Soli - <AUTHOR> https://atap.google.com/soli/ <comment><USER2> I recently showed some videos of Soli in the HCI class I teach. Students immediately hit upon the two major issues I wanted to discuss (I was pretty proud!).

The first is learnability. A big problem with gestures is that there is no clear affordance as to what kinds of gestures you can do, or any clear feedback. For feedback, one could couple Soli's input with a visual display, but at that point, it's not clear if there is a big advantage over a touchscreen, unless the display is really small.

The second is what's known as the Midas touch problem. How can the system differentiate if you are intentionally gesturing as input vs incidentally gesturing? The example I used was the new Mercedes cars that have gesture recognition. While I was doing a test drive, the salesperson started waving his hands as part of his normal speech, and that accidentally raised the volume. Odds are very high Soli will have the same problem. One possibility is to activate Soli via a button, but that would defeat a lot of the purpose of gestures. Another is to use speech to activate, which might work out. Yet another possibility is that you have to do a special gesture "hotword", sort of like how Alexa is activated by saying it's name.

At any rate, these problems are not insurmountable, but it definitely adds to the learning curve, reliability, and overall utility of these gesture based interfaces.

<comment><USER3> As predicted in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: "...an electric pencil flew across the cabin and through the radio's on/off-sensitive airspace."

<comment><USER4> It certainly seems on-point.

"A loud clatter of gunk music flooded through the Heart of Gold cabin as Zaphod searched the sub-etha radio wavebands for news of himself. The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive - you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same programme."

This is from 1979 of course.

<comment><USER5> That's uncannily accurate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It is a nice piece of technology. It is a 60Ghz millimeter-wave radar. It is a privacy nightmare. It is already shipped.

Radar uses electromagnetic waves (like Wifi but higher frequency) so it can go through walls, and even typical range for gesture recognition is less than meter, It probably can go at least 10 times as far by boosting the gain of the amplifier, it is not constrained like a theremin would be because it is already working in the far field region of the antenna.

Because it work at such high frequency (but not so high that it can still go through walls), it has many very small antennas arrays, and sense sub millimeter movements even from far away. It also has beam-forming capabilities, meaning it can focus the direction in which to sense. Because it is radar, things which moves are of interests and are filtered easily from the background.

Typically this piece of technology already can or will soon be able to : sense how many humans are around it, where they are, how fast they breath, how fast the heart is pulsating, who they are by computing some heart-base ID.

It is low-power and always-on, 360° with focus-able attention. It is cheap because it can be made on a chip. (Edit: fixing typos)

<comment><USER7> > 60Ghz millimiter-wave radar

> so it can go through walls

60 GHz RF doesn't really pass through _anything_ , which is the entire reason that the frequency is used for radar. A radar needs powerful reflections to detect things. Penetration impedes its operation, and would be akin to a camera that is out of focus.

I'm also unsure if the resolution of this chip is noteworthy.

<comment><USER8> Yup, the range claims are silly, too. Radar has an inverse fourth power with distance, so to go 10x as far by adding power, you need 10000x as much power, which is quite a challenge at 60GHz.

<comment><USER6> You are right that Radar follows an inverse 4th power with distance (inverse 2th power for the light to go to the reflected object then 2th power for the reflected wave to go back to your antenna).

For 3$ [https://fr.aliexpress.com/item/32786483344.html](https://fr.aliexpress.com/item/32786483344.html) a 6Ghz radar that goes 12meters using 30mA, so my range claims are not that silly.

When there is no obstacle 6Ghz or 60Ghz doesn't matter.

<comment><USER8> > When there is no obstacle 6Ghz or 60Ghz doesn't matter.

Power amplifier efficiency for 6GHz and 60GHz is not the same-- not even close.

> For 3$ > [https://fr.aliexpress.com/item/32786483344.html](https://fr.aliexpress.com/item/32786483344.html) > a 6Ghz radar that goes 12meters using 30mA, so my range claims are not that > silly.

This is a deflection and ridiculous. We're talking about spotting e.g. gestures. It falls apart with distance because of both angular resolution and inverse-fourth power.

I've been involved in the design of mmwave radars. If it was easy to spot and precisely track small objects at 10m, we'd be doing it...

<comment><USER6> >If it was easy to spot and precisely track small objects at 10m,

That's not the claim I'm making. I agree that this chip won't do the gesture recognition at 10m, but I'm quite convinced that it can pick up human movement signal if they try to do so.

>I've been involved in the design of mmwave radars

I don't have this level of expertise. But I'll be really surprised if we couldn't reach the same levels of amplification. Gaining 12 dB will double the range. We can extend the antenna array or use more expensive low noise amplifiers. For cars there are 30Ghz Doppler radar, and the distance can go at least 50m.

From the referenced paper ( A Highly Integrated 60 GHz 6-Channel Transceiver With Antenna in Package for Smart Sensing and Short-Range Communications [https://sci-hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1109/JSSC.2016.2585621](https://sci- hub.tw/https://doi.org/10.1109/JSSC.2016.2585621) ) : "In this work a 60 GHz 4-channel receiver 2-channel transmitter packaged chip targeting high resolution sensing systems and capable of supporting large bandwidth communication channels is presented. The SiGe technology used offers a low 1/f noise which is essential to the functionality of the chip in frequency modulated continues wave systems (FMCW)and Doppler radar with a sensing range below 10 m."

"While we have not explored this in-depth we would like to highlight the similarities to re-cent work exploiting FMCW RF technology to coarsely 'image' users through a wall [1]"

<comment><USER8> Your second quote seems out of context and doesn't occur in the paper you cite.

Your first quote says "sensing range below 10m".

Yes, it is possible to make long range 60GHz systems-- largely through antenna gain and lenses. Yes, we could build an entirely different radar to track peoples' gross movement--- and could have 20 years ago, too-- but that has largely nothing to do with the original system or your original claim.

If I wanted to image people at low resolution through a wall, 60GHz is about the last thing I'd pick. Drywall alone has an attenuation of about 3 dB/cm, and remember we have to cross the wall twice. You run out of loss budget really quick. Suggesting one can go 10x as far (10000x power alone) and through walls is... creative.

If you want to track people through a wall, use UHF. It works pretty well and is pretty easy.

<comment><USER6> >10000x power alone

Sorry to dig this up so late, there is a usual misconception when reasoning with power (which you might suffer from) :

What matters is not power, what matter is what we measure. We are measuring electric field in volts whose square is proportional to the power. Going 10x as far, mean measuring a voltage 100x smaller. Even with just the dynamic range if your analog digital converter is reading you 8-bits values (values going to 256) with a 100x voltage reduction you get a smaller blip going from 0 to 2.

<comment><USER8> What matters is signal to noise ratio. There is not really background noise in UHF and up; instead there is thermal noise in the receive amplifier.

If you have SNR of 6dB over some integration interval which gave you acceptable results, and you have 40dB of additional path loss, you're now -34dB, and you need to make that up. There's no "taking half" because we're talking about only a 100x difference in receive voltage.

Put another way, we already "took half"\-- our SNR of 6dB (quadruple the power) was already only double the voltage. Our metrics for SNR already take what you're talking about into account.

Dynamic range can be a factor, but you generally have some kind of automatic gain control that increases effective dynamic range (so that in absence of signal, you have noise much bigger than 1LSB showing up at the converter), and the conversion dynamic range "width" of the converter only matters when there are other in-band transmitters around you need to reject (because they limit how far you can turn up the initial gain before saturating the converter).

Note also, not that it relates to what we said at all-- you can detect signals much smaller than 1LSB because of dither.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not sure what to think about it. Seems awesome at first glance but then the examples are skipping songs and hand waving pokemons. Feels a lot like a solution looking for a problem.

<comment><USER10> Would be useful when cooking with mess on your hands and trying to scroll through a recipe.

<comment><USER11> This is the _one and only_ suggestion so far that makes sense. It would be nice when cooking. If I was sitting in a bus/train/plane/concert/<public space>, there is no chance in hell I am waving my hands at a phone. I would even feel silly doing it at home.

<comment><USER12> You can extend this to mechanics/technicians. Manipulating a large screen when your hands are full of grease.

<comment><USER13> but can't the front camera do that with a simple gestures classifier ?

<comment><USER14> Probably, but that doesn't sell $650 phones

<comment><USER13> I like the privacy aspect "it's not a camera, it doesn't take picture"

It does send millimetre waves though, could that mean we could hack Soli to view through clothes ? Like a full-body scanner works ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'd love to see PC devkits for this device. Something as simple as a USB 3 device you plug in and place under your monitor. Perhaps it will make its first "PC" appearance in a Google Chromebook?

I can see a lot of _eccentric_ users figuring out interesting ways of integrate many of these gestures into their workflow. Perhaps for navigating in 3d space or switching between workspaces?

[edit] There used to be a developers page which showcased that devkits exists. [http://web.archive.org/web/20181110202503/http://atap.google...](http://web.archive.org/web/20181110202503/http://atap.google.com/soli/developers/) Showcase video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H41A_IWZwZI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H41A_IWZwZI)

<comment><USER16> It will just join the graveyard of gimmicky vr/ar motion controllers.

Leap motion, Kinect, etc. Those can track precise skeletal gestures too.

I think the differentiation here is low power always on and attached to the phone with high field of view.

<comment><USER17> The Kinect caused a huge wave of innovation. It was a convenient and low-cost source of RGBD data, and many robotics labs got a few when it was released.

