UpNote - Join the conspiracy of Kindness - <AUTHOR> http://www.upnote.io

<comment><USER2> While the mission is really noble, I think you could benefit from distilling your message into a simple pitch. What does UpNote do and for whom?

At first I thought it's a place where people post their problems and others try to cheer them up (crowdsouircing moral support), but after reading few stories it seems that it's the opposite way - posters are trying to cheer up the readers with their stories.

The result is confusion.

On the positive side - the design is really nice and the photos+font really made me want read the stories.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> We believe that everyone is happy to give to someone in need. On UpNote we are crowdsourcing this positivity for all those who need it. Our mission is to provide a global platform to support one another with positive thoughts.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a NYC AI startup job list anywhere? - <AUTHOR>

I'm in New York, having recently left a job as a program trader at a hedge fund. I'm 25 and have no advanced degree, though I spent a year in a top math PhD program.
I'm looking for jobs at startups, but I haven't been able to find a comprehensive list, and I'm looking for something fairly particular. Ideally, I'd like to be in an AI/research role, though I know how small companies work and I'm willing to "wear different hats" and expand from my comfort zone.
What sorts of networking resources and job lists are available in the NYC startup community? <comment><USER2> VCs usually list job openings at their portfolio companies, so for NYC, check out the Union Square Ventures jobs page (<http://www.unionsquareventures.com/jobboard.html>).

Silicon Alley Insider also has a jobs page with some startups listed (<http://jobs.alleyinsider.com/>).

And you can use "Reg D" to find out about startups which have just gotten funding that may not be listed anywhere else (<http://redeye.firstround.com/2008/06/the-death-of-st.html>).

The nextNY (<http://groups.google.com/group/nextNYdigital>) and NYC Tech Boosters (<http://groups.google.com/group/nyc-tech-boosters>) boards also list jobs from time to time.

Also, even though it's not a jobs board, you should subscribe to Jay Sulzberger's mailing list (<http://lxny.org/correspondence.html>) to find out about tech events in NY.

</comment><comment><USER3> Boston is a wonderful town. You can bond with all the former New Yorkers -- just talk about how annoying it is that the trains stop running at 1am and the conversation will be off and running. Don't bring up the Yankees. ;)

I know that isn't a useful suggestion, but I don't know much about NYC.

You know about the upcoming Fog Creek Open House? That might be a great networking tool, one way or another: Either you will get along with the Fog Creek folks, or you can chat with all the people who secretly despise them but have turned up for the free food and the gossip value.

Anyway, I wish you good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Is the Fog Creek Open House open-invite, or do I have to register or be invited? That sounds like a great idea.

<comment><USER4> See <http://joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/07/14.html>

or just <http://joelonsoftware.com> will do at the moment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Join NextNY, sign up for the email list, start going to events and start networking. <http://nextny.org/>

<comment><USER6> Found my job through that list, extremely happy with it

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm in the same boat so if you want to talk, you can email me at dangoldin at gmail

</comment><comment><USER8> This list may be useful... <http://lispjobs.wordpress.com/category/ai/>

</comment><comment><USER9> My contact info is in my profile. Be in touch.

</comment><comment><USER10> i've got a NYC startup that I can show-and-tell. whalliburton {at} gmail.com

</comment><comment><USER11> Interested in another job as a program trader?

<comment><AUTHOR> Program trading is fine, if the environment is better. My problem at my last job is that I had trouble getting work done because the environment was extremely loud.

<comment><USER11> I am starting up a new fund (with backing), what is your email?

<comment><AUTHOR> magus.pwnsen at gmail

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> touch base with me.. donna {at} genuus dot com

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you; email sent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> so you decided against continuing grad school?

why not put an email in your profile...</comment>


Ex Amstat President: Remote Viewing and statistical significance (video, 2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrwAiU2g5RU <comment><AUTHOR> To forestall any criticism about the AIR report showing "no effect", you need to know that report did not consider (and was prohibited from considering) operational data, of over 700 missions, 50% of which provided actionable intelligence, and 85% of which had accurate information: [https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA- RDP96-00788...](https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA- RDP96-00788R001700330003-6.pdf) (page 8, last paragraph). For additional context of the linked briefing, see: [https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA- RDP96-00788...](https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA- RDP96-00788R001700270013-2.pdf)</comment>


Ask HN: How to build self-confidence to realize dreams? - <AUTHOR>

Is there anyone out there with any advice, tips, or stories of how they turned their suffering into potential?
A deep psychological scar has plagued my relationships and my dreams for long enough. I know I am worthy of love and of wealth but no matter how hard I try to heal my wounds, I always feel broken. I am only 20, I just want to feel whole so I can win my dream girl and make a difference in the world.
Thanks. All help is greatly appreciated. <comment><USER2> "10 000 hours rule" & "talent is overrated" explain that you do not need to be a genius to achieve great things, your dreams.

Man, you are so young! Life is so ahead of you.

It is a great competitive edge when we accept and acknowledge we often are weak. Most people bullshit themselves. To be honest with yourself like you are is a great solid start. The awareness of your greatest weakness may become your greatest strength.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice and the encouragement harscoat.

I read somewhere that humility is the other side of greatness and try my best to live by that. Lying to yourself about your weaknesses is just destructive in so many ways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The best way to gain confidence is to be able to list a series of things you have done which you can be proud of. How does one generate such a list?.Pick an easy task you want to achieve, write it down, do it, cross it off your list. Continue to repeat this with increasingly difficult but achievable goals, one at a time, step by step.

I appreciate it can be motivating to have a grand vision but you need to design a series of smaller wins for yourself along the way, it's too hard a slog psychologically otherwise.

In the future I want to have a dream girlfriend and run a business, so today I get out of bed, go for a walk outside, say hello to a single stranger, and read the first page of a "You and your business 101 Introduction Tutorial" book.

<comment><AUTHOR> very simple and useful advice. thanks a lot hackerblues.</comment></comment>


Reptyr: move an already-running process into screen (better than screenify) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.nelhage.com/2011/01/reptyr-attach-a-running-process-to-a-new-terminal/ <comment><USER2> This seems useful. I would welcome some guidance on what's going wrong, here.

      met% ps -aef | grep python | grep time
      myusername 25476 25417  0 16:05 pts/9    00:00:00 python -c import time, sys; [sys.stdout.write(str(i)+"\n") or time.sleep(1) for i in range(1000)]
      met% sudo ~/src/reptyr/reptyr 25476
      [+] Allocated scratch page: 7f4477b3d000
      [+] Looking up fds for tty in child.
      [+] Resolved child tty: /dev/pts/9
      [+] Found an alias for the tty: 0
      [+] Found an alias for the tty: 1
      [+] Found an alias for the tty: 2
      Unable to attach to pid 25476: Permission denied

Same thing happens when I try to take control of an ssh session.

Ubuntu 10.04.1, built with

      met% git clone https://github.com/nelhage/reptyr.git
      met% cd reptyr/
      met% make

<comment><USER3> Hm. It currently has a bunch of known limitations, and the debug output probably isn't helpful to anyone other than me at the moment, but that test case works on my Maverick (Ubuntu 10.10) and Lucid (10.04) systems, so I'm not sure why it's failing for you. If you'd like me to take a look, the most helpful thing you could get me would be to install strace, and then run

      strace -o /tmp/reptyr.strace ~/src/reptyr/reptyr PID

and then send me the contents of /tmp/reptyr.strace

Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another useful command, along the same lines, is disown. This is basically nohup, but for a process which is already running.

</comment><comment><USER5> Thanks for writing this. I once had a Dwarf Fortress game that got lost to a hung ssh session; I could have used something like this.

Does it work with x apps? Because it would be great to be able to start my IDE over ssh on the laptop knowing I could switch to the desktop with losing what I had open.

<comment><USER6> For moving or persisting X applications you would need something like <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xmove>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> how much is linux specific in this?

