Dems pitch $100B broadband plan - <AUTHOR> https://www.majoritywhip.gov/?press=clyburn-rural-broadband-task-force-and-house-democrats-introduce-accessible-affordable-internet-for-all-act <comment><USER2> We already paid for nationwide broadband installation several times by now. How many more funds do we need to siphon to major corporations that still don't build anything?

<comment><USER3> I definitely think we shouldn't give another dime in tax credits to broadband providers - a signed contract with aggressive enforcement provisions would be in order, and if the current major ISPs don't want to build the infrastructure we should find someone else who will.

<comment><USER4> > current major ISPs don't want to build the infrastructure we should find > someone else who will.

There are no such people. Both Baltimore and Los Angeles put out bids asking for companies willing to build fiber networks on certain terms. Nobody volunteered. E.g. [https://la.curbed.com/2018/1/9/16863352/free-internet-los- an...](https://la.curbed.com/2018/1/9/16863352/free-internet-los-angeles-wifi- network)

> Los Angeles officials planned to build up a network through a public-private > partnership, passing off the costs of the ambitious infrastructure project > to an outside provider. Blumenfield announced last year that the city never > received a workable proposal from a private company to build out the > network.

<comment><USER5> why though?

<comment><USER4> There's no money in wired broadband. Investors have been trying to get Verizon to divest itself of FiOS pretty much since the beginning. It's probably profitable at this point, but barely. (Verizon's entire wireline division has a 5% or less profit margin.)

Chatanooga Tennessee charges about $60/month for 300 mbps fiber. It is probably financially sustainable, but: 1) Tennessee is a low-cost, right-to- work state; 2) the capital costs of the fiber network were shared with the electric "smart grid" so some of the capital costs are being recouped from electric ratepayers. You couldn't make the same thing work in New York, San Francisco, etc. at the $60 price point. But at a much higher price point than that, you're talking about something quite expensive for what's supposed to be a public utility. Wired broadband, unlike water or electricity, is an optional service for most people. (1 in 6 high-income households only have cellular service.) If it costs you closer to $100 to have the same service in an expensive northern city, many people will opt out, and that will cause the per-household costs to skyrocket. It's a really tough mathematical equation to work out.

<comment><USER5> thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Going to be a little while before I have the time to sit down and go through the full text of the bill.

I see a couple of mentions of dig once requirements, no mentions of one touch make ready rules. References to municipal Internet that seem at glance to mostly be about allocating funds, but again, I haven't been able to read over the bill in detail, so I'm very likely missing details. I can't find much mentioning repeals other than what appears to be (again, just skimming) caps on the lifeline program.

For anyone who has spent more time reading, what are the big takeaways from this -- beyond just allocating money for infrastructure?

I'm pretty skeptical of a bill that just adds a few regulations around consumer costs and devotes money to building infrastructure, because what I've seen is that the big players like Comcast swoop in, take the money, and then don't build the infrastructure. And then nobody punishes them. I don't really get the point of throwing money at this problem when we've already seen that established players can just take the money and run.

What would make me excited is repeals of regulations surrounding municipal wifi, or tangible paths to stop new competitors from getting sued out of existence.

Should I be excited about anything in this bill?

</comment><comment><USER7> > providing a $50 monthly discount on plans for low-income consumers

This only serves to support the inflated pricing of the monopolists.

<comment><USER8> Like it or not, certain parts of the US are too rural/poor to justify even monopolists expanding internet service there. This will incentivize them to build in those areas.

<comment><USER9> Why doesn't the government just build it? They do it with sewer lines, power lines, gas lines, water lines, but a little fiber is too much?

<comment><USER4> The government doesn't build water, sewer, or gas in many parts of the country! Where I live, less than an hour from DC and maybe 5 minutes from a Whole Foods, we don't have gas lines at all, we use propane and fuel oil. We got public water and sewer only in 2015, and each house is paying off a $30,000 assessment for that. Most of the areas around us are reliant on wells and septic systems. Ironically, we have had fiber since 2008 or so. As to electric--most of that was built back when labor was relatively very cheap and tons of people were unemployed. We couldn't build the national electric grid today, for the same reason we couldn't build the New York subway today.

<comment><USER9> Then use roads as an example. The point is, internet is obviously a communal good that can't be logistically provided by more than one entity, and the government is there for the benefit of the community.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why do we have to throw $100B at everything? Just repeal the state limits on Municipal networks and let it ride.

<comment><USER11> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_barrel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_barrel)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Didnt they try this before and ISPs just ate the money and didnt finish laying cables?

<comment> the-dude Did they start?

<comment><USER13> They did enough for some election campaign photo ops.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Love the repeal of muni network limitations. That is just straight corruption - I've never heard a coherent explanation for why states should be able to prevent that.

It would be absurd, absolutely absurd to give even more money to ISPs. $100b is so much money which could be better spent on transportation infrastructure rather than a handout to some of the worst corporate citizens in the US

</comment><comment><USER15> Just to give you another perspective (although to be fair we are a much smaller country) here in Spain the Government each year has a program called PEBANG (New Generation Broadband Extension Program), which essentially subsidizes the deployment of fiber (FTTH). The ISPs submit proposals to cover a set of so-called "white zones" and then the Government subsidizes up to 80% of the cost (up to a limit, of course).

This program, along with the fact that Telefonica, the incumbent operator, decided years ago to concentrate its efforts on deploying FTTH (all that's really left right now is to complete rural areas), and having an incentive of doing copper switch-off, means that each year there are more and more villages (even really small ones of, say, 10 people) covered by fiber. Telefonica hopes to have 100% FTTH coverage by 2024 (right now we're on 80%).

Orange is also another operator which also deployed lots of fiber both by itself and through this program for rural areas.

The competitive telecom market in Spain and also the regulations appear to have also been a factor in this transformation.

<comment><USER16> They also said they'd have turned off the entire pots network (including ADSL) by 2020 and here we are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I prefer Sanders' proposal [https://berniesanders.com/issues/high-speed- internet-all/](https://berniesanders.com/issues/high-speed-internet-all/)

<comment><USER18> Sanders' proposals in general have no chance of actually passing in Congress, so I'll trust the Dems' one.

<comment><USER19> This plan probably won't amount to more than a corporate hand out. Much rather have Bernie's plan.

TLDR:

• Provide $150 billion through the Green New Deal in infrastructure grants and technical assistance for municipalities and/or states to build publicly owned and democratically controlled, co-operative, or open access broadband networks.

• Require that all internet service providers offer a Basic Internet Plan that provides quality broadband speeds at an affordable price.

• Break up internet service provider and cable monopolies, bar service providers from providing content, and unwind anticompetitive mergers.

• Ensure broadband infrastructure is resilient to the effects of climate change.

<comment><USER20> > • Provide $150 billion through the Green New Deal in infrastructure grants > and technical assistance for municipalities and/or states to build publicly > owned and democratically controlled, co-operative, or open access broadband > networks.

Limit it to eminent domain on the poles for rural/suburban municipalities. Costly, but keeps the rent seekers off the physical medium. For populations over X density, use the money to drop fiber underground, again that the municipality owns.

Issue licenses to companies that want to play ball with the towns and cities, or give the people the option to have the town run it. Spectrum/poles/underground should be public resources. Fine and/or revoke licenses from companies that are running scams and failing to reach this commitment.

States have flexed before to compel companies to meet build-out requirements: [https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/12/20691853/charter- spectrum...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/12/20691853/charter-spectrum-new- york-deal-roll-out-internet-service)

Spectrum squatters are a real problem for smaller WISP's. DISH is likely the largest mid-band squatter on the market right now, having built a single test tower with their AWS-4 spectrum license. It was supposed to cover 70% of the population by March 2020 and they blew it off for 3 years or so and are requesting another 3. [https://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/UlsSearch/licenseAdminSum.j...](https://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/UlsSearch/licenseAdminSum.jsp?licKey=3453558)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It feels like people don't realize how broke the US is right now. We're going to be in a recession, we're going to have massive unemployment bills, we already spent a ridiculous amount of money this year...

Tax revenue is going to be way down.

We can't afford these things; if the internet is too slow, you can either pay more for it or you can move somewhere where it is better.

<comment><USER22> Infrastructure spending should have one of the best returns on investment that government spending can. It generates economic activity during the build phase, and continues to deliver a return after completion.

"Just move" isn't a reasonable alternative. Many people in rural areas can't afford to live anywhere else - having access to decent internet might help change that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is it worth it? Its always amazing to me the correlation between fiber and tech success. Eg SV doesn't have much fiber and lots of fiber rich cities and countries dont have much tech. Seems the best use for fiber is video streaming which isn't really that useful. I have 1 gig fiber and dont really notice the difference from 5/150 cable unless I'm uploading backups.