<comment><USER18> Could you expand on the result of said innovation? Where would I see Kinect driven innovation in everyday life?

<comment><USER19> Much of that technology was improved and miniaturized, and incorporated into the Apple Face ID bar at the top of the iPhone X.

<comment><USER20> Personally I feel FaceID is a step backwards from fingerprint readers. It doesn't work as often for me (facial hair, hat, lighting, hoodie, and sometimes it's just finnicky) and there are privacy concerns. The fingerprint reader isn't perfect, but for me it was better. I can touch it while pulling the phone out of my pocket and it's unlocked when I open it.

I'm frustrated with Google's choice to copy Apple and remove this feature from the Pixel 4. It's literally the only reason I'm not buying one.

<comment><USER21> What privacy concerns are there?

<comment><USER20> I guess it depends on whether or not you consider a 3D scan of your face personal data. As face-tracking becomes more prevalent, I'd say this is the worst thing you could voluntarily give away. Your face can be scanned just walking through a crowd in public, a fingerprint is only usable when you physically touch something (and the digital version is always prompted so you can't be identified in a crowd unexpectedly like you can with a face).

<comment><USER21> I would agree facial recognition in a general sense has privacy implications — but in the case of Face ID I think the implementation is sufficiently secure.

<comment><USER20> I agree Apple is one of the few companies that takes security seriously. That said, it only takes one hack/leak to compromise your biometric data forever. You can't change it as easily as a password. And you're voluntarily giving it up...for what? A worse unlocking experience? If it weren't for the novelty factor I am confident most people would not use it - probably why the hardware is removing it as an option. Also it's no secret those companies want the extra data for training better models and this is a "free" way to get really high quality data.

As far as things to bemoan in tech this is pretty low on the totem pole. I'm just annoyed because I wanted to buy a new phone and can't find one that has what I want at any price.

EDIT: I saw this article seconds after finishing this comment, which seems ironic.

[https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50080586](https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50080586)

<comment><USER21> I think you should read up a bit more on the technical implementation of Face ID. The data never leaves the phone and, even if an attacker had physical access to the phone, they could not get the information. Apple is getting no training data from it.

> If it weren't for the novelty factor I am confident most people would not > use it

I think this is really incorrect. You really think everyone is using Touch ID and Face ID only because of the novelty factor, and not because it's significantly more convenient (and, at least in many cases, more secure)? That if it wasn't "fun", everyone would be completely okay going back to entering 6-digit passcodes?

<comment><USER20> > You really think everyone is using Touch ID and Face ID only because of the > novelty factor, and not because it's significantly more convenient (and, at > least in many cases, more secure)? That if it wasn't "fun", everyone would > be completely okay going back to entering 6-digit passcodes?

I meant compared to using a fingerprint reader, but even then yes. I returned an iPhone because I can't unlock my phone in the dark enough that I just got sick of it. My partner complains of the same thing, and vows to buy a cheaper phone next time because of it.

> I think you should read up a bit more on the technical implementation of > Face ID. The data never leaves the phone and, even if an attacker had > physical access to the phone, they could not get the information. Apple is > getting no training data from it.

Thank you for this, it's useful. It still doesn't assuage me that it's impenetrable though, just that it would be incredibly difficult to obtain.

<comment><USER17> Face ID works way better for me. I couldn't get the fingerprint reader to recognize my stupid sweaty fingers sometimes, but Face ID always works for me.

You can unlock your phone in the dark. It doesn't rely on visible light, as it shines its own infrared light on you. You were probably holding your phone too close to your face.

<comment><USER20> I know how the sensor array works - I've personally built structured light sensors for robots.

It doesn't work for me. I'm glad it works for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> As is often the case, this is some very interesting technology, but for now, we'll only see it used in some novelty applications.

An increased level of spatial awareness for phones will be huge in the coming decade. However, it will almost certainly be a result of sensor fusion between a Soli-like radar sensor, a FaceID-like ToF sensor, enhanced positioning and pose detection, RGB cameras, microphones, and a lot of ML to assemble a comprehensive picture of environmental context and user intent.

Radar is one more piece of the puzzle in building products that can read the same cues we naturally use to communicate with other humans: Imagine, instead of telling a voice assistant "Alexa, turn down the volume," where you have to use a phonetic trigger, and all the system has to go on is audio, something more natural: You look in the direction of the hardware, say "turn it down a bit," and make a pinching gesture with your hand. The system can assemble all these pieces (you were looking at it, you spoke in its direction, you gestured) and, with a sufficiently-trained neural network, make a more conclusive determination of your intent.

</comment><comment><USER23> Those growing up with Remote Controls of the kind: [https://i.imgur.com/AIqz63k.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/AIqz63k.jpg)

After a few days, the user develops a muscle memory of sorts. User doesn't even have to look at the controller and all actions (and feedback) are executed through the tactile interface. From cockpits to nuclear power plants to home tv remote control, there is absolutely nothing that replaces physical buttons, encoders, sliders and toggles.

I haven't formally studied UI/UX, but these are important:

\- Feedback for an action

\- Predictable steps to take an action (Muscle memory)

\- Fast response

\- Expose current state (sliders, toggles do this)

There should be 0% ambiguity or the user gets frustrated. Any piece of technology that puts impedance in this process is no fucking good. User shouldn't have to "guess and wait" whether the device recognized their gesture to swipe. A physical button _guarantees_ that the action was performed by the means of feedback. Nope, sound feedback or taptic stuff still isn't as good as the click of a button. It can be but no one engineers it well. For example MacBook Trackpad that "clicks" without moving is excellent. Seeing touch screens (one exception, phone), cap buttons, gesture controls, etc everywhere makes me sad because it has nothing to do with UX but everything to do with the bottom line (cost) and marketing, and in this case perhaps better ad tracking? I will put this in plain words - Don't trust a company that sells ads at the same time as building hardware. Either sell ads or sell hardware, not both. Google already serves software which relies on trading off privacy (even if it is anonymized). When it comes to hardware, I freak out and no way in hell this thing sits in my home.

<comment><USER24> >there is absolutely nothing that replaces physical buttons, encoders, sliders and toggles

Even space, versatility, & cost aside, there are definitely tasks that a touch screen does better. Using a map with a touch screen is incredibly intuitive compared to a mouse. (I cannot imagine using sliders or other "physical" interfaces)

>A physical button guarantees that the action was performed by the means of feedback

So you've never experienced pressing on a TV remote and nothing happening? On touch screens I can see if the app responded to my interaction. On many button interfaces I cannot.

>taptic stuff still isn't as good as the click of a button

Not sure why you're so confident with this when most people I tell are surprised that their new Macbook touchpad is entirely haptic and not actually moving.

>Don't trust a company that sells ads at the same time as building hardware

So by this definition Apple is worse than Google for privacy?

<comment><USER25> > Using a map with a touch screen is incredibly intuitive compared to a mouse. > (I cannot imagine using sliders or other "physical" interfaces)

What sort of map use you have in mind? I find panning (drag+move) and zooming (mousewheel) maps with the mouse very intuitive.

<comment><USER26> Swiping and zooming a map on a phone or tablet is quicker and far more intuitive than clicking and dragging with a mouse. You can't scroll to a precise depth without moving your mouse to a specific UI slider. Whereas with touch you control it with the spread of your fingers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The "dial" gesture is incredibly subtle. Kudos to them if it works reliably.

MKBHD doesn't seem convinced in the efficacy of the sensor* from his Pixel 4 video: [https://youtu.be/sKJ4i7p-o-4?t=326](https://youtu.be/sKJ4i7p-o-4?t=326)

* from Analemma_'s comment below, the Pixel 4 doesn't seem to be running the full blown chip

<comment><USER28> Ars' report [0] seemed to indicate that the gestures work great with the full- size Soli chip, but not the miniaturized one they had to cram into the phone.

[0]: [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/10/pixel-4-hands-on- pro...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/10/pixel-4-hands-on-project-soli- just-seems-like-wii-waggle/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I just watched MKBHD's Pixel 4 video and he said the wave gestures worked maybe 10% of the time. If that is true I hope it is a bug as shipping something like that should never happen.

</comment><comment><USER30> Interestingly, this caused the Pixel 4 to get banned in India: [https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/10/15/india-wont-get- the-...](https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/10/15/india-wont-get-the-google- pixel-4-as-soli-fails-to-secure-governments-nod/)

<comment><USER31> Radar is just turned off in Japan. Wonder why India banned it.

<comment><USER32> Save you a click:

>The radar uses a 60GHz frequency band to attain the advertised accuracy, and that's exactly where the problem lies. India has reserved this mmWave band only for military and government use for now and it needs to un-license this frequency before allowing civilian use for applications like Soli.

>The report adds that Google did consider disabling the radar for the units sold in India, but it still wouldn't have guaranteed a sales permit, and removing the hardware wasn't an option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I wonder how this will impact fingerprinting of users from a privacy and security perspective. It would be useful as a means of identity verification based off of physical properties of the user beyond just their fingerprint or iris. Yet it would also be a massive privacy concern, particularly since it advertises 360° sensing.

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm Italian, and I can tell you us Italians have waited for this for at least two thousand years!

We can finally stop pretending our sounds are the language, and get back to using only gestures :)

</comment><comment><USER35> Oh my god, extraordinary technical feat, but _do not want_. Seriously, someone go out there and charge $1000 for a dumb 50" television. Give me a phone that doesn't have an assistant or this Soli and I will give a premium for it.

