, yada yada" is the same sort of thing as tribal myths of "primitive" cultures

<comment><USER7> FWIW, I think the standard narrative is that knowledge of the great Greek and Roman works was lost in Europe as a result of the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the immense reduction in civilizational complexity that it entailed, not as a result of Muslim conquest.

<comment><USER18> And further you'll find the standard narrative is that the Arabic world was responsible for preserving many of the great classical works and for advancing knowledge of mathematics and science during the middle ages.

<comment><USER19> Not solely responsible. For example, they didn't care about artistic works, and so they didn't take any cares to preserve greek plays.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The title needs a "(2010)" in it for better context.

<comment><USER21> Thanks, added.</comment></comment>


The Secret of iOS 7 - <AUTHOR> http://www.cringely.com/2013/09/19/the-secret-of-ios-7/ <comment><USER3> I think OP is trying to see something when there is nothing to see. This seems to be common pattern with lot of Apple fanboys. Apple _might_ be still innovative as they want to believe and I wouldn't argue with that because it's waste of time. OP's core argument is flawed due to many reasons:

1\. iOS is not good at multi-tasking which is bread and butter for desktop. Look what happened to Windows 8 which tried to forced full screen apps on 24" monitors all the time.

2\. Phone/pads still don't have necessary RAM to run desktop class applications. Can you imagine running full strength Photoshop on iPad yet?

3\. Phone/Pads are still far behind in providing large cheap storage compared to similarly priced devices.

I'm not saying that convergence is not possible. It's just too early for its time still. I can imagine iPhone 7 to be able to replace today's laptops. But arguing that Apple has this genius secret idea that no one is able to see it bit too much of fanboyism.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure I agree with Cringely here either, but I think you're missing some important points:

1\. iPhones do support multi-tasking, but the interface for it is poor. This could remedied, especially if iPhone would detect a larger screen and add an additional menu bar.

2\. The killer app for the average desktop user isn't Photoshop, it's some manner of email/doc/spreadsheet. These _do not_ require gobs of ram. For everyday use, they require: monitor, keyboard, mouse.

3\. Which is quite possibly why Apple has built a zillion dollar data storage center (iCloud).

Actually, Cringely might be right, but I don't think we're going to see it anytime soon. I think it might be Apple's longer-term plan.

Put another way, it does pull together some interesting choices that Apple has made:

1\. iCloud -- and more importantly the monster infrastructure developed for it.

2\. The growing iOS-ification of OS X.

3\. 64-bit processors (which, of course, allow for 'desktop class' amounts of ram).

4\. Hardware accelerated screen sharing (AirPlay).

Another thing, I don't understand why you would classify that as a "genius secret idea". I would call it a multi-billion dollar technology company looking a few years into the future.

<comment><USER5> Indeed. Particularly:

 _The killer app for the average desktop user isn 't Photoshop, it's some manner of email/doc/spreadsheet. These do not require gobs of ram. For everyday use, they require: monitor, keyboard, mouse._

If Apple thought they could run Photoshop off an iPad, they'd do it, but they also know their bread and butter for laptops and desktops are designers who use Photoshop and Illustrator all day, every day.

I work for a tech company with a fairly large operational staff. I reckon at least half of those employees could get by with a good tablet with peripherals for almost all of their tasks.

<comment><USER6> There must be a reason why Apple's rewritten every pro app they've acquired. My theory is it's so they will port to iOS easily.

iOS is 90% of Apple's business

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So Apple's plan is to do what Ubuntu and Windows are already heading in the direction of? Except when Apple do it is new and revolutionary.

Why would any enterprise IT department choose the iOS device, which is going to be more expensive, less open, and probably play less well with all the Microsoft back end products they have?

I cant see a single advantage Apple have in this space over Google and Microsoft, other than a lot of senior management tend to like the shiny Apple product.

<comment><USER8> Ubuntu? Where's the hardware? Where's the full experience?

Regardless, innovative isn't just trying it first. It's making it work first. Microsoft has made a good try but there's something missing if it's just not seeing adoption. I don't think it's easy to say what that is or it would be fixed already. But I do think Cringely is right that someone will get there, Apple or not.

<comment><USER7> Nobody has done it fully yet, including Apple. But again, Cringely doesn't give a single reason why Apple would succeed in this space over Google or Microsoft, or something like Ubuntu. Enterprise is probably going to want to stick to mostly one OS if everything has to be ported over and all their accessories need to be compatible, and iOS is very very unlikely to be first choice of most IT departments for obvious reasons.

So the idea of convergence isn't new, and the idea that iOS would win at the convergence game in the Enterprise is implausible - I don't know what he was smoking when he wrote this article.

<comment><USER8> Enterprise is going to be a slow-adopting beast, no matter what, but that doesn't mean that iOS (or some future evolution of it) is out of the running. Come on, you're not really saying that office work can't ever fundamentally change again, now that PCs are here -- are you?

<comment><USER7> Firstly, iOS as it stands is very very poor compared with a desktop OS for office work. At an absolute minimum people need to be able to have two documents up on screen at once, maybe one spreadsheet and one PowerPoint doc.

Secondly, im willing to entertain the idea that iOS could evolve into something that could become useful as a desktop replacement, but i am yet to see a single reason why it would have an advantage over competitors, and there are many reasons, such as cost, that they are at a disadvantage.

<comment><USER9> From my experience of working in an office with admin teams, the very large majority worked with apps open on the full screen and tabbed between them. Very rarely would they have more than app visible at once, even when they knew they could they wouldn't.

<comment><USER7> That has not been my experience with office workers. They often work with one maximized app, but they often work with more than one document at a time. For admin teams in particular they often have a small chat client open either for work reasons, or more commonly to chat with coworkers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> He's absolutely right, this _will_ be the future of office type of work. He doesn't mention the Motorola Atrix ([http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/05/motorola-atrix-4gs- webtop...](http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/05/motorola-atrix-4gs-webtop- application-turns-your-phone-into-a/)) which tried to do precisely what he's talking about but failed due to Moto's incompetence (and lack of software like iWork). Apple's not Motorola though, they got everything aligned, including connection to the TV screens at home, something Atrix couldn't do.

