RIP, RIM: The death spiral is underway - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/mobile-wireless/160601/rip-rim

<comment><USER2> _look at research firm NPD Group's latest first-quarter mobile OS numbers for the U.S. market:

[...]

Apple's iOS, 28% (up from 19% [in Q4 2010])_

Wait, what? I had to clip that quote together a bit, but it certainly seems to be what they're trying to say. Even given we're not too clear on what "mobile OS numbers" actually means, it's hard to believe that any meaningful metric has Apple's mobile platform growing from 19% to 28% between 4Q10 and 1Q11. That's essentially a 50% increase quarter over quarter?

I can't tell if they just have a massive typo somewhere in there, but if they actually think that's accurate it seriously calls into question their numbers and conclusions about RIM.

<comment><USER3> Probably the bump from Verizon sales. It looks like the demand has cooled for Verizon iPhones so the numbers might not be so impressive next quarter, unless there is an exodus from RIM because of reporting like this.

iCrack doesn't have the same feel as Crackberry though...

<comment><USER2> No doubt verizon sales gave apple a bump, but:

 _This morning, before the opening Bell, Verizon released first quarter earnings results, finally disclosing iPhone 4 activations -- 2.2 million since the device's February 11 launch. [...] During calendar Q1 2011, AT &T and Verizon activations -- 5.8 million -- accounted for 37 percent of the 18.647 million iPhones sold by Apple, that's up from 30 percent a year earlier._

So verizon activations accounted for 2.2M out of 18.6M iphone activations or ~12%. You'd need to dilute that more for ipads and ipods, presumably leaving you with less than 10% of the sales volume. Impressive, but not nearly enough to explain a 50% jump.

[http://www.betanews.com/joewilcox/article/ATT-and-Verizon- iP...](http://www.betanews.com/joewilcox/article/ATT-and-Verizon-iPhone-sales- are-nearly-the-same-40000-per-day/1303398412)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> RIM can absolutely, easily pull this out. Probably a few different ways, actually.

They make great hardware, and still have a vastly superior keyboard experience to any softkey phone anywhere. They have buckets of cash, and had great, really great earnings last year.

They have an ecosystem problem. This would be simple to remedy -- they just need to commit to HTML5 for apps, maybe adopt jquery mobile as a significantly-supported project.

Staff a small, awesome webkit team, and start making it dead simple to deploy to Blackberry. Start a webstore to compete with Chrome's webstore, but this one lets you take it with you on your Blackberry.

Second internal team would be dalvik support, adopting the android ecosystem. RIM never really made a ton of money on the 'app' ecosystem; this would put them on equal footing when being evaluated against Android.

I'll await my offer from the RIM strategy folks. : )

<comment><USER5> I think you're brushing off sales & marketing too easily. RIM's problem isn't that they just don't have compelling hardware/software, it's a market perception now, too. Fine, say tomorrow they come out with the "iPad-killer" - how do they convince people of this? What about all these people who have invested in the i-ecosystem (Pads, Pods, Macs etc.), why would they switch? And how do you win the hearts of devs who can build HTML5 apps + jQuery mobile for the already existing platforms? RIM has so many chicken-and-egg problems.

They snooze, they lose (lost?).

<comment><USER4> I'd say it's a matter of approaching strengths and weaknesses aggressively, a-la Nokia.

RIM Strengths: keyboard, corporate relationships, extremely happy users, historic hardware excellence

Weaknesses: shitty UI, no app ecosystem

Motorola was in this situation but with fewer strengths two years ago. Do you really think that RIM would not benefit from being able to say:

"As always, the best keyboard in the business. Now, with access to Amazon App Marketplace / Android Marketplace!"

To my mind it's entirely possible that RIM could bankroll itself through this cycle with their current cash, but if they want to compete, aggressively, they should probably adopt the android ecosystem as a compatibility layer.

An android phone that works excellently with Blackberry Server and has a blackberry keyboard would be EXTREMELY appealing to a broad range of corporate buyers, and many power-users as well.

<comment><USER6> Add "Godawful developer ecosystem" to that list of weaknesses.