</comment><comment><USER24> The missing X% without high speed internet available to them are primarily rural. Space's Starlink is poised to offer high speed internet to those exact people on a timeline faster than whatever this project dreams it can achieve, at zero (additional) cost to the government.

The other chunk of society without access to high speed internet are the low income. So why not just spend $50B on welfare reform (or even Basic Income) to provide the financial means needed to access the existing high speed internet. They can buy internet, or something they need more. You'd save $50B.

All together, this just seems like a new way to funnel $100B of tax money into the pockets of corporations who make the right political donations.

</comment><comment><USER25> How feasible would it be for a city to build publicly available wireless access points so that anybody who wanted to run a WISP can do so? I'd really like the option to walk away from a commercial ISP entirely if it's too painful. Right now I just cancel my Internet for a few months and go to the library before calling Comcast again, but with the current and possible future pandemics that might not be a viable option.

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

<comment><USER26> Many states have laws that prevent cities from entering the ISP market.

[https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband- roadbloc...](https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadblocks/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Instead of all this, pass a law giving safe harbor to municipal broadband - give legal protection to municipal governments that want to pursue this.

Also require that affordances such as utility poles, rights of way, etc, be made available for expanding broadband.

In many cases, municipal governments are prohibited from creating or operating broadband infrastructure.

</comment><comment><USER28> Wait! We've seen this before. It happens right before elections to promise companies a fat payday from the companies, and then they gouge customers for under performing bandwidth!

How about we just buy service from Starlink, on a per-connection basis, rather then paying for their infrastructure?

</comment><comment><USER29> Oh man municipal fiber if successful is likely the only thing that can challenge the big telcos

</comment><comment><USER30> Wouldn't it be cheaper to get reliable 4G/5G coverage to currently undeserved places ?

</comment><comment><USER31> Look at the Obamacare handout to healthcare tech companies to get an idea of how little progress is made when government is the benefactor. It's tragic how poorly they will spend $100 Billion.

</comment><comment><USER32> How about just let Google Fiber do its thing?</comment>


Court Rules 3-0 in Favor of Google vs. Author's Guild in Fair Use Books Decision - <AUTHOR> https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-Jy9Sa8zPtaMW1DVm1XeUZBQXM/view <comment><AUTHOR> > In sum, we conclude that: (1) Google's unauthorized digitizing of copyright- > protected works, creation of a search functionality, and display of snippets > from those works are non-infringing fair uses. The purpose of the copying is > highly transformative, the public display of text is limited, and the > revelations do not provide a significant market substitute for the protected > aspects of the originals. Google's commercial nature and profit motivation > do not justify denial of fair use. (2) Google's provision of digitized > copies to the libraries that supplied the books, on the understanding that > the libraries will use the copies in a manner consistent with the copyright > law, also does not constitute infringement. Nor, on this record, is Google a > contributory infringer.</comment>


Andrew Mason asking for advice on "selling a website idea" (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?440070-Selling-a-website-idea-What-to-expect

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, HNers. I've been sitting on this link for about 4 years now. This post on Sitepoint is from shortly after Andrew Mason first pitched The Point, which later became Groupon, to investors in Chicago.

On a day when folks are discussing the end of his time at Groupon...this link shows where it first began and the hopefulness and optimism that comes with a new project!

<comment><USER2> I love you Brad. It's so good to have an actual journalist amongst our ranks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Man, I miss reporting sometimes. Optimizing onboarding processes and answering support requests from Brazil are fun and all, but sharing new stuff with people is a real thrill.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> See also:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=picnichouse>

Several of Mason's posts at HN were also asking for advice:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=picnichouse>

He didn't get any responses for his queries about...

• "Writing pesky account management e-mails for your site"

• "Is it OK to copy terms of service/privacy policy from another site?"

• "Ask YC: Hiring non-technical ("business") staff?"

• "How do I take a U.S. e-commerce site to Canada & overseas?"

A lesson for HNers: don't be offended or discouraged if no one here responds to your submissions! Keep seeking elsewhere.

<comment><USER4> Sucks that he never got any feedback on some of his submissions but at least folks weren't negative (usually the case nowadays).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't know if I am blinded by my environs or by the 7 years since this, but how did the idea of selling his idea and then building it ever sound good?

<comment><USER6> Chances are he was good at selling things that didn't exist (some people are very talented at this) + he was lucky to find the right kind of person as an investor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Well "for the time being" turned out to be until today. Worked out pretty well for his pocket book in any case though, I'd say.

<comment><USER8> Extremely well.

Off topic, the guy that took his place appears to be worse IMO. [http://www.businessinsider.com/groupons-cozy-deals-with- lefk...](http://www.businessinsider.com/groupons-cozy-deals-with-lefkofskys- marketing-logistics-and-law-firms-2013-2)

<comment><USER9> Excellent and enlightening share. Sadly, this seems to be the norm throughout the upper echelons of the western system of democratocapitalismywayorthehighway. Ahh, humans.

PS. Where's paradise?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very impressive getting meetings and getting commitments of funding with just the idea of Groupon and a goal of developing it in 6 months. A guy like that was bound to succeed, and despite stepping down - or, getting fired - that is what he did, he succeeded.

</comment><comment><USER11> _Andrew: He wants to pour a lot of money into the site and hire me to front the project for the time being._

 _response: "for the time being"? Extremely bad idea._

haha. yes but apparently mostly no.

</comment><comment><USER12> How do we know this is Andrew Mason's writing?

(The page contains no instances of "Andrew", "Mason", "Andy", "Drew", "Groupon", "coupon" or "the point".)

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://lmgtfy.com/?q=andrew+mason+picnichouse>

<comment><USER13> Actually, I get better results with <http://lmgtfy.com/?q=picnichouse+mason>

<comment><USER14> you guys can also share these links without the annoying lmgtfy:

example:

<https://www.google.com/#q=mason>

<comment><USER15> But then you lose scene points for not being condescending enough.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple versus Samsung: Jury foreman justifies $1bn verdict - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19425052

<comment><USER3> >Not that there's anything [wrong] with older prior art - but the key was that the hardware was different, the software was an entirely different methodology, and the more modern software could not be loaded onto the older example and be run without error.

That guy is just bullshitting everyone and assuming we are all idiots. The same could be said for Apple too, in defense of Samsung, right?

EDIT: The way I see it - He supports Apple simply because he is in the same shoes as Apple himself. Do you know what patent this guy owns?

It is a 'very innovative patent' just like Apple's 'rounded corners'.

[http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect2=PTO1&Sec...](http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph- Parser?Sect2=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/search- bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&d=PALL&RefSrch=yes&Query=PN/7352953)

Now you see, why he's supporting Apple. Both own BS patents.

Actually, this verdict should have been expected - The court is in the country of the infringer (Apple), The lawyers are from the same country and the money is _also_ from the same country. There is no reason as to why people should support Samsung (Korean) than they should support Apple (in an unfair world). Apple has easy access to every kind of influence you could think of. This leads us to several conclusions:

1) One who has more money in this is system called 'democracy' RULES this system, because they automatically gain all the power they need. Including support from all legal systems and governments.

2) If you assumed everything happened in a fair platform, without exchange of money _illegally_ , then your assumptions are plain wrong. Apple has a lot of money..even more than Samsung, it is easier for Apple to payout the necessary guys in the legal system and still not leak it outside to anyone, than it is for Samsung. This is NOT to _confirm_ they bribed someone, but just to let you know that there is a very high probability of them doing so.

Why do I think so? Think about this fact: Apple has sued numerous competitors using their BS patents and has won several times. Numerous competitors have sued Apple and none of them have had a fair victory _yet_. Surely there is something fishy going on here.

Also to be noted - Apple has more money than any of their competitors.

3) I suspect even Samsung's lawyers could have been manipulated, because they all seem slightly dumb to me (on purpose?).

In all its entirety, this whole legal system and patent system is just a clever way for the people involved to make money. Tomorrow, if you plan to start a phone company, just keep all this in mind; You are as vulnerable as Samsung is to get sued for BS reasons by such patent trolls (Apple).

A little personal:

I wanted to buy a tablet for my mom, I was seriously considering the iPad 2, because it still is a really good tablet. After all this BS, I've decided not to buy any of their products, even though in the end, loss of a single user is not going to matter to them. But I am pretty sure that there is strength in numbers. I sincerely plead everyone to boycott Apple and its products, because if its going to be more than just one user(me), it WILL surely have an impact on them. Hopefully, they will learn not to repeat all this shitty behavior again.

A little deeper:

Actually, if you are against Apple for such bad behavior, you have no other choice, than to boycott them. A few months back, my idea was to create a better tablet than Apple did and show the world that they aren't the only ones who can do it and they are over-hyped as hell. I contacted Chinese OEM's, display guys, etc. But, later I realized, it will be of no use, because I will be as vulnerable as Samsung was...and I don't even have the money to defend myself or my tablet startup. Hence the only way to screw Apple right now is to stop buying their products.

