The Flat Design Aesthetic - <AUTHOR> http://speckyboy.com/2012/12/11/the-flat-design-aesthetic/ <comment><USER2>
      Allen Grinshtein of Layervault may have coined the term "flat design" originally.

Oh dear. This is what happens when your design perspective is limited to the past few years of popular UI design.

"Flat design" was not invented by designers at tech startups. The concept was not popularized by Microsoft. Yes, there has been a recent trend away from the use of shading, texturing, and depth cues. It is a resurgence of something that began much, much longer ago.

Who invented "flat design"? Maybe Josef Müller-Brockmann, 1951? El Lissitzky, 1932? Dribbble users may not care about these names, but the current seasonal trend toward formal simplicity is little more than a rediscovery of the 20th Century's defining graphic design aesthetic, Swiss Modern.

If you're interested in the history of design, and understanding modern visual design in a broader context, I'd suggest Philip B. Meggs' A History of Graphic Design. For something a little more readily available, you might also want to take a look at Guity Novin's History of Graphic Design. Here's the relevant chapter on the Swiss Grid: [http://guity- novin.blogspot.com/2011/07/chapter-42-swiss-gra...](http://guity- novin.blogspot.com/2011/07/chapter-42-swiss-grade-style-and-dutch.html)

<comment><USER3> Here's some brilliant flat design, right guys?

<http://rand-mh.sourceforge.net/book/xmh/figs/ormarwsr.jpg>

<comment><USER4> I'd be curious to see these old wm rendered using a modern graphic stack. With a little bit of anti-aliasing and some tweaking it could be beautiful.

<comment><USER5> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raster_graphics>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Minimalism and skeumorphism are not mutually exclusive.

Skeumorphisms are adopted on UIs, _a priori_ , to give hints about the function and ease the interaction with new users. It's a metaphor to reuse prior knowledge of how things work in the real world.

What Apple did with the calendar app is not skeumorphism: it's just kitsch. While the app _looks_ like a calendar, it doesn't _work_ like a calendar (you don't flip between months, for example), so it completely misses the point.

On the other hand, you could design a calendar that _works_ like the real thing, using minimal lines and flat colors, and you could argue that it's minimalist _and_ skeumoprhic (because it still carries assumptions about another object, the paper calendar, even thought flipping pages is not a metaphor of digital media).

BTW, the definition of skeumorphism in the Wikipedia article is too narrow, and at some points downright wrong.

<comment><USER2> Actually, both the OS X and iOS calendars do support flipping between months with a swipe. Arguably, the leather effect at the top aids in this by reinforcing the physical-analog affordance, though the torn edges are a bit much.

Now the address book, that's a nearly perfect counterexample. Once again, on both iOS and OS X, it has "pages" that invite a swipe – except here, swiping does nothing. A dead affordance that only serves to frustrate and confuse the user.

<comment><USER7> The new address book is an absolute usability disaster, IMO. Though to my great joy, Mountain Lion at least restores a large part by bringing back the three-pane setup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Oh Jesus, UI Design has turned into fashion.

Follow a fad, get sick of it, follow another fad, get sick of it. Over-do skeumorphism, proclaim "I'm heading in the extreme opposite direction", over- do flat design, go into extreme opposite direction. After everything's been "flat"ened we'll move into 3D design where divs and containers have a raised 3D look.

===== The problems with flat design =====

\- It can give off a hospital white, cold, emotionless, colorless, boring, bland, sterile look.

\- Looks like it was exported from a UI drafting app.

\- Looks unfinished.

\- You can't always tell which elements are clickable (see new YouTube redesign) because everything is so blocky (see windows metro).

\- Has an extremely unhealthy obsession with white-space as a separator.

\- Elements that where once grouped together are now just floating around in white-ness.

\- Looks like randomly arranged icons and text. (see the new unnecessary, god- awful YouTube re-design)

===== The problems with Skeumorphism =====

\- Inefficient, lots of css, lots of images.

\- Follows what used to be familiar 10 years ago rather than what's proper today.

\- Stuck in the past, old fashion, outdated.

\- Doesn't make room for new UI elements.

\- Old UI clashing with New UI.

===== The problems with Web 2.0 look =====

\- Design and UI are loud and attract more attention than the content they hold.

\- Super shiney buttons, unnecessary gradients.

\- Distracting colors.

===== WHAT DESIGN SHOULD BE CENTERED AROUND =====

\- Predictability, familiarity, usability, ease, retention, signups.

\- Gradients are fine as long as they're subtle and not distracting.

\- Buttons should have rounded corners to emphasize their clickability.

\- Important elements should stand-out / pop-out more. You can use shadows and gradients and color to do this.

\- Typography should be easily readable and go with the theme of the site.

\- Design elements should not be loud, the elements that contain the content should not stand out more than the content itself.

\- Rather than use eye bleeding white on everything, using subtle soft colors is best.

<comment><USER9> Design has always been about aesthetic preference. While you're absolutely right about the core concepts (typography, color, contrast, etc), I find it amusing that you say that buttons "should" have rounded corners, or that gradients "are fine". Both of those concepts have merit, but are centered around a specific design metaphor (creating virtual objects with real-world qualities; round, "safe" corners for touching) that is by no means _required_ for good UI design.

I'd be happy if we could just all agree and acknowledge that design is fashion and is almost entirely open to personal preference, instead of cyclically praising then destroying our golden calves du jour.

<comment><USER10> The word "affordance" was mentioned in this thread a lot and for a reason: it is not a thing of fashion, it is essential for good UI design. If you want to engage user in interaction you must make it pretty clear what can be interacted with.

<comment><USER11> Yes: the problem with all the minimalist approaches to anything (starting with architecture) is that "we, the people" are confronted with something with which we do not know what to do.

Is this a conference hall, a chapel or a dining room? Is this the main room, the entrance or just the aisle to the toilets?

Design, whatever designers may say, is just a means to convey a message: either it succeeds or it is bad design.

It cannot be like modern poetry or modern 'art', where either you know the code or you understand nothing. If this happens, it is not good design, it is a different thing (which may be valuable in itself but not 'design' in this context).

You can write a newspaper with telegrams. It certainly would be cheaper. It would also be unreadable.

Edit: sorry cannot help mentioning it. Minimalists are usually as 'dogmatic' as any baroque artist might be. But at least, when you see baroque art you appreciate the harmony instantly. Not so with minimalism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am generally against skeuomorphism, and prefer what this article refers to as "flat"" design. However, one of the difficulties I've come across with flat design is the ability to communicate the affordance of actionable items (i.e., buttons) vs. non-actionable items (i.e., content and images).

As an example, I would classify the Windows Phone as an OS that has fully embraced flat design. However, after using it for 6 months, I constantly find myself confused on where I can click vs. not. Other apps have trained me to recognize buttons through gradients and bezels. This becomes even more important on the phone as there is no "hover" state that helps one explore click-able areas. I found it helpful is to introduce hints of skeuomorphism when communicating affordance of actionable items, while keeping the rest minimal.

Am I the only one, or are others also experiencing this issue as well with totally "flat" designs?

<comment><USER13> > Am I the only one, or are others also experiencing this issue as well with > totally "flat" designs?

I was under the impression that this was _the_ main gripe about flat interfaces. It sure seems pretty compelling to me. Flat may be pretty, but it is demonstrably less intuitive, less functional.

It seems to me that the people advocating flat interfaces have completely missed the point of form following function, having chosen a less usable interface for what are essentially aesthetic reasons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is skeuomorphism being diluted to the point of irrelevance? I understood it to be _clear_ translations of design elements from one object to another. So, making a computer calendar look like a physical calendar that you would flip through on your wall.

As used in the article, it's so vague as to be unhelpful: gradients are skeuomorphism? What were they copied from? What other object are they trying to imitate?

Using the example of nest illustrates this well -- the interface shows an exact replica of the UI on the physical device to control it. Does the rotary control make as much sense on a computer screen? Probably not. Is it still a good design decision? Yes. Is it flat? No.

<comment><USER15> _we often apply gradients and drop shadows to elements that are meant to be buttons, because buttons in the real world have these features, even though they are unnecessary in the setting of a computer user interface._

So it's skeuomorphism because it's trying to look like a physical push-button.

<comment><USER14> A gradient can be used as a design element (in buttons or elsewhere), without skeuomorphic intent.

<comment><USER16> A gradient from one tone/tint/shade to another of the same hue implies one thing: directional light. If directional light is visible on an object, that object exists in 3D space, at least in the mind. If that object exists in 3D space, then it has tangible form. If a UI element has tangible form, instead of only function, then it is skeumorphic.

At least, that's what the article seems to be saying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Rdio is I think an example of the aesthetic taken too far; when I first got it in an update, I thought it might have been a bug. It looks not drawn _enough_ , like the product of a UI framework that deferred look-feel and died due to an uncaught exception.

A lot of UI styling is just cosmetic, but some of it is there to create affordances.

<comment><USER18> Their designers stripped away everything that was unnecessary, and allowed the content to become the design. It's a very difficult aesthetic to pull off because it relies entirely on the most challenging aspects of UI design: spacing, grids, and typography.

At first, I didn't like it either, but over time have come to love it (and have become inspired by it in my own designs).

<comment><USER10> Alas, it is possible to strip too much and I think Google is guilty of that.