<comment><USER3> Most of this. It uses ptrace() to connect to the target and then make the target make specific system calls and ioctl()s on various fd's. I bet it could be ported to other unixes (assuming they have equivalent tty syscalls and ioctl's), but you'd have to change a lot of the details.

If someone wants to try a port to, say, a BSD that abstracts the syscalls and ioctls into a platform-specific way, I'd be happy to take a look.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> this guy seems to love himself...</comment>


What Makes Software Good? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@mbostock/what-makes-software-good-943557f8a488#.gb19glwjc <comment><USER2> The D3-specific changes look really cool.

But I'm dissatisfied with the generalizations being proposed. We've heard before that programs are intended for humans to comprehend and only secondarily for computers to run. We've heard that programming interfaces are user interfaces. We've heard many many _many_ attempts at distilling experience into maxims for others to follow. And yet those vague 'others' never follow said maxims.

What we tend _not_ to track down is the reason why software is the way it is. We're warmer when we say the culprit is social rather than technical, but even that's not quite accurate. The culprit is _political_. Users of a piece of software aren't all the same. They can be segmented in many many ways, but I'll focus on one: people upgrading from D3 v3.0 and those coming straight to D3 v4.0. There's a tension between the needs of these segments that is identical to class warfare: every change to the API improves the life of the latter but adds an inconvenience to the former when upgrading. It's quite possible that D3 has done a good job addressing this tension with semantic versioning, and by being a tool rather than a service that users can upgrade on their own schedule. But this tension and the ways we choose to address it is by far the bottleneck in general. Most tools atrophy and fail to adapt to changing environments because they get _captured_ [1] by existing users to the detriment of new users, and eventually to the detriment of everyone.

Repeat after me: compatibility is the mind killer. At least when we are building software for other programmers rather than end-users, we need a new social contract that allows newcomers and upgraders to coexist more peacefully and sustainably.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture)

<comment><USER3> > What we tend not to track down is the reason why software is the way it is.

The rest of your comment goes in a different direction, but still, you might be interested in the Big Ball of Mud essay:

> While much attention has been focused on high-level software architectural > patterns, what is, in effect, the de-facto standard software architecture is > seldom discussed. This paper examines this most frequently deployed of > software architectures: the BIG BALL OF MUD. A BIG BALL OF MUD is a > casually, even haphazardly, structured system. Its organization, if one can > call it that, is dictated more by expediency than design. Yet, its enduring > popularity cannot merely be indicative of a general disregard for > architecture.

[http://www.laputan.org/mud/](http://www.laputan.org/mud/)

<comment><USER2> Thanks; it was good to reread those patterns. I wonder how the trajectory of say a life stage like [http://www.laputan.org/lifecycle/lifecycle.html#Consolidate](http://www.laputan.org/lifecycle/lifecycle.html#Consolidate) is affected if some or all of the people responsible for previous stages left in the interim.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really wanted to like this article, but it should have been called "What Makes Software Interoperability Good." There wasn't a lot of useful information about what makes software good at a high-level.

<comment><USER5> At a high level, what makes software good has almost nothing to do with how we code, and almost everything to do with what we code. If it solves a problem, simply, easily, and quickly, it is good.

<comment><USER6> What about ethically?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Side note: the images in the middle of the article are Masahiro Mori's 1969 "Fancy Cups", and solve the problem of "you've all put down your drinks and now nobody remembers whose was whose" with tactile feedback -- without giving everyone a different style of cup. Right now I and my girlfriend have been doing the same by collecting a bunch of individual mason jars from different flea markets, ensuring that none of them look 100% alike, to try to replicate the same effect on a budget.

As for the article content, I am in general somewhat skeptical of these highly-cerebral approaches of "what can we learn from that?" \-- it is very hard to remember those maxims when you are setting out on a new project, even if they are taped up on your desk! A simpler maxim which would save a lot of effort is "You only have to solve the immediate problem in front of you -- stop trying to anticipate the next one," and perhaps another is "Don't start that project until you spend a whole shower/bath thinking up some perspectives on different ways to solve this problem." As Alan Kay says, the right perspective is worth 80 points of IQ. Maybe one more is "design top-down: create a non-working prototype of what you want the end user to be able to do if they could magically will some functions to exist, then fill in those functions' type signatures and some stubs, then fill in those functions' bodies."

So for example I bolted one idea on top of an existing infrastructure this past December. The preceding infrastructure was really good for what it did -- categorizing books statistically by content -- and this would look at the categories of the book and then perform some action with it. This works great for the 90% of the use-cases we care about and we have humans filter the remaining 10%, making them 10x more efficient -- great! Except for the setup, which is painfully expensive, because now we have to set up these category rules etc. for anyone who wants our custom-action service, which turns out to put 2 layers of indirection between "here is this book" and "here is the action I want to take on it." Some client says "well I want to filter out the books containing this phrase", now we have to define some new categories, some appropriate rules to filter into those categories, and then set up new rules to act on the assignment of this category -- not fun, and the many-to-many table joining categories to actions is just annoying to deal with.

Instead I should have implemented (and am now implementing) a little microlanguage where you can just _read_ what causes the action in one TEXT field in the database, and decouple these two systems completely. Then it becomes easy to ask someone, "hey, could you specify those rules? Here's a widget to test against with validators..." and they can see it for themselves. Now they can build a bunch of these in some text or Excel or whatever document they're using, and just send them to me, and all I have to do is change curly- quotes to straight-quotes.

</comment><comment><USER8> The same thing that makes anything good, quality, which I've best heard defined as "fitness for use"...

</comment><comment><USER9> Why, fitting to the purpose and attention to details.

The concept of quality from Pirsig, Rand or Japanese traditional crafts.

</comment><comment><USER10> requirements != expectations

</comment><comment><USER11> The best software has no need of a user interface at all.

<comment><USER12> In other words, "the best software is no software at all."

<comment><USER11> No, software you don't have to interact with - that just does whatever you need done - seems to me to have more value than something I have to configure.

it still does something, so there's gain, but the cost is lower than if you had to configure it.</comment></comment></comment>


Twitter Can Predict the Stock Market - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/10/twitter-crystal-ball/

<comment><USER2> I had really mixed feelings after reading this article because on one hand, I was beaten to the punch (I was already working on using Twitter trends to predict how stocks would change), but on the other hand, I am very happy to know that the idea was actually proven to work, after I toiled for so many hours determining how it might actually work.

The best solution that I found was to factor the rise in rate in positive or negative twitter posts in a given day into an algorithm already based on something called the "magic formula". The "magic formula" is formed on the thinking that stocks can be chosen based on their ranking in a list; this ranking is determined by a high return on capital, low p/e ratio, and a high volume.

My plan was to factor in twitter trends to the list so that stocks would be ranked better, based on public opinion of the stock. I actually was able to figure out how to do this relatively well, as I improved the accuracy of the "magic formula", but failed to make it significantly better. The key is to study the trends and figure out when stocks have a lot of negative talk about them, and then buy them right as the rate of negative tweets about the company stops.

Would anyone be interested in developing this idea further for open source use or even possibly for some profit?</comment>


A history of the Crusades, as told by crusaders' DNA - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2019-04-history-crusades-told-crusaders-dna.html <comment><USER2> Not a teeth missing?! The crusaders must have had excellent dental coverage!

But seriously, anyone who knows how can they have a full mouth of teeth at that era can explain?

<comment><USER3> Years back I recall reading an article about a skeleton which was found in the SF bay area (I think), and the difficulty of finding out who it was. They knew it was a woman and her approximate age, but because she had perfect teeth, dental records would be of no use. On the other hand, the fact that she had perfect teeth was itself a clue.

Skipping to the end of the story, she was a "mail order bride" from southeast asia; her husband got tired of her, killed her, and buried her in a remote spot. She had perfect teeth because she grew up eating a non-western diet with no sugar/coke/etc, probably mostly vegetables, rice, and fish.