</comment><comment><USER36> Gonna require "the cloud" so they can collect free machine learning model training data and spy on us, I assume?

<comment><USER37> No, it's doing all the heavy lifting on device, only sending the compressed output to the cloud for spying, err, offering you a better service.

<comment><USER38> TBH, when this data is shipped up to the cloud, it may be used for customization that _could_ be fed to the ad engine, but it's especially important for refining algorithm.

A lot of the leaps in high-fidelity human-computer interaction (voice, face, and likely this new gesture system) have been made with having enough data about real-world interactions to train the models. It's how a company finds out about the ten thousand things that happen in the real world that their lab-models missed, and gets their algorithm from 90% accuracy to 99.9% accuracy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> It would be nice to bring "hover" back to touch applications. You can have hover with a mouse but not with your finger. Good for tool-tip style help.

</comment><comment><USER40> Relevant cross post from Bret Victor and hands: [http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesi...](http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/)

This technology seems promising in the face of his ideas.

<comment><USER41> A step in the right direction maybe, but it's missing half of the equation. And this seems a space where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts: we aren't half way there. You may be using your hands to gesture, but you aren't feeling or manipulating anything. Every single picture in that post has a physical thing in the hand. This product never has a physical thing in the hand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> They should use this technology to charge Youtube video ad views depending on how many people are watching the ad on a phone. Multi-user presence will be interesting to see how it gets used as an API.

<comment><USER43> Or prevent a show from being screened to more than two people! Imagine how many missed royalties can now be collected! With Google Pay integration, the user can even be charged automatically to avoid the inconvenience of having to apply for a screening license.

<comment><USER44> I know you are joking, but I am pretty sure this was a patent Microsoft filed in conjunction with Kinect. I could be wrong about if it was Microsoft or not, but it was definitely about a camera noticing how many people were watching a digital product/ad.

<comment><USER45> It was Microsoft.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Slightly off topic: Where can one find these minimalist cartoons/sketches of people for websites? Ideally free, but those options appear super cartoonish and limited.

<comment><USER47> something like this - [https://www.humaaans.com/](https://www.humaaans.com/) ?

<comment><USER46> Perfect, thank you :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Mods: can we change the headline to include a few words on what a soli is?

</comment><comment><USER49> So, um, where is the technology that lets my phone float in free space as I execute these gestures, like in the video?

<comment><USER50> Well, there is this if levitation is _really_ a must-have feature for you: [https://www.amazon.co.uk/MASUNN-Magnetic-Levitation- Revoluti...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/MASUNN-Magnetic-Levitation-Revolution- Technology/dp/B074Z59C6Z/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?keywords=magnetic+levitation+display&qid=1571240589&sr=8-3)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> How does waving your hands in the air "feel more human" than using your opposed-thumb-equipped hands to interact with some material object?

</comment><comment><USER52> > _Private_

> _Soli is not a camera and doesn't capture any visual images._

This is a privacy misconception that really needs to die (something also discussed in the W3C ambient light sensor thread recently on HN frontpage). Sensing involves privacy implications. By. Definition.

<comment><USER53> We don't even need to resort to "by definition" here.

They describe the tech as "detect[ing] objects and motion through various materials". We're effectively talking about the equivalent of TSA full-body scanners. How's that for privacy concerns!?

Also, for a bit of pedantry, if this is literally "radar" as they say it is, then the argument that "Soli is not a camera and doesn't capture any visual images" is arguing semantics at the level of splitting "which EM frequency ranges count as a camera and/or visual imagery" hairs.

<comment><USER54> The site doesn't say what band they are using, but their research articles contain a lot in the 60GHz range, which is certainly high enough resolution to capture images, particularly if you use synthetic aperture techniques (you can already do inertial movement sensing on a phone to aid with this).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Remember the gorilla arm.

[http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/G/gorilla- arm.html](http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/G/gorilla-arm.html)

</comment><comment><USER56> I think a killer app for this could be small screens. You could have a UI with pseudo-"buttons" around the edge of the screen large enough to see but too small to actually press, letting the interactions take place just off screen. This could let you turn a 2x2 inch screen like a watch into one that's effectively a couple inches larger in terms of the interactions available. Right now my watch's design is almost entirely constrained by having UI elements big enough to easily touch, taking up precious screen space.

</comment><comment><USER57> Google finally ships a research project in a real product and people don't seem to understand the usefulness.

Human nature for some reason often devolves to "what's the point?"

Here's the 2015 announcement. There's a lot of potential. Maybe we'd all benefit from "imagine what's now possible "

[https://youtu.be/0QNiZfSsPc0](https://youtu.be/0QNiZfSsPc0)

<comment><USER58> It's really cool and innovative technology, but I also struggle to see the point for the common user. If this were a computer monitor or projector screen, sure. But my phone is pretty much always in my hand if it's being used in any way. If it's already in my hand, what do I gain from this?

I can see how it'd be very useful for people who mount their phones on some sort of distant stand. But I feel like that's pretty uncommon; though maybe I'm just ignorant of how common it actually is. It's probably much more common for tablets, like for watching videos/movies at a distance. I do that, and I could definitely see myself using this with a tablet. But for something small that's pretty much always either in my pocket or in my hand?

<comment><USER59> Your phone isn't _always_ in your hand. In fact, your phone isn't in your hand for the vast majority of the day most likely. And it's in those scenarios that something like this could be cool if it works well.

If it can detect your presence before you actually pick it up it could do things like fire up the face auth systems to give quicker unlock. It can auto- lock if you set it down and walk away without manually turning it off or waiting for the timeout. If the alarm is going off it can lower the volume if it detects your presence before you actually dismiss or snooze the alarm.

There's all sorts of possibilities for all the times where you are not holding your phone. If it works well, that is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> why no one talks about health and safety of this technology?Not that it will cause any issues, but interested and curious about any peer reviewed studies on how prolonged exposure of 60GHz with close proximity to the body will affect? If there is none, I would love to jump on to the ship. Because, it is so cool! if there is something or have no evidence, then the community or the experts should talk about it and push for proper studies before 10 years from now folks exposed with Soli got cancer!

<comment><USER61> There's nothing special about 60GHz, it's just like any other radio transmitter that's been around for decades. The safety is well understood and apart from some pseudoscience around it (as has been for every new tech, including microwave ovens, cellphones, 5g etc.), there are no concerns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> I've tinkered around with gesture recognition with the Magic Leap quite a bit for art projects. I hope this gets released as a standalone product with an SDK!

<comment><USER63> According to Google cache they had an SDK at one point [1] - guess that went down the drain after monetization. The chip itself seems to be an infineon product [0] you could buy but the interesting part will likely be the software stack. From a research perspective this is certainly cool tech. But it seems kind of odd to have an ad / landing page for an aspect of their tech you can only get as a gimmicky part of a feature phone. All the "it's not a camera" wording makes me feel like this is just a marketing campaign to say "see, we're not creepy".

[0] [https://www.infineon.com/cms/en/product/promopages/60GHz/](https://www.infineon.com/cms/en/product/promopages/60GHz/)

[1] [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8OjB0R...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8OjB0RVLk5IJ:https://atap.google.com/soli/developers/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk)

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> I think this is better for something like a Nintendo. To put it in a phone is kinda invasive. I would hope that at minimum the chip can only be specifically activated by the user in specific apps. To just have it on all the time is kinda crazy. Are they going to disclose when they can identify WHO is using it rather than just multiple bodies, etc...

</comment><comment><USER65> I think this could be synergetic with voice commands. It wont be useful on its own but sometimes you dont want to say every command out loud, so doing a little annoyed wave feels more natural. Soli on its own is not going to sell phones in my opinion but maybe Google is building up to a larger more aware device that can ultimately guess your entire mood, behavior and position in the room and do various things based on that. Like a sort of virtual person that would detect if you look worried and then it asks you how you are feeling today. That's a futuristic direction that I can see this going towards. For example, one usecase that I would probably like is a phone that tracks my posture during workouts and if it's really advanced, it could give me advice or fire me up on my last reps. Like a personal trainer. Right now it seems we aren't anywhere near that but this is my guess for their strategic direction.

</comment><comment><USER66> So now Pixel phones have the perfect spy chip and they call it "private" because it doesn't record images. But then they don't say what data it records and what they do with it. What they do have is boatloads of stupid buzzwords for the dumbest phone user imaginable. That doesn't bode well at all.

</comment><comment><USER67> I might start sweating if it takes that much energy just to move to the next track.

Edit: Not sure why this got voted down? Hold your arm in an upright position, swat to the side a few hundred times, you would feel at the very least, muscle fatigue.

For repetitive tasks, you want efficiency of movement, not dramatic movement.

<comment><USER32> I think you're getting voted down because "holding your arm in an upright position and swatting to the side a few hundred times" seems like an exaggeration of what's required to "move to the next track".

I would imagine to move to the next track in a song you'd be using an action from the "Active" demos at the bottom, which may require some kind of initial motion to enter the "active" state, but also seem like they'd work with your arms resting at their sides, and be literally almost no energy whatsoever to e.g. swipe your thumb along your index finger once.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> Note at the bottom:

> 1) Pixel 4's Soli implementation does not include all capabilities and > interactions described here

<comment><USER69> I wonder if that's a software or hardware imitation.

<comment><USER68> I hope it's hardware or they would be selling vaporware.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> This seems an awful lot like the eye/head tracking in the Amazon Fire phone and that went over super well.

This type of input makes sense in certain applications/platforms but a phone isn't one of them - at least not with current phone usage patterns.