      > aspects of UI design: spacing, grids, and typography

I'd say these are more aspects of content design, albeit still very important in UI, but less so, for a simple reason: typically there is less content. You still have to have some visual hierarchy, make important things prominent and less important less so, mark interactive elements as such. When you strip too much you are forced to use whatever left for that and it can be a stretch, like excessive use of white space.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This whole argument is starting to feel really old. Neither "flat design" or skeumorphism is necessarily the right path. They are both great techniques which can solve different problems. Gradients and texture bring dimensionality and personality. Flat design feels more modern and focuses certain functionality. Look at Apple v. Microsoft right now. Skeumorphism IS solving Apple's design problems and Windows 8 is struggling to make meaningful strides. In my opinion This whole purist backlash against skeumorphism is bad. This new approach implies that ornamentation and style is not important or useless. I find this implication ridiculous, designers must solve problems with form and emotionally appeal to users. Personality is equally important to solving the problems. The fact the designers are attacking or shunning one over the other is upsetting.

</comment><comment><USER20> I always hated everyone's (especially Apple's) skeumorphism. I wrote this <http://nnife.com/inouveau.html> about it, to me imitative digital design has always been horrible and it reminds me of the imitative architecture and furniture design that was popular about 120 years ago, like this article also mentions. It's such a dumb way of designing.

"Let's just make it look like this other completely different thing! It's familiar, so people will be drawn to it."

Pixels are flat. Screens are flat. Flat design is here to stay.

<comment><USER10>
      > Pixels are flat. Screens are flat.

Pixels are also RGB. Does it mean that designs should use only those three colors?

      > Flat design is here to stay.

Total non sequitur.

<comment><USER20> What the fuck are you talking about?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> As with everything on that blog: total BS.

Flat design isn't an 'aesthetic'; it's the result of considered design thinking. Picking 'flat design style' instead of x or y 'design style' is to cheapen yourself as a designer to the level of an 11 year old on DeviantArt.

<comment><USER22> Some of these design blogs need to be put in the same bucket as W3Schools on HN so people know not to bother. So much misinformation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> It would be nice to see some usability studies to see if users actually find the actions on a page as easily despite the lack of 3D, bevels, shadows, gloss, gradients, etc.. We programers often reason things out, like the above article did, just to watch users try to use the app and prove us completely wrong.

At one company where we had flat buttons we made the most commonly desired action on the screen really huge and had a block of smaller buttons below it. In usability tests, no user ever hit that huge button. They all thought it was just a page title or something. We even tried giving them tasks that required using it, but they would go into a different section of the app like the settings and never figure it out.

</comment><comment><USER24> Sort of off topic, but there are physical examples of "flat" design applied to objects. One notable example could be the Quad 33 preamp:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Quad_33_Front.jpg>

</comment><comment><USER25> Skeumorphism isn't inherently bad. But problems commonly follow when designers aspire for authenticity over sanity, which leads to bad user experiences. Apple's Contacts and Calendar apps are cumbersome to use because they try too much to replicate real world objects.

More alarmingly, it limits our creative thinking. When the iPhone was first presented in 2007, Jobs kept on reminding us that these user experiences were only possible because of touch screens. We were no longer limited by static physical keyboards. The iPhone doesn't even have a shutter button in Camera.app! There are countless other examples of digitally authentic user experiences which are only possible if we think outside the box and beyond real world objects.

</comment><comment><USER26> In this book Interface Culture, Steven Johnson argues that Apple's OS X (back in 1999 or so) was as significant a cultural contribution as.... Sgt. Pepper by the Beatles

That's back when Apple made everything 3-Dish and liquid and transparent. It did indeed change a whole 5-year chunk of UI designs. Maybe it was even the first skeumorphism...it looks like water

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_(user_interface)>

<comment><USER27> I can't see a comparison to Sergeant Pepper. Sergeant Pepper was both mass culture, and genuinely innovative through the use of sampling techniques that ultimately changed the nature of pop. And it did progressions between movements which was not new but still unusual in pop.

What innovations were new to OS X? In several cases it copied features from other systems and then did a worse job of implementing them than the original. GUI search was copied from BeOS and less powerful and more cumbersome. Workspaces were copied from unix UIs, and feel roughly bolted-on because the system is application centric not window centric. The strength in OSX was in bread and butter stuff like consistent UI and drivers that work.

The only thing that was mildly new was the traffic light and horizontal stripes. We'll have to see if people still respect that in a few decades. I suspect we will instead look back at it as influential in the way in the way that flares or the Ford Anglia 105E were influential, perhaps asking "what was wrong with the world that so many people thought this kitsch to be a good idea".

</comment></comment><comment> B-Con I love it. I like the flat look, and I like simplicity in UIs. I was afraid that flat and simplicity was going to die with Web 2.0, but now with Google and Microsoft pushing simpler, largely flat UIs, that seems to be less worrisome.

There will always be trends, and I'm sure eventually we'll trend away from flat, but I'll enjoy it while it lasts.

</comment><comment><USER28> I think the only thing I'll miss from the unmourned previous design era were gradients. They served a very practical function: the boundary between almost any two gradients, even subtle ones, triggers the edge-detection algorithm in the brain and creates a border while using up hardly any of your budget for space and contrast.

<comment><USER29> I like the happy medium that the Squarespace screenshot suggests - flat list navigation elements that are implicitly clickable due to their arrangement, and lightly-gradiented buttons that pop out as actionable items. Moderation is ideal (as usual).

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> One thing that comes to mind is the updated www.outlook.com design and Windows 8 in general. While I personally am a fan as a designer, I'm more interested in what non-techy people think of skeumorphism vs flat.

Anyone have input from relatives / friends or anyone not associated with technology?

</comment><comment><USER31> If skeuomorphs are designed to transition from the physical to the virtual, and we're now getting beyond them to a 'flat design', new virtual materials should be the next topic for discussion. What sort of virtual world is it that uses entirely new material forms?

</comment><comment><USER32> This page on LayerVault is a lot of subconscious work to know what's a button and what's a form field.

[https://layervault.com/payments?plancode=small_team&sign...](https://layervault.com/payments?plancode=small_team&signup=true)

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm surprised Windows wasn't mentioned in the article. Although the latest version has been met with mixed reactions, I think the fact that Microsoft has embraced "flat" design will have a measure of influence on the future of the aesthetic.

</comment><comment><USER34> None of the points listed about flat design are specific to flat design, but are simply good design practices.

</comment><comment><USER31> There are two o's in skeuomorphism!

</comment><comment><USER35> I love flat design!

</comment><comment><USER36> I _HATE_ the flat look. I prefer to see gradients, drop shadows, and rounded corners. That's why I can't stand Android & Windows 8.

<comment><USER37> Android has plenty of gradients, drop shadows, and rounded corners. They aren't garish hard-candy-style buttons like on iOS, but they're certainly there. Subtlety in execution is an important part of design.</comment></comment>


Firefox Installs non-free binaries from Cisco and Google again (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=915582 <comment><USER2> It's worse than that. Firefox will download non-free javascript and html from pretty much every website you visit. Debian team needs to get on it, fast!

<comment><USER3> I do not think the sarcasm is deserved here. Debian is committed to free software. You can find a set of guidelines they implement in their social contract website under the heading "The Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG)" at [https://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines](https://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines)

A substantial user and developer base prefers Debian precisely because of these Guidelines. Inclusion of free software (as-is) that automatically installs non-free binaries would violate almost all of these guidelines.

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure that these guidelines make a distinction between a call to install a codec on-demand versus a call to download and run (and even cache) a minified Javascript library.

<comment><USER4> The difference is whether the user has explicitly asked for it. If I point my web browser at a url, I am instructing it to download and execute whatever it finds there. However, if the browser decides to download a codec on-demand, it is making an executive decision as to what code should run on the machine - and to select non-free code without user interaction is a violation of trust.

An analogous situation would be the non-free NVidia blob. Debian fully supports installing it, but it would be very much verboten to do so by default, automatically.

<comment><USER2> > If I point my web browser at a url, I am instructing it to download and > execute whatever it finds there.

And your browser will download linked javascript from third party websites to make it run. As firefox downloads a codec from a third party to make the media you've requested run.

I actually agree about the conflict between this codec behavior and the Debian philosophy. But they need to come to terms with the much greater conflict with their philosophy that the modern internet experience presents.

Stallman, for all his faults, was right about a lot of things. We live in a world where people don't own their own books, and buy software on a subscription model. For a few years back in the late 90s and early 2000s it looked like free software was the answer. But the internet made an end run around it, and Debian, etc., hasn't caught up. We're all digital renters instead of owners.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can someone here please explain to me what the issue is? Firefox downloads non-free binaries in order to read some codecs by default, and this issue states that firefox should not download the codec by default because it is non-free, which is against debian's philosophy, is that correct?

<comment><USER6> Yes, although notably this is about black-box DRM systems, not just your run- of-the-mill video codecs.

Standard versions of Firefox include non-free components by default because most users expect Netflix to work. ("Free" means "open source" in this context.)

Debian repositories (that aren't named "non-free") are supposed to contain only free software, so the Debian-packaged version of Firefox needs to be stripped of any non-free components. Should any slip through, that's a critical bug as far as Debian is concerned.

I don't think there's an issue here, it's just two projects with different goals proceeding as they're supposed to. We can have a discussion about all the things wrong with Encrypted Media Extensions and the like, but it's somewhat beside the point unless Firefox gains _way_ more marketshare.

<comment><USER7> What technical reason is there for Firefox to dynamically download these libraries instead of bundling them at built time? It leads to bugs such as this one.

<comment><USER8> Pretty sure its up to Debian to repackage and modify software to meet their standards. Not for app developers to somehow comply with every bizarre packaging policy each Linux distribution cooks up.