</comment><comment><USER11> _iOS 7 has, for the first time, support for not just Bluetooth keyboards but Bluetooth mice as well._

Wait, what? If this is true, it certainly hasn't been talked about much.

Edit: I should be more straightforward — I don't believe this is true.

<comment><USER12> I believe it supports them, just like it supports game controllers now, but apps will have to include their own implementation of support to actually make use of them. It doesn't seem that iOS 7 supports using a mouse/touchpad by default throughout the OS itself.

<comment><USER11> Looks like apps can only support arbitrary Bluetooth devices if they're the Bluetooth Low Energy type: [http://stackoverflow.com/a/11892685](http://stackoverflow.com/a/11892685). Conventional Bluetooth devices would have to go through the MFi program to be supported by App Store apps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sounds similar to the Lapdock by Motorola [http://www.amazon.com/Motorola- Lapdock-100-Smartphones-Packa...](http://www.amazon.com/Motorola- Lapdock-100-Smartphones-Packaging/dp/B005P58B5G)

</comment><comment><USER14> > Go to your desk at work and, using Bluetooth and AirPlay, the iPhone 5S or 6 > in your pocket will automatically link to your keyboard, mouse, and display. > Processing and storage will be in your pocket and, to some extent, in the > cloud. Your desktop will require only a generic display, keyboard, mouse, > and some sort of AirPlay device, possibly an Apple TV that looks a lot like > a Google ChromeCast.

What is the networking? iPhones don't have Ethernet ports. WiFi has limited bandwidth and much worse security (you can sit in the parking lot and listen for authentication creds). Cellular is more secure, but expensive and slow.

What is the network identity and permissions layer? There is nothing on the market that comes close to Active Directory, which is probably the #1 reason that so many businesses still run Windows on the desktop. As far as I know, there is no AD integration in iOS.

Can businesses run an iCloud sync service locally, within their corporate firewall? I'm guessing no. Corporations are rarely comfortable with sending all their proprietary data out to some 3rd party--even more so following the recent NSA revelations.

Can you run antivirus on an iPhone?

I think Cringely is not fully appreciating the corporate mindset when it comes to technology--a common failing among tech pundits.

<comment><USER15> Active Directory is basically just an implementation of an LDAP server and Kerberos. There are plenty(1) of commercial and high quality open source implementation on various forms of Unix and iOS is Unix. Wifi bandwidth is increasing all the time. Many laptops nowadays don't have ethernet ports. iPhones don't have viruses either.

Most of the problems you mention are problems for PCs, but beyond the PC world they're non-issues. Ask your Unix server support team the last time they had to deal with a virus on their machines.

I remember when the iPad came out someone I think on HN posted that he needed to be able to print to a portable bubble jet printer and iPads didn't support that, so therefore they would never catch on. Seriously, that was his contention. Everyone thinks their own little world is the entire universe. Blackberry and the tech press were adamant iPhones would never encroach on BB's corporate sales because iPhones don't play well in corporate environments. We all now know how that went down. In theory everything you mention is a problem, but in practice they can be worked around or are just non-issues.

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

<comment><USER16> Active Directory itself, as you identity, isn't anything remarkable. However, it is valuable because it is deeply integrated into all of Microsoft's products and a huge range of products from 3rd party vendors.

<comment><USER15> Including OSX server's Profile Manager, which through iOS Configurator can be used to manage profiles for iOS devices. Apple's enterprise grade iOS management products have come on leaps and bounds over the last few years. This really isn't going to be a problem.

[http://www.apple.com/support/iphone/enterprise/](http://www.apple.com/support/iphone/enterprise/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Some thoughts:

* This is something like an obvious thing to do; the question is when and whether the mobile OS vendors are going to be bothered with the work to make it happen, including the internal revenue/political frictions to overcome (ChomeOS vs. Android, anyone?)

* Speaking of the work necessary, here are two technical changes I assume you'd see if Apple was actively working towards this now: one, a move towards resolution independence for iOS apps, and two, API changes to accommodate having multiple apps active at the same time. If these were happening, presumably iOS developers would be talking about them?

* iOS famously tries to abolish the file, document and filesystem (from the user's perspective). It's interesting to consider what kind of compromises Apple would or will make in making a desktop, multitasking iOS. Stick to the iOS model or try to retrofit something?

* 'Native' support for keyboard and mouse - an experience good enough that Apple wouldn't be embarrassed to be advertising it as a first-party option - would be awkward to bring in. iOS 7 may have a nice new interface for switching and managing tasks, but how much fun would it be to close an app with the throw-it-away gesture on a large-screen device using a mouse?

</comment><comment><USER18> I suppose most people here aren't familiar with Cringely and his completely off-the-wall "revelations", using just enough facts and tossing in a few plausible (and deniable) "pseudo-facts" to spin a good yarn.

FYI, iOS7 does _not_ support a mouse. Yes, there were jailbreak hacks for it. No, Apple has no interest in making the OS navigable with a mouse (even though the changes involved are actually pretty minor). Yes, apps can try to go their own, but good luck with trying to pair any other HID device besides a keyboard (or a few custom devices such as styluses) at this point.

Also, as someone who's been successfully living off an iPad as a thin client (using SSH+RDP to a remote X11rdp server), yes, the iPad makes a kick-ass thin client, good enough for you to develop in (despite the screen size). It was even better when I could use Citrix/ICA, but perfectly usable in every respect.

But, again, Apple doesn't care about thin clients - otherwise they'd have shipped a working ARD (Apple Remote Desktop, an enhanced VNC protocol with proprietary extensions) from day one. What they believe in is a nice, smooth, local integrated experience.