Thanks for reading.

<comment><USER4> I am going to be disillusioned with HN if this uninformed speculation isn't buried.

<comment><USER3> So you conclude the patent system and the legal structure is fine as it is? Because, my conclusion is the opposite from all the points I make above.

<comment><USER5> False dichotomy alert: the patent system may be broken in ways other than your speculation.

I don't think bribes were involved, for instance.

Also, it's wise not to attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence. This jury was obviously incompetent and manipulated (even if not deliberately) by a foreman with his own agenda.

Another one a good friend once taught me: when you think you have figured out something nobody else did, odds are you're wrong. He used lines on a bank as an example: if there are two lines and one is much smaller than the other, they are probably not interchangeable and, if you enter the short one, you may realize you entered the wrong one.

<comment><USER3> >The patent system may be broken in ways other than your speculation.

I claim that the patent system is broken because it allows anyone to patent BS trivial stuff, which can later be used to sue their competitors.

I would love to hear your version of 'the ways other than your(my) speculation'

<comment><USER5> I don't disagree with this specific point, but you made a lot of other points in your post.

I also suggest you are coming across as somewhat aggressive. We can disagree in less emotional ways, even if it is an emotional issue for most of us.

<comment><USER3> >I also suggest you are coming across as somewhat aggressive.

It is true, even when I read my own comment now, I do find it a bit aggressive. I'm genuinely sorry for that...actually I was kind of taken aback after reading that Jury's reasoning...and used the same spirit to type that comment...Nothing is fair in this world..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This quote really bugs me:

"Not that there's anything [wrong] with older prior art - but the key was that the hardware was different, the software was an entirely different methodology, and the more modern software could not be loaded onto the older example and be run without error."

That's just wrong - if it was correct then you could say the same thing about samsung: Samsung's code won't run an an Apple machine, so it's different and not violating the patent.

<comment><USER7> Here is his full answer:

"Prior art was considered.

But the stipulation under the law is for the prior art to be sufficient to negate or invalidate Apple's patents in this case, it had to be sufficiently similar or, more importantly, it had to be interchangeable.

And in example after example, when we put it to the test, the older prior art was just that. Not that there's anything [wrong] with older prior art - <USER2> the key was that the hardware was different, the software was an entirely different methodology, and the more modern software could not be loaded onto the older example and be run without error.

So the point being, at [a bird's eye-view from] the 40,000 foot-level, even though the outcome of the two seemed similar, the internal methodology of how you got there was entirely different. One could not be exchanged for the other.

And that is the thing that most people at large do not understand about the legal system. And as a result of that you have heard a lot of hype in the media about did we turn our back on prior art."

It looks like this jury was a lot more informed than the internet lawyers give them credit for.

<comment><USER6> I read the full quote and it's wrong. Period.

If "interchangeable code" was the standard then why apply it only to prior art? Why not apply it to future art as well? (Samsungs implementation.)

It looks like this jury just made stuff up. And I really hope the judgment gets completely tossed for this. The judge has yet to rule on that (although it's rare to toss a jury verdict since they actually are allowed to make stuff up to some degree - lookup Jury nullification, so I'm not really expecting it to be tossed).

<comment><USER7> "Interchangeable code" wasn't the standard. In fact "interchangeable code" doesn't appear anywhere in the article. What would have invalidated Apple's patent was if the implementation in their patent was "sufficiently similar" to the prior art's implementation. They found that it wasn't, so the patent wasn't invalidated.

I posted the full answer not for your benefit, but for other HN readers. You cherry-picked one part of his answer that gives the impression that the only thing the jury did to determine if the patent is valid is to see if the code would run on other devices. It isn't, as is clear from the rest of his answer.

I'm not sure how you think this jury "made stuff up" because from his other answers, they seem to have had a much better understanding of the law and the facts than followers of this case have had.

<comment><USER8> I believe he was referring to this answer.

Q: There had speculation that Samsung might be awarded damages as well because of its claim that Apple had infringed its technologies.

A: "What was key to us... is that [the technologies] had to be interchangeable."

"And so consequently, when we looked at the source code - I was able to read source code - I showed the jurors that the two methods in software were not the same, nor could they be interchangeable because the hardware that was involved between the old processor and the new processor - you couldn't load the new software methodology in the old system and expect that it was going to work. And the converse of that was true."

Edit: Specifically, he convinced the other jurors that because the "methods in software" were not interchangeable ... well, rereading it I'm not sure what his conclusion is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "but the key was that the hardware was different, the software was an entirely different methodology, and the more modern software could not be loaded onto the older example and be run without error."

This is just RIDICULOUS. By this line of thought, every time new hardware or software methodologies come out, you could patent the same old software solutions again!

If reimplementing a well known feature, algorithm, or whatever on new hardware isn't obvious "for a practitioner skilled in the art", then I really don't know what is.

</comment><comment><USER10> Ideal outcome: Samsung keeps producing awesome handsets, but uses stock Android instead of Touchwiz.

<comment><USER11> They won't. It will be very hard to differentiate themselves from thousands of other Android devices.

<comment><USER12> I think you're both wrong!

I like the hardware of the SGII I have, and I would prefer the hardware of the Galaxy Note, or the Galaxy Note II.

But also, remove TouchWiz, and still the Galaxy Note II has some very nice and innovative software allowing for pseudo-windowing on Android, as well as "Pen" aware apps.

<comment><USER13> The problem is that when Samsung customise Android, they do so to (a) differentiate, and (b) to ensure you can't upgrade.

On a more "on topic" note, this juror is a turkey. As another poster pretty much said "prior art can not be ignored".

<comment><USER14> Here's another gem:

"Just to make it clear, the phone that I have is a Motorola Droid X2 and the reason I'm mentioning that is because it is in the record, it was told to the judge and told to the court when asked that question.

And it is of a slider variety so it has a normal keyboard, and for that reason it's not among the 26 accused phones. "

The Droid X2, of course, isn't a slider. The juror probably has a Droid 2.

<comment><USER15> Nice. Except they awarded $130e6 in damages for the Epic 4G. A slider.

<comment><USER14> Good catch. I forgot that part.

The more I hear from the jury the more it sounds like they first decided "Apple good. Samsung bad." and filled in the rest from there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Apple should be asking for a mistrial without prejudice at this point.

If they don't (and the judge doesn't), Samsung is going to flip this decision like a pancake in appeals __just __on the interviews of the foreman.

Unless a temporary sales ban is worth more to Apple...

<comment><USER5> A temporary sales ban on previous generation phones is not very valuable. And Apple is much more exposed to similar sales bans because they have a much smaller product lineup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is getting rediculous. This has been discussed as nauseum without either side agreeing. Picking over the bones of the trial while writing untold paragraphs about the whys and whatfores is wasting cycles. Wait until the appeal, of it is allowed, and see.

One thing to note though. There has been an awful lot of cogantive bias exhibited by both sides. It must stop. It just leads to flaming and even more wasted time.

<comment><USER18> the bias started with the jury. They had a self declared expert as their foreman. That he was able to sit on the jury astounds me and from the other stories its obvious other members of the jury deferred to him. Hence the assumption I have is, he took his "knowledge" of the system and decided before the trial was complete. It is about the only way to explain the speed of which they arrived at their decision.

Have you ever been in a group where one person is so obnoxious with their views you just want it over?

<comment><USER19> And this is where the Jury fails.

A Jury is a forced consensus. They should have an odd number (so a draw is impossible) of independent jurers who do not communicate with each other at all.

<comment><USER17> The jury consisted of 9 people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Ok, so let me get this straight. Samsung was found infriging on trivial patents, because they copied the entire look & feel? It does seem to me that what samsung did was more than a bit unethical (although I did not follow up enough to have a very good opinion), but the actual reasons why it was found infriging was something completely different? That makes no sense whatsoever. The jury foreman is defending a completely irrelevant thing to me.

That said, I'm actually glad that it's the look & feel that matters rather than really those trivial patents, but the whole thing looks like Al Capone charged for tax evasion.</comment>


Google Tried to Prove Managers Don't Matter, Learned 10 Traits of the Best Ones - <AUTHOR> https://www.inc.com/scott-mautz/google-tried-to-prove-managers-dont-matter-instead-they-discovered-10-traits-of-very-best-ones.html <comment><USER2> Google has made some resources available for managers and managers of managers here: [https://rework.withgoogle.com/subjects/managers/](https://rework.withgoogle.com/subjects/managers/)

I found this helpful. There aren't many easily discoverable resources where effective management techniques are distilled. I'm writing a guide on coaching for my company and not only are there mountains of information all over the place, a whole lot of it is bullshit.

</comment><comment><USER3> The article looks very generic except for : "In Google's case, they want managers having key technical skills (like coding, etc.) so they can share "been there done that" experience."