JQuery was barely supported at all until the latest OS release, which isn't being backported to the vast majority of their recent hardware. Because developers are stuck catering to the lowest common denominator (and because the upgrade cycle is a _lot_ slower in the corporate world), any improvements are going to be moot for quite some time before most users can see any benefit (or before developers are willing to invest time developing apps for BB OS 6).

The pre-webkit browser's specifications were written to behave similarly to IE6, but somehow managed to even fail at _that_. It's a browser that's barely even compatible with itself. Simply put, you cannot develop JS-based webapps for it.

Developing a web-based BB app is also a weird and bewildering experience. Development needs to be done entirely within Eclipse, documentation is sparse/awful, and the entire development process is never laid out clearly anywhere. The code signing requirements are particularly onerous. The simulators are handy, because of the many device-specific peculiarities, but never seem to actually work properly themselves.

RIM have dug themselves into a hole; they are faced with either continuing to support their current (awful) platform, or completely alienating their existing installed base. RIM really has no good options at this point, and a bit of a chicken/egg situation. No good apps until everyone has a phone supporting the "new" platform (whatever that is/will be), but nobody will buy phones on the new platform because there are no apps for it.

<comment><USER4> Yep, my point.

They need someone to cut the Gordian Knot and make a clean breast of things. Who was Elop's counterpart over at Google??

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> 6 months to a year ago, a lot of people didn't believed me when I said RIM was irrelevant. It was quite obvious when the iPhone came out that RIM was going to need to make some big changes.

The only person I actually heard praise the BB UI was somebody who had gotten a smartphone for the first time. Then he used my iPhone...

The only people I know still buying BB's are old and/or adverse to change. That's about the market segment they have left.

<comment><USER8> Interesting observation, because in cities I've observed (Ottawa and Toronto) the type of people using BBs are the opposite of the ones you've seen.

Among young people I see around town, on the bus/train, etc., almost all of them have BBs. This is particularly true for young women. I'm not sure exactly why this is the case, but it seems that most of them prefer BBM over SMS.

<comment><USER9> It's mainly because BBM is a non-threatening way to give out your contact information. You can add a guy to your BBM list, chat with him and then if you find out he's a crazy you can block him. The person can't constantly txt you or call you back like with your cell phone number. It's brilliant for us ladies. :)

<comment><USER10> Interesting. Seems like a big opportunity for a mobile carrier to push how easy it is to block numbers on their service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Stock price has taken a dive, <http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=RIM.TO>

Currently down more than 13% on yesterday's closing price, at 46.49 - to put that into perspective, September 13th last year saw a low point of 45.40, which is the lowest close since November 6th 2006 (45.33). By February 18th this year it had got back to a ~9 month high of 68.92. The all-time high for RIM was 149.90 in June 2008, but the price reached that level then dropped back down all in the space of a few months.

TLDR of the above paragraph - last September the price of RIM stocks dropped almost as low as it was in 2006 before it really started growing, and now there is a possibility it will do so again.

Side note: this submission is to an editorialised piece (which in my opinion is pretty badly written), would prefer it be straight to the source: <http://press.rim.com/release.jsp?id=5015>

<comment><USER12> The "source" you linked to only contributes to a small portion of this article. The RIM press release doesn't make any mention of how RIM's competitors are doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> RIM needs to become a services company and focus on what they did best - enterprise class connectivity on the go. Take your set of tools and apps across devices - and email is just one of the many things they can offer. IT Depts dont really want to choose the phone people carry but have to standardize. The Apple and Android divide will only get more polarized, if Windows Phone does well, all the more better - imagine one set of RIM tools integrating with every device in your company to offer secure email, security + wipe clean, documents, BBM, social features, etc. For that though, RIM will have to become a software company. And they suck at that. The opportunity is big enough to support a $30Bn company, for sure.

Oh and they should forget about consumers. That whole thing was just dumb.

<comment><USER14> It's much easier to sell mediocrity in B2B. There's no need to have truly great products, a truly great salesforce is good enough.