</comment><comment><USER71> Why is this needed? I can see there are some niche needs like when you are cooking and cannot touch the screen. But that is what voice is for. What exactly is soli solving? Looks like over engineering to me, simply because they can.

<comment><USER72> Let's not pretend voice isn't also a huge novelty.

Yes the gestures are majorly a novelty, but the fact is, this is a radar, not a gesture sensor.

It would be capable of determining if you're in a dangerous situation (by sensing assault / weapons), it could help a blind person avoid walking into walls, or simply chime when it falls out of your pocket.

Some of these have very high power requirements which is why it's not entirely practical to bake it into the phone as a common feature, but they're all entirely within the realm of possibility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> The screen is right there but you want me to not touch the screen to interact.

<comment><USER69> You can still do it the normal way.. It's a neat idea and new interaction methods coming up means we can experiment and maybe find things that work even better. Soli if they work out the kinks would be great because you could increase the interaction area available without having to make a bigger device.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> I'm curious is there are any health studies done around this, what about the dangers of EMF radiation when it's on all the time so close to your body, not to mention in your pocket all the time.

</comment><comment><USER75> This doesnt make sense for phones. But when it becomes reliable, it will be a good usecase for smartwatches. It already has less screen area and limited option for button input. So gestures makes sense.

</comment><comment><USER76> Lots of negativity in the comments here, but I personally will love to have a way of interacting with the phone even when my fingers are wet or dirty.

</comment><comment><USER77> > Soli is aware of your presence.

I can't wait until I get my official Google-Amazon Big Brother living room portrait with built-in Soli and Alexa

</comment><comment><USER78> >Motion Sense will be available in select countries.

Just...why? What is the point of region locking this? It's only hardware, isn't it?

<comment><USER79> Google does love pointless region locking but this is probably due to RF certification requirements from each country's equivalent to the FCC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> In an earlier iteration of the web page they had really cool examples of controlling sliders, radial dials, panning surfaces, highly specific pinch gestures etc.

All of those have been removed and now it's just waving. It's cool tech and requires solving lots of hard problems, but it's a shame it falls so short of the initial vision.

<comment><USER81> Still there. some of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> I was impressed when I saw it back in 2012. It took them a while to ship it into an actual product.

</comment><comment><USER83> The technology is amazing, as seen in previous demos, but how much of it is actually possible in the phone? The video is very underwhelming, showing simple wave motion that was possible using IR, Motorola had it even before smartphones over a decade ago.

</comment><comment><USER84> All I want is a small Bluetooth device (maybe wrist-mounted) with a few buttons, a slider, some sort of rotary sensor like a mouse wheel, and accelerometer. Then give me complete control in my phone over how the software interprets the actions.

</comment><comment><USER85> It will be so fun to watch my 2 year old play with this . If it's good we'll be happy if it's bad it'll be like the iOS 7 upgrade from 6 when my other then 2 year was so frustrated she threw the ipad down the street shattering into many parts

</comment><comment><USER86> I could see this being extremely useful in the health space, since you could interact without touching anything and transmitting bad bugs.

</comment><comment><USER87> Meanwhile, deep in the bowels of Google...

      if (handwave.slows > 10%){
      do: flag: arthritis
      do: alert: advertisers }

</comment><comment><USER88> This is a beautiful piece of tech for any ad company looking to collect reaction information to ads (like google):

* It works at low power. Turning on the front camera and processing the visual data generated needs large amounts of power.

* It can't be blocked as easily as a front facing camera.

* People are less aware that they are being surveilled, which makes them less motivated to block it.

* Yes, it's not capturing any facial expressions, but the information generated probably still gives valuable cues to advertisers.

Also, get ready for unskippable ads pausing when you aren't looking into the direction of the smartphone.

<comment><USER89> Ugh. I remember when Black Mirror was viewed as creepy and dystopian...

See: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteen_Million_Merits](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteen_Million_Merits)

<comment><USER36> Fifteen Million Merits is one of their episodes that's _not_ about the future at all, the way I read it. More of an allegory about _now_ (or, _now_ in 2011, anyway).

<comment><USER89> That's an interesting take that I could completely see now.

When I watched it, I guess I took it more at face value, that in the future when everything is automated, only celebrities and 'power generators' will exist, and of course the rest of the stuff like unskippable ads and in-your- face pornography.

<comment><USER36> I think the lack of "enforcers" of any kind throughout the episode is key to understanding it. The closest thing we really see is the Cuppliance drink. The stage hands hesitatingly start to step in near the end, but are waved off and aren't exactly jack-booted thugs anyway.

Those demoted aren't dragged away crying. Our protagonist does property damage without apparent censure (one is left to suppose the screens get replaced, eventually, while he's out, maybe or maybe not with a charge to his merit account, similar to the way "detritus" is taken care of).

This is why I don't think there's much room for ambiguity re: whether the outdoors at the end is real. If it's not then that's undercutting what's been the key theme of the rest of the episode, of timid acquiescence to a very _gently_ coercive system. If it's real then that's the punch line of the whole thing—these people could just leave, and they don't because of some combination of social norms, fear of the unknown, fear of losing what (pointedly crappy and meaningless—the avatar skins and such) comforts they have, and (one may assume) some soft but effective persuasion techniques that might come up if they tried. Since assuming it's the latter is consistent with the rest of the episode and makes it much stronger, it doesn't make much sense that it'd be anything else or even be deliberately left ambiguous (why?).

It's all about how control and how a "trapped" state can occur absent anyone waving guns around. With more than a little commentary on social class, celebrity, electronic entertainment, and the hollowness of participation in an economic system and society heavy on alienation (the bikes), along the way.

[EDIT] I just skimmed the first few minutes again because I remembered there being a whole thing about fruit, and not only that, the opening's _full_ of cartoony imagery of the green outdoors. The outdoors at the end is definitely intended to be real, not fake or even ambiguous, unless we assume incompetence on the part of the creators. It's the antithesis of the wholly false, not- even-trying-to-look-real outdoors scenes that are all over the beginning, which _did_ leave room to wonder what the world's like outside this environment—the ending gives us the answer.

<comment><USER89> I've always been jealous of people who can see so deeply into things, I absolutely cannot unless it's pointed out. I think my mind wanders off when watching, so I miss the details. In any event, thank you very much for the write-up, this makes that episode so much more intriguing to me.

<comment><USER36> Haha, no problem, but it's mostly just practice. The key thing seems to be recognizing that there's anything worth picking out in a piece of art to begin with—those with little practice don't notice it anywhere, or else will see it everywhere because of course it's possible to bullshit deep themes into an average episode of NCIS if you're so inclined—then questioning _why_ for various decisions. If you're not sure what something means in a thematic or thesis sense, look at which possibility or possibilities go best with the rest of what you've seen (or read, or heard—works for books and music, too).

FWIW I find most of the rest of Black Mirror a lot less _rich_ than Fifteen Million Merits, though I like most of it. I couldn't write as much on most of the episodes as that one, because I'm just not sure there's as much there. Most are a fairly straight route up to usually some kind of twist, with a little worth saying about the relation of the twist to the rest but mostly what they're up to is pretty _on the surface_. Nothing wrong with that, and that fact that it consistently tries to say _anything_ at all puts it above most TV, so far as that goes.

To expand a little into other episodes, though, to give some more idea of what I mean by asking _why_ about choices creators make in art: take The National Anthem, for example. When a Certain Pivotal Scene (you know the one) happens, the creators could have depicted it several ways without changing the actual story. A few possibilities: 1) actually show it, entirely, 2) show it but crop out the worst of it, 3) keep the camera nearby, say on people in the room or in the next room over, or on the fictional production crew "shooting" the event, 4) any of the above but show only a little and cut away, 5) just skip straight to after, don't have any footage that takes place during it at all, among other options. There was a _choice_ to make, and the one that was made isn't exactly revolutionary, but also isn't one of the most obvious ones: keep the camera going for all of it (or maybe just most? I can't recall for sure) after showing us every moment at the scene of the event leading up to it, _but only show the faces of people watching it on TV_. Why? It wasn't the only way they could have avoided putting the event itself onscreen, why do it that way?

Showing people watching a screen, especially something sensational that's been teased from the very first scene of the episode, and holding the camera on it that long does a couple things, I think: in the general case, it invites identity with or comparison between the real life viewer and the viewer in the show; in this particular case, I think the show is also delivering on a kind of implicit promise of horrible spectacle by _showing us the most disgusting thing that 's happening in that moment_, by the creator's judgement. Anyone watching the show, even if they hope the event won't happen or that it won't be depicted at all if it does (which is hopefully most people?) _was still held in suspense and to some degree entertained_ by that will they/won't they dynamic. The result is that this choice both casts judgement on the viewers- in-the-show _and_ prevents the real-life show watcher from casting them as Other and distancing themselves from those voyeurs. This option was chosen by the show's creators because it conveys a message different from what others would have (most of the other options above wouldn't convey much at all, without some further effort, but would advance the plot just the same) and does so effectively. That single choice causes multiple effects on and messages to the viewer, working toward one end.

To take that a step further, both reinforcing the likelihood that this was intentional and possibly adding insight into other episodes, the show _repeatedly_ returns to themes along these lines, of the viewer-as-complicit. White Bear's a huge one, obviously, featuring punishment essentially for the act of watching a crime (and filming! The show also loves to jab at itself and its creators pretty viciously, as Fifteen Million Merits manages to also do in addition to everything else) with a kind of Greek hell of... having crimes done to them while "normal people" watch and record, which is called justice. A couple others tread similar ground—Shut Up and Dance, notably.