<comment><USER4> Also, Southeast Asia probably means drinking green tea, which equals fluoride, thus good for teeth (up to a point).

Relatedly, I remember hearing of archaeologists finding skulls of "cave men" (can't remember the time or place) with perfect teeth and signs of tooth picks (grooves around the gum line). The implication was that cultural knowledge (or perhaps just personal habits) had solved bad dental hygiene at times throughout history--and it was repeatedly lost and found again. Could have also been happenstance with natural fluoride in the water (how the effect was discovered, I believe), or non-intentional as with the green tea.</comment></comment></comment>


Netflix Long Term View - <AUTHOR> http://ir.netflix.com/long-term-view.cfm <comment><USER3> This is a huge shift for Netflix.

Until recently, the motivating impression was that Netflix just plain had every movie out there (which its continuing DVD service kinda does). I subscribed because it was a cheap replacement for buying anything I wanted to see: they had everything I wanted and could want. My to-watch list was very long, and I thought it would remain.

Now, studios and competitors are making that model untenable. Netflix can't carry _everything_ because studios/distributors want an ever-larger cut of the profits, and competitors are willing to pay for exclusivity. Suddenly, I find large sections of my to-watch list disappearing off Netflix as contracts expire and don't renew (the biggest blow was when "Toys" disappeared - something old & obscure enough that I thought surely they'd manage to keep _that_ license).

Netflix just pivoted.

They're no longer the long-promised "long tail" of movies, hosting all but the latest & biggest (yeah, I'm willing to pay extra individually for those). They just gave up on that model.

Now they're becoming a "channel" focused on hosting a curated collection, including their own productions.

That's a big shift.

<comment><USER4> It happened a long time ago, at least I became aware of this shift when an exec from Netflix was quoted saying "The goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us" [http://www.gq.com/entertainment/movies-and- tv/201302/netflix...](http://www.gq.com/entertainment/movies-and- tv/201302/netflix-founder-reed-hastings-house-of-cards-arrested-development)

<comment><USER5> And honestly, I think Netflix is most of the way there. HBO Go is a pain to use, the tablet app won't let me output to a TV or monitor, and it is frequently slow for me. I can't remember the last time I needed to wait for Netflix to buffer, and it seems to happen constantly for HBO.

Netflix is solid on the technical side, and their original series (in my opinion) eclipse what HBO currently offers. HBO has one show that really interests me (Game of Thrones, of course) and Netflix has a handful (House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, Bojack Horseman, hopefully with more new interesting series on the way).

The only reason I'm even subscribed to HBO at this point is because Verizon gave me a few months for free, and I'll be ditching it once that expires.

<comment><USER6> > _and their original series (in my opinion) eclipse what HBO currently > offers._

I realize it's your opinion, but...really?

HBO has a massive catalog of brilliant shows[1]. Netflix isn't even on the same planet when it comes to original content (but I hope they get there, better for all of us).

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

<comment><USER7> Tis is my position as well. HBO has been putting out some of the best content available for TV for over a decade. Their back catalog make HBO Go's nominal cost seem like a pittance. Netflix has put together some quality original content (House of Cards is outstanding), but they're going to have to keep it up for a generation before they hold a candle to HBO.

<comment><USER8> I don't think so, because HBO's old content is already widely available. It's only kind of good for retention, and that only on HBO Go (and Amazon, now that it's there too).

The competition for new subscriptions and paying that one more month always takes place in the present/future, or at least for content you haven't watched yet which for any fan is going to be present/future.

And Netflix is kicking ass there, TBH. They have high-quality dramas, resurrected cult (and my!) favorites, the deal with Marvel, and probably half a dozen other things that got me salivating that I'm forgetting.

To be honest, I think Netflix, Amazon and Hulu are -all- schooling the old school providers in terms of interesting new content, HBO included. I love Six Feet Under, Mr. Show, and Deadwood as much as anyone, but aside from Silicon Valley and GoT, nothing else current excites me. At the very least, HBO needs to get much better at both making -and- fulfilling promises.

<comment><USER9> You're assuming fans only care about fresh content and have seen everything in the past. Thats not true.

<comment><USER8> Sure. But then you come back to the fact that the majority of their old, good content is carried on other services.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Am I the only one who finds finding something on Netflix to watch increasingly difficult, and contradictory to what they say in that piece. My experience is mostly using Roku (a spinoff from Netflix) and Android.

For example if I watch a WWII documentary, then they feel the need to recommend every one they have, for a long time. Oh and "watch" means "seen more than a second or two of", so you get all this crud even if you didn't like it.

Perhaps the biggest sin is showing me stuff I have already watched, outside of the "watch again section". My home screen is mostly things I have seen, and I have to keep scrolling past to see if there is anything interesting deeper in the sections.

It is especially annoying that there is no "do not show this again". My home screen is a collection of content I have already seen, or do not want to see. It makes Netflix look dumb and is very user hostile.

Most amusing is that they don't provide a way of finding content that you want to watch now. For example you would like to watch something funny and light for the next half hour, or a date night movie. Sometimes those categories randomly show up on the screen, but usually not.

I'd go on, but the overall vibe is a very dumb experience of recommendations that I don't want, no useful content exploration, and it feels like I watch stuff despite them, rather than because of them. Maybe I should cancel my account again.

<comment><USER8> I'm not a fan of their suggestion interface either, but InstantWatcher and CanIstream.it go a long way towards fixing that.

But...Roku, a spinoff? Nope. Roku's independent, founded by the guy who founded ReplayTV, which was TiVo's only real competition way back when.

<comment><USER10> You'll need to correct all the people who wrote about Roku being a Netflix spinoff then. Here are some to start with:

[http://www.fastcompany.com/3004709/inside-netflixs- project-g...](http://www.fastcompany.com/3004709/inside-netflixs-project- griffin-forgotten-history-roku-under-reed-hastings)

[http://venturebeat.com/2013/01/23/netflix-created- roku/](http://venturebeat.com/2013/01/23/netflix-created-roku/)

[http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/23/before-the-launch-of- netfli...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/23/before-the-launch-of-netflix-spin- off-roku-ceo-reed-hastings-decided-it-would-be-cute-to-make-fun-of-foxconn- assembly-line-workers/)

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the correction! I missed that chapter somehow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _Winning moments of truth_

We strive to win more of our members' "moments of truth".

Those decision points are, say, at 7:15 pm when a member wants to relax, enjoy a shared experience with friends and family, or is bored.

They could play a video game, surf the web, read a magazine, channel surf their MVPD/DVR system, buy a pay-per-view movie, put on a DVD, use a piracy service, turn on Hulu, or launch Netflix.

We want our members to choose Netflix in these moments of truth.

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

This nails it. When I get home (especially if I had a long day at work), I first go to Netflix and see what's on my list. This is because Netflix app is beautiful, it always works and they have my list of things to watch. As someone who loves to watch documentaries, I am happy with the selection that Netflix offers.

If I don't like anything on the list, I just watch an old Friends or Breaking Bad episode.

I think Netflix has absolutely nailed the user experience and depending on your taste/location, their selection is great as well.

<comment><USER12> Although I use Netflix all the time, it's in spite of their app. Outside of the "my list" I've curated myself, 98% of the things the Netflix app shows me, I'm not really interested in. I feel like that ratio could easily be made better if they allowed me to mark things I'm not interested in and never show me those things again + apply machine learning to display a better personalized catalog.

Whenever I use Netflix I always feel like there is a lot of content locked away and I have to dig past the same stuff it always shows to find stuff I'm interested in.

<comment><USER13> > ... if they allowed me to mark things I'm not interested in and never show > me those things again

You can literally do exactly that. If you hover over a title there should be a button that says "Not Interested". It should appear just below the stars as if you were going to provide a rating.