So yes, that whole thing about consumers is ill-advised. Especially when there's someone out there that's already figured out how to build truly great products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Reading this made me think of these posts:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1996237>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2043613>

</comment><comment><USER16> I think the whole idea of competing with Apple or Palm was kind of foolish. I think they had consumer number envy. It was amazing to watch them take their successful, refined form factor and try to build an iPhone-clone in the Storm. Now we see them take QNX (good) and try to have a bunch of different ways to develop for it (Air, Android compatible, etc).

I really think they should have invested in an enterprise friendly development environment (more JVM use), update the UI (remembering to leverage the keyboard), and build appliances that were plug and play in enterprise data centers. If they wanted to get radical, build a netbook that had a great keyboard, 3G, and ran Blackberry apps.

</comment><comment><USER17> This makes me wonder how WebOS is faring at HP. They need to come up with some sort of niche killer app and secure a stable foothold for themselves. I'm surprised that RIM is dying so quickly; I thought their foothold was with jet- setting business and politico types.

</comment><comment><USER18> I've been told that RIM could improve their odds by making their corporate install system better, and that awkward aspects of this count against Blackberry adoption at the moment. Does anyone here have more knowledge about this?

</comment><comment><USER19> It's more likely that RIM will switch to Android rather than selling to someone else.

</comment><comment><USER20> Death spiral you say?

[http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=bvg&chs=323x200&#...</a>

<comment><USER21> RUN FOR THE HILLS!

On a more serious note, they're going through a tough period, but I expect them to make it through. They are transitioning to a whole new OS, which is too new and rough (I played with a playbook a bit) to carry their product line, while their old OS is not good enough. The good news is that their strong performance until now gives them enough slack to make the transition.

By Holiday Season 2012, they should have both tablets and phones all transitioned to a polished version of QNX, which should allow them to be competitive. The smartphone market is also growing very rapidly, so if they manage to hold onto 2nd or 3rd place with ~15% share, that still means tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of devices sold per year.

All depends on execution however.

<comment><USER22> When you write "They are transitioning to a whole new OS" I assume you _mean_ "They are transitioning to a different OS" because the different OS is QNX and it has been around for decades (so it's not a "new OS").

<comment><USER23> He's likely referring to a new shell on top.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's not a good sign when investors are waiting for news of a sale and instead they hear about low earnings and loss of market share.

</comment><comment><USER25> A worse than expected quarter and their product is no longer top dog? I'd hardly call that a death spiral. A march to mediocrity, maybe, if they don't start producing products with wider appeal.

In all the IT World articles I've seen over the last week or so, they seem to make over-the-top statements and exaggerate about everything. Not so much in this particular article, but it seems like they don't have a very good understanding of the technology they're covering.</comment>


Viable Threat to Google Adwords Emerges - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2007/06/04/yahoo-plots-adwords-death-by-a-1000-cuts/ <comment><USER2> About damn time. It's not like adwords has some of the attributes that certain markets exhibit, making competition very difficult:

\- Vendor lock-in - it's easy to swap out one set of ads for another.

\- Positive network externalities - there aren't (big) network effects involved in ads.

Sure, there are some scaling issues, and some issues with regards to determining what the page is 'about', but those don't seem like insurmountable problems for reasonably large companies to deal with.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> All the companies rage about developers and third party development, but it looks like Yahoo might actually step up and open up their system when Google is keep a closed shop.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's nice to see the Yahoo web 2.0 crowdsourcing strategy extends beyond just buying shiny websites.</comment>


Physicists Just Achieved the First-Ever Quantum Teleportation Between Chips - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-manage-quantum-teleportation-between-computer-chips-for-the-first-time <comment><USER2> I know this is quite ignorant, but for the sake of devils advocate, what's different between this and any form of wireless communication (Bluetooth for example)?

Obviously they are quite different, but they define "teleportation" as the copying of data from one point to another without a physical connection. Playing devils advocate, can't you say that wireless data transferring?