Moving into more tenuous territory: Jan Junipero _may also_ be doing something like this, forcing the viewer into more direct confrontation with some message in it by identifying them with some element of or character in the show, at the end, just a bit. The long sequence of server farms and robot arms at the end definitely adds a sense of melancholy and unease over the happy ending and neatly reframes our own emotions about the episode, which is probably the main thing it's intended to do, _but_ that also looks an awful lot like any modern- day server farm. Like where Netflix episodes come from. Like the episode you just watched, finding temporary joy in this fiction while sitting, apparently lifeless... and oh look it's suggesting another show or movie, how nice, this could just go on forever, couldn't it? And that's the season Black Mirror transitioned to Netflix, I'm pretty sure.

That's quite stretch from the pretty clear use of those themes and mechanisms in other episodes and I wouldn't say I'm anywhere near as sure of it as some of the other stuff, since it's pretty abstract and there are other, stronger ways to explain _why_ the scene is there and why it looks the way it does... _but then again_ Bandersnatch came out a few years later and hits some of the same notes _explicitly_ , which makes it just a tad less likely that that _wasn 't_ on the creators' minds when they decided how the end of San Junipero should go, and a little more likely that that connection _was_ intended.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> > _Motion Sense will evolve as well. Motion Sense will be available in select > countries²._

What this has to do with the country?!

<comment><USER91> According to other comments, various countries have banned the technology. So that's why it's not available everywhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> I wish Google would figure out how to do speech-to-text without mistakes before they start dabbling in radar.

</comment><comment><USER93> I wish they could use this to turn off touch input on the screen when I'm not looking at the phone.

</comment><comment><USER94> This reminds of the cellphone surveillance system from that one Batman movie. Scary stuff.

</comment><comment><USER95> I wonder if that's proximity sensors or always-on gesture recognition doing image processing off the front camera.

Either way, gesturing left/right/up/down doesn't seem to add more than touching the device. My Moto G6 has that now, using the fingerprint sensor as a directional swipe button, love it.

<comment><USER96> they specifically point out on the page that it's not a camera, doesn't capture any visual images, even works through some solid materials, and can sense in all directions around the device.

This looks literally perfect for something like a smart display. I have a google home smart display on my desk, and I like to keep it back far enough that it's a bit of a reach to touch the screen and interact with it. If i could just wave in front of it, that would improve things significantly! But add in the other benefits of something like this (just being able to sense where a person is around a device like a smart speaker or display seems like it could be extremely useful for better sound projection and better microphone listening), and it seems like it really could be a game changer.

I am wondering why they decided to first release it in a phone, where it seems like it has the least benefits...

<comment><USER97> > I am wondering why they decided to first release it in a phone, where it > seems like it has the least benefits...

Google wanting something in your phone that allows it to track engagement? I can't think why.. :)

> Engaged > Soli anticipates when you want to interact.

<comment><USER36> Plus a stationary or semi-stationary version only lets them collect data from wherever you place it. Put it in phones and pretty soon you've got whatever sort of data this thing picks up from damn near every room, every street, every trail, every car, every _everything_ anywhere that people exist. Data to train your machine learning algos, for free. God knows what else—data to map every square centimeter of every environment in the modern world, for all we know.

Their priorities are spying-first, typically, so this is unsurprising.

<comment><USER38> It may help to understand Google's priorities by following up on this Hacker News link ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21271087](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21271087)).

Their goal is ubiquitous access. To get to that goal, they're collecting a lot of data about the world and their users to figure out where, when, how, and why users want data to optimize getting it to them. And yes, it probably serves their ad model too, but there's more to it than that; Google is helmed by a futurist and employs futurists, and is looking towards a not-too-distant future of always-on personal networks enhancing what a person can do in their day-to-day.

<comment><USER98> Their goal is the same as every company's goal, earn money.

If they introduce anything new, the first question is, how that will make money for them. If it is collecting data, the question is, how they can use that data to earn more money.

Also as it has been mentioned by someone in the comments, I'm really not keen being surrounded by another set of devices that can "see" me CCTV is more than enough already. I also I don't want to invite google to my home to map it out.

Probably Pixel4 owners are going to be asked to turn off their phone and put it into a box next to the door when they want to come into my flat.

<comment><USER38> Kind of but not exactly. Money is the lifeblood that the corporation needs to survive; earning money is the goal in the sense that the purpose of human life is "eat food."

The fact that the corporation is still basically privately owned though publicly traded (in the sense that the founders retain a controlling stock percentage) means that they can use the money as a means to whatever ends the founders wind up the company and point it at. They know the game is over if they run out of money, but that doesn't mean the game they're playing is "Build maximum monetary value for shareholders" any more than the game you or I are playing daily is "What will I have for dinner." They have enough controlling interest to vote that that's not what the company's primary goal is, in practice.

Now, why would anyone who _isn 't_ them play that game by buying GOOG/L stock? Because in spite of the company's goal not being "maximize revenue," it's very good at generating both revenue and product people care about, and the people trading its stock are excited about that. They get a piece of the action, even if they don't actually call the shots.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER99> The sensor sucks because it's small. Plus as a radar it's subject to regulatory requirements. Google should have gone with a lidar-based solution, but the concept of putting lidar in a cellphone is probably heavily protected Apple IP.

<comment><USER100> Lidar requires moving parts. Not an ideal solution for something that needs to be low powered and compact.

<comment><USER101> There may be solid state LIDAR available? [https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161213005517/en/Vel...](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161213005517/en/Velodyne- LiDAR-Announces-Breakthrough-Design-Miniaturized-Low-Cost)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER102> Wonder if this was created exclusively in house or did Google ATAP do this again....

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18566929](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18566929)

</comment><comment><USER103> Just touch the screen. It's already on your hands!

<comment><USER104> Unless it is implemented in anything different than a handheld device

Unless you have disabilities

Unless you are not allowed to touch the device (like while driving a car)

etc, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER105> I can't take Google seriously. Every time they add a new feature, my mind goes "and then they will sell you ads on this geospatial information".

</comment><comment><USER106> Good lord... this is a really cool piece of technology and half the comments here are just complaints that it will enable better ad tracking or erode privacy or that touch screens are good enough.

This is HN. This is _cool technology_. Can we just stop to appreciate what cool new interfaces or game concepts we might be able to build with this, rather than jumping on the knee-jerk Google hate train?

<comment><USER107> I agree. I completely understand privacy criticism but we don't need to fill the whole thread with unsubstantial sarcasm.

<comment><USER108> For many, privacy concerns are more important than cool tech, and this is not a Show HN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER109> I honestly don't get why you'd need a motion sensor on a handheld device. Let alone the limited application of such an input, you'd literally need to keep the device stationary for the motion sensing to be effective. It's a usability nightmare.

> > [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnRbXWojW7c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnRbXWojW7c)

This ad not only fails to sell the feature but also makes using the touchscreen look easier.

<comment><USER110> One useful thing I could imagine is for cooking. If you got dirty hands you will (hopefully) be able to unlock the phone hands free and browse through a recipe.

<comment><USER9> They probably dumped hundred thousands man hours and hundred millions $ on this so we can skip songs while cooking. Every time I see a project like that released by a major tech company I lose a bit of my faith in tech.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER111> I'm sure the answer is no but can I buy just the chip?

<comment><USER112> That's what I want to know as well. This github[0] mentions the sensor as a standalone item, and this appears to be the manufacturer[1]. This[2] is the closest I could find for purchase (24GHz, as opposed to Soli's 60GHz, and nearly 300 bucks to boot).

[0] [https://github.com/simonwsw/deep-soli](https://github.com/simonwsw/deep- soli)

[1] [https://www.infineon.com/cms/en/product/promopages/60GHz/](https://www.infineon.com/cms/en/product/promopages/60GHz/)

[2] [https://www.avnet.com/shop/emea/products/infineon/demodistan...](https://www.avnet.com/shop/emea/products/infineon/demodistance2gotobo1-3074457345633899287/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER113> It feels like a marketing gimmick vs a useful application. Probably will be cancelled in a year or two.

<comment><USER114> " _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something._"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER115> Consumers need to boycott this stuff. This chip has one purpose: surveillance. All the "features" on this press release are contrived and useless, but they are hoping it's shiny enough that we like it and want it.

<comment><USER32> Why do consumers "need" to boycott this stuff? I want this stuff, and I want it cheap and readily available -- and hopefully more advanced over time. The "features" on this press release look useful to me as a start to something much better later.

<comment><USER116> Some people find joy in maintaining their privacy. They also ruin some of the fun, because "regular" people (non privacy enthusiasts) find joy in cool new technology like this. They make a good point, but they also probably didn't read the documentation, because it clearly says sensor data is never sent to Google.

<comment><USER115> Why should we believe that this product _doesn 't_ serve Google's core business--mass data collection -> advertisement?