I believe lacking technical skills is what causes many to perceive managers as useless. Managers have a lot of power over the teams they manage and experienced workers may see a lack of technical skill as not being qualified to hold this power.

</comment><comment><USER4> I quit because my former supervisor does not even know what git or ssh are. We are a very technical/IT company. There's no excuse to be ignorant of such things. I made the decisions that fellow team members went with on several occasions. The supervisor sat on their laptop playing chess on Facebook. I am not even joking. When you have people at the same horizontal hierarchical level as you coming to you straight instead of our supervisor, it says a lot. I figured the company doesn't want to bump my pay for doing my supervisor's job so I will leave first chance I get. I did and I feel lighter. Maybe I lost weight.

So I agree, a manager needs some "been there done that" experience.

</comment><comment><USER5> Every engineer has probably thought at some point in their career what's the point of the manager? Managers are basically extensions and the eyes and ears of upper management which doesn't scale very well... they are there to communicate the vision and pass the word, ensure work is delivered consistently, employees are happy or have just about enough incentive to stay...some may go above and beyond into coaching their reports if they care but sinply it's all about making sure the team doesn't fuck up and looks good to the boss...</comment>


VW C.E.O. 'Personally' Apologized to President Obama in Plea for Mercy - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/29/business/international/volkswagen-legal-costs-emissions-cheating.html <comment><USER2> "Bring me his head!" \- Joffery</comment>


CryptoKitties – Ethereum collectable is not actually tamperproof - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/loom-network/your-crypto-kitty-isnt-forever-why-dapps-aren-t-as-decentralized-as-you-think-871d6acfea <comment><USER2> I don't really see this as a problem. CryptoKitties is a centralized product, something you can build on Ethereum, if you like it or not.

And I don't really have a problem with that if the creators keep a good track record.

<comment><USER3> I think a lot of people believe they are getting a unique item that can never be copied.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think side chains are going to be the future of dApps. Smart contracts alone won't be enough

</comment><comment><USER4> it also demonstrates very clearly that eth sure as hell doesnt scale well right now

<comment><USER3> This is getting addressed with side chains</comment></comment>


Traditional hosting is hurting WordPress - <AUTHOR> https://convesio.com/traditional-hosting-is-hurting-wordpress/ <comment><USER2> Unclear how this is better than something like WP Engine. They have lots of killer features, great reviews ( [https://cloudconfusing.com/2019/09/16/wp- engine-review/](https://cloudconfusing.com/2019/09/16/wp-engine-review/) etc), enhancements on WP that aren't part of the core platform etc.</comment>


IBM's Lost Decade - <AUTHOR> https://www.platformonomics.com/2020/02/ibms-lost-decade/ <comment><USER2> It's interesting to talk about what "IBM" has been doing, because after all the A&M IBM has done this last decade, they've actually got plenty of "activity" to their name. Just, activity that was previously known under the names of Softlayer, Cognos, Redhat...

Go to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_IBM#Acquisitions_since_2000) and sort the table there by value, descending. "IBM" is a shorthand for more (un-dissolved!) subsidiaries at this point than GE or Samsung.

IBM itself is just a consulting "solution provider" company that provides "solutions" in terms of the products and services of its subsidiaries. They're never going to look like they're on the cutting edge of some space, unless that's what one of their (equally-stodgy) enterprise clients wants to pay them to do. (And even then, why build when you can buy? IMHO IBM would only ever build a new technology at this point if there was no existing company out there in the market, _with_ that tech IP, that they could just acquire.)

Certainly, there's the Watson AI lab, though I don't think anyone's expecting much of it at this point; nor, importantly, _was_ anyone inside IBM _ever_ expecting much of it. Watson (the lab specifically, not the brand strategy of calling all their cloud OLAP SaaS products "Watson") is more a nod to their clients to say "of course we're looking into AI", and a pool of people competent enough that they could _clone_ the existing ML approach of one of their competitors if one of their clients demanded it.

IBM _could_ be a really innovative company if they rearranged their talent pool, certainly. But innovation—getting ahead of the market and so needing to educate the market on the problem their products solve—hasn't been IBM's business model since the 1950s. IBM makes money by listening to clients' "unique" needs, and then meeting them with "custom" solutions at low CapEx cost, by using an ever-larger flywheel of existing solutions pre-tuned to _almost_ fit every possible business use-case.

<comment><USER3> I don't know why people overlook the progress IBM seems to have made in the quantum computing world. Perhaps not as impressive as Google's progress but impressive none the less.

<comment><USER4> Two reasons I can think of:

\- "seems to have made" is important. A decade ago, Watson seemed to be a lot of progress in the AI world.

\- Where's the revenue?

<comment><USER5> Watson has become IBM's Clippy....it never came close to living up to expectations.

<comment> mark-r That's being unfair to Clippy. I expected Clippy to be an annoying joke that wouldn't last long, and my expectations were met perfectly.

<comment><USER6> Well, clippy didn't last long (although I miss the cat a bit), but the clippy jokes seem to have lasted forever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hugged

[http://web.archive.org/web/20200203151544/https://www.platfo...](http://web.archive.org/web/20200203151544/https://www.platformonomics.com/2020/02/ibms- lost-decade/)

</comment><comment><USER8> IBM should give IBM Cloud to the Red Hat people and rebrand it as Red Hat Cloud.

Red Hat is the only subsidiary of IBM that is respected by the developer community. The rest of IBM has a very MBAsque reputation.

<comment><USER9> IBM should _not_ rebrand bad products as Red Hat (redwashing? hatwashing?). Maybe Red Hat could come up with a better public cloud than IBM but that would be a long-term project.

<comment><USER10> Red Hat already has a public cloud offering, it's called OpenShift Online: [https://www.openshift.com/products/online/](https://www.openshift.com/products/online/)

It doesn't seem to be very successful, which is understandable since Red Hat is historically an on-premise software company, and a very successful one too. Internally they probably view Online as a sales enablement tool.

Since Openshift is already Red Hat's big bet to keep growing, presumably if they were willing and able to make OpenShift Online a major success, they would have done it by now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I remember reading an article back in 2011, a puff piece about IBM in the Economist for the company's 100th birthday: [https://www.economist.com/briefing/2011/06/09/1100100-and- co...](https://www.economist.com/briefing/2011/06/09/1100100-and-counting)

It's pretty interesting to look at some of the quotes from that article now:

\- "As IBM enters its second century in good health, far younger IT giants, such as Cisco Systems, Intel, Microsoft and Nokia, are grappling with market shifts that threaten to make them much less relevant."

\- "By 2015 the firm wants its earnings per share almost to double, to "at least" $20." (It was actually $11, and kept falling from there)

\- "given the complexity of the world and how much of it is still to be digitised, IBM's human platform looks unlikely to reach its limits soon. Perhaps not for another 100 years."

</comment><comment><USER12> I was curious a out some of their early sort-of cloud offerings around 2013/2014, partly under the Watson brand. They had some interesting services for text analysis similar to services like AlchemyAPI (which IBM actually purchased not much later) that I wanted to check out. But they were also starting to try and offer more general purpose cloud services, albeit it beta forms, and I poked around a bit.

My recollection is that nearly all of them were attempts to back-door users into their traditional enterprise software, not to actually offer true cloud platforms.

For example I remember an "analytics" offering that promised on demand instant analytics environments for exploring data and generating insights. I was interested! In reality, it was a thinly veiled portal into a hosted cognos environment. And if you're not familiar with cognos, let me tell you, while still entrenched in some Enterprise environments, it is an object case study in crufty klunky product design that has accreted disparate layers of functionality over decades. The Advent of Cognos 8 in 2005 simply smashed together a bunch of prior products like report net, power play,metric manager, and others that worked together poorly, if at all. I won't bore you further with the details except to say this, along with similar non-strategic product design by Business Objects, is why products like Tableau grew so fast in popularity.

So, yeah, as the cloud hit its stride in the 2012-2015 era, IBM was just trying to slap "cloud" labels on something they could use to sell the same old stagnant products.

</comment><comment><USER13> IBM is trapped by their very wealthy legacy customers [banks, insurance companies, governments and a few fortune 100 stores]. IBM certainly has the talent to create new products, but unless they appeal to those customers, the effort is pointless. The existing customers are so wealthy that it's not worth the effort of the IBM sales machine to target anyone else.

When IBM buys a company, it's not to get new customers. It's only to get products that their legacy customers have been buying from someone else.

<comment><USER14> To be fair, it is quite OK for them to do just that. To cater exclusively to large businesses that require multi decade support and who demand specialized features. The reason those wealthy clients are still with IBM is precisely because they can trust IBM (it's possibly the only tech company they do trust).

IBM marketing is all smoke and mirrors to convince everyone that they're cutting edge in areas they're not. They don't need to be; their important customers are fine. The customers just want to feel like they're working with an "innovative" company, and that feeling is delivered by IBM marketing and M&A.