<comment><USER14> I primarily interact with Netflix through my game console. 'Not Interested' is not an option in that UI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Maybe it's just me. But one thing about linear (live) broadcasts -- and this also applies to an extent to live radio vs. mp3's -- is that there is just something engaging about watching a program that you know other people, at that moment, are also watching.

It's also missed when watching a show that you DVR'ed, after the fact -- like the series finale to Lost, or the Super Bowl.

If/when live broadcasts are completely a thing of the past, I think this sense of engagement will be lost forever, and people won't even realize what they're missing out on.

In a way, it's sort of like watching someone play a video game live on Twitch vs. watching it on Youtube.

Does anyone else know and also feel this sense I'm talking about?

<comment><USER16> I experience this phenomenon on a less immediate time scale: in the days following a new episode of Breaking Bad, etc, there is discussion and camaraderie with other fans. With the "binge-only" model of House of Cards, that same social experience is not possible.

<comment><USER17> > With the "binge-only" model of House of Cards, that same social experience > is not possible.

Maybe that's why they're releasing just one episode/week of their new TV series "Better Call Saul".

<comment><USER18> I think that's because Better Call Saul is originally broadcast on AMC, which airs it weekly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is a great write-up and a wonderful precedent for netflix to set. That being said, I feel the post is mostly promises, as Netflix is in the middle of another year-long 'content desert'. I cant remember the last time I got excited about The Matrix or Iron Man coming back into the queue.

My process is to check [http://instantwatcher.com/](http://instantwatcher.com/) and then go to netflix. The thing is I've been disappointed by whats at the top of the charts for so long, I've considered dropping netflix. The top 50 is uninteresting sounding documentaries, low budget horror, and everything else that rounds out the discount DVD bin at the grocery store. Netflix excells at one thing - Television.

I get that its likely not Netflix's fault. The cut for movie studios each month from an $8 subscription cant be very much. I feel Amazon's pay-to-play model is more realistic, though less consumer friendly. I remember the deal announced last year of netflix getting first run Disney flicks (starting in 2015 I think?) and thats exiting, but the daily reality of netflix besides TV is the entertainment equivalent of hot, soupy gruel.

<comment><USER20> I don't see Amazon's model as less consumer-friendly - particularly as I remember well the days of having to go to the local video rental place, making sure to return it on time, paying late fees, etc.

I'm happy to pay $3-5 for a few days in which to watch a movie, and then not think about it when I'm done. The price is right, and the convenience can't be beaten.

<comment><USER21> You could buy a lot of movies outright for only a bit more than Amazon charges, so the price seems a bit steep to me. Obviously not back-breaking, but the price feels wrong.

<comment><USER22> I've never understood buying a movie, though. Once I've seen it, I'm done. No need to ever see it again. One of the best things about Amazon's service is the hybrid model. Prime for tons of content and when that fails you can rent a la carte. While everyone is fighting the content purchasing wars this seems to give the consumer the most content albeit with inconsistent total pricing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> One of the things they bring up, which is that apps are replacing channels, annoys me. I'd rather do a global search and then present me with delivery media (channels/apps/whatever) instead of having to pick the app and then do individual searches. It's a pain point.

Also, if they want to capture the hotel market, I mean people on the road staying in temp accommodation, they'll have to deliver blue content (or yellow as they say in Asia). People on the road want pornographic content, more so than at home. Their current most likely option is to get it at high markup via hotel operator delivery systems.

<comment><USER24> This is one of the things Roku gets right compared to other set top boxes. You can search across services. Unlike on other boxes like Amazon's which lets you search Amazon and will always push their content above anyone else's. It's especially annoying if something is available on Netflix and is paid content on Amazon... it's still going to tell you to buy it on Amazon even when you already have access to it for no additional cost.

<comment><USER7> It's a platform seller, too. I've had an Apple TV, Fire TV, Fire Stick, Playstation 4, and a Roku box. This singular feature is the reason why we watch TV and movies on the Roku box more than anything else. It's like magic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> My family uses netflix. I don't. Every time I want to watch something I cannot find it. 10,000 titles is nothing in a world where The Simpsons has several hundred. Netflix needs more and deeper content.

I won't admit to ever downloading something without full written permission of the copyright holder, carved in stone and witnessed by three saints, but last night I did watch "Black Books" after not finding it on Netflix or any other service.

(If you are a fan of 'Father Ted' or 'The IT Crowd', Black Books was done by the same people and contains many of the same jokes.)

<comment><USER5> The biggest issue with content is that rights-holders either don't want their programs on Netflix or they don't think they'll be paid enough. I think Netflix is in a sweet spot on pricing (if the charge substantially more, people may be more inclined to stop subscribing) so paying more to attract the heel-draggers may mot be an option.

That's part of the reason why they're making their own series. Eventually rights-holders won't have much choice but to allow streaming, but for the immediate future they're the bottleneck.

<comment><USER26> IP holders have pretty much embraced streaming. They have not embraced Netflix's price point. And at 8 bucks a month, I don't think it is reasonable to expect them too. I don't think 8 bucks is enough revenue to be a major source of funding all the content that is produced.

Netflix has been essentially freeriding on cinema goers and live tv watchers who subsidize all the content creation. If Netflix replaces those sources, it'll have to provide similar revenue.

<comment><USER27> exactly. Why don't they have a full catalog of everything out there and let me pay 5 bucks for a particular movie I want to watch?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> If someone from Netflix is reading:

> We win those moments of truth when members expect Netflix to be more > pleasurable than their other options

Can you please make it easier for me to find my "Recently Watched" TV Shows? That would definitely make my experience "more pleasurable".

Also, please stop showing me movies I've already rated. I've seen those. Just show those to me in the "watch again" list.

Platform: Website

<comment><USER29> Just click on "Recently Watched" at the top left of the homepage.

It links to here: [https://www.netflix.com/WiViewingActivity](https://www.netflix.com/WiViewingActivity)

<comment><USER28> So for me that page is broken. It reads "My Activity" and then its just a grey page.

<comment><USER29> Some ideas:

* Check for Netflix extensions and disable them in case they are breaking the page.

* Turn off "Test participation" in Your Account

* Open the console and see if there are any error messages.

* Contact Netflix Support (there is a link from Your Account and when I've tried it I have gotten a response right away.)

Normally, for me the page looks very similar to [https://www.netflix.com/MoviesYouveSeen](https://www.netflix.com/MoviesYouveSeen) (and is linked to from there.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I personally don't really like the setup Netflix uses as much UI-wise. It seems as though nowadays services need to be all about personalization, where ratings, reviews, and content watched all factor into the new content that is shown to me, the user. I might only like one movie or tv show of a particular genre, give it 4 or 5 stars, and then there's a pretty good chance I'll keep being shown similar ones that I know I'll never be interested in watching.

For myself, I think it would work really well if they had the more standard list of available shows, movies, etc in alphabetical order, or some other more sortable format, perhaps by release/airing year, or similar.

<comment><USER29> They have a lot of this, at least if you are accessing the service via the web. Just click on Browse and choose a genre and you'll be able to sort by rating, year of release, maturity rating, or alphabetical order. You can also access these genres by clicking on the section titles in the recommendations.

Otherwise, your best bet is to use one of the many external sites such as allflicks.net.

<comment><USER30> Oh... I guess I missed that via the website. AFAIK that's not available for other clients, but I could be wrong actually. It still seems that they want to have personalized lists front and center, when it would be nice if they would have a setting that lets a user choose what is displayed at the root level. But otherwise that does seem to work pretty well.

Thanks for the tip.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> _Eventually, as linear TV is viewed less, the spectrum it now uses on cable, fiber, and over-the-air will be reallocated to expand Internet data transmission. Satellite TV subscribers will be fewer and more rural. The value of high-speed Internet will increase._

This is something that has always bothered me, internet bandwidth only takes up a small amount of spectrum in place of channels and the cable companies could cut lots of channels and improve broadband dramatically. The days of someone dictating what you watch and at what time are over, why all the spectrum hoarding.