Like another commenter said, this would be a lot more innocuous coming from Nintendo or something.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Housing construction in Seattle suburbs at historic lows; Seattle sets records - <AUTHOR> https://www.seattletimes.com/business/real-estate/king-county-suburbs-slow-their-housing-growth-canceling-out-seattle-building-boom/ <comment><AUTHOR> The greater SF and greater Seattle areas face similar challenges: the cities themselves are not doing as well as they could regarding legalizing new housing supply, but their suburbs and surrounding areas are doing even worse—and this contributes to the affordable housing crisis. State-level action is needed.</comment>


How to name things: the hardest problem in programming (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/pirhilton/how-to-name-things-the-hardest-problem-in-programming <comment><USER2> _The two hardest problems in computer science: naming things, cache invalidation and off-by-one errors._</comment>


Khan Academy: Venture Capital & Capital Markets - <AUTHOR> http://www.khanacademy.org/#Venture%20Capital%20and%20Capital%20Markets <comment><USER2> I just went through the first 3 videos on VC but I found it curious that there was no mention of participation rights (1x, 1.5x etc.) and their effect on the outcome for founders. It is such an important concept that leaving it out of the video is a significant strike against. I like Sal's stuff generally, but I would vote this particular video down if I could (for the reasons mentioned above).

</comment><comment><USER3> Didn't expect that there would be notes on VC's on Khan Academy :)

<comment><USER4> Sal used to work for a VC firm (MVC Capital) before he started Khan's Academy.</comment></comment>


Particle accelerators: Small really is beautiful - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21588048-fundamental-physics-seems-have-insatiable-appetite-bigger-more

<comment><USER2> This is similar to work going on in Scotland: [http://www.strath.ac.uk/laserfest/thealpha- xproject/](http://www.strath.ac.uk/laserfest/thealpha-xproject/) [http://www.strath.ac.uk/impact/turningelectronsintoopportuni...](http://www.strath.ac.uk/impact/turningelectronsintoopportunities/)

</comment><comment><USER3> It might be of interest to see an animation of the process, as found on the official Stanford page: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V89qvy8whxY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V89qvy8whxY)

</comment><comment><USER4> What the Economist article seem to fail to mention: "In the accelerator-on-a- chip experiments, _electrons are first accelerated to near light-speed in a conventional accelerator_. Then they are focused into a tiny, half-micron-high channel within a glass chip just half a millimeter long."

From: Stanford's own article: [http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/september/slac-chip- accel...](http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/september/slac-chip- accelerator-092713.html)

<comment><USER5> From the Economist article: "Dr Byer did still rely on an old-school accelerator to feed moderately high-speed electrons into his device in the first place. But lasers could do that job too, as the German team, led by Peter Hommelhoff, of the Friedrich Alexander University in Erlangen, and John Breuer, from the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, demonstrate in a second paper, just published in Physical Review Letters."

<comment><USER6> and also:

"The electrons fed into it were first sped up using a midsized standard accelerator, so when they arrived at the glass accelerator they were already travelling at 99.86% of the speed of light, or 60m electron-volts..."

<comment><USER7> And again, in the complete nonsensical quest of describing particle energies by many nines in 99.999999..% of the speed of light, the proper math falls down, 99.86% c is ~10 MeV, 60 MeV is about 99.996% c, but IT'S COMPLETELY MEANINGLESS!

Nevertheless...

Here's a handy online-tool to calculate the speed of a particle accellerated in a electric field (enter 60000 kV to get the values for the 60 MeV electron):

[http://www.ou.edu/research/electron/bmz5364/calc- kv.html](http://www.ou.edu/research/electron/bmz5364/calc-kv.html)

Or calculate it yourself: E = E₀ / √( 1 - β²) with E₀ being the rest-energy of the particle (511 keV in the case of the electron) and β being the velocity relative to the speed of light.

At 99.86% of the speed of light, an electron will have a total (rest-mass + acquired energy by accelleration) energy of about 10 MeV:

        (in python, energies in keV)
        >>> 511. / math.sqrt( 1 - .9986 ** 2 )
        9660.374008193809

<comment><USER8> ...and of course to replicate lhc they'd need to reach 3.5 TeV at high luminosity. let's just say they are not ready for this quite yet...

EDIT: (in 2011, then 4 TeV and next time they run 7 TeV)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Hard Could It Be?: Lessons I Learned in the Army - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/magazine/20080301/how-hard-could-it-be-lessons-i-learned-in-the-army.html <comment><USER2> Dup. See <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=125572></comment>


Ladies, look at your code. Now back to mine. - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/buzz/kevinb9n/Q3YnNiEC9jr/Ladies-Look-at-your-code-return-Iterables-filter <comment><USER2> Perhaps Java8 will get multiline string literals -- an over-9-year-old request:

<http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=4472509>

Lots of the shortsighted decisions in the historical bug database can be attributed to xxxxx@xxxxx, who dismissed this as "yet another request for a syntactic sugar to save some user from typing... not worth it." I sure hope Oracle has let xxxxx go by now!

<comment><USER3> Wow, what an ad hominem answer:

 _shankar.unni

I agree with the Evaluation, completely. This is truly pointless syntactic sugar, unless you're coming directly from the C# or Visual Basic world without ever having worked in any other language, and escape sequences are just too hard for you to comprehend.. (In which case, many other Java features would be, too..)_

This is sad, some one offers a great language feature that will reduce bugs and save money and people respond with insults.

<comment><USER4> I find it ironic that a Java programmer is deriding other programmers (C# and VB) for not being "real" programmers.

<comment><USER5> That's narrow minded. There are some great Java programmers. It's just that they don't have the same priorities that you do.

<comment><USER4> I think you misunderstood me: I was saying that the notion of who is a "real" programmer is stupid. I really despise using PHP. Does that make everyone who works at Facebook not a "real" programmer?

However, the notion of a _Java_ programmer deriding others for their language choice is even more ridiculous because of the comparative ease of the syntax. If the argument held any merit (which it doesn't), Java definitely wouldn't be on top of the "real programmer" mountain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Considering that Javascript, Ruby, Python, C#, Perl, and even PHP have supported anonymous functions or lambda expressions, this advancement is a long time coming.

<comment><USER4> Oh God it's so much worse than that. You remember who was a coauthor on the original specification? _Guy Steele_. Yes, "Lambda Papers" Guy Steele. I have no idea how this has taken so long.

Oh and I thought this was hilarious. :)

<comment><USER7> While Steele's been involved with Lisp and Scheme, he also has a really long history of involvement with imperative languages, which he seems to have kept separate until recently. He's been on the C and Fortran standards committees, for example, and that hasn't caused much noticeable crossover of features like lambdas into those languages, either.

<comment><USER8> He also co-authored the Java Language Specification (with James Gosling and Bill Joy.)

The wise are not dogmatic.

<comment><USER9> He's also responsible for^W^Wthe author of <http://www.careferencemanual.com/> .

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If Java were Haskell, the syntax would be "filter isPartTime".

It's silly to have to type stuff that's easily understood by both the programmer and the compiler.

</comment><comment><USER11> It's sad that you can't easily chain these methods. e.g.

        employees.filter(predicate1).filter(predicate2).filter(predicate3)

instead of

        Iterables.filter(Iterables.filter(Iterables.filter(employees,predicate1), predicate2), predicate3)

<comment><USER10> That's what's nice about functional programming, where functions are functions, not thingies inside your object. You would write something like:

       filter predicate1 . filter predicate2 . filter predicate3 $ employees

Where . is function composition.

<comment><USER12> You still need to hope the fusion optimization kicks in there. It can be done faster with one filter over the list and then checking all three predicates at each element in some cases. I think the following will do the right thing:

      filter (\x -> p1 x && p2 x && p3 x) employees

which can then be made points-free.

<comment><USER13> Don't just hope, write it yourself!

      {-# RULES
        "filter/filter"  forall f g xs. filter f (filter g xs) = filter (f.g) xs
      #-}

It's a programmable programming language.

<comment><USER14> Don't you mean

      forall f g xs. map f (map g xs) = map (f.g) xs

?

As for filter, I presume something like

      forall f g xs. filter f (filter g xs) = filter (\x. g x && f x) xs

would work.

<comment><USER13> Yup,

      forall f g xs . filter f (filter g xs) = filter (\x -> g x && f x) xs

was exactly what I meant, thanks for the catch!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In Scala you can just do:

employees.filter( _.isPartTime )

And it runs in the same virtual machine.

<comment><USER16> In Ruby:

employees.find_all &:isPartTime

<comment><USER17> And I liked employees.select {|employee| employee.part_time?}

Crikey, should buy a book...

<comment><USER18> Personally, I prefer your version; the &: version starts reeking of Perl line noise. Although I believe Ruby would benefit from an _ for not explicitly named block arguments.

<comment><USER19> As a random note for anyone who's wondering how this syntax came about, this is the Symbol#to_proc [1] method, which was actually a monkeypatch from Rails that ended up making its way back into Ruby proper.

1: <http://ruby-doc.org/core-1.9/classes/Symbol.html#M000031>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe the C# compiler goes a step further and allows you to write those lambda arguments without the type annotation. Is there a technical reason why the Java compiler can't do the same?

<comment><USER21> C# will infer lambda argument types from context, yes. So the code given:

      return Iterables.filter(employees, {Employee e -> e.isPartTime()});

Would be in C# (Since you'd also omit the { } and use "=>" not "->") something like this:

      return Iterables.filter(employees, e => e.isPartTime());

And it is a better C# idiom to make "filter" an extension method on IEumerable<T>.

      return employees.filter(e => e.isPartTime());

In fact, the existing extension method "Where()" is what you want.

      return employees.Where(e => e.isPartTime());

C# has had this for about 2 years now. And it is good. So, I'm looking at your code, and back to mine. Mine is shorter but still very readable (to me anyway). And it stays readable when you chain methods, e.g.

      return employees.Where(e => e.isPartTime()).ToArray();

I'll stay with mine right now.