What makes this "teleportation"? The quantum bits aren't moved in regards to their physical location, it's just that their "buddy" reveals their state and data transfer can be inferred from this.</comment>


TwitterSpam - <AUTHOR>

There's been discussion before about spam on twitter, so here's a concrete example.
It seems like people are just looking at the trending hashtags, and spamming, which then gets them into search results. How can twitter solve this? Any ideas?
For example, I did a search for #media140 which is an event in London today. The whole page of results was all spam tweets from the same account, with popular search terms and hashtags in it, (And an affiliate/target link).
eg http://twitter.com/Janet104807/statuses/1859946423
also http://search.twitter.com/search?max_id=1859950510&page=1&q=www.goldencasinoflash.com
Another point is this spam would artificially increase the "trending topics" - feedback loop.
It seems like the search functionality could become useless pretty quickly if spamming isn't stopped in its tracks. It'd be very easy to write an app to create twitter accounts, find trending hashtags, popular keywords, then start sending out tweets with affiliate links. Go through web proxies to avoid any banning by IP. Do they already exist?
Google solved this for website search with PageRank, and other algorithms to detect spam, how could twitter do a similar thing?
Thoughts? <comment><USER2> 1\. Make sign up hard so that bots can't do it

2\. Block accounts the send out the same URL multiple times

3\. Block tweets that contain multiple, popular hashtags

4\. Block accounts that send multiple messages over a short period of time with the same hashtag

5\. Allow users to flag accounts for review

6\. Implement SURBL for URLs

<comment><USER3> 5\. Don't display results chronologically

<comment><AUTHOR> What other order makes sense for 'realtime search'?

<comment><USER4> Time of course has to be a factor in the sorting of the search results. But that doesn't mean that it has to be the only factor.

Other possible (negative, antispam factors): ratio of following to followers, number of duplicate or near dupe posts, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Create a Twitter Rank, people are ranked by number of "replies" from users with high rank ;)

<comment><USER6> a TwitterRank would only increase the number of spammers to reply to their own spam to increase their rank artificially just like it's happened with Google. Google has seemed to move away from PageRank as the primary indicator for its searches anyway as you can have page 5 results with the same PageRank as page 1.

<comment><USER5> true, but page rank still a key, there's a difference between PR2 and PR7. Spammers can rise up to PR4 their pages, but PR7 or PR8 will be impossible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I just made a similar discover on my own I just posted about this morning. I tried tweeting something like "online dating" and was able to get a follower that was spam in a few minutes. My biggest problem is trying to walk the line between being spam and self promoting your product.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=618580>

</comment><comment><USER7> Hiding new accounts (7 days, for example) from appearing in the real time search would be a partial solution.

<comment><USER8> Wouldn't that just fix the problem for 7 days, to which the bots would use accounts they created the previous week?

<comment><USER7> Quite possibly. But at least it makes spamming less convenient. In my experience, most spammers are lazy, so if you make spamming your site even marginally harder than spamming the somewhere else, they go to someone else. Granted, this might only apply to "long tail" sites and not giants like twitter.

The other advantage is that there is probably a black market for twitter spamming scripts. This might break a few, at least temporarily.

The most determined spammers will probably always find a way through any automated system, but making it inconvenient is good if it is easy enough to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Do as Google Accounts does (or did last I checked), and require either a mobile number or a referral to create an account. For Twitter the mobile part even makes sense, sort of.

</comment><comment><USER10> Accounts suspected of spamming with hashtags should still be able to tweet, but their tweets shouldn't appear in the search results. Problem solved?

</comment><comment><USER11> twitter will need to borrow a page from the anti-spam war being waged in email land.

-rate limiting

-de/duplication

-source analysis

and a variety of other anti-spam measures. all this adds to the computational cost for twitter but in the long run is in their interest.

</comment><comment><USER12> simple. implement a solid, clear-cut spam policy and include a button on a tweeter's page to flag the account for review by admins. kinda like we do it here :)

<comment><USER3> You can @reply the @spam account to tell them about a spammer, or just block them. Lots of blocks alert the admins too. There are certainly some auto kill features too.