<comment><USER13> >The customers just want to feel like they're working with an "innovative" company

Actually this fully explains their foray into "blockchain". It's the hottest thing to happen to banking since the web, even though it may be pointless.

<comment><USER15> As someone who's built "production" software on top of IBM's "private blockchain" tech... it isn't quite pointless, but it's not far off; though that was a few years ago at this point lol

<comment><USER13> Well I have to ask.. What problem did the private block tech solve for you?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > And the big bet on a ridiculously over-hyped Watson could make sense if you > saw incomplete and underperfoming products as merely the top of a consulting > sales funnel

I worked on Watson Assistant for a few years and it's not a bad product at all compared to the competitors but, sadly, I have to agree with the above assessment. It was completely overhyped.

<comment><USER17> Is there even a significant market for such a product?

<comment><USER18> I have a dumb idea. IBM should release an Echo/Alexa competitor with Watson branding. It should be brightly colored, made of metal with large-print buttons and be preprogrammed with older, male voice. Then they market it as home automation for Boomers.

"Watson, open the lights."

"Watson, how much of the green pill do I take?"

"Watson, play Lou Dobbs."

<comment><USER19> Buy Wolfram and integrate alpha into the Watson knowledge base.

<comment><USER12> Alpha looked so promising on release, but every time I've checked in on it, it just seemed like there was some tinkering around the edges and absolutely nothing fundamentally new or groundbreaking since its inception.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > Revenue - Down and to the right

How could a revenue curve move in any other direction than to the right? A revenue curve that loops back on itself and starts moving to the left, back in time?

<comment> awinter-py also known as 'up and to the left'

<comment><USER20> > up and to the left

The x axis is time. How can you move to the left, back in time?

<comment><USER21> Hint: it's a joke.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Paying an infrastructure provider and a managed k8s / other "cloud" API vendor separately is actually very reasonable. There is no good reason those two things should be tightly coupled. Amazon should not get to charge a markup on hardware because of the software that runs on it. That's a regression not only from open source, but from shrink-wrapped proprietary software too. Putting the cloud back in shrink-wrap world could add a lot of value: buy commodity capacity, still write "cloud" applications for it, split the hardware savings with IBM.

To compete, Amazon will have to either lower its markup or innovate in proprietary hardware (as it's starting to do with Graviton2) to provide value- added services that software on commodity hardware can't effectively replicate. And IBM basically invented that game, so good luck.

Not to say IBM is capable of executing it, but it's an interesting strategy.

<comment><USER9> Speaking of k8s markup, AWS only charges for the masters and they recently cut those prices by 50%. This problem doesn't exist.

<comment><USER23> Why do you think AWS charges for K8s master nodes (control plane), when both of their major competitors do not?

<comment><USER9> Because they can, of course. But it's still hard to imagine a third-party product (e.g. OpenShift) being cheaper than $0.10 per hour.

<comment><USER23> They surely can. But so is true for Azure and GCP as well. Thus, I'm curious about whether it is a feasible pricing strategy for AWS, considering the fact that EKS is not much different from their competition's managed K8s offerings.

<comment><USER9> I mean AWS can charge more because they're viewed as the "default" or "leader" cloud; Google and Azure are not.

<comment><USER23> Understood. This IMO is a bit of a shaky ground, because, while still being (or being perceived as) a cloud leader - though Azure a formidable competitor across the cloud spectrum - AWS is definitely not a leader in the managed K8s area (where GCP clearly is, at least, as of now).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> In context, this explains a big of the reason why they need changes, which are now in place: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonobacon/2020/01/31/jim- whiteh...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonobacon/2020/01/31/jim-whitehurst- becomes-president-of-ibm-why-he-gets-culture/#67633ca26394)

</comment><comment><USER25> After getting behind, why should it be assumed automatic to "just catch up" in cloud? Microsoft fell behind mobile and never caught up despite pouring billions on it. Same with Google and social networks. Oracle also got behind in the cloud race and will probably also lose it all.

The early bird gets the worm, stop blaming the CEO.

Although "Watson" seems a PHB toy to trick investors or job seekers into thinking it had magic AI.

<comment><USER26> > Oracle

Another perfect example, along with SAP.

In the 1990s and 2000s, Oracle and SAP used to win on the basis of their "fully integrated suite of business applications" that they contrasted with the "best of breed" approach that (they claimed) would cost more to integrate than they delivered in additional value. However, over the last 10 years, Oracle and SAP went on a buying spree scooping up all those best of breed enterprise applications and then failed to integrate them with their core offerings, creating the same problem they claimed to be addressing. At the same time, R&D spend on organic product innovation slumped.

Buying up the competition isn't the panacea many tech companies seem to think it is.

<comment><USER25> It sounds like it "worked" from their financial standpoint, at least for a while. You don't have to compete if you buy up competitors. Remember when MS bought FoxPro? Customer choice and prices may be a different story.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> the ratio of super-trolly-know-it-all (Red Hat is just a "proprietary Kubernetes distribution", really? do you even know what Red Hat does?) to "no 500 server error on my blog" is pretty high here

</comment><comment><USER28> In the first-approximation analysis of stock buybacks, they keep the share price the same but reduce the market cap of the company by however much was bought. This is known and intended. If $55B of their $95B drop in market cap is simply by returning cash to the investors, that isn't such a bad thing.

<comment><USER29> That's incorrect. A company's market cap includes any cash the company has. Buying stock means spending that cash but increasing the value of the stock by an equal amount.

Stock buybacks don't affect market cap.

<comment><USER30> I don't think this is correct either. A company's cash, or other assets, are not included in its market cap. It's just share price times number of shares outstanding.

Where why_only_15 is incorrect is in saying that buybacks don't affect share price. The whole point of a buyback is to increase the share price.

<comment><USER28> I don't think that's true.

Consider a company with 1T shares that's valued at $1T with $100B of cash. Presumably, $100B of that valuation is for the cash, because investors know they could give that money back through dividends or the like. Let's say the company buys back 100B shares for its $100B. Because the company no longer has the cash, the overall value decreases (to $900B) to the same degree that there are less shares on the market (100B less).

<comment><USER31> You should think of a stock buyback as another way of paying a dividend without triggering a taxable event for stockholders. The value transitions into a greater price of the now-fewer-outstanding shares.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> No mention of their acquisition of the Weather Channel's digital properties, or any other M&A for that matter. Hard to see how this decade was lost for them, rather than a significant investment into the future.

<comment><USER9> IBM has had a continuous pipeline of acquisitions over decades, but where is the money? At some point the profit from the older acquisitions has to cancel out the cost of the newer ones and that isn't apparent for IBM.

<comment><USER33> > IBM has had a continuous pipeline of acquisitions over decades, but where is > the money?

They used it for stock buybacks.

<comment><USER34> ...and?

This whole idea that stock buybacks are necessarily bad needs to die. Can they be bad? Sure. But there are valid reasons to pursue a strategy of buybacks vs. dividends.

<comment><USER35> And nothing, the question was

> but where is the money?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> It's really hard to decline so consistently with the same rotten management at the helm year after year. Did they hire management from Qualcomm to achieve this?

</comment><comment><USER37> One thing IBM has been working on is trying to solve the issue of worldwide remittances and global payments by using Stellar (XLM) and their block-chain solution to bridge various assets and fiat currencies.

[https://www.ibm.com/blockchain/solutions/world- wire](https://www.ibm.com/blockchain/solutions/world-wire)

[https://www.stellar.org/papers/stellar-consensus- protocol.pd...](https://www.stellar.org/papers/stellar-consensus-protocol.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER38> MicroSoft went to sh*t under its 2nd CEO, but recovered under its successor. Hopefully IBM can revive under future leadership.

</comment><comment><USER39> Now the site get's error 500

</comment><comment><USER40> What does IBM sell nowadays?

<comment><USER41> Outsourcing, or as another comment called it, "services".

<comment><USER42> Otherwise known as "Your mess for less"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I worry that addiction to stock buybacks is a terminal disease for companies like IBM. Imagine what $65B invested in R&D over the last eight years could have yielded in the future instead of being poured down a financial sewer.

<comment><USER33> They used to be illegal. They should be illegal again. If they were, then that $65B _would_ have been invested in R&D (and in their employees!).

<comment><USER44> The money would have been returned as dividends instead. For-profit companies are not intended to exist just to spend all profits on themselves (although Amazon is one obvious counter example amongst many).</comment></comment></comment>


College freshman with an idea. How should I spend my summer? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a freshman at MIT majoring in computer science. I have a startup idea that I'm really excited about, but don't think I have the technical expertise to build it.
I have about 1.5 years of programming experience, and enough web development under my belt that I could build a sloppy but working prototype.
My question: this summer, should I jump right into building my idea? Or should I do other things to raise my programming IQ (internship/side projects/reading/your suggestions) until I feel more technically confident? <comment><USER2> In my opinion working on your own project is by far the quickest way up the programming learning curve (with the possible exception of convincing somebody brilliant to work on it alongside you).