<comment><USER6> That as it may be, "why is this component downloaded separately" is a fair question to ask. (Sibling comments have proposed some answers.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> see also this cluster-fudge: _" firefox: Safe Browsing updates fail due to insufficient quota on the Google API key"_ [https://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=895147](https://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=895147)

both issues are still open after more than 1 year! There seems to be a disconnect in how FF security is perceived by tech savvy users and how security/privacy critical bugs get prioritized by Mozilla.

edit:

Just recently I discovered DoH was activated by default now and bypassing my /etc/hosts block list without any warning. This opened me up to tracking from sites I thought I had blocked (discovered it only by accident and after several months when I actively looked into DoH and the network.trr.mode setting).

In all above cases the failure-modes are insecure. It's like a firewall that suddenly switches its enforcement policy from a deny-all+whitelisting to allow-all+blacklisting without properly informing users.

Totally unacceptable!

<comment><USER9> Thank you for that note on DNS-over-HTTP .. it might explain a weird event for me recently where a blacklisted site wasn't blocked (opendns + pihole).

Are FF sending all my DNS data to a private third party now then? Doesn't sound a very FOSS thing to do?

<comment><USER10> If you have an up-to-date PiHole, firefox should automatically disable DoH since PiHole now ships the necessary canary.

<comment><USER11> Still unacceptable if I'm not at home or on a VPN.

<comment><USER10> If you're not at home or on a VPN you trust, how can you trust the network you are in delivers a safe DNS server? Besides, you can always disable DoH or point it to your own DoH server.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why is this relevant if it's from DEC 2018?

</comment><comment><USER13> Next week will be entertaining when someone takes a baseball bat to the pinata and 50;security vulnerablities fall out. thanks Cisco for your continued dangerous and terrible software.

I wonder if the devs get a bonus for everyone they fix.

</comment><comment><USER14> that's why I use chrome

<comment><USER15> This doesn't even make sense, Chrome is non-free to begin with.

<comment><USER16> It's a joke.

<comment><USER17> It's two jokes!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


RR: lightweight execution recording and deterministic debugging - <AUTHOR> http://rr-project.org/

<comment><USER2> Looks very interesting. I wonder what tricks it uses compared to gdb's record function? Sounds like it's orders of magnitude faster than gdb's record.

Edit: Sounds like they trap all i/o and other things that cause nondeterminism, and emulate those. Otherwise they just let the code run at native speed.

<comment><USER3> [http://rr-project.org/rr.html](http://rr-project.org/rr.html) has all the gory details.</comment></comment>


Dotfiles/bin/todo - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/holman/dotfiles/blob/master/bin/todo

<comment><USER2> While I don't use this todo method, I did fork this repo which has been handy for managing my own dotfiles.</comment>


Apple Ditching OpenGL? - <AUTHOR> http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2014/06/03/apple-ditching-opengl/ <comment><USER2> _the market hungers to return to a programming paradigm in which the developer can interact much more DIRECTLY with the hardware without a bloated CPU bound OS or graphics API in the way._

Yeah, because all of us really want to go even more backwards in terms of having to deal with the BARE METAL (read: weird fucking behavior) of all of these cards. The current situation with OpenGL is far from ideal, but it's a damned sight better than having to rewrite my code all the time every time for each new device that comes out.

The last chunk of the article talks about the magical ~physics~ that this sort of thing will enable, because real-time raytracing is the the future right? Right? Guise?

If Apple does indeed end up ditching OpenGL (not that they were doing a great job of keeping up with the core API until recently, though they _did_ keep new extensions rolling in steadily), it'd be more proof of them being shitty to engineers and the rest of the development community as a whole.

<comment><USER3> To be fair, the Metal API is a lot more straightforward then OpenGL, and OpenGL is far from being "write once run everywhere". Each OpenGL platform, GPU and driver comes with its own set of quirks and problems. I do _not_ think that vendor-specific APIs are the right way, but the current OpenGL situation isn't that much different. I would have hoped that Apple shows some real progress on their OpenGL implementations instead of writing their own API though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What I find fascinating, in general, is Apple's rise as a gaming powerhouse.

Take SpriteKit. It didn't exist until it was announced at WWDC 2013. Up until that point, the functionality offered by it was largely either hand-rolled by the developer, or achieved via framework (e.g., Cocos2D). I think Apple realized that they could capture more mind-share and confidence if they offered their own first-party framework offering.

Fast-forward a year later, and we have an enhanced SpriteKit (i.e., light sources, field forces, per-pixel physics, inverse kinematics), and of course the newly-announced SceneKit (3D scene rendering for casual games), Swift and Metal... _all within a year!_

With regard to Metal, Tim Sweeney had this to say after the Zen Garden app demo:

"There are thousands of objects being rendered here in a scene that we couldn't have dreamed of building, prior to Metal delivering a 10 fold increase in rendering efficiency. To have this level of graphics capability on iPhone and on iPad now is a stunning breakthrough. We're proud to have been a part of it. Of course, we'd love to share this with you, so as soon as iOS 8 is available, we'll be making Zen Garden available in the App Store for free."

<comment><USER5> Yes, it's like watching history repeat itself. Apple is the new pre-20xx Microsoft, Metal is the new DirectX, Swift it the new VB(A/Script).

<comment><USER6> Swift is hardly VB. Swift is a modern functional language competitive with Java. It's far more complex than Objective-C. The threading model in Swift utilizes GCD and Closures versus the "perform selector in background" semantics of ObjC.

Not for junior engineers.

<comment><USER7> A PC vendor-specific high-level language? VB is the obvious comparison. Sure Swift is a _better_ language, but it fills the same niche as VB - a platform has a difficult API and they want a more productive language, so they make something very high level using popular practices of the day, custom made to map tightly to their platform.

It's just the popular practices in that niche in VB's day were things like Delphi and Tcl/TK, whereas Swift comes out in the day of Java/C#/Golang.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _If you think I'm exaggerating… just ask yourself… what other Apple API's or Microsoft API's get their own brand logo?_

For Apple, pretty much all of them. SceneKit, SpriteKit, HealthKit, CloudKit, … The list is long.

<comment><USER9> I think we could push this at least all the way back to 1991 and QuickTime

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Adopting Metal for reasons of extra performance is one thing. Completely eliminating OpenGL ES support from iOS has no excuse _other than shutting off Android_ , so that would be a pretty nasty move from them. I hope they don't do it. Forget about Android _users_ \- it's iOS developers that should be crying foul if Apple intends to do that, as it will force them to live in an iOS-only world whether they like it or not.

<comment><USER11> " _as it will force them to_ leave _in an iOS-only world whether they like it or not._ "

I think you meant "live", but you could get leave to work in there as well. It would certainly take a lot to convince me to develop something for the iOS ... gated community.

<comment><USER12> > It would certainly take a lot to convince me to develop something for the > iOS ... gated community.

Like the chance to make decent money? Gotta give Apple credit, their users are willing to shell out cash.

<comment><USER11> Emphasis on the word "chance". You could spend quite a bit of effort developing an app only to find out that Apple won't approve it, or perhaps requires unacceptable changes.

Hence my emphasis on "gated community". Some people like the trade-offs in this business model (earning money does have its attractions :-), I personally don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> From a company that funded Khronos for OpenGL ES and shared canvas/webkit with the world, this would be the wrong direction. WebGL success is largely hooked to OpenGL and its use on mobile as OGLES and WebGL are based on the same base spec. The OpenGL battle was just won with mobile, why replace that?

<comment><USER14> Get the competition where you want them, while _you_ move to higher ground.

<comment><USER15> Are we talking about Sun Tzu stuff here?

"All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near."

Is this particular case, make everybody compromises performance by adapting themselves to OpenGL while we prepare an almost-bare-metal thing?

<comment><USER14> The key (and there's probably a Sun Tzu quote about it as well) is getting your competition to where they _want_ to be ... in a way that entangles them there. OpenGL is a respectable place to be, and making it an industry standard & norm ensures everyone can achieve their goals by leveraging the work of others; there's nothing wrong with a solid grounding in OpenGL. The trick, of course, is recognizing that there is _always_ a better position, and preparing to move there while helping everyone else get to a nice comfortable position below it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm actually surprised (after reading his bio) by this article. Did I completely miss the point of Metal? It sounded like more similar to low-level console platform APIs than to OpenGL or DirectX.

<comment><USER7> Which, realistically, is what Apple needs. The iOS platform is becoming one of the de-facto big players in the portable console market. Console-level APIs are a logical extension.

Insert speculation about Apple TV as Wii competitor here.

<comment><USER17> >Insert speculation about Apple TV as Wii competitor here.

I thought the Plants vs. Zombies demo already looked better than the Wii U. If Apple puts an A8 in the next AppleTV and keeps it under $200, it would be a very appealing alternative to a $400 xbox.

Apple selling a game controller still seems like a weird prospect, though.

<comment><USER18> >Apple selling a game controller still seems like a weird prospect, though.

Rather convenient that iOS 7 included a game controller API and Apple hardware certification for Bluetooth controllers.

(Of course, they are expensive and poorly reviewed, but the groundwork is there.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Two additional reads on the subject I found useful:

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/8116/some-thoughts-on- apples-m...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/8116/some-thoughts-on-apples-metal- api)

[https://ilikecode.wordpress.com/2014/06/03/what-impact- ios-m...](https://ilikecode.wordpress.com/2014/06/03/what-impact-ios-metal/)

</comment><comment><USER19> OpenGL is about two decades of amalgamations and mistakes that needed to be cut out of the working spec. And as a result we have more low-level APIs that are now vendor specific, such as Metal, AMD's Mantle, and so forth...