<comment><USER12> true, true. but how many of your average users know this? i'm just saying, your options and the process are not common knowledge.

it would go a long way if the whole twitterverse were policing spam instead of just the more savvy users</comment></comment></comment>


Who's Working on Property Management? - <AUTHOR> I'm on my condo board and managing most day to day activity is absolute garbage. Property Management companies are also, generally, garbage. Is anyone working on streamlining operations for either condo boards/HOAs or property managers?
Where I'm from in Edmonton, we have GeniePad, but it's 10 years old and it's clear no one's worked on it for a really long time. They seem to have market penetration throughout the city, and a bunch elsewhere in NA. This can't be the best thing out there, though?
It seems to me this is an untapped opp, given we pay our property management company $20,000 per year, and 80% of the time-consuming tasks - say, answering questions, handling parking, dealing with document requests and move in/outs - could be pretty easily automated (with little custom code, even). <comment><USER2> You can try [https://www.mybos.com/](https://www.mybos.com/)</comment>


SeatGeek for Android - <AUTHOR> http://chairnerd.seatgeek.com/

<comment><USER2> I just downloaded the app. The design is strong. Not flashy, but polished.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why do you need the read/write external storage permission?

Also, I saw a cool concert in your app, where tickets were $64. Then I found tickets for it on ticketmaster for $40 (including fees). Is this part of the business model? I'd be willing to pay a small premium for your app, but a more than 50% difference in price is too much.

</comment><comment><USER4> Very metro</comment>


Debug remote iOS device using Chrome devtools - <AUTHOR> http://c.nikoloz.me/1x3u2n0X2X2J <comment><USER2> > If you're Chrome dependent developer like me, you'll love this.

Chrome _dependent_ ? Seriously?

If I want to debug Safari on iOS (physical or in the simulator), it's literally two clicks, using the Develop menu in Safari for Mac.

I guess I understand why you could need this on Linux, but why would you deliberately make your life _harder_ if you can do it so easily with the built-in tools on a Mac?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, Chrome has 10 times better DevTools than Safari.

<comment><USER2> Can you qualify that with some kind of reasoning?

<comment><AUTHOR> Dude, for me it's, because I have habit of using it for years. In inspecting things, CSS pane, console, etc...

<comment><USER2> All of which the Safari Developer tools do.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


HiSilicon Kirin 970 Review - <AUTHOR> https://www.anandtech.com/show/12195/hisilicon-kirin-970-power-performance-overview <comment><AUTHOR> I find the comparison between ARM's GPU and others very interesting. I wonder what exactly Apple and Qualcomm are doing that they are way more efficient based on power usage?</comment>


SVG backend for PDF.js - <AUTHOR> https://mozilla.github.io/pdf.js/web/viewer.html <comment><AUTHOR> Type `PDFViewerApplication.preferences.set('renderer', 'svg');` in the console, and reload the page/viewer:

[https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js/pull/8564](https://github.com/mozilla/pdf.js/pull/8564)</comment>


Show HN: Replicate the world's best stock investments - <AUTHOR> https://instavest.com/ <comment><USER3> The voluntary gifts aspect is interesting. In the FAQ, there's mention of the option to tip someone whose investments you've shadowed, if you've been successful. If you capitalise on this social, community aspect, I'd be interested in seeing what comes of this. Patreon-esque community involvement is pretty novel for the space, and if you could pull it off it would go a good way to humanizing what's seen as a cold hyper-competitive space.

Because these things need a standard disclaimer: If you have 1000 people flipping a coin every six months or so, at the end of that 3 year slice, you'll have ~15 people very proud of their coinflipping ability assuring everyone else of their judgement on the next flip. After all, their results speak for themselves.

<comment><USER4> There have been many studies on the voluntary gifts aspect. And thus far, our voluntary gifts are approximately 12%.

Our lead investors have years of experience and we spend considerable time with them before they are are allowed to take co-investment. This includes reviewing their past performance - both good and bad, and understanding investment decisions and rationale at a deep level.

Of course, Instavest is another marketplace in the largest marketplace in the world - the stock market - people are free to buy, sell and copy at their convenience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can think of many ways to abuse this site[0], and that is just from an initial standpoint. This could be the next big SEC case waiting to happen.

Are there measures in place to prevent from such easy abuse?

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pump_and_dump](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pump_and_dump) \- This could be perpetrated on an entirely different scale with people seeking out the "guidance" of a few big players

<comment><USER4> Hi - I'm Saleem, the Co-Founder & CEO of Instavest.