</comment><comment><USER19> 1\. of course phones will replace desktops, it's been coming for ages. If your phone is powerful enough, why buy a desktop too?

2\. in general, phones are "overshooting" what is needed in a phone: 1080p, 469ppi, quad-core, 2GB RAM etc

3\. the real next market is a smaller form-factor (which this better tech now makes possible), not larger - maybe watches, maybe glasses, maybe something else. Apple has being absolutely extraordinary in leading new markets several times - but only with Steve. Sony also did it several times - but also only with their founder.

      either don't see a competitor rising up or are too complacent to feel threatened.

Christensen says it's far worse: even when they do see it, fund it, prepare for it, take it seriously, they _still_ can't do it. Factors: it's a different emphasis from everything else they do, so it's not only learning/adjusting, but also unlearning/unadjusting (entrants only have to learn/adjust). Specifically: the rate of releases (eg Windows vs iOS); what users value/prioritize; how they use it (tasks); how to communicate to customers (a previous positioning works against them); financial analyst expectations (new markets start small and unexciting); corporately, small and possibly-failing new markets do not always attract the best talent; and well-established corporations tend not to attract risk-takers - and why wouldn't such people strike out on their own? That's often how it goes in practice.

Basically, like animals, companies become supremely adapted to their niche. When that niche disappears, they can't adapt. Fortunately for Apple, the same people will probably buy iWatches, iGlasses, iWearableWhatevers, for the same purposes, the same priorities as they buy iPhones.

Still, cringely is right.

<comment><USER20> Say you live in Apple land and have all the iStuff. Would you buy a brainless iPad with storage processing on your iPhone? If the only advantage is a cost savings ($50?), I don't see the point.

<comment><USER19> Sorry, I don't understand. Cringely's idea is not a brainless iPad, more like a brainless laptop/desktop

When laptops came out, many people docked them at home/work to a full keyboard and monitor. Why have two (or three) computers to maintain and worry about? Why go to the hassle of switching between them - your files, apps and customized environment?

To be fair, today is different, the cloud (dropbox etc) helps. But avoiding the problem in the first place has an appeal too; and dropbox doesn't solve apps. Though using webapps exclusively could solve that.

You may have a point about the price difference though - is it really only $50 to buy a PC box these days? (i.e. excluding display, keyboard, mouse).

<comment><USER20> I just gave it as an example. Brain one place hardware in another. It just doesn't require imagination using iOS & iphone-esque RAM/processor on an ipad.

$50 - In the ipad example, I imagine that would be the cost difference for the brain. Maybe a little more, I don't know. But there are definitely decent android tablets in the 100-$200 range. The whole premise of the-phone-is-the brain seems to be that this is all you need on your desktop. Anyway, Apple don't do stuff like this because its cheaper.

But I don't really see a big cost savings. File sharing might be a bit of a win, but small compared to cloud based patchwork stuff (drive, dropbox emailing files). Apps are easy enough to install in iOS anyway and you could make app purchases be cross platform if you are all in the same ecosystem.

Basically, I see the advantage of iOS on the desktop. Its clean and easy and better for a lot of people. But why complicate that by outsourcing processing to a different device? If you want iOS on a laptop, just put iOS on a laptop.

<comment><USER19> But with a brainless iPad, you don't get the keyboard, mouse and upright display, which was the point...

Anyway, maybe you're right about the cost saving. A SoC is pretty cheap.

A clearer argument is that the guts of desktops/laptops will be replaced by phone guts. This is because an ARM SoC are cheaper than intel, and now good enough. We're already seeing the samsumg chromebook and asus transformer - <USER2> as ARMs increase in power, it increasingly makes sense. It's expected that Apple will do one eventually - which I guess also explains the evidence in the article (and you get iOS on the laptop/desktop with no extra work).

Note 1: intel x86 CPUs (apart from atom) are still much more powerful than ARM - even a celeron. But Christensen's idea is that this doesn't matter. He calls it "overshooting" what the market need: people want enough power to do their tasks, they might like more, but not enough to sacrifice other things, or pay more. Maybe it won't run photoshop, but most people don't.

Note 2: Apple has a focus on video and photo editing, and as these apps improve, they will meet the needs of more and more people, perhaps eventually reaching photoshop users. One thing that intrigues me about Apple's choice of pushing GPU (and not CPU) in iPhone/iPad, is that GPUs scale better, and GPGPU might well be the best multicore we're going to get. It's generally perfect for image processing (ie photoshop). So in this case, the iPhone 5S guts may turn out even more powerful than it seems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This seems like a giant extrapolation based on only the merest hint of any actual evidence.

The big question to me, is why would Apple, the quintessential hardware company, be going out of their way to try and sell you _less_ hardware? They don't want you to reuse your iPhone as your main computer. They want to sell you both. In general they detest the whole concept of shoehorning bits of technology into roles they are not meant for. In Apple's eyes, each device you own is exactly optimized for its unique role.

This whole thing sounds like Cringely's personal fantasy rather than anything Apple would actually do.

<comment><USER17> Yes, it can't be the next big thing for Apple's revenues if it doesn't shift lots of fairly expensive hardware. There's also Apple love of iCloud, and iCloud revenue, to push them towards cloud (or even local) sync between your iPhone and a mini-desktop rather than a dock-your-iPhone solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I agree with sytelus that the writer is seeing what he wants to see. I don't agree with the reasons though. They all seem like doable hurdles if Apple really wants to do this.

I think iOS could handle mult-tasking if it was a priority. The lack of RAM/Processor/storage is not a long term problem either. Specs will go up over time and apps like photoshop will be written to max out the capabilities of their average users' machine, but not more.

I just don't buy the everything-is-powered-by-your-phone future. I see difficulties, hurdles and compromises but no benefits. There is no reason _not to_ have processing and storage capabilities where the display-keyboard-mouse is. It's cheap.The problems solved by putting the brain in your phone are small.