Even when I got my first broadband cable connection, one of the first on the node in Chandler in 1996, the cable guy said it only used the space of 2 channels for internet data and the rest for broadcast/cable channels.

<comment><USER32> My cable company dynamically allocates the bandwidth on the last mile cable so that it only broadcasts what people are currently watching. This ostensibly lets them show much higher bandwidth HD shows and have more channels available than they actually have bandwidth for.

So in this particular case, it's not as wasted as it could be. I even think this might be why they were recently able to bump up all the internet speeds in my area.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Must be hard for netflix sometimes.

Here in The Netherlands for the past 5 months only Lord of the Rings part 1 and part 3 have been available due to licensing issues or something. I've called customer support a few times and they keep saying " We're working on it. but we have issues obtaining the license". Seriously. How can a studio only license Part one and three? This stuff makes me mad.

Contacted customer support for the last time today and the person I talked to once again told me the same thing but then surprisingly started openly ranting about "How te studios can be such a pain when we ask them to renew licenses. And that it's diffucult not to get in trouble with them".

Anyhow. they'll personally contact me once they have fixed the license again. That's some nice customer support right there.

Quite saddening to see studios stand in the way of a solid product. I just want to watch my darn triology on friday evening.

<comment><USER34> > How can a studio only license Part one and three?

They probably have licensed all three parts for streaming, but perhaps, in your region, someone paid for an _exclusive_ license on the second part that hasn't expired, so Netflix isn't able to get a license.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> > As we've gained experience, we've found that the 20th documentary about > bicycling will mostly just take away viewing from the other 19 such docs, > and instead of trying to have everything, we should strive to have the best > in each category. As such, we are actively curating our service rather than > carrying as many titles as we can.

This sounds like a bad move to me. Maybe carrying a huge breadth of content is a good way to attract new users, but unless they have _depth_ of content, they aren't going to hold onto those users. Most people aren't that eclectic in their tastes, so if you only have one film in each category (even if it's the "best" one) people are going to drop them after they've watched everything they like.

Put another way, bicycling-documentary fanatics aren't going to keep paying $8/month indefinitely for access to one great biking doc.

</comment><comment><USER27> What confuses me is this: Why doesn't Netflix allow me to pay a little bit more, as an option, and, in exchange, have every single movie available to watch online? I mean, sure, they can produce their own shows, but only some of them will be good. So why limit content so much? I pretty much stopped using Netflix, instead I go to Amazon Instant Video

I may be missing something, but strategy of producing original content, while limiting the catalog, doesn't make sense. Why not have infinitely large online catalog AND produce original shows?

<comment><USER34> > What confuses me is this: Why doesn't Netflix allow me to pay a little bit > more, as an option, and, in exchange, have every single movie available to > watch online?

Because much of the content they don't have is because the content owner is competing with Netflix and won't license it, or because some other Netflix competitor has purchased an exclusive license.

Some of it is Netflix managing in-total licensing costs, which could be addressed by having "premium" content (either as a tier or pay-per-title or pay-per-view), but that's not the case in general.

> Why not have infinitely large online catalog

Netflix's former, deeper catalog was only possible because content owners were less aggressive in attempting to capture all the value of online streaming of their property.

<comment><USER27> are you talking about Amazon Instant Video when you say competitor?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> OK, a little OT and minuscule, but kind of gels with in with Netflix's overall future...has anyone else noticed that Netflix's predicted ratings seem to be a bit inflated, since perhaps last year? For previous years, I could count the number with one hand of movies/TV-shows that Netflix rated more than a 4-star for me...now there are dozens and dozens of things that Netflix thinks I would give a perfect rating to.

Maybe it's because I've become less discerning or have unconsciously changed in the way I rate things...but I don't think so...it used to be that anything predicted to be 4-stars or above --which was very rare -- was indeed something that I would love. Now I'm seeing many preemptive 4.8 to 5-star ratings for things that I _know_ I don't like (because I've seen them before).

(I think we can agree that the effect of seeing more high-rated content is not the result of Netflix actually getting more quality content...the number of good movies has remained constant or gone down, especially since the Starz day)

The cynical user in me thinks Netflix has tweaked its algorithm to encourage me to watch more things. However, at least they don't seem to have tweaked it in favor of their exclusive content, as none of those (such as Marco Polo) are predicted to rate highly with me.

<comment><USER37> dvd.netflix.com seems to still use the old reliable ratings predictor. Downloading (netflix.com) uses a much inflated predictor that seems designed to push popular stuff. I imagine they have to do this to obscure that the selection is so much poorer for download.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Can someone tell me how geo-fencing within the EU is still a thing to stay when one of the EU's main digital agenda goals is to establish a digital single market market?

[https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/our-goals/pillar-i- di...](https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/our-goals/pillar-i-digital- single-market)

[Edit] Some sources:

Geographical Restrictions, (and different pricing) for digital goods within the EU are clearly discriminatory against the customer. As stated here:

[http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2014_2019/documents/i...](http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2014_2019/documents/imco/dv/ppt_descrimination_consumers_/ppt_descrimination_consumers_en.pdf)

 _Under intellectual property law, right holders may geographically restrict licenses. Therefore intellectual property law allows businesses to compartmentalise the market. Restrictions of passive sale are contrary to the consumers' freedom of access to goods and services on the DSM, and are not permitted under European law.

Prohibiting geographical restrictions would not require fundamental changes to the international system of intellectual property rights. It would simply ensure that all licences granted for the territory of one Member State are valid for the whole territory of the EU. The tendency to market compartmentalisation is inherent to territorially restricted IP rights._

[http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/etudes/join/201...](http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/etudes/join/2013/507456/IPOL- IMCO_ET\(2013\)507456_EN.pdf)

<comment><USER39> The EU's competition authority has actually launched an antitrust investigation into this in January 2014: [http://europa.eu/rapid/press- release_IP-14-15_en.htm](http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-14-15_en.htm)

It's a really complicated issue though, but hopefully, geo-restrictions will vanish at some point in the EU, either by legal or political force.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> > As such, we are actively curating our service rather than carrying as many > titles as we can.

I hope this is true. Because the quality of content that has been added to Netflix over the past year has mostly been god awful. A lot of the movies that have been added are not even D-grade quality. They are straight to video dreck.

On top of the bad movies there's been reams and reams of awful reality shows as well.

When I first signed up for Netflix they had full libraries of HBO and Showtime shows. NBC shows. Movies that people actually went to see in theaters.

I understand that having HBO and Showtime's libraries is going to be hard now that those companies are pursuing their own subscription services. But that doesn't mean Netflix needs to resort to the crap it's been adding lately.

Honestly, if things don't improve in 2015 there's a good chance I'll cancel my Netflix subscription.

</comment><comment><USER41> "we should strive to have the best in each category" ... this is certainly not happening in Canada.

<comment><USER42> Agreed, but this is true in any of their countries. Content licensing really gets in their way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Netflix employs many smarter business people than me that operate with a lot more information, so my opinion may be completely incorrect, but I've always thought that they erred by being scared off of the criticism they got when they increased their pricing a tiny bit. Less than ten dollars a month is an incredible bargain for the vast number of hours of content that they provide. Netflix should double, triple, or quadruple their price and get themselves in financial position to meet the demands of all of the studios going forward for all of their content.

You can't do that if you're pricing yourself out of that game though. I want to pay Netflix more money for a catalog that has virtually every movie/tv show ever. But that's just me.

</comment><comment><USER44> Just a tangent, but the 600m for advertising and 500m for product development is not a Netflix only thing, but it always pisses me off so much to read it.

That first number, the bigger number, is a black hole. Advertising is the worst, with its only competitor in my book being the legal system, industry in the industrialized world. It produces nothing of value, because all it tries to do it move money from predisposed destinations to the advertisers. It is buying market share, without making anything with the money. The later is actual productivity, goods and services people can use and want and experience and benefit from.