Do it. Build a prototype.

</comment><comment><USER3> Working on a project is the best way to learn for sure, whether your own or another person's. You'll figure out the most important elements of the languages you're working in quickly, and the holes will be filled in over the next few years of school. Although, you should be reading books/blogs in your field as you go (but, really, you should always be doing that)

</comment><comment><USER4> I would definitely start working on the idea and come up with a prototype.

</comment><comment><USER5> Jump in and do it. What's the worst that could happen?</comment>


Air pollution is worse than we thought - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/8/12/21361498/climate-change-air-pollution-us-india-china-deaths <comment><USER2> I got a reality check recently about air pollution being worse than I thought, when I was cleaning the dust/dirt off my patio railing. I noticed the dust was particularly black, and the whole time I was cleaning it, a familiar smell was in the air. I finally realized: it's brake dust!!

While I live on a street with many cars driving by all day, I thought being a few storeys up would reduce the amount of pollution from vehicles... apparently not at all!

<comment><USER3> Yet another benefit to regenerative braking!

<comment><USER4> Can anyone elaborate on this? Do electric cars really cause less break dust for this reason?

<comment><USER5> If the car is not slowing down by clamping brake pads to a metal disc, then yes? I'm not sure how to answer the confusion here: confused on how regenerative braking works, or conventional braking?

<comment><USER6> How does regenerative breaking work?

<comment><USER7> Imagine a generator on a bicycle, you pedal to make a light bulb light up. There is of course inherent friction in the system, but a large fraction is actually pushing magnet fields around to produce electricity. That part actually has no friction, while it's not 100% efficient in the form of stray magnetic fields and some heating, normal metal on metal friction is a very small fraction.

Normal brakes use 100% friction, which of course causes substantial heat, and increases wear and tear on the pads, the rotor, and brake fluid. These type issues are why it's often recommended to use a lower gear down hills so you can offload the brakes with engine friction.

So not only does regenerative braking produce less dust, but it produces less heat, and the brakes/rotors/fluid are on average cooler and in a state where any needed braking causes less wear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like the strategy proposed (linked in the article).

In increased production capacity: 4x electric vehicles, 16x batteries, 12x wind turbines, 10x solar modules. 2x the nuclear capacity. 25% of the energy grid converted into communal/consumer owned renewable production.

Basically full production in every technology that result in zero air pollution for the energy grid. Full production in all technologies also allow us to see which clean technology is cheaper in practice without people sitting still while arguing over which strategy they should use.

<comment><USER9> I've spent a lot of my life opposed to nuclear power - but I'm slowly feeling that even with the currently unsolved long term storage issues - that it is better than the alternatives (carrying on burning fossil fuel until some point in the future when storage is good enough.)

I'd love to be wrong and I'd love to see renewable energy and storage solved in the next 10 years (though likely take longer than that to scale up nuclear).

<comment><USER10> There are many types of nuclear power, with thorium salt reactors being one of the most effective possible components to an overall solution. These could be scaled up quickly. The problem is public opinion and the lack of nuanced understanding of the differences.

<comment><USER11> No, the problem with molten salt reactors is that except for a few test reactors in the 1960'ies, nobody has built and ran them. There is little knowledge how well they'd actually work as power production reactors running at high power for years. E.g. how do you do maintenance?

And on top of that, the Th fuel cycle requires reprocessing and breeding, again technology that looks feasible on paper but little knowledge how it would work out in practice.

I'm not saying this as a negative, I think MSR's are cool and potentially very useful technology. We should definitely research them with the goal of taking them into use for large-scale power production. But this won't be ready in 10 years.

Now, I hope I'm wrong, and maybe IMSR proves me wrong by deploying at scale sooner. Though that is the traditional once-through LEU cycle, no Th, but still a MSR design.

<comment><USER12> You know who has picked up all the research on molten salt we abandoned?

China.

The utter hysteria around Nuclear is the biggest threat to climate change and if you really want to diminish the use of fossil fuels nuclear is the most economically viable path. The majority of costs are either cultural or obtuse regulations that have layered up over time. Micro reactors, molten salt and other really innovative designs don't get traction because of irrational fears radiation spawns in people.

Similar to a lot of hysteria we are seeing around COVID-19. Even if the majority of the population gets infected, it's only a real threat to a small portion of the population - so rather than managing that specific threat we are acting like it affects everyone the same - with disastrous results that are still unfolding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A 2019 OECD paper analyzing European satellite data estimates "that a 1 µg/m³[!] increase in PM2.5 concentration (or a 10% increase at the sample mean) causes a 0.8% reduction in real GDP that same year. Ninety-five per cent of this impact is due to reductions in output per worker, which can occur through greater absenteeism at work or reduced labour productivity."

[1] [https://patrickcollison.com/pollution](https://patrickcollison.com/pollution)

</comment><comment><USER14> I think they overstate the case for clean energy being cheap. It is cheap because the costs of storage are externalized. If you don't have fossil fuel producers then suddenly you have to add a lot of storage into the mix, which is not cheap.

Of course, if it's doable in practice I'm all for it, and if clean energy is really as cheap as they claim, then we'll get there pretty soon just on economics.

<comment><USER15> This is something I don't think is fully understood by most people.

Most people think "clean energy is just about building solar panels" \- it's viewed as this linear process. I think the media often present it this way.

But in fact, between us and a society run by clean energy is all sorts of huge technical hurdles we haven't solved yet. Adding 10,20% renewables is simple enough - but 100% renewables without daily blackouts is incredibly hard. We need many orders of magnitude more battery storage to get there (or some other storage technology).

It's the same for electric cars. The cost of electricity to run an electric car is small, so people assume that if everyone has an electric car, running costs will be low.

But currently electric cars are subsidised by fuel taxes, and low emissions vehicles are encouraged by low vehicle taxes. When every vehicle is low emission, we still need to get the cost of maintaining the roads from somewhere. And electric car charging at home works because only a handful of people do it. When every car on the road is plugged in every night the distribution networks to every street will need to be massively upgraded.

It's a problem because it means most people don't appreciate how far we have to go before a clean energy society is possible. We need to increase investment into this technology by an order of magnitude to have a hope of implementing before climate change has significant effects.

<comment><USER16> \- the majority of the cost of road construction and maintenance comes from general taxes. Fuel taxes haven't paid the majority since the 80's.

\- 100% renewables is hard. 90% renewables is straightforward.

\- electric cars generally charge at night and use about the same amount of power as an electric oven. Distribution network changes are not required.

<comment><USER17> > electric cars generally charge at night and use about the same amount of > power as an electric oven.

That does not sound right. Napkin math: A _tiny_ Renault Zoe has a 52kWh battery. Even assuming 100% charging efficiency, charging for 8 hours over night you're looking at 52/8=6.5kW per hour. That's already more than twice as much as an oven, and an _extremely_ conservative approximation.

edit: thanks for pointing out what I missed. I was somehow fixated on full recharges.

<comment><USER18> Just to get some real numbers on the table:

\- My EV has ~30kWh battery

\- I charge about twice a week, overnight, from around 50% to 100%, if I drive to work every day

I have a relatively short commute to work. So this is may be a lower bound. But charging 52kWh every single day is definitely an extreme case on the other end.

Where I'm from, EVs typically charge at 10A-32A at 220V, or 7.4kW to 22kW with level 2 chargers. That means you can't charge a Tesla from 0% to 100% over night, but then I haven't heard of anyone who actually needs to do that every day, if ever. The closest I've done personally is charge a Tesla I borrowed from around 30% to 100% at a cabin, but then I started when we arrived in the afternoon and we left just before noon.

It's weird that you'd call a 52kWh Zoe tiny btw. 52kWh is quite respectable. It's only half of the largest EV you could possibly buy now, and I'm guessing 50-70kWh will be the standard mid/entry level battery size for a long time.

30-40kWh cars _might_ disappear. That'd kind of be a shame, because it's a useful size for many people. And having a larger battery than you need is a _huge_ waste unless you have vehicle-to-grid to get more value out of the battery capacity you're not using. But then again, maybe the 30-40kWh market will be taken over by second hand 50-60kWh cars with reduced capacity.

<comment><USER19> > 30-40kWh cars might disappear. That'd kind of be a shame, because it's a > useful size for many people. And having a larger battery than you need is a > huge waste unless you have vehicle-to-grid to get more value out of the > battery capacity you're not using. But then again, maybe the 30-40kWh market > will be taken over by second hand 50-60kWh cars with reduced capacity.

I am sad that there are so few good subcompact/ truly low energy options in this market. There is a tiny Chinese car coming to the US, but right now it seems like it's only going to hit a few markets.

<comment><USER20> The US is the only major market really lacking in this space. Asia and Europe already have a bunch of competitors in the "city car" space with a lot more on the drawing board. Almost none of those companies believe the US is interested in "city cars", if they have a US presence at all.