The downside is we're now at risk of losing an open standard API. OpenGL is bad, and yes, it needs to be retired. But without an mature alternative development costs will only grow.

All of this reeks of the worst kind of anti-competitive behavior and its time for an investigation.

<comment><USER20> I don't think you actually know what anti-competitive means.

<comment><USER21> > I don't think you actually know what anti-competitive means.

This is not a good Hacker News comment because it puts another user down and because it doesn't add information. It would be much better without the first bit and if it taught us something about what "anti-competitive" means.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "While the rest of the game community is trying to adopt Mantle, DirectX 12 or Metal, I'll be re-learning my ray-tracing and quantum physics"

Agree, let me just grab my quantum physics engine and spin up my realtime ray- tracer and build a next hit game in a month.

</comment><comment><USER22> Vendors should just publish specs for GPUs and make them normal compiler targets. Drivers should just arbitrate access from user space.

</comment><comment><USER23> Keep in mind, that Microsoft, Apple, Samsung, nVidia, AMD, Intel, will keep having support for OpenGL (ES or other versions). And it is still the simplest way to write code for multiple platforms at the same time.

Of course, each of them tries to "bind" you by offering some extra speed or features and make it hard for you to publish to other platforms. But at the end, I believe that OpenGL (ES ...) is the only thing that will survive :)

It is very much like client-side web apps. Adobe wants you to use Flash, so you would have to buy Adobe Flash. Microsoft wants you to use Silverlight, so you would have to buy Visual Studio. Oracle wants you to use Java, etc ... But at the end, Javascript remains. It is not prefect for everyone, but it is "open" and free to implement, free to develop without paying anything to anybody.

</comment><comment><USER24> I might be way off here but the idea that metal et al have anything to do with enabling ray tracing seems absurd. The cards still are hardware optimized for triangle rasterization, the api doesn't change that.

</comment><comment><USER25> This wouldn't really make sense.

</comment><comment><USER26> Isn't metal basically the same thing as mantle ? By that I mean a low level API that has direct access to the GPU ? Also Dx12 is said to do this soon.

</comment><comment><USER27> Provocative title, but probably overstated. SceneKit uses OpenGL directly with shaders and deferred rendering. Metal seems likely to become more mainstream as engine developers adopt the tech, but there are going to be lots of developers who are overwhelmed with writing glsl shaders, let alone significantly altering the render pipeline.

</comment><comment><USER28> Anyone has any good idea of what will be the impact of such a decision on the Linux gaming market ?

<comment><USER29> How many ports are there from iOS to Linux?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is tragic news. Instead of working on an open cross-platform solution, they create their own proprietary crap. This must die. Vote with your money.

</comment><comment><USER31> The author has made a misattribution: apologies are due to John Donne, not Ernest Hemingway, for the repurposing of Meditation XVII.

</comment><comment><USER32> Metal isn't on Mac. They ditching Mac too?

<comment><USER33> They're ditching Intel and the discrete GPU chips that it needs.

This is the reason Metal isn't introduced on Mac. They're waiting. Waiting until their Macs run on ARM.

I'm not saying it'll happen tomorrow. It may take a few years.

<comment><USER15> I don´t understand.

Is Apple returning to make its own chips trend?

<comment><USER33> Apple never had their own desktop chips. PowerPC was an IBM architecture. They had created ARM to make chips for Newton, but that's it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Linux ate my RAM (2009) - <AUTHOR> https://www.linuxatemyram.com/ <comment><USER2> In 1994, I was doing some Linux contracting for a company whose in-house programmer suddenly claimed "Linux causes data loss!".

The suspicion was based on copying a large number of small files (static HTML files generated from a database) on a MS-DOS machine. This was on the order of several hundred megabytes, IIRC.

On Linux, the disk usage of these files was quite a bit smaller, hence the suspected data loss.

This is because, of course, the files came from a FAT16 file system, which had to use large allocation clusters to handle that much data.

He wasn't wrong to be paranoid. I mean, what, Linux had been started by a student in Helsinki just three years before that, and here was this business running on it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, actually I would love to disable disk caching on my embedded Linux systems because it's a really common use case that they lose power and I would like to not have a bunch of data in memory when that happens. Right now I have to call sync before I do anything with the power or when I come back up everything I just "copied" is gone.

<comment><USER4> Was about to say this. The disk cache does get in the way when you want to have realtime response on embedded system. The swapd just seems to cause issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I remember when people were whining about this with Windows 7 when it was doing the same thing.

<comment><USER6> Windows 10 is borderline unusable due to it (it evicts RAM _very_ aggressively to use as disk cache). Doesn't help that their IO scheduler is completely screwed up too (and they removed the ability to disable NCQ, so disk performance on HDDs is down the drain).</comment></comment>


How Google was "skyhooked" by Apple's new iOS 6 Maps - <AUTHOR> http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/09/26/how-google-was-skyhooked-by-apples-new-ios-6-maps <comment><USER2> The writer is an abject moron.

The previous maps app was coded by Apple, but used data licensed from Google. Without that data, maps are worthless. It will take Apple _years_ to get to a level resembling the quality of the Google maps. I'm referring to the POIs, accuracy, maintenance, etc etc.

Anyone thinking otherwise knows nothing about the complexity of mapping and routing (I do: used to work for a company that licensed data to Google maps, and marketed the first trip planners in Europe -- no, not TomTom).

This was a gift from the Gods for Google. I betcha it would take Google no more than a month or two to code their own app if they had to start today, which they wouldn't have to, the switch wasnt a secret, and another 6 months to have it approved by the Apple gatekeepers.

However, why would Google do this? The google maps web version covers most immediate needs (great search results, good routing) and as announced, they anticipate adding a web version of street view shortly. This is pure WIN for google. Loads of goodwill for saving the day, loads of crappy Apple apps with Apple maps, and they'll have Q4 to look forward to with many many additional activations of Android (S3, Note II, etc.) so who's in a rush?

Meanwhile, I rue the day I upgraded to IOS6. Siri is sucky. Tethered WiFi connections have issues. All apps that use the standard "maps" component are ruined...

I also see class action lawsuits and EU rulings in Apple's future... for failure to provide an option to revert to IOS5, rendering old hardware less useful and ruining apps, and locking in the user base to sub-par solutions because of their monopolisitc control. Remember Microsoft and IE? History will repeat itself. It always does.

</comment><comment><USER3> >>>Additionally, all the work to produce a new Goggle Maps Navigation+Earth for iOS would need to be paid for by ads (just like Google's free Chrome browser or YouTube app for iOS), because few iOS users would be likely to pay anything substantial to replace Apple's own Maps with Google's version. In contrast, Apple's software development is funded through profitable hardware sales.

Now this is just goofy. Google doesn't have ads in chrome. It is a loss leader used to propel web related research forward. Youtube does have ads, but mostly to cover bandwidth costs, and has never turned a profit. Google could easily release an app without any form of profit just to retain user share.

<comment><USER4> Google has lots of ads in Chrome. They are on their search page and are displayed almost any time you type into the location bar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "However, Apple's surprise announcement left Google with no recourse but to heap complaints upon Apple's new Maps while having nothing to offer as an alternative apart from its own limited web app. "

Wait... So Apple's Maps is actually wonderful, and all complaints are actually by Google? It's not since the new Maps app provides a subpar experience to the old Google-powered Maps app?

</comment><comment><USER6> > Google faced the task of not just porting its existing Android Maps version > to iOS, but improving upon its features and appearance to match Apple's own > version. That would logically include matching the 3D features of Flyover

Does anyone really care about Flyover, aside from a neat first-time demo? How can you say "Google will have to put in an alternative to Flyover" without thinking the same thing about Apple and Street View?

I'm also laughing at the part where he spins Apple's lack of Transit as a plus.

<comment><USER7> > _I'm also laughing at the part where he spins Apple's lack of Transit as a > plus._

What does he say...?

[No way I'm giving him a page-hit...]

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> ...From Tim Cook's letter, I'd say that Google showing up with a nice maps app would be quite a boon to Apple right now. This article seems to not match reality.

<comment><USER9> _"This article seems to not match reality."_

Perhaps, but personally the article felt authentic to me.

Maybe something to do with the number of specific new details revealed in this ongoing IOS6 maps debacle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What the hell.. junk like appleinsider is making the front page of HN now?

</comment><comment><USER11> >>> Apple's surprise decision to launch its own Maps service in iOS 6 caught Google off guard

Google had early warning when they saw Apple acquiring several maps companies over the years:

[http://9to5mac.com/2011/10/29/apple-acquired-mind- blowing-3d...](http://9to5mac.com/2011/10/29/apple-acquired-mind- blowing-3d-mapping-company-c3-technologies-looking-to-take-ios-maps-to-the- next-level/)

</comment><comment><USER12> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance>

</comment><comment><USER13> The Reality Distortion Field lives on!

<comment><USER14> Daniel Eran Dilger is a pretty terrible writer and a huge Apple apologist. I got about halfway through before I had to check the byline and confirm my suspicions.