I especially don't see _Apple_ doing it. It seems like an anti-Apple move. Apple like to keep their metaphors as clean as possible. That means stuff needs to be self contained. A brainless desktop powered by your phone and the cloud is the opposite of that. It's complicated.

OTOH, I do see (or maybe see what I want to see) the benefit of iOS on a keyboard & mouse device. I just think its a different iThing. An iOS desktop could be what chromebook should have been. A "computer" where everything is easier than it is on windows/mac.

</comment><comment><USER22> The iPhone could replace desktop PCs that are only used for basic tasks like word processing and web browsing. However, advanced uses of desktops like hardcore gaming, a/v editing, software development, etc require much more advanced applications and underlying OS support that won't realistically be available on the iPhone in the near future.

That being said, I do think the idea of Apple selling MacBook Air like cases and displays with a slot for adding the iPhone has potential.

<comment><USER23> This has been done before and not taken off, but who knows with apple. The slot could be where the trackpad is with the phone functioning as the trackpad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Yeah, you're not gonna leave it in your pocket so the battery can die. You'll drop it in the something that will also connect the i/o.

</comment><comment><USER25> The secret of iOS 7 appears to be that it supports bluetooth mice.

</comment><comment><USER26> I've been wanting to dock my phone into a cradle hooked up to multiple monitors, speakers, USB hub, keyboard, and mouse for a very long time.

The Microsoft acquisition of Nokia for a Surface Phone that would do something like this makes a lot of sense. They certainly wouldn't want to lose the new desktop form factor race.

</comment><comment><USER27> I don't think Apple wants to abandon their desktop market at all. However, they could be introducing a new thing - a new Apple TV style device that's designed to connect to monitors and act as a workplace bridge for iPhones and iPads.

If you could get a $100 or $150 AppleDesktop that only ran App Store apps, but hooked up to a monitor/TV and allowed BT keyboard/mouse, would you do it?

It could be the AppleTV store, or the iOS App Store, or even the Mac App Store that's backing it, but it would definitely be an interesting competitor vs. a Chromebox, as it could function without internet (which might make it a perfect "computer" for your aging parents). The fact that it couldn't run OSX or sideload apps would clearly protect Macs from some cannibalization.

</comment><comment><USER28> Apple lost the iPod market? I haven't been in the standalone mp3 market for a while: what beat them?

<comment><USER29> People no longer carry dedicated media-player-only devices, since their phones do that and a bunch of other stuff.

Same reason why people argue that standalone pocket cameras are dead or doomed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I dont get his theory at all, the trend seems to be people getting more devices, not less.

Why try to unify handheld and desktop? For customers it would be a FridgeToaster(tm), with less power than a dedicated desktop (yes performance matters). It doesnt even make business sense (less devices sold).

</comment><comment><USER31> But... I love my MBP.

I'd go for the pocket PC with peripherals thing for convenience but I want to go to my desk pop open my MBP and kind of BE there with my machine.

I know this sounds kind of ethereal but ffs, I don't have an office anymore. Most people I know work in coffee shops or somewhere similar.

There needs to be some signal that I am 'at work' on something.

For me, sat on a bench at the dinner table in our apartment with my laptop open is that signal. Kids don't bug me and my wife knows to approach with caution.

Maybe I'm just old fashioned but I like having a workstation that takes up a space.

</comment><comment><USER32> I think Cringely is wrong in detail but right in overall thrust. iOS is Apple's future, but Apple's plan is for multiple comparatively inexpensive devices that share data and do their jobs well, not one thing that hooks up to accessories and works badly. The killer app for iPhone 5S is commerce and becoming your identity wallet (Google Authenticator is a similar play, but it simply becomes an app you prefer to keep on your iPhonr). I can certainly see the iphone 5S logging you into your device.

</comment><comment><USER33> Maybe I'm missing something, but if I were Microsoft, I think (at least my first pass thinking anyway) I'd just say "Nope. No MS Word on iOS. Ever."

I can't see what's in it for them. A tiny slice of cash compared to selling it for desktop computers, and if they _don 't_ sell it for iOS-based-desktop- replacements then the iOS-based-desktop-replacements won't have the ability to write files for the rest of the business world to use.

<comment><USER34> I'd argue the opposite; Microsoft should've been offering Office from day 0. That people have started using Numbers and pages on iPads has meant that they are aware that alternatives exist and that they _do_ open Offices document just fine. Surely making money from a competing platform as well as your own is better than making money just on your own platform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Good read. It seems everything will be a module of a system. Users will only need to carry the necessary part with them. And since the mobile device now can have such a powerful calculation capability and wireless connectivity, users will be able to just switch the physical interface they operate on and use the small bar as the core device. This isn't the first time someone tries to do this. But it seems quite viable with what Apple currently have.

</comment><comment><USER36> I think it's about a TV/game console/entertainment center to compete with others in the home and accomplish what today's apple TV and tablets cannot. I seriously doubt they would give up on desktop architectures given how much effort they have put into it and the plain superiority of the modern x86 PC architecture when it comes to performance. But the specs on the 64 bit chip make it perfect for a home console.

</comment><comment><USER37> A lot of people are seeing this. Phones now have a _lot_ of computational power, but a 4-5 inch touch-screen and a hardware button or two constitute a piss-poor interface for using it all! You have an office suite that works on your phone. Big whoop. It still doesn't make them viable devices for serious work.

So, what's next? Do phones become our personal go-everywhere pocket computers, and will displays, keyboards, "vacuum" laptops etc. just become a way to improve the interface capabilities of our personal pocket-computers? Cloud computing, if the NSA doesn't manage to kill it completely, offers a way to at least have our documents follow us around (e.g. Dropbox). There's no reason why a lot more of our computing environment couldn't follow us around via the cloud too. It's easily doable to store everything about your current session on the cloud so that, when you leave work, your computer at home has everything waiting for you just the way it was at work. Having the exact same computer following us around without transmitting everything to Big Brother would have a certain amount of appeal if not for the greater danger of losing _everything_ with our phone! So, what's next?