I'd go into another tangent about how advertisings size is out of control and it only gets worse due to how people are getting poorer on average (less money per individual) while wealth concentrates in the rich (ie, those that would own a company like Netflix) which means that when you rake in huge profits and a big money pot, what do you spend it on? Making goods and services is pointless if there is no money left in the market to explore your products and buy new things. Instead you throw those profits into advertising, into a non- productive discipline whose only job is to manipulate people into giving you money they would have spent elsewhere. But this post is already long enough that nobody is going to read it anyway!

What a colossal waste, everywhere advertising happens. And it is only on track to get worse.

<comment><USER45> > It is buying market share, without making anything with the money.

Erm. Yes, it's doing something with the money. Buying market share.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I wonder if Netflix is preparing to offer services to studios/businesses as a contingency plan. Their infrastructure seems to be amazing, especially compared to the bug-riddled Hulus and Crackles of the world. I don't have cable, so I'm not sure how it compares to HBO Go and other studio-centric sites, but it can't be easy to maintain those kinds of services. Maybe we'll see a future where studios leverage Netflix's cloud, but offer their own distribution/revenue schemes?

</comment><comment><USER47> This was interesting positioning from Netflix: We don't and can't compete on breadth of entertainment with Comcast, Sky, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Sony, or Google. For us to be hugely successful we have to be a focused passion brand. Starbucks, not 7-Eleven. Southwest, not United. HBO, not Dish.

Netflix is phasing out its DVD business over the next couple of years to focus on domestic and international streaming. International is where penetration is pretty low and they're targeting 15-16% penetration of broadband households over five years from its current 3%.

In the last few quarters they've outperformed their own subscriber growth forecasts on the international side with country launches in France, Germany underway. The share price has jumped each time. Other markets they are likely to cover Italy, Spain, OZ & NZ. Massive markets like India, China, Russia and Japan really unlikely for the medium term at least with piracy, strong local incumbents and lower purchasing power.

It's just made $270m in profits in December 2014, after 10 years of losses from IPO to 2012 and secured a $500m loan with $1.1 billion cash so it is only now becoming financially sustainable. I assume they are getting better at creating own original content and thought Marco Polo was pretty good, might be on my own there though. I think the future is bright though opening in each new country and having to license content in them way in advance means lots of upfront costs in unfamilar locations. Should be a long slog but they're on the right track as a focused, passion brand.

</comment><comment><USER48> "long-term-view.cfm"!? Cold Fusion? That's still a thing?!

<comment><USER49> If you do a dig on ir.netflix.com, you'll see this is hosted at shareholder.com. It is not uncommon for publicly traded companies to host this stuff through third-party providers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Interesting read. I think they are slightly underestimating Amazon as a competitor. They mention them but from my point of view the edge that Netflix has is good engineering (including usability) and being attractive to good engineers. A somewhat random small, recent example is the fact that they were at reactconf, talking about interesting stuff (targeting non-DOM) and showing involvement in "hot" technology.

That's an edge that HBO has a really hard time catching up to but Amazon doesn't. I think Netflix is putting a bit too much focus on the content side. It also reads a bit like they'll shift a bit more from customer to business partner focus which may or may not be a good idea.

</comment><comment><USER51> The thing I find most interesting is their strategic take on piracy - <USER2> recognize it as a competitor. When a 'moment of truth' rolls around, it's an option potential customers might choose, depending on content available and user experience.

They dive into detail on the 'competitors-for-content' category, with whom they could compete both on the available content and user experience fronts. On the other hand, the only advantage they can eke out over piracy is in the user experience.

</comment><comment><USER52> I'm building lazyfan[1] precisely because of how fragmented availability has become. Even when you want to pay to stream a specific movie, it might be available from iTunes, but not Amazon or vice versa. But you don't want to pay for something you have so you have to check Netflix or Amazon Prime.

Forget comparison shopping, it's tough to even know what's for sale.

[1] [http://www.lazyfan.com](http://www.lazyfan.com) (beta)(a movie trailer autoplays)

</comment><comment><USER53> Given their example scenario ("moment of truth"), I'm far more likely to just buy an episode of something for a few bucks on iTunes. That way I have a much better chance of finding what I'm looking for, and I can watch something current if I want.

I'd prefer a subscription, and I don't really care to _own_ a random episode, but if I was watching so many shows that the money would be an issue, I would have a cable subscription (I don't).

</comment><comment><USER54> I am amazed at the dollar amounts the give. I never expected it to so much to market such a service. The technology side I could see, expanding their reach and such.

<comment><USER5> Shooting a commercial can cost a million bucks. If you want prime advertising slots, it might cost from a few hundred grand up to a million for a 30 second spot. Print and online advertising is cheaper, of course, but I don't think their advertising budget is unreasonable considering how large a company they are and how difficult it may be to get new subscribers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Man this transition feels like it is going to take my lifetime. Years ago it felt like an internet based on demand (+cheap) option should have been available. It is a simple thing to fantasize about but a difficult thing to realize it seems. For me personally the price point still feels too high given that I never get to own any content.

</comment><comment><USER56> My attempt at a tl;dr:

We cannot afford to license all content from all studios (and compete with Comcast/AT&T etc), so instead we will spend 5b trying to create our own content (and compete with HBO instead).

Oh and we will be spending half a billion on marketing.

(did I misread)

<comment><USER57> Time to bid a farewell and switch my mindset to Google Play, Vudu, and Amazon Instant Videos. I get less bang for my bucks with Netflix and I'm not into TV shows to justify with their "original" stuff. Why do they want to get into this game when all HBO needs is to open HBO Go to everybody for $7.99/mo?

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Netflix europe has terrible descriptions of the films/shows which you may as well ignore. Also their catalog really isn't that impressive. It would be rather easy to replace it if anyone tried.

</comment><comment><USER59> I interviewed here, and it was by far among some of the best group of people I've ever met.

I think some of the HR people are a bit rough, but the teams that contribute to the bottom line are top notch.

</comment><comment><USER60> I wonder when they are going to close down their DVD division.

<comment><USER61> Since the online catalog started shrinking, the DVD division is more useful. The DVD rental business has first-sale-doctrine rights; Netflix can rent those DVDs even if the studio doesn't like it. They don't have that right online, and have to cut a deal each title.

<comment><USER60> Yes but are people still using it? Personally I don't really care how big of a catalog they have, I'm not going to wait 2-3 days for a movie to arrive.

<comment><USER62> Yes. I like movies, and a service that only has a limited selection of crappy movies isn't that interesting to me. I don't really care if it takes a couple days to arrive. I can see the attraction of the streaming service if you are into the TV series that they have, but it's not even a competitor for movies. I would love to sign up for a full catalog streaming service, but it looks like that will never happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Why are people raving about this? It has no new information and sounds like a marketing release. What am I missing?

</comment><comment><USER64> I wonder how long until they stop their DVD shipping side business.

</comment><comment><USER65> So, what is happening faster:

1) Deployment of AFFORDABLE highspeed broadband

or

2) Decreasing local storage costs

Why do I need to stream something if I can store 6TB of data locally for less than $150 (and decreasing daily).

How much storage space will $200 buy you in 10 years? And how many decades of video and audio could one store on such a device?

<comment><USER66> You still have to get that content from somewhere. Storage space isn't really the limitation there. Plus, even if you could, what would be the motivationto store eeverything locally, when 1) you rarely watch a show more than once, and 2) you can stream it instantaneously anyway?

<comment><USER67> Maybe you have better internet than me, but my streaming quality isn't always HD, and if I fastforward/rewind I generally have to wait a while to rebuffer. Do an advance download of everything in my watchlist, and the next episodes of the series I'm watching, and everything will by high quality, no wait, all the time.