<comment><USER15> He is indeed an Apple apologist (I prefer the word "zealot" more), but he's not a terrible writer (in general). He sometimes (a couple times a year) writes insightful, technical, under-the-hood stuff in his blog, "roughly drafted". That's why I visit his blog every quarter or so and skim the long articles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> First I learned about Google "Microsofting" Skyhook on the Location Servics deals.</comment>


Technical co-founder needed for a 'neglected' app having 100,000 users - <AUTHOR>

I'll just quickly list out all the details:
- I have a web app which I put together over a weekend back in 2008.
- It currently has about 100000 (one hundred thousand) registered users. But...... read on.
- The app has one very important feature missing.
- The app is poorly developed and very poorly designed.
- Most users don't come back after using the service once or twice (or thrice) because of that missing feature.
- The app is free.
- I put a survey on the app asking "Would you pay $5 a month if we add that feature?". 35% users said Yes!. Even if 90% of them are lying, we still have a great passive revenue opportunity.
- I spend zero money on marketing. Traffic is organic.
- I spend zero time on the app. Domain renewal is automatic. Hosting renewal is automatic. I just don't touch it. It runs on its own.
- I have been neglecting this project for so long. Procrastination.
<comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----
</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----
What I am expecting from the technical partner:
- Build that feature (PHP, MySQL and some third party APIs). Building this feature can be little tricky. I am not sure.
- Integrate payment gateway.
- Just handle all the stuff.
- 50-50% split of revenue.
- So, in a nutshell, do all the work and get 50% split.
</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----
</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----
If interested, please give me your email id, I'll contact you. I am not comfortable in sharing the url here. I hope I am not violating any rule.
You may use services like http://scr.im/ to mask your email id. </comment><comment><USER2> I'm interested. I've done multiple startups, written code that serviced 100 million+ uniques a day at one of the big boys and been developer one on numerous growth projects. Best professional complement ever was being called a coding animal. Shoot me a note at throwaway firstname.lastname@example.com.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, now I am curious. I wonder what sort of app it is, and I wonder what % of those 100,000 registered users are active users. I've been looking for an excuse to use Stripe for payment processing. This could be it. Shoot me some details. email@example.com

<comment><USER4> I had guess 100-200 daily active.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just checked the traffic stats (I use statcounter)

\- 1,600 daily visits (of them 1000 are returning visits)

\- 4,400 daily page views

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Shoot me a message. firstname.lastname@example.com

I have strong PHP experience (currently building enterprise level PHP apps) and I've done extensive payment gateway integration, including custom e-commerce platforms.

Very interested.

</comment><comment><USER6> Sounds right up my alley. firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><AUTHOR> A member posted that meltmail wasn't working. Do check.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Guys, share the link to the web app, please :)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [UPDATE]

I'll be sending a mail to all of you soon. Thanks for your interest.

<comment><USER8> Thanks. Sounds like an interesting project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I might be interested: firstname.lastname@example.com (throwaway address as well).

</comment><comment><USER10> I could be interested as well - email me at firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER10> turns out that service doesn't work - try firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm interested. Please contact me at firstname.lastname@example.com.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm also curious about this. (my username) @yahoo.com

</comment><comment><USER8> email@example.com

I've integrated PayPal in the past too :)</comment>


Erdős: Mathematical problems - <AUTHOR> https://erdos.sdslabs.co/

<comment><USER2> Previous discussion from the last time it was posted: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8313702](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8313702).

We have since gotten new problems and a few new features (such as a newsletter to announce new contests).

</comment><comment><USER3> this looks more organized and varied than project Euler.

the most recent puzzle is a clone of a game called Hackenbrush :-) [http://www-math.mit.edu/~rstan/transparencies/games.pdf](http://www- math.mit.edu/~rstan/transparencies/games.pdf)</comment>


The F|R Interview: Y Combinator's Paul Graham - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2008/05/03/the-fr-interview-y-combinators-paul-graham/

<comment><USER2> The questions and answers have been edited so much that I often seem to be saying something different than I actually did. So I posted my original answers:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=180299>

I used their new questions when possible, but the original ones when they'd changed so much that my answer would otherwise have been mysterious.

Edit: Problem fixed. They replaced the interview with the original questions and answers.

</comment><comment><USER3> _Can your model be replicated?_

YC's competitive advantage is their "brand", which existed before they funded their first startup.

I'd bet a huge chunk of YC applicants read PG's essays long before they even heard of YC. Applicants completely and wholeheartedly trust YC before they fill out the application.

I would not have felt comfortable submitting the most intimate details of my company (including financial) to another company but I revealed them to YC without batting an eye.

<comment><USER4> Out of curiosity, how many times did you apply to YC? If more than once, were any applications with something other than fleaflicker?

<comment><USER3> Once. Fleaflicker is the only startup idea I've ever pursued.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Perhaps I'm missing something, but: did they link to a page about doing recursion in C++ to explain the concept of a Y Combinator? (<http://www.cprogramming.com/tutorial/lesson16.html>) .

For better explanations, this is sort of from The Little Schemer:

<http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~sweirich/cse340/04/why_of_y.ps>

This is also good:

<http://www.dreamsongs.com/Files/WhyOfY.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER6> "... but it is not our model that distinguishes us. It's the people that make the difference ..."

I don't know much about YC since I am of a very different demographic but I would say the same thing about the people who comes to this discussion site (YC News or Hacker News) which I discovered by accident six months ago. I bet most people who keep coming back to YCN do so because of the quality of the discussion (i.e., people) as well. And my observation is that many are coming from all over the World, with very different startup experience, and obviously of different age group (i.e., very few are YC candadates).

And I bet it would be difficult to replicate YCN for the same reason that it would be difficult to replicate YC.

</comment><comment><USER4> is zecter (<http://www.zecter.com>) a misspelling?

</comment><comment><USER7> Nice - thanks for posting.</comment>


Tencent's Just Getting Started on Online Advertising - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-27/tencent-s-just-getting-started-on-online-advertising <comment><USER2> That article (blurb?) is impressively low on any detail.

Here's a better one: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-26/why- tence...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-26/why-tencent- wants-to-be-more-like-facebook-in-advertising)

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, given how the company is operated and makes money it already does "advertising" a lot. Though it is more like self promotion to sell some kind of micropayment on a particular product. And they make tons of money doing this.

This moves looks like a way to try and squeeze more money out of their user and properties. If someone thinks FB is bad or EA games with micro transactions are bad, try one of Tencent's properties. Then think what will happen with this move towards advertisement.

<comment><USER4> Beyond that, consider what Tencent are doing with a "social credit score" to compete with Alibaba's Sesame Credit. It will be scary when these systems eventually migrate to or evolve in the US.

Tencent social credit:

* [https://qz.com/1049669/chinas-tencent-hkg-0700-is-quietly-te...](https://qz.com/1049669/chinas-tencent-hkg-0700-is-quietly-testing-a-social-credit-score-based-on-peoples-online-behavior/)

Sesame Credit video from Extra Credits (almost a couple years old now, but most easily-engaged piece I've seen on implications of social credit):

* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHcTKWiZ8sI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHcTKWiZ8sI)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent) $500+ BILLION market cap, and stakes in a lot of top companies. Imagine if they truly entered the US /EU market

<comment><USER6> Tencent can't even effectively enter non-mainland Chinese markets (HK, Taiwan, Singapore, etc...) or the countries surrounding the PRC (Cambodia, Myanmar, Vietnam, India, Russia, Korea, ....). Their scope is very china limited, where they have no experience competing with international contenders.

<comment><USER7> WeChat is pretty big in Hong Kong now. I was on Hong Kong MTR last week and half of the people standing around me used WeChat within 10 mins.

<comment><USER6> Still not as big as Facebook in the SAR. Also, none of the other functions work beyond mobile payments for mainland tourists.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Startups with Families Can Better Accomplish Missions that Matter - <AUTHOR> http://exitevent.com/why-startups-with-families-are-better-equipped-to-accomplish-missions-that-matter-14224.asp

<comment><USER2> As someone who values having a work-life balance and having a family, this was a breath of fresh air to read here on HN. I like this article because not only is Elliott saying that you can have a work-life balance and run a startup, but it may even be an advantage.

I'm sure there are even more benefits not even listed in the article. I think there are a lot of personality traits that having a wife/kids can help develop in ways that only having a family can, patience being a huge one :).

<comment><AUTHOR> Patience, dedication, and the ability to defer enjoyment in service of a bigger goal are things I've observed at greater than normal quantities in those of our team who have kids.</comment></comment>


Nurse reveals the top 5 regrets people make on their deathbed - <AUTHOR> http://www.ariseindiaforum.org/nurse-reveals-the-top-5-regrets-people-make-on-their-deathbed/

<comment><USER2> It has a bit of preachiness that makes me suspicious how accurate it is. I wonder what less appealing regrets she filtered out. Also, it's on the same site that says "Many of these mantras still exist, but it is very difficult to find those who can chant them accurately. This is actually a safety measure because if the wish-fulfilling mantras were easily chanted, there would no doubt be many people who would misuse them.".

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops... I guess I should've done a bit more due diligence on the site before sharing this as its credibility does indeed seem a little shaky!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Not a particularly interesting article, but I rescued the bullet points from archive.org:

1\. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the it.

2\. I wish I didn't work so hard.

3\. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.

4\. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

5\. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

</comment><comment><USER4> Seems to be down at the time of my comment. Hope it comes back up.</comment>


Philly Wisper - <AUTHOR> https://phillywisper.net/ <comment><USER3> I love to see this, but it's a hard sell. Philly is one of the lucky cities with reasonable competition already, one of which is Verizon's Fios - <USER2> built out through the city. A lot of new construction homes have both Comcast* and Fios pre-wired into the home, so installation is trivial and competition is, delightfully, fierce.