MS isn't as far behind as Cringely thinks. The surface pro is basically a desktop that's meant to follow you around. It's not quite phone sized, but MS is definitely showing a strong interest in unifying the mobile and desktop user experience. They've done more so far than Apple has, since Cringely's speculations on iOS are still entirely future tense. Still, I'm not entirely convinced the one-computer following you everywhere approach is going to beat the cloud. A little back-tracking by governments on their right to invade user privacy or a credible open-source secure-cloud environment actually taking off could lift cloud computing's chances. Yes, I'm aware it will largely be chance which one wins, and user privacy will likely be compromised no matter which approach wins, either by cloud-data storage or mobile-device backups.

No matter how it happens, things are evolving towards a world where we won't have separate, discrete devices, but just multiple ways of accessing the same persistent computing space. When it comes right down to it, new ways to interface with our computing environment are probably just as important as unifying our discrete computing spaces. Google's work on Glass indicates another possible way to change the game. Free both the user's hands and you have the potential to deliver richer user-input capability. Still, it's not entirely clear to me that this is Google's intention with glass. They may be getting too hung up on the idea of augmented reality when improving user input capability would bring far greater benefits. Augmented reality is nice, but if that's all Google sees in Glass they're going to get their butts handed to them.

<comment><USER38> Thank you for saying most of what I felt, only so much more clearly!

I don't how anyone whose work depends on _creating_ quality content - programmers, journalists, designers - can achieve even a fraction of their PC (I use that term loosely) productivity on a 'post-PC' device like a tablet.

I see people saying they have ditched PCs and laptops altogether in favour of tablets, and I wonder how. I'm not a Luddite, and I've owned the iPad and Nexus tablets for a while, but I still prefer my laptop for my work every. single. time!

<comment><USER39> I agree. Just a couple months ago I attempted to shift a lot of my programming work towards my tablet, just to try it out.

In short; it sucks. You need constant internet connection because you're always ssh'd in. The flow of productivity is interrupted every time you have to lift your hand to physically touch the screen, and even with a high-end keyboard the technology to quickly traverse a screen just isn't there yet.

<comment><USER40> Here's an old post about an experiment along those lines.

[http://yieldthought.com/post/12239282034/swapped-my- macbook-...](http://yieldthought.com/post/12239282034/swapped-my-macbook-for- an-ipad)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Add builtin inductive charging, with in-monitor charging stations (so you can literally keep your phone in your pocket) and the entire puzzle is complete. Although one might only want to do this _after_ one has their personal optimum number of kids ;)

For me, I'll miss third-party non-gate-kept software. But I'm pretty sure that I'm the minority... iff Apple can get Microsoft's business apps on board.

<comment><USER42> Serious question: which business apps? From where I'm standing it looks like Office is dying. Not dead yet, but dying. So it can't just be that. Exchange?

<comment><USER43> Numbers are from 2012 b/c I didn't want to spend more time looking for more recent #s. But according the MS Q3 2012 numbers, their Business division revenue was $5.81 billion, up 9 percent from $5.33 billion a year earlier.

<comment><USER42> Those numbers say MS' business division is doing great. They don't say specific "apps" are doing great or would be a huge value add to iOS.

That said, I'm clearly not in the business world, because I haven't used a MS product outside an Xbox since school... so I probably have a skewed perspective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Instead of hooking a keyboard to your iPhone/ipad flip it around. Apple TV can be an airplay receiver, your ios device sends it's display to the larger screen and you type, touch, or dictate on the device that's already in your hand most of the day. Some die hards won't give up their dedicated keyboards, but many people can transition over to the "mobile desktop".

<comment><USER45> That is already supported today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Why does this sound exactly like the Ubuntu Edge?

<comment><USER42> Because it's not a new idea, just an idea that's time may be coming. Ubuntu is definitely out ahead on this one conceptually, but iOS devices are inching their way closer and closer to desktop-class software and performance... by the time Ubuntu ships something, Apple may already be there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Reinvent the Motorola Atrix, but wireless. iOS would be much more pleasant to use, but I don't their strategy is that simple.

</comment><comment><USER47> The article was more or less okay, until he _blew it_ with this:

> More likely, since it's an iOS device, Apple will call this gizmo an > iSomething. It will be impossibly strong and light — under a pound — the > battery will last for days, and it ought to cost $199 for 11-inch and $249 > for 13-inch, but Apple being Apple they'll charge $249 and $349.

Can he really be that clueless? Does he even realize that even a large iPad is heavier than 1 pound? How could an iPad-like device with _keyboard_ and a bigger battery be even lighter?

Also the price makes no sense at all - again because of the extra keyboard and battery, and also because there's no way Apple would price such a device _below_ an iPad Mini. That would mean using a processor, RAM and storage that are even more obsolete than the ones in the iPad Mini.

That's crazy. If anything such a machine would have all of those even better than the large new iPad 5, and my guess is it would cost $700, while still maintaining more or less the same amount of profit as a Macbook Air (since the chip and storage would be so much cheaper than on the Air).

It would also increase Apple's average ARPU, and would bring them higher total profit and revenue, since these will be cheaper than Air, and Apple will sell more of them (but fewer than iPads, still).

</comment><comment><USER48> i had the exact same thought when talking to a friend about the last keynote. he told me the 5c was a ripoff and noone would buy it.

i told him he's missed the most important news : productivity apps for free, and the emphasis on trying to make pads and phones not only reading devices but content writing devices as well (5s as powerful as a laptop)

And since content editing requires more power and Apple is best at producing high level computing platforms, that would let them win market shares over android again (in a "if you can't win the game, change the rules" type of strategy).

i'm predicting a huge rise in medium prices and features for apps in the next year. But we'll only be sure when the new ipad is shown. because of its screen size, it's the only device really capable of providing a true content editing platform at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER49> I can't imagine this working over AirPlay, the latency it introduces is pretty significant (1-2 sec).