The American (genital) size contest for SUVs and Trucks has sucked a lot of oxygen out of what is a much more interesting variety in EV production for Asia and the EU.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is what I never understood about people that don't think anthropomorphic climate change was a thing. Like ok, forget the warming of the planet, we still are making our air, water, and soil unhealthy at alarming levels.

</comment><comment><USER22> I wonder if the fact that it causes brain damage has something to do with our collective reluctance to address this enormous human health and environmental issue.

<comment><USER23> No, because people in cities, breathing in that particulate matter daily, actually want to do something about it.

<comment><USER24> After living in Vietnam for 4 years, which has massive air quality issues, I wouldn't say they want or even care to do something about it. They just live with it.

<comment><USER25> You need a certain level of prosperity to care. If you have enough to eat and that is about it you don't care, you would prefer other nice things in life first. Eventually your house isn't too crowded, you can get to enough places you want to go, you have good enough medical care, some education for the kids, and a few other nice things in life. Eventually you cross the line to where clean air to breath becomes important.

Vietnam has a lot of problems they need to solve before clean air gets to the top of their priorities. It is a long road but it will come to the top. They are making good progress on the other issues, but we are talking about decades, so no surprise they don't care yet. Give it time.

<comment><USER24> Anyone who thinks Vietnam is poor, is mistaken. They are the epitome of capitalism gone to the greedy. The richest of the rich and the poorest of the poor. It is the wealthy who are often the worst offenders, not the people struggling to make ends meet.

The culture is literally to not care about these sorts of things because it is someone else's problem. You see it in the day to day living... endless numbers of people routinely just throw their plastic cups carried in plastic bags, into the sewer on the side of the street. Knowing full well, it will either just sit there or one of the govt. sponsored cleanup people will pick it up.

I spent two years actively refusing plastic and it is impossible to convince every single person you deal with that you don't need yet another plastic bag.

Covid will end up being a giant reset for this country and I'm less enthusiastic about the future than you are. It will be interesting to watch for certain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm unpopular at parties because I'm more worried about other pollutants vs co2. (Not that co2 isn't bad)

<comment> white-flame But CO2 isn't bad, nor is it a pollutant. The rate of CO2 increase in the atmosphere is what's bad.

I understand the intended implication, but the vernacular is pendulum swinging too far in the wrong way factually against CO2.

Nitpicky, but hey this is HN, and I can be unpopular at this party, too! :-P

<comment><USER27> "Pollutant" depends on context. Plants need nitrogen and phosphorus compounds to grow, but when fertilizers run off farmland into rivers and lakes those same compounds are pollutants. The same goes for carbon dioxide. It is essential to plant life, and it is also a pollutant when dispersed into the environment in large quantities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Plug for open-source air quality monitoring: [https://sensor.community/en/](https://sensor.community/en/)

Build your own sensor for about 50-60 dollars. The community has a DIY guide. There used to be a guide that didn't require soldering, but the current guide still isn't very complex.

</comment><comment><USER29> Some more discussion of this topic I have come across recently.

\- Dying to breathe: Mongolia's polluted air (babies with pneumonia) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUNuHxrd7Y0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUNuHxrd7Y0)

and these two podcast describing who is most effected by these issues.

\- OPPRESSIVE HEAT: CLIMATE CHANGE AS A CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUE [https://www.climateone.org/audio/oppressive-heat-climate- cha...](https://www.climateone.org/audio/oppressive-heat-climate-change-civil- rights-issue)

\- Broken Ground: Robert Bullard On Environmental Justice [https://www.democracyworkspodcast.com/broken- ground/](https://www.democracyworkspodcast.com/broken-ground/)

</comment><comment><USER30> For anyone wondering about immediate solutions in your own home, I can say: Indoor air filtration really works.

I now use this industrial-level laser particle counter to verify my indoor air quality: [https://www.iqair.com/us/commercial/air-quality- monitors/par...](https://www.iqair.com/us/commercial/air-quality- monitors/particlescan-lite)

I currently live on an arterial road, about 2 blocks from a major Interstate (I-5).

I'm very concerned about air pollution. Pollution here (Seattle, Downtown / Capitol Hill area) is bad enough I can see it in the form of black dust which comes in even through closed windows. And that's just the particles big enough to see.

I placed 4 HEPA filters throughout the house, and I run them constantly on a low setting. Based on square footage, I would only need 1-2 of these filters. But I wanted extra filter capacity in each main room.

One annoyance is that my particle counter returns a particle count (per cubic meter, I think?) which doesn't have an exact conversion to the standardized AQI (Air Quality Index). I found a plausible conversion guide, surely not exact but close enough.

Here's what I learned:

\- Indoor air filters make a _dramatic_ improvement to air quality. When the outdoor particle count is ~1M, my indoor count can be well under 100K. That's 90% reduction.

– When I approximate AQI, it's common for outdoor air ([https://cfpub.epa.gov/airnow/index.cfm](https://cfpub.epa.gov/airnow/index.cfm)) to be in the "Moderate" scale, and my indoor air to be at the floor (best) of "Healthy".

– The IQAir HealthPro Plus ([https://www.iqair.com/us/room-air- purifiers/healthpro-series](https://www.iqair.com/us/room-air- purifiers/healthpro-series)) is incredibly effective. It lowers particle count to _zero_ at its outlet.

– My other air filters are still effective, even though they don't get the particle count down to zero. They are the RabbitAir minusa2, and two Blueair Classic 205 units.

I was also very surprised when I carried the particle counter around my neighborhood. The quiet streets often have worse air quality than the arterial! And the particle count on the arterial was just as bad as on the Interstate 5 overpass. I think the better airflow on the arterials may help get the pollution out of the area. I really expected the quite streets to have fewer pollution particles.

I have not ventured into testing for C02, other gasses, or Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs). But I'm very curious and may try to measure that myself someday soon.

<comment><USER31> You use the 2000 dollar one? Is it possible to get a rough but working measurement device for around 100 dollars?

<comment><USER30> I got the particle counter used on eBay for about $100. I know it's totally unnecessary to have that industrial version, but it was cheaper (used) than I could buy their consumer-level AirVisual Pro([https://www.iqair.com/us/air- quality-monitors/airvisual-pro](https://www.iqair.com/us/air-quality- monitors/airvisual-pro)).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I live about two blocks from a four lane road (functionally - a highway). We don't have forced air. I have considered in-room air filtration, but have heard mixed reviews on efficacy. Anyone have relevant experience with in/room filtration machines?

<comment><USER33> Running any air filter (cheap, expensive, etc) lowers the PM2.5 count in my home (adjacent to a busy 4-lane road in San Francisco) from ~40 to near zero. This is the tool I use to measure PM count: [https://www.iqair.com/us/air- quality-monitors/airvisual-pro](https://www.iqair.com/us/air-quality- monitors/airvisual-pro)

[https://twitter.com/typesfaster/status/1116732197031956480?c...](https://twitter.com/typesfaster/status/1116732197031956480?cxt=HHwWgMCmlYeBt_8eAAAA)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> It's good that pollution's immense consequences on public health get more attention, so I like the piece for that. Though a little puzzled about why the author approached, for his main source, an earth scientist and physicist, not someone with an epidemiology background. No disrespect to that source, whose work sounds important and very interesting.

</comment><comment><USER35> (In case it will change, original title was "Air pollution is much worse than we thought")

The whole piece reads like political propaganda anti fossil fuels. (Which might be what you are looking for, but not what I expected from the title). Only about 10% of the text is about the air pollution aspect of using fossil fuels, these 10% are buried somewhere in the middle and basically come down to linking to a couple of studies. Are they even new studies? Additionally there is some mentioning of the phrase "air pollution" in sentences that give no new information whatsoever and discuss the various political and societal movements tangentially related to it...

If you are looking for legit reliable information, this piece will hurt your mind to even read. Even the writing style feels like political agitation and not information. (It would actually make more sense if GPT-3 wrote this.)

<comment><USER36> Agreed. Vox isn't in the news business, they're in the selling ads through confirmation bias business.

<comment><USER37> Could it be that you didn't like the article because it didn't confirm your biases?

<comment><USER38> Anyone who takes particulate pollution seriously is not going to like the article.

To solve particulate pollution in a practical way we don't need to build wind turbines to replace gas plants (that would be good for CO2 reasons though), we need to slap filters on diesel garbage trucks and heavy industry exhaust stacks and wet down construction sites and do other things to keep small dust (which invariably gets into people's lungs, reacts with various organic molecules and causes problems) to a minimum.

Straw manning particulate pollution as a fossil fuel problem is a great way to make particulate pollution seem like a bigger and harder to solve problem than it actually is.