25M wireless connections at $50 are a hard sell against 1G fiber at $80.

I don't mean to be a debbie-downer about this, because I think promoting connectivity is a huge boon to society.

* Fun fact, the new Comcast building looks like a middle finger facing west - literally flipping off the rest of the country. Seems appropriate.

<comment><USER4> 25 Mbps is the minimum speed we provide. Our customers typically see a good bit more. And for context, a Netflix HD stream only requires 5 Mbps.

Also, our $50 a month is actually $50. There are no extra service, rental fees, franchise frees, or taxes. It's a single flat rate price.

We also do require or even offer annual contracts.

In other words, we make getting Internet service easy and hassle free.

Finally, we implement Network Neutrality and will never sell or share our customer's personal data or browsing history (short of a valid warrant).

<comment><USER5> But Fios in Philly is $40 a month (and then $55) for 100Mbps with no installation fees or contracts, so it will take your customers more than three years to break even for probably worse speeds. The net neutrality promise is nice, but do you have other selling points?

<comment><USER6> I, for one, would happily pay the price to know my money isn't subsidizing lobbying to legalize the cable-fication of the internet.

<comment><USER5> I would too!

But we have no way of knowing that Verizon and Comcast aren't their backend. For all anyone knows, giving them money _is_ giving Verizon/Comcast money.

<comment><USER4> We use two back end carriers and about to add a 3rd. We do not use Comcast or Verizon. Of the ones we do use, you may have heard of one of the carriers, probably not the other. The 3rd, very unlikely. And no, I'm not going to name them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow! Never expected we would end up on HN.

Happy to answer any questions.

Mark

ps: Some press and a review.

[https://www.phillymag.com/news/2019/04/29/wisper-internet- se...](https://www.phillymag.com/news/2019/04/29/wisper-internet-service- philadelphia/)

[https://dangerouslyawesome.com/2016/05/what-its-like-to- have...](https://dangerouslyawesome.com/2016/05/what-its-like-to-have-an- internet-provider-that-actually-cares/)

<comment><USER7> Any plans to service the areas outside of Philly? (I moved out 3-4 years ago, but am starting to miss it quite a bit.)

Either way, by even introducing competition like this, you're doing something fantastic. Kudos!

<comment><USER4> Thanks!

We're focused on covering much more of Philadelphia before we start looking to expand elsewhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That sounds really nice; I wish them all the best luck.

"PhillyWisper Residential service plans are designed for personal use for 8 hours a day for general internet use including streaming, web surfing, e-mail access, and all other possible online activities. Residential customers are not allowed to host public servers of any kind, use static (public) IPv4 IP addresses, or consume more bandwidth than required to support typical residential Internet activities. PhillyWisper may disconnect or limit the bandwidth for residential customers who use residential service for activities deemed atypical at PhillyWisper's discretion.Connection speeds for Residential service plans will fluctuate based on network demand."

That's not so friendly. IN fact, it's rather badly defined.

No mention of IPv6.

<comment><USER9> > Residential customers are not allowed to . . . consume more bandwidth than > required to support typical residential Internet activities. PhillyWisper > may disconnect or limit the bandwidth for residential customers who use > residential service for activities deemed atypical at PhillyWisper's > discretion.

This worries me much more than any privacy issues (which could easily be alleviated with a $5/mo. VPN).

Are we supposed to read their minds to determine what "typical" behavior we're allowed to engage in? Or should we just live in constant fear of our internet being arbitrarily disconnected?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow I can't believe I'm seeing this on HN!

I worked with the co-founder Mark Steckel, and he is about as good as they get. He takes privacy and security VERY seriously (he's the only person I know that actually uses PGP!) and he's one of those guys who has forgotten more about networking than I'll ever know in my lifetime.

He literally answered a call one time while on the roof of a building either setting up or tweaking service for someone!

I don't live in the Philly area any more, but if you do I'd be willing to bet my reputation that you'll love the ISP if you get them.

<comment><USER11> "East Kensington start-up"...I thought that was code for "crack house" or "junky graveyard".

I kid, I kid. Best of luck to them. That area could really use some success stories.

<comment><USER7> About 10-20 years ago, you'd be completely correct.

But that area has underwent some of the craziest transformations I've seen in a long time recently. Not exactly gentrified, but certainly more accepting of literally everyone.

<comment><USER12> Nobody pays a mil-plus for a building of 3-story condos on a former crack block unless it's gentrified. Northeast Philly is the new Williamsburg.

<comment><USER13> "Northeast Philly is the new Williamsburg"

That's a bit of a stretch...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have been a customer for 3 years and have been ecstatic with their service. I think there have been maybe 2 outages in 3 years, and within minutes Mark e-mailed everyone detailing what happened, why, what he was doing to fix it, and when he expected to have maintenance finished. Observed speeds are typically higher than SLAs and as long as Mark is in business I don't plan to use anyone else.

When he came to install equipment I got the opportunity to go up on my roof and "help" (I know v little about networking) but it made for a really fun afternoon.

<comment><USER15> What's the latency and speed like beyond the advertised speeds? That would be my biggest hold back and was why I didn't sign up for Clear a couple years back.

<comment><USER14> For speed I regularly clock ~80 mbps down ~25 mbps up. This is pretty consistent (had a "slow" night on Sunday of ~60mbps when I checked).

Latency I haven't really paid much attention: I usually only check when it feels like something is wrong as a sanity check.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I look forward to see this business growing as it gives an alternative other than comcast and verizon which both have poor customer service. However, in Philly, 25 Mbps for $50 is expensive. In comparison I have been paying $70 a month for 100mbps with Verizon. Perhaps price will go down as customer base increases. I would also like to know more about the reliability of the service in bad weather.

<comment><USER17> I'm assuming it's using a similar technology as my mom's internet uses (hers has an antenna pointing at the local water tower). I can't think of a time that she's had weather related outages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> At first this struck me as expensive, in the sense that per Gbps, I get a much better price from Comcast. And then I remembered all of the externalities that come along with that price: data caps, potential monitoring, bad customer support and whatever else I'm forgetting.

How much is avoiding those actually worth to me? Probably pretty close to the price difference, actually, and if those things are really important to me I should be willing to walk the walk and pay for them.

I won't, because I don't live in Philadelphia, but I hope to have real viable alternatives where I do live.

<comment><USER19> Don't forget to read their customer agreement:

> Residential customers are not allowed to . . . consume more bandwidth than > required to support typical residential Internet activities. PhillyWisper > may disconnect or limit the bandwidth for residential customers who use > residential service for activities deemed atypical at PhillyWisper's > discretion.

That sounds to me like exactly what Comcast does. Torrent too many files of open data? No internet for you.

<comment><USER20> ISPs have to put this in there to protect themselves. Most small ISPs don't care what you do or how much bandwidth you consume unless you are degrading the performance of their other customers.

Source: I used to work at a small WISP similar to philly wisper.

<comment><USER19> Sorry I caught this so late, but no, ISPs do not have to use language like this to protect themselves. They can also provide the bandwidth the customer is paying for 100% of the time (or give the customer's money back), like my company does: [https://www.pilotfiber.com/legal](https://www.pilotfiber.com/legal)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Wireless has become much better and robust in recent years, but I've honestly never been exposed to a wireless solution that was completely without issues. That's why I'll always prefer cables (as in fiber).

Not knowing much about Philadelphia, surely a city like that offers fiber to most houses in 2019, and it's probably not going to cost more than $50-100/month for an entry level package? I could be wrong.

<comment><USER22> Philly resident here, I pay no contract $79.99 for Fios gigabit.

Verizon here also offers a 100mbps option (I think it's that at least) for $39.99 I believe, so this is a bit expensive.

<comment><USER23> Those prices are only for the first year, I recently learned that when my $39.99 100/100 plan jumped to $55, and the customer service rep said it will jump to $65 the third year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It would be a nice if they would put their tower(s) locations and their range circle on the site. That would at least give a running start if they can get a signal to the destination.

I'd rather not need to sign up to find this information out.

<comment><USER4> You don't actually need to sign up to tell if you are in range.

Just check out the "Available now" section in the zip code drop down on the sign-up form.

<comment><USER24> Ok, that wasn't intuitive from the form, it looked like you wanted a ton of info before I got to the zipcode. Maybe a hint on that page to look. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've had this for a year now & I love it. My speeds are typically twice what is advertised. FWIW, I used to have att gigabit for comparison.

</comment><comment><USER26> I _think_ that a lot of major cities have something like this... It just tends to not be advertised broadly. For instance, New Orleans (not exactly a tech hub) has at least 2 companies like this[0] and I've only accidentally found out about them. I wish I could try one of these, but I'm outside of their coverage area.

"WISP <city>" seems to be the search term if you're looking for something like this in your city.

[0] [http://southwan.com/coverage/](http://southwan.com/coverage/) & [http://skycom1.com/about-us/](http://skycom1.com/about-us/) & [https://www.nolabroadband.com/our- services/residential/](https://www.nolabroadband.com/our- services/residential/)

<comment><USER27> A few other ways to find WISPs in the U.S.:

[http://www.wispa.org/Directories/Find-a- WISP](http://www.wispa.org/Directories/Find-a-WISP)

[https://broadbandnow.com/](https://broadbandnow.com/)

BroadbandNow uses data reported by ISPs to the FCC. Disclaimer: I do have a relationship with BroadbandNow, they sponsor a website that I run.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Very cool! Always great to see fellow WISP folks on HN! For those curious about the industry: there are something like 500 wireless ISPs (WISPs) in the U.S. and many more outside of the U.S. [http://www.wispa.org](http://www.wispa.org) is the de-facto standard organization in the U.S. and runs a few conferences throughout the year. The largest WISP in the U.S. today is Rise Broadband ([https://www.risebroadband.com/](https://www.risebroadband.com/)) - most are considerably smaller. I worked at Rise for about 10 years and have spent basically my whole career working for Wireless ISPs in the U.S.