<comment><USER11> It's more like a fraction of a second, not anywhere near 1-2 seconds in my experience. That said, I agree, even working with iWork-style apps might not be ideal. If they're gonna run iWork on TVs, I'd expect the apps to be executing on an Apple TV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> An interesting point is Apple is more like a consumer product company. The rules of tech industry have their effects on Apple. However, while completing in the consumer market, there are other rules as well. Taking different dimensions in to account could not be a bad idea.

</comment><comment><USER50> What if 10 years from now, you pull up your iPhone 23s and it is more powerful than the computer you are using now and you simply rest it on your desk and let your monitors/keyboards connect to it. It acts as a thin layer between you and the cloud. No PC.

</comment><comment><USER51> I wouldn't be surprised if future versions of iPhone had a (mini?) Thunderbolt "docking" port, which can even support external graphics cards ([http://www.macrumors.com/2013/07/30/11-macbook-air-owner- con...](http://www.macrumors.com/2013/07/30/11-macbook-air-owner-connects- high-end-graphics-card-with-complex-thunderbolt-setup/)).

And CPUs can throttle their speed or disable cores depending on desired power consumption, of course.

Heat dissipation could probably be solved with a metal back plate.

RAM seems like the only major issue for a iPhone-based desktop/laptop. Not sure if RAM expansion via Thunderbold is feasible.

</comment><comment><USER52> So, when is Apple going to "invent" the Asus padphone

</comment><comment><USER53> Ubuntu Touch

<comment><USER54> Vapor Ware

<comment><USER55> [https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/Install](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/Install)

<comment><USER54> [http://www.ubuntu.com/phone](http://www.ubuntu.com/phone)

can i buy this? no.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> So basically what the article says is that apple should make a chromebook?

It could work. A touchscreen chromebook-like could be very attractive to the end user, especially if you can remove the base somehow and turn it into a big iPad. It would be like the Surface, except with a good app store.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, what the article says is that Apple wants to make a phone that can also double as a desktop machine by docking it with the appropriate peripherals. That's a very different approach than Chromebook takes.

<comment><USER57> Weirdly this is exactly what Microsoft is doing with their tablets.

iOS is much more hampered in terms of doing 'real PC things' at this point so Microsoft has a good head start, even though Windows 8 isn't exactly the epitome of polish yet.</comment></comment></comment>


Google accused of burying webmail service on search results - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/07/google-burying-webmail-service-search-results-protonmail <comment><USER2> Happy ending though, they actually got a response and a fix from Google.

<comment><USER3> A year later...after ProtonMail took to Twitter to complain about the issue, and after Google refused to respond to them in the previous year. Then, "suddenly", just like Facebook "responds" to a censorship accusation after it's all over the news, the issue got fixed. Good guy Google, I guess?!

[https://protonmail.com/blog/search-risk- google/](https://protonmail.com/blog/search-risk-google/)</comment></comment>


What Every Start-up Should Know about PR - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailymuse.com/entrepreneurship/startup-pr

<comment><USER2> My advice - do your own PR for as long as you can, don't hire a PR firm. I fell prey to the persuasive tactics of one firm, which over charged, over promised, and delivered nothing.

<comment><USER3> Somebody said it best: Only hire a PR firm when you're dealing with too much _inbound_ press attention.

<comment><USER4> Former owner of PR agency here: absolutely correct.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I guess the PR scenario has become more complex with the popularization of social channels, social intent and social influence tools. Also, the fragmentation of communications means the PR manager needs to keep track of more campaigns, people. Indeed, not easy to do if you want to do it well.

Just think about the recent PR scandals: AirBnB, the Path contacts-gate, etc. It's very easy to deal with promotion (proactive PR) but very hard to deal with mishaps (reactive measures).

</comment><comment><USER6> A good PR firm is an enormous help. Having a practiced, impartial judge to help craft your message is valuable. So is someone who already has relationships with folks in the press -- it's the same principle as approaching VCs via entrepreneurs they already know.

It's not for everyone, but if spending $10k on building your brand and attracting new users doesn't sound crazy, a good PR firm is a decent place to spend it.

</comment><comment><USER7> PR can be summed up in four words: Don't be a dick.</comment>


Philip Greenspun's take on Women in Science - <AUTHOR> http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science <comment><USER2> I agree with Philip's basic observation that scientific careers are overrated, but a lot of his arguments would appear work against academic careers in general. The "scientific careers suck but men are irrational" hypothesis doesn't explain why there are so few women in mathematics and chemistry vs. history or English literature, or indeed why there's so much variation _within_ science, with plenty of female biologists but very few female theoretical physicists.

<comment><USER3> That's a good point. The large number of women pursuing Ph.Ds in English literature and Bio does tend to undercut the argument that women are avoiding Ph.D's in math and hard science because they are more rational.

That said, we do need to distinguish between fields. Phil argues that "Adjusted for IQ, quantitative skills, and working hours, jobs in science are the lowest paid in the United States." Would you make the same statement for jobs in literature? Are Lit professors as capable of pursuing these highly paid alternative career paths as the Math/Hard Sci/Engineering Ph.D's? It's a highly contentious question, I know.

I'd say that most lit Ph.D's probably don't have strong quant skills, nor do they have much of a science background. So they clearly are not choosing lit over a career in high finance or medicine. However, law is probably an option, so the women who pursue a lit Ph.D may be exhibiting at least some of the "irrationality" that the men are.

I guess it comes down to how you feel about the Science Ph.D vs Medicine, Finance or Law relative to the Humanities Ph.D vs Law only. If the situations are analagous (which is open to debate), I'd say you've uncovered a major flaw in Greenspun's "men are more irrational" argument.

<comment><USER4> Medicine is not what I'd call a "quant" field, and I bet lit Ph.D.'s have precisely the skills necessary - focus, attention to detail, ability to memorize large amounts of knowledge, and good reasoning. So women who get lit PhD's probably could go to med school.