<comment><USER22> There was also a comment to the above saying that instead of writing:

      List<Ticket<ThingYouLove>> tickets = new ArrayList<Ticket<ThingYouLove>>();

You could write:

      List<Ticket<ThingYouLove>> tickets = new ArrayList<>();"

Nice, but I prefer C# there as well where you use the var keyword, like this:

      var tickets = new ArrayList<Ticket<ThingYouLove>>();

<comment><USER23>
       Nice, but I prefer C# there as well where you use the var keyword, like this:

         var tickets = new ArrayList<Ticket<ThingYouLove>>();

Actually, JDK7 is better in this case because it helps developer to "program to an interface".

<comment><USER21> Could you expand on what "program to an interface" means to you in this context, I'm not getting it. Assume that I know what it means in the usual context, of depending on the services of an interface type not a concrete type.

<comment><USER22> With the var keyword the variable will be the exact same type as what you initialize it to, not an interface.

      List<Foo> list = new ArrayList<Foo>();

...is programming towards an interface, whereas

      var list = new ArrayList<Foo>();

...isn't, because the type of list will be ArrayList. I think his point was that with the new Java stuff you could instead do

      List<Foo> list = new ArrayList<>();

...which would then be explicitly programming towards an interface, while still not having to type so bleeding much.

<comment><USER21> Programming to an interface just doesn't seem so useful within the scope of a method.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm really glad that JDK 7 finally has diamonds. (In more ways than one: [http://weblogs.java.net/blog/forax/archive/2009/08/27/diamon...](http://weblogs.java.net/blog/forax/archive/2009/08/27/diamond- gate))

</comment><comment><USER25> > I'm on a horse.

And quite possibly very drunk.

edit: oh I get it, he's referring to [http://www.blogher.com/im-horse-old- spices-man-your-man-coul...](http://www.blogher.com/im-horse-old-spices-man- your-man-could-smell). This is what I get for not watching tv anymore, I guess.

<comment><USER26> Or even HN? There was a fair amount of coverage of the Old Spice man on here when they were doing their nonstop live commercial shoots.

<comment><USER25> I spend a fair amount of time reading HN, but this is one of the topics I skipped over.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> He should have thrown in the new feature for meaningless underscores in numeric literals. I've always wanted this feature in every language, since 1_000_000 is so much more readable than 1000000 or 10 __6.

</comment><comment><USER28> Did this strike anyone else as being mildly chauvinistic?

<comment><USER29> It's a parody of an Old Spice commercial (official version at <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE> ).

<comment><USER28> Wow, nevermind then. That was hilarious.

<comment><USER30> And since you missed it - about a month ago Old Spice did a great internet level promotion with this ad - answering questions from facebook / reddit / youtube / twitter. And cleverly targeted videos at people like Kevin Rose. It was really impressive. HN had the post about how they did it here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1516195> And the key discussion about the campaign was here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1512225>

You can see the full list (that does get rather repetitive -- although keep in mind they were coming out about every 20 minutes for 2 days straight) here: <http://www.youtube.com/user/OldSpice#p/u>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Now I want to see the Old Spice guy make a response video to this... or maybe just read this aloud.

</comment><comment><USER32> Which of those two styles is being presented as superior?

</comment><comment><USER33> So funny and i'm not even a geek!

</comment><comment><USER34> Im on a horse. Freaking awesome.

</comment><comment><USER35> Awesome - love it.

</comment><comment><USER36> go Java! catching up a little more with Python. Meanwhile, back to my Python hacking session...</comment>


Two Google Homes Are Arguing About Whether They're Human - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/selectall/2017/01/two-google-homes-are-arguing-about-whether-theyre-human.html <comment><USER2> The discussion is here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13336416](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13336416)</comment>


Vint Cerf on Colbert - <AUTHOR> The intersection of HN readers and Colbert viewers is probably pretty large but I still thought this was worth contributing.
Watching Colbert (and Stewart) I notice how much the internet informs their content. So when they invite and engage with one of the internet's principals it's hugely satisfying.
Vint Cert was the guest last night (Tuesday). The icing on the cake is that Vint not only avoids becoming a plaything for Colbert - as many of Colbert's guests are - but that he knocks Colbert off balance. And Colbert, as he always does, handles it with aplomb.
Great watching.
Part 1 of the interview:http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/08a2dg/vint-cerf-pt--1
Part 2 of the interview: http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/x9hnxr/vint-cerf-pt--2 <comment><USER2> Clickable:

[http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/08a2dg/vint-cerf-pt-- 1](http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/08a2dg/vint-cerf-pt--1)

Part 2:

[http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/x9hnxr/vint-cerf-pt-- 2](http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/x9hnxr/vint-cerf-pt--2)

<comment><USER3> If only there was a convenient way to get from one URL to another URL!

I'm sure Tim Berners-Lee stubs his toe every time someone posts a non- clickable link on the web.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I remember seeing Vint Cerf speak at LCA - he's a very good speaker, and great at keeping the crowd's attention. He mentioned that his biggest (professional) regret was not separating TCP and IP more thoroughly - it turned out that the layered model had worked wonderfully, and this mixing of these two layers caused later problems, unforseen at the time.

</comment><comment><USER5> Anyone got a link for outside of US? Or do I need proxy/VPN to see this?

Edit: Found it [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ann2q4VPiF8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ann2q4VPiF8)

<comment><USER6> Tip: All of comedy centrals websites are extremely trusting when it comes to the X-Forwarded-For header.

<comment><USER7> .... until South Park completes its switch to Hulu in a couple of months.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Being asked "What makes you so sure you're not in the Matrix?" by Vint Cerf would be the closest I could ever get to a 'spiritual moment'.

<comment><USER9> Yeah and for the following minute he looked at the table, rather than Vint Cerf's face, when he was talking. Amusing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't even know what is Colbert, can someone explain? For me it is the name of a great man of power under Louis XIV or something like that.

<comment><USER11> Stephen Colbert is a popular comedian on US television. His character is a parody of right-wing commentators like Bill O'Reilly.

If you haven't seen him before, check out some of his clips on youtube, you won't regret it :)

Edit: Unless you have something else important to do today, or for that matter this week...

<comment><USER12> Just never head or him referred to as only his last name. Perhaps you should review how English names are used??

<comment><USER13> I live in the northeastern part of the US and it is extremely common for me to hear him referred to by just his last name. For all I know it's a regional thing, but it certainly isn't rare.

<comment><USER14> Same here. I think a) It's fairly common to refer to famous people by their last names (Gates, Jobs, etc.) b) The show is "The Colbert Report", so "Colbert" works as a shortened version. Hence, "Did you catch Clinton on Colbert last night?"

In any event this sort of usage is pretty typical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Links for Canadians (and possibly other non-USians): [http://www.thecomedynetwork.ca/Shows/TheColbertReport?vid=39...](http://www.thecomedynetwork.ca/Shows/TheColbertReport?vid=397742)

</comment><comment><USER16> I like how he actually attempted to address that 'carpet bomb the world with AOL CDs comment'. Some serious awesomeness going on there.

</comment><comment><USER17> Indeed, great interview... thanks for sharing.</comment>


Unlogo project: remove logos from videos - <AUTHOR> http://unlogo.org

<comment><USER2> This reminds me of a fairly simple approach to commercial skipping [1] in the early days of DVRs: the TV station's logo is never visible during commercials but always during regular programming.

This was for German TV in the 1990s/early 2000s. I've never watched much TV, neither in Germany nor elsewhere, so I don't know if this applies to TV in other countries or if it still applies in Germany these days.

Still, I always thought this was a smart solution to an otherwise quite difficult problem.

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

</comment><comment><USER3> There was this idea floating around on some virtual reality forums some years back about an "adblock for real life" that would work in a very similar way with a head-mounted display. In terms of pattern recognition it is not at all difficult. Detection and tracking of a set of images is pretty much a solved problem in computer vision (doing it reliably in realtime is still somewhat of a black art). I like how this is framed as an art project, and it's a very cool proof of concept, though it's an issue that it doesn't black out logos until after they have been seen, and the blackout box blinking on and off as the detector passes its threshold only draws attention to those areas. A practical implementation could use inpainting algorithms (also built into OpenCV, and even provided in one of the samples) to fill the logoed areas with background-like texture, so that it's not an obvious "censored" black patch but a smooth transition.

<comment><USER4> I believe Limor Fried created some type of glasses that would detect refresh rates of video sources and black out the glasses when viewing the monitor/tv.

No image recognition, though.

<comment><USER5> If you could look through a (linear) polarizing filter oriented at 45 degrees from the vertical, you could kill off most of LCD displays. Unfortunately, sunglasses with polarizer are usually polarized at the wrong angle, so you have to tilt your head to see the effect (black screens).

<comment><USER4> Her method worked with CRTs, IIRC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Has it been tested on this?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logorama>

<http://vimeo.com/10149605>

</comment><comment><USER6> I'd originally thought that the project was to remove those faded 'station id' logos that TV channels put on videos. It would be great if there were some kind of functionality in ffmpeg to remove those semitransparent logos either when the video is first being encoded, or when it's being decoded later to be displayed.

</comment><comment><USER7> A few months ago we ran into such concept while chatting with a fellow programmer. But instead, we thought about using such filter to count appearances of brands in youtube videos. If their product works I bet this dudes will be bought by some corporateion and their app/filters will be used for sth like that.