</comment><comment><USER11> Philly tried to have a community mesh net years ago. It really didn't work out. Hopefully this fares better.

<comment><USER28> There have been at least 3 attempts. The current one is still lacking much of a community.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> > we'll just need clear line of sight from your roof to our towers

I don't know what the real estate market is like in the parts of Phila. they're operating in, but in an area with lots of new construction, this could be an interesting issue when a proposed new structure would block existing customers.

<comment><USER30> This happens regularly for regular cell towers. Even major operators can get hit. It can usually be solved within days even if not advertised in advance, but that's for those major operators who can afford to put up a lot of towers or micros.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> > we'll just need clear line of sight from your roof to our towers.

Wouldn't it make sense to also implement mesh networking locally, so you wouldn't need a line-of-sight connection to every subscriber?

<comment><USER32> I've used a similar provider, Stephouse in Portland, OR and they would routinely install repeaters throughout the city to help cover deadspots, areas shaded by tall buildings, hills, etc. I assume the same would be available in Philly with the advantage that Philly is quite flat by comparison.

<comment><USER31> Do these repeaters also require line-of-sight to the consumer, or do they use a different means of communication?

(Also this sounds a lot like an ordinary provider and not like the independence as claimed on the website. A mesh networking solution would achieve independence through peer-to-peer connectivity.)

<comment><USER27> Mesh networks at this scale are pretty complicated and messy. Also they tend to be pretty low capacity. It's an order of magnitude (or maybe two) more difficult to build and manage a high-capacity robust mesh network than to build a pure line of sight hub-and-spoke style network. (I've done both.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I pay 90/month for 150. Seems like a major compromise

</comment><comment><USER34> What are they using? I had Clear using WiMax for a few years and it was _good enough_ until they shut down. I was tired of all the cable shenanigans.

<comment><USER35> I had Clear WiMax in a big metro for a few years and it was awful. Miserly speeds, lots of interference and congestion.

Modern wireless ISPs use a mesh of point-to-point directional radios operating on WiFi frequencies (see [https://mikrotik.com/products/group/wireless- systems](https://mikrotik.com/products/group/wireless-systems) and [https://www.ui.com/products/#airfiber](https://www.ui.com/products/#airfiber) for some popular products). These radios are much higher performance than WiMax (10 Gbit links are possible over short distances, 1 Gbit is normal over several miles) and suffer less interference because of directional antennas.

WISPs have been staging a quiet revolution across areas that don't see much competition. In San Francisco, known for atrocious bureaucracy preventing ISP competition, traditional fiber providers have been struggling to expand service for decades. Meanwhile, a local WISP called MonkeyBrains has quietly covered almost all of San Francisco and much of Oakland and Berkeley in their mesh, and is continuing to expand.

<comment><USER34> yeah, I was in Durham, NC and was pretty close to the tower. I don't think there was much congestion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I would give anything for this in Baltimore.

</comment><comment><USER37> I work out of Indyhall. Philly's most popular coworking space. I'm using Philly Whisper right now.

We only use it because Comcast couldn't keep our connection working. We're literally on Market street two blocks from Independence Hall. Within 5 blocks is the Philadelphia Mint. Numerous Federal courts, etc. And we still can't get a reliable connection.

Philly Whisper still goes down occasionally. We've had it go down twice in the past 60 days. They are super responsive but at the end of the day the internet going down for hours is still money lost.

I have FIOS at home and I've only ever seen it go down at night and it's because of a router update.

Disclaimer: I used to work for Comcast. Would not recommend.</comment>


Publish and Perish at Imperial College London: The Death of Stefan Grimm - <AUTHOR> http://www.dcscience.net/2014/12/01/publish-and-perish-at-imperial-college-london-the-death-of-stefan-grimm/ <comment><USER2> _This is not a university anymore but a business with very few up in the hierarchy [..] profiteering and the rest of us are milked for money_

This is exactly the impression I have of many American universities, which seem to have collectively fallen victim to a sort of 'administrative capture'. A typical example is the recent pay increases of 20% for the University of California chancellors - on salaries in the mid-$300,000s. The regents who voted for this said they intend to boost the pay of faculty and other staff too (who have also been subject to years-long pay freezes), but to me there's something fundamentally wrong with the idea of starting with the people who have the least economic need and are already handsomely compensated.

[http://www.sfgate.com/education/article/UC-regents- award-20-...](http://www.sfgate.com/education/article/UC-regents- award-20-percent-pay-raises-to-fix-5765312.php)

<comment><USER3> Nobody gets what they deserve. You only get what you negotiate.

(from my dad who is a former engineering professor and now a university administrator).

<comment><USER2> Don't take it as a dig at your dad, but shouldn't it be part of an administrator's fiduciary duty (at least at the top level) to ensure that people _do_ get what they deserve? The longterm health of the institution surely depends on the quality and availability of the intellectual output as well as the balance sheet.

<comment><USER4> Precisely this. The loss of productivity from disaffected employees is difficult to quantify, but at times substantial. And once a culture of disaffectation takes hold it's near impossible to get rid of it. Administration is well advised to be careful in this matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting to note that Imperial College appear to have wiped all record of Dr. Grimm from their website.

[http://www.imperial.ac.uk/collegedirectory/](http://www.imperial.ac.uk/collegedirectory/)

[http://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/s.grimm](http://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/s.grimm)

It's heartening to see that some aspects of this institution's operations are apparently well-funded and efficient.

(Sarcasm, for the impaired.)

</comment><comment><USER6> The flip side of this (at least at an American research university that I have witnessed first hand) is that professors bringing in large amounts of money with R01 grants can get away with nearly anything they want. This intersects with the other front page discussions about H1B visas and the system of exploitation I've seen with foreign post-docs and grad students. I've seen a foreign research scientist (and dear friend) literally work himself to death securing the grants that kept the money flowing into the lab.

There's so much to say about the current state of "research" (which I dare not call science, because seeking to falsify a hypothesis is a terrible way to win a grant) but all explanations are clear if you just follow the money.

<comment><USER7> Surely that's better than trying to win a grant by proving a known-false hypothesis, which isn't unheard of either.

<comment><USER8> If that known-false hypothesis is supported by wealthy people,this can be very lucrative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't understand, don't professors have tenure?

<comment><USER10> Fewer and fewer institutions have tenured professorships these days, for three reasons I can think of:

\- The pension plans that typically go with long-term employment like tenured professorships are expensive.

\- Tenure gives professors a protected position and more political power, which is threatening to administrators.

\- Exactly the reason this article addresses: institutions want to light a fire under people to force them to optimize for the amount of grant money they pull in, rather than for scientific achievement, or (gasp) quality of life.

The context of the story suggests that he was not one of the lucky ones, although it is possible that he was, and the university was going to fire him on grounds of some breach of contract or with the argument that he was otherwise breaching his duties as a professor by failing to bring in money.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It seems that the articles is not available any more... Here is a copy: [https://www.evernote.com/shard/s5/sh/cb87dfea-7551-46e7-a162...](https://www.evernote.com/shard/s5/sh/cb87dfea-7551-46e7-a162-82da078d15b5/a086e1e698c57954d73586da5e6f8f8e)

Also, here is one of early comments: [http://musicfordeckchairs.wordpress.com/2014/12/02/wider- les...](http://musicfordeckchairs.wordpress.com/2014/12/02/wider-lessons/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Indeed, this change will only increase the uncertainty for the staff on an LD contract, who by the time they are offered an IC contract will on average be more than 40 years old, quite a long time before knowing whether they can look forward to some long-term stability for themselves and their families.

[http://cds.cern.ch/journal/CERNBulletin/2014/49/Staff%20Asso...](http://cds.cern.ch/journal/CERNBulletin/2014/49/Staff%20Association/1972030?ln=en)

<comment><USER12> Looking at your comment history, you certainly have an axe to grind for some reason. No idea why you think pasting this over and over on marginally related stories accomplishes anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> There's almost no academic pride left in British universities. There may be amongst the staff and students, but not at the top. So disappointing.

</comment><comment><USER14> >We had four papers with original data this year so far, in Cell Death and Differentiation, Oncogene, Journal of Cell Science and, as I informed Prof Wilkins this week, one accepted with the EMBO Journal. I was also the editor of a book and wrote two reviews. Doesn't count.

>This leads to a interesting spin to the old saying "publish or perish". Here it is "publish and perish".

Sad to think that incredible contributions like that are still not enough to be deemed an essential part of a research department.

If he was able to publish at that scale with the grants he was getting, then that's not only perfectly alright, but it's damned impressive.

Incredibly unfortunate to hear of his passing, even worse that the circumstances aren't clear.

<comment><USER15> Apparently 'academic research' is now entirely a synonym for 'making money from funding.'

<comment><USER16> One of the fun things about the price mechanism is that it reduces _everything_ down to its valuation in currency. Ethics, knowledge, emotion. It's terribly convenient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This sounds nothing like the experience of where I am at (UCLA) in terms of grant pressure. I don't think the UK has tenured positions though.