I think Greenspun is off the mark on his reasons why people choose science, literature, or any relatively low-paying field. They get compensation in other ways, like being able to use their mind in creative ways. I consciously choose not to continue in Medicine because it's boring to me compared to building things. I've traded money and stability for more chaos and the ability to work more on my terms. If you talk to docs, you'll get another set of complaints -- malpractice insurance, hours (for some), paperwork.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article should give everyone pause for thought--women and men. It is a little disheartening to think that I went into engineering as a path to medicine (with better security and compensation) and got sidetracked by interesting work. As a tenure-track professor with an itch to pursue a startup, I am wondering if I should start scratching. If only there wasn't a family in the equation...

<comment><USER3> As a professor, you're probably in a pretty good position to start a family. As a professor, you're probably going to have to give the university a big cut of whatever benefit you generate, but at the same time, you probably have more freedom and autonomy than most. Plus, you have a steady salary. On the down side, I don't know how hard you're working to get tenure - maybe too hard to launch a meaningful effort at a startup.

I read that at Stanford, it's pretty common for a CS professor to have started a company, almost a rite of passage. So maybe this would work out for you...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's another response to the Larry Summers incident.

Why are there more men than women in mechanical engineering? Elizabeth Spelke debates Steven Pinker: <http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/debate05/debate05_index.html>

(watch the whole video, it's brilliant)

</comment><comment><USER7> People who think they can't have children or get married are cheating themselves. You don't have to make 150k per year to have more than you need.

We had our first child when I was an undergrad and my wife was working. My wife quit working and I graduated so that I could be paid to go to school rather than the other way around. We bought a cute little home on a graduate stipend and had another child. I graduated with a masters degree and worked for a year and we had another child.

I started my PhD a bit over 4 years ago and we have had two children since then, bringing the total up to 5. We have always had more than we need and our children are doing great. I'll graduate in a couple of years, perhaps after having a couple more kids and I think we'll have substantial savings. My wife has never had to work and we have never relied on the state for health care or income.

Graduate school demands some focus but it is also extremely flexible. I choose my schedule and it's been a great life.

The bottom line is that it doesn't cost that much to live comfortably and take care of children. Choose what you want to do and then find a way to do it.

It might be wise, though, to look at home prices near the schools that you apply to . . .

<comment><USER8> Where did you buy this cute little home on a graduate stipend? There are certainly some places where you can. I heard from several students who did this when I visited Wash. U. in St. Louis.

But I ended up in Cambridge, and here there's just no way.

<comment><USER7> Baltimore. Biophysics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Women don't go into science because the behavior of inanimate objects doesn't interest them.

<comment><USER10> This was downmoded? wtf. My girlfriend does a Phd in relationship therapy and she says that it is interesting to her because it has both and emotional component and an analytical component. For me anything to do with emotions is a no no. Women are into those areas because they need something more than what the hard sciences has to offer not because they have less to bring to the table.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Science jobs are often the most free.</comment>


New composite image of galaxy cluster Abell 1033 looks like Starship Enterprise - <AUTHOR> http://chandra.si.edu/photo/2018/a1033/ <comment><USER2> open a channel</comment>


Linux Virtual Machines on macOS using Virtualization.framework - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kendfinger/virtual <comment><USER2> This is awesome! I'll probably throw a quick blog post out there how to get it running on Intel macs... Can confirm it compiles (using Xcode 12 beta 3) but does not run on the A12Z-based DTK, it throws this message, which certainly goes along with what I've been seeing that there's in fact no hardware virtualization on the A12Z...

2020-07-30 12:46:00.380 virtual[80435:3301742] ERROR: Error Domain=VZErrorDomain Code=2 "Virtualization is not available on this hardware." UserInfo={NSDebugDescription=Virtualization is not available on this hardware.}</comment>


46 House Republicans join Democrats in backing a study on climate-change - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/us-military-climate-change-threats-study-bipartisan-2017-7 <comment><AUTHOR> NB: Title edited for space.</comment>


Accessing Disparate Data Through PostgreSQL Foreign Data Wrappers - <AUTHOR> http://blog.relational.io/postgresql/fdw/2012/10/22/accessing-disparate-data-through-postgresql_foreign_data_wrappers.html <comment><USER2> When I first read about FDW implementations in Postgres, I was extremely excited. I've played with them quite a bit, and while I still think they are cool...they've got an extremely long way to go before I can see them as anything more than a kludgy hack.</comment>


Three cops fired after accidental dashcam activation captures racist rants - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/three-cops-fired-after-accidental-dashcam-activation-captures-racist-rants/ <comment><USER2> >Moore said a local magistrate, a Black woman, "needed a bullet in her head," before the three discussed their feelings that a civil war was coming, for which all three claimed to be ready. "We are just gonna go out and start slaughtering them fucking n</comment><comment>s. [I can't wait. God I can't wait]"</comment>


Ask HN: Why the platform doesn't have a pinned tab icon for Safari? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Pinned tabs fallback to using the favicon as I understand it? I certainly see an icon when it's Pinned - or do you mean a dedicated Pinned tab icon?

If you mean the latter, that seems pretty unlikely given that the site literally just gained some semblance of responsiveness on mobile devices in the last month.

<comment><AUTHOR> In fact, it's not using the default favicon, it's dedicated. It uses a specific SVG file with a specified color when the tab is active.