<comment><USER8> > _If their product_ [unlogo] *works I bet this dudes will be bought by some > corporateion and their app/filters will be used for sth like that.

Erm, I bet it will be used to replace company logos/brands with ads/logos of other companies that have paid the video distributor (YouTube FTW!) instead.

Indeed I'd be highly surprised if this were not the goal all along.

<comment><USER7> _Indeed I'd be highly surprised if this were not the goal all along._

Yeah, I didn't want to put it that way...

<comment><USER9> Jeff Crouse (creator of Unlogo) here. I can guarantee you that is not the goal. I have been working on open source, hacktivist projects for over 5 years. Please see my website: <http://www.jeffcrouse.info>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> implementation is ugly</comment>


Uber plans to start audio-recording rides in the U.S. for safety - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/11/20/uber-plans-start-audio-recording-rides-us-safety/ <comment><USER2> Not pay walled:

[https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/uber-to-start- recording...](https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/uber-to-start-recording- audio-of-rides-112019.html)

[https://www.inquirer.com/business/technology/uber-audio- reco...](https://www.inquirer.com/business/technology/uber-audio-recording- safety-rideshare-20191120.html)

A live uber mic in every car now... Yeah, no thanks.

I'm curious on wire tap laws, and how they are getting around this.

<comment><USER3> I'm guessing they'll have a confirmation of acceptance prior to confirming your ride. In two-party consent states (like CA) it's a notification/consent thing, so as long as they tell you you're being recorded and you consent to it, it's legal. But yeah, I'll pass on this as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sounds useful in some cases, but the wording of their PR indicates they want to make this the default, instead of opt-in. The list of places where one may have a private conversation is growing thin.</comment>


California makes electric skateboards street legal - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/12/9512045/electric-skateboards-legalized-california-zboard-boosted <comment><USER2> It's unfortunate that the text of this included power and speed limit caps in the definition of an electric skateboard. It's not as if cars are defined as only moving under 65 mph and having 120 horsepower. This seems deeply myopic and it's disappointing for Boosted and others to have helped these provisions get cast into law in a state that limits future development and defines unnecessarily conservative limits on performance.

"An "electrically motorized board" is any wheeled device that has a floorboard designed to be stood upon when riding that is not greater than 60 inches deep and 18 inches wide, is designed to transport only one person, and has an electric propulsion system averaging less than 1,000 watts, the maximum speed of which, when powered solely by a propulsion system on a paved level surface, is no more than 20 miles per hour."

<comment><USER3> Low speed electric bicycles are federally limited to 750W and 20mph as well, which probably helped guide this regulatory process. I personally think a 20mph speed limit is very reasonable when regulating the use of motorized products on infrastructure shared directly with other uses (paths and bike lanes).

<comment><USER2> Electric boards clearly shouldn't be on sidewalks, same as bikes. I'm often stuck slowing down bikes going gently downhill because my boosted board won't go faster than 22. This becomes a safety hazard as bikes try to pass, etc. Bikes don't have separate speed limits in bike lanes and are capable of speeds much higher than 20.

Ability to ride uphill is also a function of output power. This cap is fairly generous but I don't understand why its necessary at all if there's a speed restriction? It'll only limit acceleration and hill performance if there's a speed restriction.

<comment><USER4> > Electric boards clearly shouldn't be on sidewalks, same as bikes.

Regarding bikes, it depends entirely on where you live. If you are in an urban area, where the sidewalks are crowded, and cars can't get up to high speed before the next stoplight, then certainly bikes should be on the street. If you are in a suburban area, where sidewalks are empty and cars travel at easily twice your maximum speed, then the streets are not safe for biking.

<comment><USER5> >where sidewalks are empty and cars travel at easily twice your maximum speed, then the streets are not safe for biking.

the streets are safe, the law explicitly requires 3 feet lateral separation or no pass. Choosing to endanger people on sidewalk just because not enough balls to ride on the street is kind of low.

<comment><USER6> You'll get less hurt in a collision with a bicycle than I would if I get hit by a car doing 100km/h with a drunk driver behind the wheel. By any measure, I should be on the sidewalk in that case and it's extremely selfish to ask me to die just so you don't _maybe_ get a slight bruise on your butt and a bit of mud on your sleeve.

<comment><USER7> Who's driving their car at 100kmh/60mph on a sub-urban street? that's freeway/highway speeds. Also let me hit you with my bike at 20kmh and lets see how you like it, if you give way to pedestrians fine but we all know you won't because it takes more effort for you to stop than it is for them so you would use the same excuse.

If there isn't a safe way for you to ride your bike in your area don't take it out on pedestrians, and don't ride on the side walk a bike can easily critically harm or even kill a small child and there are plenty of parents that might allow a 3-4 old roam around them on the side walk. Pets especially small dogs whit those retractable leashes are also quite susceptible to being hit by a bike, especially when you can't see the dog or the leash and you just swoosh into it.

If you can't ride safely on the roads near you it doesn't give you the right to endanger others doesn't matter how much of a relative danger you might put them in, go fight to get bike lanes and until then follow the actual law and stay on the road.

<comment><USER8> Plenty of traffic will be traveling at 35mph which is fast enough for the majority of impacts to be fatal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Meanwhile in England, a law from 1835 has recently been used to declare them illegal :(

[http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/oct/12/uk- hoverboard...](http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/oct/12/uk-hoverboard- crackdown-all-you-need-to-know)

<comment><USER10> The only people I've seen using them in England have been doing so very inconsiderately, so I'm happy with this ruling.

England can't even provide safe cycling infrastructure, let's at least keep the pavements safe for walking.

<comment><USER11> "The only people I've seen using them in England have been doing so very inconsiderately..."

It always seems to be a busy High Street where they can get the most attention. But since they obviously know there is absolutely no chance of being prosecuted they will carry on regardless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Interesting. I commute by bike in SF and see electric skateboards on the street pretty frequently– I'd assumed they were legal.

Anecdotally, their speed seems like a good fit for the bike lane. I keep a pretty good pace on a bike, but still find electric skateboards occasionally passing me (especially if we're both stopped at a light, since their acceleration is a bit better than mine).

<comment><USER13> I usually see these - amzn.com/B00SIOZY6A, unless "electric skateboards" is referring to something else

<comment><USER14> While I don't mind personally, it is generally frowned upon to use affiliate links on HN. Just FYI

<comment><USER15> yeah especially since it sets a session cookie that leaches off anything you buy there and not just the linked product. not sure how long the cookie lasts though.

<comment><USER16> If it _were_ an affiliate link, it would do that. But it isn't, so it doesn't.

See my other comment for details.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Link to the bill itself: [https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201520160AB604)

Some interesting notes:

-require the operator of an electrically motorized board to wear a helmet

-require an operator to be at least 16 years of age

</comment><comment><USER18> OT: I've always wondered if powered mini-transportation tools like electric boards and scooters could fix the gaps in mass transit. Make it so that stops are less frequent/further apart, with the assumption that the last few miles can be covered on your personal device. Instead of buses that have to stop every block, they just run express service between major hubs.

Individuals only have to own/maintain only a <$1000 electric scooter with zero emissions. While the big expensive bus is a pooled resource.

<comment><USER19> Some people can't afford a TI-83 for their children if it's a requirement in math class. To assume that everyone taking public transit wants / needs / is able to afford even a $300 device to get them the last mile seems a bit out of touch with the typical mass-transit-dependent demographic.

<comment><USER20> OT: TI-83 _should_ cost < $20 by now, based on costs of materials and that the r&d has been paid off for years.

<comment><USER21> Huh? The R&D was paid off as soon as it completed. Money from completed projects funds R&D in the present; it doesn't retroactively fund R&D in the past.

<comment> semi-extrinsic Yes,R&D is technically paid off as soon as it completes, but paying off the R&D is an investment and the company obviously wants a return on this investment.

<comment><USER21> But the price of a calculator is totally unrelated to the cost of the R&D associated with the calculator. The original point was nonsense.

The company wants its return to be as large as possible. Speaking in more sensible terms, they want to get as much money as they can regardless of whether they've reached a magic internal accounting threshold or not. R&D just has _no relevance at all_ to product pricing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Over here in airstrip one, if it doesn't belch fumes, it's illegal. All patriotic transport methods allow you to enrich the cabinet and their families by paying Road tax, fuel duty, and of course by buying lovely oil from them.

Seriously, the only place you're allowed to use a scooter here is in your own home, and even then, your neighbours will call the police because your living room is a public Street if we say it is, sonny.

[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/oct/12/hoverboard...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/oct/12/hoverboards- illegal-pavements-roads-scooters)

<comment><USER23> Gas powered bicycles are illegal in many places where all-electric bicycles are legal. I doubt the correlation to oil usage is really there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I hope I'm wrong, but on busy bikeways, I can see cyclists feeling annoyed with the new powered interlopers. But, if it gets more people out of bigger vehicles (cars and 1000cc+ motorbikes), this should prove positive.

<comment><USER25> In California, electric bicycles that meet certain restrictions are already allowed in all the places a normal bicycle is. If there's a tension between ordinary bicyclists and small powered vehicles in this class it should already exist. Personally, I've found pedestrians to be a much bigger annoyance than faster bikes (whether powered or otherwise) on dedicated bike/pedestrian paths.

<comment><USER2> or Uber drivers and taxis sitting in bike lanes...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Obligatory xkcd:

[https://xkcd.com/139/](https://xkcd.com/139/)

Also: [https://xkcd.com/409/](https://xkcd.com/409/)</comment>