Besides that, just because something's available on streaming doesn't mean it'll stay there forever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Can someone tldr; this?</comment>


Next-generation solar cells pass strict international tests - <AUTHOR> https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2020/05/22/perovskite-solar-cells-pass-strict-international-tests.html <comment><USER3> This is a great long read (if you like log graphs) on how solar prices have dropped more than anyone predicted: [https://rameznaam.com/2020/05/14/solars- future-is-insanely-c...](https://rameznaam.com/2020/05/14/solars-future-is- insanely-cheap-2020/)

> This incredible pace of solar cost decline, with average prices in sunny > parts of the world down to a penny or two by 2030 or 2035, is just > remarkable. Building new solar would routinely be cheaper than operating > already built fossil fuel plants, even in the world of ultra-cheap natural > gas we live in now. This is what I've called the third phase of clean > energy, where building new clean energy is cheaper than keeping fossil fuel > plants running. Even in places like Northern Europe, by the later 2030s we'd > see solar costs below the operating cost of fossil fuels, providing cheap > electricity in summer months with their very long days in the high > latitudes. These prices would be disruptive to a large fraction of already > operating fossil fuel power plants – particularly coal power plants, that > are far less able to ramp their power flexibly...

(hat tip to the Forge the Future newsletter: [https://forgethefuture.substack.com/?no_cover=true](https://forgethefuture.substack.com/?no_cover=true))

I predict a lot of fossil plants will convert to simply providing inertia for grid stabilisation and charge for the service. They won't burn anything any more and may even demolish their stacks and cooling towers. They will just keep their generators and turbines connected to the grid as a big virtual flywheel to dampen spikes in demand / supply and maintain the AC frequency within tolerance.

<comment><USER4> Seems like that role will also be moved over to battery installations, as they have an instant response time vs long minutes for a plant.

<comment><USER5> Battery installations are still relatively expensive right for the capacity they offer right?

<comment><USER6> That's a very general statement, but solar plus lithium battery storage is now competitive with gas peaker plants and those can grid balance as an extra service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> IIRC, there are some nasty heavy metals in some perovskites. Does anybody know which type is used in these projects? I'm 3000% in favor of solar, but still it bothers me if they use Pb etc...

<comment><USER8> I focused on PV in college and the fact is solar is dirty and they haven't planned for end of life recycling. The potential is great and we will get there im sure, but I always thought it was irresponsible to subsidize and widely roll out especially the early stuff in the 90s that was very inefficient and filled with heavy metals and REE. I'm not up to date now but the only thing I can say is at least the efficiency is better even if they are using similarly toxic elements.

<comment><USER9> I'm probably much less well-informed than you, but I can't understand the arguments about the disposal of the panels at the end of their life. I throw away a wheelie-bin worth of trash every single week, that's 1040 wheelie bins over a 20-year panel lifetime, yet those panels are probably equivalent to about two wheelie bins. It's a microscopic volume. What is in solar panels that is such a disaster compared to household trash? In 20 years I also expect to go through ten phones and five computers (although admittedly I'd chuck them into the local electronics recycling bin).

<comment><USER10> Heavy metals in thin film, mostly. Cadmium isn't great. They can be highly recycled though. Nevertheless, if a storm destroys a bunch of panels lots of cadmium will be dispersed

<comment><USER7> Cadmium telluride is not the prefered technology for solar cells. Silicon is still the major player, and it is free of any pollutants. I checked the wikipedia page for "solar cell". Given these informations, any consumer or technologist can adopt solar without compromising on pollutants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So is part of the bet here that future potential efficiency numbers will continue to increase at a rate faster than silicon can? Or is strictly a low cost play?

<comment><USER12> Efficiency improvements amplify cost reduction per kWh electricity: An ever growing share of PV system costs stems from every item that is not a a module (inverter, cables, labour etc). Modules are becoming cheaper faster than other components, so reducing module costs further has diminishing returns.

In contrast, taking your module efficiency from 20% to 21% increases electricity generation by 5% and thus reduces costs per kWh by 5%.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> We should always remember additional factors to the equation, including:

* The materials involved in production of such cells and of power-stations/fields based on them - in particular, their rarity and/or their toxicity.

* The sustainability and environmental impact of procuring the materials.

* Longevity of the cells.

* Recyclability / decomposability of the cells at end-of-life.

* Logistical considerations in setting up and operating solar cell fields, specifically of this type.

* Ease/cost/frequency of maintenance on these cells, individually and in a solar-field, when in operation.

and perhaps other factors I'm forgetting. Still, the materials science achievement is to be lauded.

<comment><USER14> Anything using fossil energy also has such hidden issues.

And you have to consider the ecosystem:

\- fossil fuel engines require much more maintenance than electrical engines, and now vehicules always embed heavy electronics anyway.

\- fuel need to be transported at a heavy cost, which is now hidden by the massive demand. The day we use more solar than fossil, the whole fossil infra will suddenly feels very expensive

\- most countries are not like the US and don't have oil on their soil. Countries don't like to be dependant on others for critical things. You may buy solar panels (or fuel engine) from a friendly country, but if things turn out badly, people can't cut sunlight from you one the initial setup is there.

Nothing is perfect of course, but I like the solar future we are hinted at.

<comment><USER13> I didn't suggest fossil-fuel-based energy production is superior.

Having said that - maintenance of cars using fossil fuels is not a relevant comparison, since we're talking about power plants.

Personally, I doubt that we can just -whoosh- swap the coal and petroleum for solar-based electricity and have our problems solved. It's likely that a lot of social effort to conserve more and waste less energy will be necessary to reach some sort of long-term-sustainable state of affairs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So encasing the cells in glass stopped decomposition? There was no pressure buildup in the cells? No gasses released?

The test says it's 1800 hours of stressful conditions for the cells. Assuming 10h of sunlight per day, that's 180 days of stability. I guess time will tell how long they really last, but it's good news that they surpassed test requirements.

And having a 25% conversion rate baseline compared to a ~26% assumed max for silicon is also impressive. I wonder how much they can boost that.

</comment><comment><USER16> Gonna chime in here, have a weak materials engineering background.

The material economics go wild if you try to solve for stability of perovskite. You really don't know how much this thing is going to cost.

With perovskite, from what I remember, you get the nice efficiencies with lead based perovskites.

This increases the price of electricity as you layer it on top and you get an extra 2% efficiency.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've passively followed the perovskite revolution for a while now, and the constant claim is that they're cheaper. But how cheap? Nobody can ever seem to quantify it.

<comment><USER18> The raw materials for perovskite cells are cheap, but so are the raw materials for silicon cells. There won't be hard cost numbers on perovskite PV modules until they go into volume manufacturing. They won't go into volume manufacturing until they can be stabilized enough to last years in the field.

My personal guess is that single-junction perovskite cells will not ever overtake single-junction silicon cells for rooftop or utility scale solar. Single junction perovskite cells may be used in applications where light weight and flexibility are advantageous, like charging portable electronics, if they can be stabilized.

Perovskite cells _may_ compete in rooftop/utility solar with conventional silicon when incorporated into tandem cell designs -- either perovskite on silicon or a stack of different perovskites with different band gaps. That gives them the potential to exceed conventional crystalline silicon module efficiency rather than merely play catch-up. The company that seems to be furthest along with this approach is Oxford PV, which is pursuing a perovskite/silicon tandem design:

[https://www.oxfordpv.com/perovskite-silicon- tandem](https://www.oxfordpv.com/perovskite-silicon-tandem)

<comment><USER19> Full disclosure, I know next to nothing about solar markets. What about putting panels on vehicles? Couldn't the market for cells on vehicles overtake the existing solar market?

<comment><USER20> If your goal is to power the car while driving, even 100% efficient solar cells wouldn't be enough, as there simply isn't enough surface area to gather enough energy to power a normal car doing normal driving. If your goal is to leave the car sitting charging in the sun all day, that's a bit more practical, but I believe there aren't yet any production vehicles like that yet: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_car](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_car)

<comment><USER21> Solar trees could help for the parking, but I don't know how the economics of that plays out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Last time I was installing panels, panel were fairly cheap.