<link rel="mask-icon" href="website_icon.svg" color="red">

Ref: [https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documenta...](https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documentation/AppleApplications/Reference/SafariWebContent/pinnedTabs/pinnedTabs.html)

<comment><USER2> I did say "fallback". HN does _not_ have that link element in it's markup, and this tab is currently pinned, and shows the regular HN favicon</comment></comment></comment>


The Future of Thinking: Computers and Minds in Mid-20th C. Imaginations (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://histscifi.com/essays/dick/thinking.html <comment><USER2> Computational Theory of the Mind relates [http://www.ict.griffith.edu.au/~johnt/1004ICT/lectures/lectu...](http://www.ict.griffith.edu.au/~johnt/1004ICT/lectures/lecture11/Pinker- pp64-77.html)</comment>


Luvit Reborn - <AUTHOR> https://luvit.io/blog/luvit-reborn.html <comment><USER2> I'll be running a workshop on April 8th in San Francisco if anyone wants to learn more about luvit in person. [https://www.eventbrite.com/e/questing-with- luvit-a-libuv-asy...](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/questing-with-luvit-a- libuv-async-framework-for-lua-tickets-16240410505)

</comment><comment><USER2> Thanks for posting this. If anyone has questions, I'll try to answer them here, on twitter or in the comments on the blog post.</comment>


PayPal on Android lets you bump phones to send money - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/paypal_on_android_lets_you_bump_phones_to_send_money.php

<comment><USER2> Wow, it took them a decade and billions of dollars in revenues to realize their original, petty goal.

I hope I don't become a famous billionaire astronaut Fields medalist, before I realize my vanity goal of getting a six-pack. That would suck.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, _that_ would suck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Congratulations Bump, for helping Max Levchin's original vision for PayPal, as described in Founders at Work, come to fruition.

</comment><comment><USER5> Congratulations. Now quit screwing your customers and I might decide to give that company money again.

<comment><USER2> You haven't cried until Amazon owed you money :-|

I have never felt so helpless in my life. Had about 4k with them, and their excuse for not giving me my money was "you're selling way too many books too fast". To get my money, I had to take a mugshot, holding up tens of USPS receipts with a pile of books behind me (as if it wasn't enough I was selling my most precious collections, if not _friends_.)

<comment><USER6> That doesn't sound so bad really. A photo is just a photo, they made 'proof' pretty painless and it's easy to see why they would do a double take if a non- company nobody is selling $4,000 in books.

<comment><USER2> 10 weeks went between photo and payment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For the record, so does FaceCash (<http://www.facecash.com>) on Android, and we don't charge fees for person-to-person transfers!

<comment><USER8> It would be sweet if this service (or any service, for that matter) was more widespread. A bit of a chicken and the egg problem here, though.

<comment><USER7> It's great to hear you say so. We're working hard to get more merchants (not just ones in Palo Alto) signed up. The more people you tell about it, the easier it is for us.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can you bump a Droid with an iPhone yet?

<comment><USER7> Yes, with our software you can. I'm guessing it works with PayPal too since it's the same library.

<comment><USER10> He was probably asking specifically for the Paypal app. Not that this isn't a good thread to talk about your startup, but the question seemed pretty direct and your response didn't answer it past "I'm guessing"

<comment><USER7> ...and your answer, which provides no additional information, begins with "probably." I was trying to (and did) answer the question: it's the same library, so the fact that it works with one application tells you something about the rest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> That headline is a bit ambiguous when Bump isn't capitalized.

For a moment, I thought that it was a bug where if you bumped the wrong button on the phone accidentally, you could send money accidentally and wondered if we had a new Antennagate type of problem.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm sure this is a fine product, but as a consumer I would need a little education on this product, because the very first thing that came to my mind was "accident waiting to happen."

</comment><comment><USER13> Why didn't they just roll their own Bump technology? Can't be that hard to do, and now they're dependent on Bump.

<comment><USER14> The Bump technology is probably more complicated than it looks, especially when it comes to insuring that a transaction is unique, valid and can't be intercepted (the way a Paypal transaction needs to be).</comment></comment>


One Irish China Expert Is Taking the 'Hard' Out of Hardware - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-28/liam-casey-s-pch-international-helps-startups-crack-china <comment><USER2> After looking through the article, I think that "one Irish China expert" is just the world's least elegant way of referring to an Irishman who is an expert on manufacturing and works in China (among other places):

> … the Irish CEO has built a contracted network of around 100 trusted > factories in Shenzhen, China's manufacturing heartland, to supply technology > companies including Apple, Beats and Xiaomi.

<comment><USER3> I agree, my initial reading of the title was that he was an expert on bone china - although the capital 'C' in China should have clarified that. I feel "Irish expert of business in China" would have been clearer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think everyone here is too smart to follow this kind of pers-vatorial too literally? Or Bloomberg, at all, actually?

But anyway, the story is about someone (who happens to be Irish) who is trying to "retail" manufacturing. That's of course a useful service, and might work for a first production run, but it potentially cripples the entire project if that "retail" margin is significant.

For example, the bike light that's mentioned has got lots of press and "design blog" coverage, but it's something ridiculous like $40-50 to buy, and I've seen knock-offs, already, on aliexpress for less than half that. Is that the kind of Chinese manufacturing you need?

Also Bloomberg's mast photo makes the guy look like he's trying to strike a "power pose", which fails in too many ways to count.

</comment><comment><USER5> I;m curious how he ships out of China within 3-5 days at competitive rates. I've inquired with a lot of people, and there seems no way to avoid exuberant rates via air for very low weight shipping (less than 50kg), even via group- buy style agreements.

<comment><USER6> I would assume that it is about volume. PCH is not exactly what one would call small startup.

<comment><USER7> That's right, there's also really large supply of air freight, which tends to be obscured when small shippers get hugely inflated quotes. When you ship 40,000 boxes a day, those little boxes are bundled into giant pallets, most of which get shipped as belly cargo on passenger planes with excess space. A quick search shows trans-Pacific rates are quite reasonable these days! [http://www.aircargonews.net/news/single-view/news/drewry- air...](http://www.aircargonews.net/news/single-view/news/drewry-air-cargo- rates-index-below-290-for-the-first-time.html)

<comment><USER5> Exactly. At those wholesale rates, $3 per KG of cargo via air even with a few days delay is amazing in the possibilities it raises, from production to usage.</comment></comment></comment></comment>