<comment><USER37> Even better than diesel filters is not using diesel at all! Fossil fuels are never going to not produce pollution. California with some of the strictest tailpipe emission standards still has huge smog problems. I don't see the issue with highlighting the air quality co-benefits of fighting climate change. We need to do both!

<comment><USER38> >Even better than diesel filters is not using diesel at all

Of course that would be better but that's a hard and expensive problem and the 99% solution is easy and cheap. Seems like a pretty obvious choice to me.

>California with some of the strictest tailpipe emission standards still has huge smog problems.

A combination of bad geographic luck and diminishing returns (everyone else's emissions regulations have 90+% the same effect)

>I don't see the issue with highlighting the air quality co-benefits of fighting climate change.

If your goal is to stop coughing up a lung today then focusing on better batteries and cheaper green energy is wasted effort when you can directly solve the pollution problem more cheaply right now. Sure air quality is a nice side benefit to reducing C02 emissions but if your true goal is improved air quality then reducing CO2 emissions is a crap way to go about it because the two are only loosely correlated and the bang for your buck is so bad. If your goal is to win eyeballs to your site and get people who's understanding of the problems is on the level checkout-isle magazine to share your article then it is probably a good idea.

<comment><USER39> What do you think those filters and extras that a few car companies were caught software cheating around are meant to do? But then at some point you reach loss of efficiency which means burning more fuel and producing more other pollution.

The big problem is prevalence of old cars or ones in disrepair.

Then of course coal and oil plants, secondary gas plants; and of course industrial pollution from manufacturing.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Can You Teach Yourself Synesthesia? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/07/can-you-teach-yourself-synesthesia/259519/

<comment><USER2> I have synesthesia in real life. For me, I have one of the "most common" forms, between words and colors. Specifically, I have a color-word synesthesia ("association" is _not_ the right word here) between days of the week and colors. For example, Friday for me is a "medium green", Tuesday is a "light blue" and Wednesday is a sort of "soft red"... Every day has its own color, though I must mention that Saturday and Sunday are both white, though different shades. Each of these colors also has a "brightness" to it that is kind of impossible to describe in terms of regular colors, though colors seen on a computer display get close. I also have some mild synesthesia between specific letters of the alphabet (but not all of them), as well as every single-digit number. It's worth a mention that I can't think of specific instances of this synesthesia helping me remember anything, though I am pretty good with remembering numbers, and it needs to be said that I don't know what it's like _without_ synesthesia, so I can't offer a comparison.

Very much related to this post, I can't say whether or not learning synethesia is possible. It's so hard to describe the synesthesia between words-colors, to such a degree that I'm inclined to say that any learning would be simple association, and not the synesthesia that I experience myself. For example, when I read the word "Wednesday" it's a very specific color of red with a certain bright softness about it. I "see" that color every time I hear or see _and then comprehend_ the idea of Wednesday. When I see "Wednesday" as a collection of letters, there's no color, but when I summon the internal idea/concept of Wednesday, then the color is there. See how retarded I sound? That's how confusing the internal "association" is, and why I am inclined to believe that "one does not simply _learn_ synesthesia"...

<comment><USER3> Whoa! I think I may be having a weaker version of the same type of synesthesia that you have described. I tend to "imagine" colours when I think of certain letters, numbers, days or months. I don't feel this way for each one of them though.. for eg. 2 = red, 4 = green, 5 = pink, 6 = blue, 7 = purple whereas nothing for 0, 1, 3, 8 and 9 (may be black?). Similarly, E = yellow, F = pink, saturday = green, march = yellow etc. Also, I don't "see" colours while reading text, just when I happen to think more about a letter, number or word.

All this while I was thinking this is common and normal in all people like photographic memory or something. Learnt something new today :-)

<comment><USER2> Yes, that's _exactly_ it! Some letters are not there (actually most letters), and I know that some numbers are "weaker" than others. I also know that some of these color synesthetics have changed over time. For example, I know that the number 2 for me didn't always trigger darkish pink, but I can't remember what it used to be. Also, I have lost synesthesia for G, H, and J, which used to be yellowish, yellowish, and green, but now don't "do" anything.

If you are experiencing more of a one-to-one idea/color analogue instead of a simple kind of "association" between an idea and a color, then what you are describing is highly likely to be similar to what I have, which is word-color synesthesia, the most common form of the "condition". For example, it's much more intrinsic than the simple association we normally feel between, say, the word "money" and the color green. That's a simple word-color association. When I see the word "March", I "feel/see/experience" the color blue (and vice versa, though this vice versa is a bit weird because I'm not so good at distinguishing individual colors).

<comment><USER3> Yes, it's different from the money-green association. I wonder what made me think it was normal and everyone else thought this way too!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You could argue everyone who is literate has synesthesia - I can not look at symbols representing the alphabet and not hear the associated phonemes in my head. Makes me wonder what you see if you scan the brains of people who are born-deaf when reading, actually - which parts of the brain light up? Oh, and when reading logographic alphabets like Chinese of course.

<comment><USER5> Subvocalization [1] -- "hearing the words" -- actually varies between people. Anecdotally: I myself don't "hear" anything while reading. There is apparently some evidence that all, or almost all, people subvocalize, but that for many people it happens subconsciously and involuntarily, and that you can detect it only by monitoring the vocal chords. There was an HN thread discussing it recently [2].

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocalization>

[2] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5278039>

<comment><USER4> I never heard of subvocalizatin before, fascinating! Any (non-historical) reasons it is considered separate from synesthesia?

<comment><USER5> Because it's a separate phenomenon? Synesthesia is explicitly about different senses crossing paths, and does not apply only to reading. For example, synesthetes might see colours in conjunction with smells.

<comment><USER4> So how is "hearing a visual pattern" not two senses crossing paths?

<comment><USER5> It's not so much hearing a visual pattern as it is to speak it. Subvocalization engages the voice apparatus in a way that is very close to actually speaking.

<comment><USER4> If that is true, then why does this work?

<http://xkcd.com/462/> <http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/22402009.jpg>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well, syntax highlighting has been around for some time. So if present, shouldn't an effect of induced synesthesia be well known by now?

<comment><USER2> This is an interesting observation. I've been writing code for about twenty years, and using some form of syntax highlighting for a little over ten of those years. I change the colors in vim (and geany, my other IDE-du-jour) to match function names with a bold blue and variables with a bold, dark red. These colors are the ones I definitely change every time on a new install/machine/whatever. I can see exactly what we would think with the color-syntax association, but it's _not quite_ the same as my synesthesia. Like, when I type out a function definition, I don't have a bold blue "mindset" while doing it. However, when I type the word Wednesday in that context, there's a thick undercurrent consisting of the "softish bright red". It's really, really hard to explain, but there is a difference for me.

<comment><USER6> Oh well, it's no surprise, really. Visual cortex is vast and depending on which areas/levels take part very different effects may be present.

<comment><USER2> Yes certainly, synesthesia has many different forms. From what I understand -- and I could be completely off, but this is just information I've tried to collect since I finally had a word for the condition -- the word-color synesthesia thing is pretty common. Sound-color exists, but it's pretty uncommon. Among many, many different combinations. One of my friends has confided in me that she feels different temperatures with different words. I hadn't heard of that before, but I don't doubt it. There were some scientists who did MRI work on synesthetes and found that it basically amounts to functional crossovers in the brain between the affected areas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have always wanted a firefox add-on that would make each letter a different colour consistently to test this theory. I know "If you want it, then make it"... Maybe this summer.

<comment><USER8> At first I thought that was a great idea and thought about how it might be done. Then I realized reading a word where every letter was a different color would be incredibly annoying (for a while).

I imagined bright colors like this: [http://img3.etsystatic.com/006/0/5982325/il_fullxfull.367326...](http://img3.etsystatic.com/006/0/5982325/il_fullxfull.367326283_qwvp.jpg)

To me that is very distracting.

<comment><USER9> in the study they only printed four letters in colour, not the entire alphabet

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does anyone know if a comparative study has been done comparing the word/colours that people with synesthesia see to determine if there is any pattern? I'm wondering the same thing for auditory/colour patterns, it could have interesting applications for lighting at live music shows.

<comment><USER2> From what I can tell, there's no pattern in any synesthesia. It's due ("they" think) to essentially a hardware crossover in the regions of the brain responsible for these "cognitions"... You have the same idea I did for some time when I was much younger. A really good friend of mine organized raves back around the first time they were popular and I knew if people could experience what I experience for only a while, it would have a result similar to the consciousness-altering properties of drugs. It's always been normal to me, but I also know what it's like to think of words/colors that have no meaning together, so I can imagine how empty my vocabulary would be without this extra layer of interconnectedness. I'm terribly sorry if this comment meets your disapproval. I'm really just trying to help extend my experience to fellow HNers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> <http://xkcd.com/1213/>

<comment><USER12> [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1213:_Combin...](http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1213:_Combination_Vision_Test)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Chrome plugin, please.</comment>