More expensive were inverter, controller, batteries.

</comment><comment><USER23> TL;DR: 500 times thinner, much cheaper, 25.2% efficiency, but not durable at all.

<comment><USER24> Now they have a coating that protects them. TFA did not say how much that changed efficiency, if at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Low cost energy? Think twice, the population is controlled by this expense mostly! It's a nice utopian dream, scientifically achievable, but politically not viable.

</comment><comment><USER26> The uncertainties here are demonstrated by the fact that the article is quoting 25.2% efficiencies. Solar panel efficiency wouldn't matter as much as the ratio of energy/m2/$ ratio.

Nobody cares if a solar panel is 2% efficient if it costs 100 times less to fabricate and install. Just build more of them. Still, it is good news to see this sort of energy research bearing fruit.

<comment><USER27> When we kitted our boat with solar panels the cheapest part of the entire system were the panels, ~$1/W. Half of the budget went into mounting and the fabrication of the mounting hardware and 1/3, or the remainder, went to wiring and controllers. This nearly lines up with domestic solar. 1/3 to panles, 1/3 to frames and mounting, and 1/3 towards electrical.

Panels at 2% efficiency would be wildly uneconomical at practical any price.

<comment><USER26> > Panels at 2% efficiency would be wildly uneconomical at practical any price.

I guarantee that is wrong, if the price got low enough it would be economical. Wikipedia suggests to me [0] plants operate at 3-6%, and plants are extremely economical. Even starving African children can afford access to plants. If solar panels were as cheap and easy to produce/distribute as plants but could be plugged in to a grid then 2% efficiency would be wildly economical - <USER2> would be the greatest energy revolution in human history.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthetic_efficiency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthetic_efficiency)

<comment><USER28> Lots to unpack here - is there a more straightforward way to word your argument here? To put GP's post in terms of yours, the planters and water cost much more than the plant, so even if "starving kids in Africa can afford access to plants", it doesn't mean greenhouses are free

<comment><USER26> It isn't an analogy. Plants are literal solar systems. The only reasons they can't be plugged into the grid is they deal with energy chemically instead of electrically.

It doesn't require that much imagination to say that solar cells might one day be work in an extremely similar fashion to plants. Not likely, but not an outrageous thought.

Nature has produced a cheaper, more ubiquitous and more self-replicating solar system using efficiencies in the 5% range with a theoretical cap of 11%. That suggests we don't need 25% efficiency to accomplish amazing things. It isn't a critical metric.

<comment><USER29> I'm fine with your equation of plants with solar power. But it's not cheaper; look at the price of biofuels. Aren't they in fact more expensive than fossil fuels and solar panels?

<comment><USER30> I think most biofuel is currently more expensive because it is diverting high input monoculture crops that are typically grown for feed like say corn ethanol or soybean oil. I believe ethanol from sugar cane in Brazil was cheap but only because the humans laboring to harvest it and process it were paid very little. But yeah the current choice of using industrially farmed high input crops to source biofuel does make it expensive. I think ultimately heavily refined energy dense fuel does require lots of time or energy input to produce.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


In Life, Like Software, There Are No Silver Bullets - <AUTHOR> http://adamnuttall.co.uk/index.php/there-are-no-silver-bullets/

<comment><USER2> (Article is about weight loss)</comment>


Use pay phone to contact Australian Secret Intelligence Service recruitment - <AUTHOR> https://www.asis.gov.au/About-Us/Contact-us.html <comment><USER3> It's clearly a technical screening challenge - first the applicant must _find_ a public payphone in Australia... and it must also be in working order.

<comment><USER4> Candidates must be able to withstand the smell of urine for a number of minutes...

<comment><USER5> And avoid the cops who will definitely see them as weirdo crack-adicts calling their dealer from a phone booth

<comment><USER6> "But officer, I'm a _spy_!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> An alternative theory to "don't want other 4/5 eyes knowing" is they want to filter out people who don't take OpSec rules seriously.

<comment><USER8> > they want to filter out people who don't take OpSec rules seriously

I personally think it's a little bit this.

I know someone who applied to be an intelligence analyst agent in the UK. First stage was a multiple choice exam in a London hotel, where they had to turn up and say they were there for "KRNP Recruiting" or something. Now the hotel staff must have known something was going on, and it wouldn't be to hard to find this out ... but I reckon it filtered out both ppl who didn't take it seriously and also people who enjoyed that kind of subterfuge a little to much :-)

(honestly can't remember exact letters now)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> >>Unfortunately, for security reasons, if you make a mistake with your login details 3 times in a row, your account will be permanently deleted and you will need to create a new account via a new job application.

That's a first for me!

<comment><USER10> I hope most people are shrewd enough to keep uncommon login details, or this could be used to delete a lot of accounts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> In their page outlining their selection process, there is a statement of

"If you wish to include data in your application which is classified higher than 'IN-CONFIDENCE', please indicate in the 'Additional Comments' section of the application form that you have further classified information which you feel is relevant to the success of your application. Should ASIS determine it necessary to discuss this classified information with you, this will be done via secure means at a later stage."

This is what public payphone is for, in both directions.

It all feels very James Bond..

</comment><comment><USER12> Their recruiting for foreign agents. Which means what the agent could be doing might be illegal in their home county. That's why they don't want applicants to use their home or mobile phone.

<comment><USER12> It would be quite simple for a foreign govt to order their local teclo to hand over a list of all phone numbers that have called the secret agent recruitment hotline

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Just pick up the phone, we know it's you and why you're calling."

</comment><comment><USER14> The problem is that you're also probably viewing that page using your home or mobile internet connection.

<comment><USER15> HN just provided a bunch of noise to cloud those page views. It's not much, but it's something.

<comment><USER16> What a genius ploy by friism hehe.

Phase 1 - Post ASIS Foriegn Intel page to HN, creating noise

Phase 2 - Apply for ASIS Foreign Intel

Phase 3 - <USER2>

Too bad it only work about once a year.

<comment><USER17> Phase 2 - Enable ASIS to infect thousands of Silicon Valley company computers with zero-day exploit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't understand why they ask to use a payphone on a government website.

What is the benefit of using a payphone in this case?

<comment><USER19> The benefit is they immediately hang up, then call you back on your mobile. The first interview question is "how did we do that?"

<comment><USER20> I'd be really impressed if, while not carrying a mobile, they call the guy next to me, on his, and ask to speak with me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> LOL, ASIO/ASD must be snooping to see which grads are being pinched by ASIS. I didn't know the job market was that hot!

</comment><comment><USER22> Would payphones be more secure than private phones? Payphones are few & far between in Sydney, so third parties who want to listen don't need to bug too many of them.

<comment><USER23> Using a personal phone to contact the security services provides a direct link between that person and the security services to anyone who can access phone records. Using a payphone (probably) at the very least increasing the cost of establishing such a link (to identify the individual, you need listen to the call, which is more work and may be obscured by any OPSEC requirements that can be established over the phone, or have access to some other records [phone location records if the person is carrying a mobile phone at the same time, or CCTV footage from the area]).

<comment><USER24> Actually you just need to stay nearby - the phones are used to rarely that anybody who uses one is probably a spy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Also note their physical address:

"If you wish to contact ASIS on another matter, please write to: __Locked Bag 41 __, Kingston ACT 2604. Canberra, Australia "

<comment><USER26> Actually that's pretty benign. Locked bags over here are widely used by businesses and Government departments.

<comment><USER27> Is that like a PO Box in the States?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Someone should call them using a pay phone to tell them how to form a plural of "FAQ".

</comment><comment><USER29> luckily, there is almost no more pay-phones in USA....

<comment><USER13> There's like one per suburb/town in Australia. In rural areas, often there's just a payphone in the middle of nowhere. The only artificial light in miles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Duh....of course you use a payphone to call ISIS......oh my apologies it says ASIS, sorry i do have a mild dyslexia</comment>