<comment><USER18> My girlfriend is tenured, it does exist still. It tends to come with a 5 (five) year probation period so that if you do not achieve the grant quota they can bump you down to a teaching role and remove you from all research work.

And do not be deceived, all departments in all British universities are like this to some extent. It's just that some places (Imperial) appear to be worse than others, and some environments are more professional and do a better job of hiding the extraordinary politics from students.

Stefan Grimm has just given you a peek behind the curtain.

<comment><USER19> It's not all of Imperial. Faculty of Medicine is always the one that gets on the news for this kind of bullying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Have they released a cause of death for Prof. Grimm?

<comment><USER21> Also the mention of an inquest seems to suggest something unusual suspected of causing the death. (Your average death from natural causes doesn't lead to an inquest.)</comment></comment>


Amazon's Next Mission: Using Alexa to Help You Pay Friends - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/hey-alexa-can-you-help-amazon-get-into-the-payments-business-1523007000 <comment><USER2> The problem with everyone getting into "pay your friends" is that everyone wants to be paid in a different way and you need a dozen different accounts. And it seems like everyone wants to help you pay your friends these days.

<comment><USER3> This is fully generalizable to all kinds of software nowadays.

The problem with everyone getting into "[SOFTWARE PRODUCT]" is that everyone wants to [DO THIS SOFTWARE THING] in a different way and you need a dozen different accounts. And it seems like everyone wants to help you [DO THIS SOFTWARE THING] these days.

It's like Beta vs VHS, with 3-20 incompatible competitors, over and over and over for eternity.

<comment><USER2> Then someone comes in and says "we need [software thing] as a protocol like email" and then someone invents [software thing] as a protocol and now everyone on HN wonders why no one uses [software thing] as a protocol despite its obvious superiority.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find it perplexing how Amazon is churning out new products so quickly. How do they do it?

AWS is radical in this way too! New products are launching constantly.

<comment><USER5> [https://www.vox.com/new-money/2016/12/28/13889840/amazon- inn...](https://www.vox.com/new-money/2016/12/28/13889840/amazon-innovation- google-apple)

 _" … experiments start small and grow over time … Amazon creates a small team to experiment with the idea and find out if it's viable. Bezos famously instituted the "two-pizza team" rule, which says that teams should be small enough to be fed with two pizzas … new teams get limited funding and clear milestones; if a team succeeds in smaller challenges, it's given more resources and a larger challenge to tackle.

… Amazon doesn't spend too much time on internal testing. "They prioritize launching early over everything else," … Bezos has been fanatical about letting teams operate independently of one another … discouraged the kind of standardization you see at companies like Google and Apple, encouraging teams to operate independently using whatever technology makes the most sense … to make Amazon a modular, flexible organization with a minimum of company-wide policies.

That has made Amazon's internal culture somewhat chaotic and balkanized. An engineer on one Amazon project can't easily jump to another the way they can at Google or Apple. Friction between teams with different cultures may explain why some people find Amazon a stressful place to work. But this chaotic culture is also hospitable to innovation. A new team can use the tools and processes that make the most sense instead of feeling pressure to conform to company-wide standards."_

<comment><USER6> I disagree with:

> can't easily jump to another the way they can at Google or Apple.

I've never worked at Google or Apple, but I work in AWS. I see people switching teams, across different organizations within AWS and the retail business. When I first started, you had to stay on your team for 1 year before you could transfer, now there is no such restriction.

I will agree with the

> encouraging teams to operate independently using whatever technology makes > the most sense

<comment><USER7> I also work in AWS and will agree with,

>Friction between teams with different cultures may explain why some people find Amazon a stressful place to work

It can be incredibly difficult working with other teams, but hat's not unique to Amazon.

Mostly just that in general it's a very stressful place to work regardless of being an engineer or other role there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> While I've never used any of these services (I just use cash, or a bank transfer if someone pays for hotel rooms or something), surely most use-cases are when out and about, not when in the living room with your talking speaker thing?

<comment><USER9> Speaker thingy is just one interface, your mobile also can talk to Alexa.

<comment><USER10> Humanizing the Alexa service is a huge sign of our downfall.

Don't let them do this to us.

<comment><USER11> That's not humanizing, it's slang. When describing some network operations non-technically, one might say that device A "talks to" device B

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For what it's worth, you can do this today with Google Pay with Google assistant on a phone[0]. It works on iOS and Android today[1].

[0] [https://support.google.com/pay/send/answer/7544913](https://support.google.com/pay/send/answer/7544913)

[1] [https://venturebeat.com/2018/03/22/google-assistant-can- now-...](https://venturebeat.com/2018/03/22/google-assistant-can-now-send- money-to-friends-and-family-with-google-pay/)

(Disclaimer: I work on payments at Google)

<comment><USER13> Same with Siri and Apple Pay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Amazon does this kind of thing all the time and most people just forget the times that it fails.

[https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/30/amazon-shutting- do...](https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/30/amazon-shutting-down-its- register-credit-card-processor/)

Not all of them actually pan out. Similar story for Etsy competition. (Amazon launched "handmade" in 2015 and kinda maybe relaunched last year. It might have more success this time).

Amazon might have a better time trying to buy PayPal (for venmo) or Square (for Cash App and to compete in the field they already gave up on). It would be amusing if this announcement was calculated to hit their stock price for a cheaper acquisition. That's probably way too cheeky, but for a lot of markets, Amazon has had more success acquiring than building their own.

<comment><USER15> No way Amazon could buy PayPal. Their customer service is the polar opposite, it'd be a giant culture clash.

<comment><USER16> When doing buy-outs or acquisations, how often do company consider culture- class as an obstacle? I would think thats not even brought up during discussion.

For a startup, it might make sense. Not for large established companies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It is much easier to do it through Alexa than let's say HN. It ties to an account with each person and they are all known to the company. Payments are scary between strangers. The more data you have, the cheaper you can process safely.

</comment><comment><USER18> They literally have no differentiation here vs. Messenger Square Pay or Google Pay or Venmo. So much metoo in this thing.

<comment><USER19> Can you ask a smart speaker to pay someone else by name using any of those services?

<comment><USER20> It begs the question - exactly what kind of problem does paying with a smart speaker solve over just using your phone? Also, how much is that worth to you?

<comment><USER19> The central question for Amazon is not "what problem does this solve?" but "does this feature or product delight customers" and "how does this generate more revenue for Amazon?" With this in mind, the feature accomplishes both: customer have demonstrated the desire to pay or their friends and family (by the popularity of Venmo and others) while the funds will then be available to purchase items on Amazon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> [https://archive.fo/uJHYp](https://archive.fo/uJHYp)

</comment><comment><USER22> Is venmo the hotness everywhere, or is this just an NYC thing? We venmo _everything_.

<comment><USER23> Nope, it's an everyone young people under 25 (or so) thing.

The payments holy trinity is Venmo, Tab, and Splitwise.

Tab is for splitting specific checks with easy itemization and multi-person selection + easy tip calculations, connects with Venmo. Mobile app only.

Splitwise is great for running tabs, traveling in groups, or complex splits. Keeps track of who paid and who split and even simplifies to the fewest number of payments, of course also done by Venmo. Great desktop site with a good mobile app as well.

The only thing I'm waiting for is to import a Tab bill into Splitwise!

<comment><USER24> I live in NYC and have never used Venmo before (and am over 25). It is just cash, credit or checks (ugh) for me.

<comment><USER23> How do you split a check at a restaurant with a group?

<comment><USER24> I usually just pay it all myself, or someone volunteers to do so, and we all say we'll take turns.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> oh-kumudo That is a good idea. Sending money through voice is very natural.

Disclaimer: I worked in AWS.

<comment><USER25> Explain? I wouldn't trust speech recognition software with money personally.

<comment><USER26> People didn't trust computers with money either. Then they didn't trust phone- shaped computers with money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> In a Hacker News spirit - wait for an article titled "malware screaming - Alexa, pay jfirbxhsnxbd at gmail dot com one hundred bucks now - in the raise"

</comment><comment><USER28> bitcoin payments are next maybe?

</comment><comment><USER29> Why not use cash?

<comment><USER30> Hard to do exact change and I don't want to owe anyone or be owed anything. We go out to dinner and the bill is $71.53 split four ways — would rather not use cash for that.</comment></comment>


Amazon launches virtual 'Dash' buttons for one-click buying from the homepage - <AUTHOR> http://www.recode.net/2017/1/20/14333220/amazon-virtual-dash-buttons-one-click-purchase <comment><AUTHOR> What surprised me was not the feature itself, but the fact that they have automatically created buttons for low-cost items that I have ordered recently and prominently placed them on the home page with zero fanfare or indication about what they actually do.

"Hmm, what's this?" ::clicks on white space that becomes 'BUY' on hover; result is an in-place, fingertip-sized notification with no page transition or modal:: "Did that actually just place an order?" ::checks orders:: "Wow." ::cancels order::

Went back to the home page and clicked the "Learn more" link looking for how to get rid of them. They have "Add button", "Organize buttons" and "Settings" controls, none of which can be used to delete buttons. To delete one, you have to click on the product logo on the button (don't click the unlabeled 'BUY' button, as it'll place an order even from this screen), then click "Delete" in the modal that pops up.

I thought this was surprisingly aggressive, even for Amazon. I wonder how many people will be getting unexpected packages.

<comment><USER2> Accidental orders could be what they're going for on purpose here. They'll bite the cost of refunds (customers get to keep the product), leaving only the memory of how easy it was to order.

Is parasitic marketing a term?</comment></comment>