We've been very careful to stay within the confines of SEC and FINRA law.

We have a number of safeguards in place to protect our customers, including but not limited to: 1\. Customers can only trade on NYSE or NASDAQ only - <USER2> OTC / Pink Sheets; 2\. There is a minimum 14 day hold (this is enforced by Instavest, not our brokerage partner) 3\. An investor must disclose if the asset they are purchasing is held on another platform 4\. Moderation and review prior to an investment being shared with the community 5\. Lead investors have to "put their money where their mouth is" before an investment is shared

Trading in NYSE and NASDAQ securities that highly liquid and have a high average daily trading volume makes it very difficult for any sort of market manipulation, including the pump and dump scheme you referenced.

<comment><USER6> Saleem, you need to fix the TOS text at the end of the page. Not only it's not formatted but it calls for a link which isn't there (Desktop using the latest version of firefox and windows, adblock disabled).

<comment><USER7> Can you please post the specific line (or just email email@example.com)? I can't see what you're talking about. Thanks for reporting it, once you let us know we will fix it ASAP.

<comment><USER6> Leveraged ETFs are inherently more volatile than their underlying benchmark or index. For more information, CLICK HERE. Accounts are carried and cleared with First Southwest Company ("FSC").

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is exactly what Etoro does. Etoro has many problems though. To name a few:

\- Many traders will keep losing trades open indefinitely and only close their winning trades. This way they get a 100% success rate because all their realized trades were profitable. This also leads to huge realized profit percentages while the total value of their portfolio was just decreasing because of the losing trades.

\- You start copying them later, so you won't get all their trades. This means that your available balance percentage will be different than theirs, resulting in strange behavior when they up their stop loss with additional funds, whereas you don't have any additional funds left. This also happens when they of you withdraw/deposit funds.

<comment><USER4> Etoro trades currencies and the company cannot operate in the United States because it is not in compliance with SEC regulations.

Our investors invest their own money first, then you can replicate their investment at your convenience.

When they sell, you have the OPTION to sell. You can close out your position anytime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is pretty interesting to me. Investing in strategies including automated trading strategies on some of the hosted platforms that are out there.

But... I am a Boglehead. It's going to take a hello of a lot to pry me away from VTSAX and many many decades of history (that may or may not repeat).

I would only ever be interested if I could invest in a low cost way across ALL the strategies by market cap of assets held under each strategy.

Ideally I could invest across all the strategies not just at Instavest.

I'm the kind of guy who wants to buy a fund made up of every openly traded asset by market cap.

<comment><USER4> This is our ultimate goal.

<comment><USER10> I'm also a Bogglehead and I would love to see it. Do you have a roadmap?

<comment><USER4> Nothing to release right now - we're focused on developing the core product!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why is it that I can't see any details about the investors without logging in? The only thing I can see are the returns of 6 select investors, which is less than helpful. And I can't just create a fake account either - all accounts need an initial transfer. From a site that gets paid based on the number signups, this leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

<comment><USER12> I closed the signup exactly at that same spot. Unfortunately this gives the sign "snake oil". The intent and model is o.k but not enough credibility for me to wire money without further backup. Sorry seemed worth a try.

<comment><USER4> Here's an example of a writeup. There are several more like this. This position is up approximately 30%.

SunEdison is an attractive investment opportunity: by Jay Yoon March 11, 2015, 2:57 p.m.

Solar Is Cost Competitive Even Without Subsidies:

In general, I am very bullish on the overall solar sector. The cost of solar has declined to the point where it is competitive on a non-subsidized basis in many countries. Currently, solar is cheaper than retail electricity in approximately 30 countries. This includes some of the largest solar markets such as US, Japan and Germany. Other large countries, most notably China and India, are very close to grid parity.

Adoption of Solar Is Still At the Beginning Stages.

The overall penetration of solar is very low today (approximately 0.3% of global electricity generation). A small increase to 1% penetration will triple the market size. Thus, the solar industry is still at the beginning stages of a prolonged period of growth. The cost of solar will continue to decline going forward which will lead to the increased penetration of solar in many countries. For example, in the US, solar is currently cost competitive on a non-subsidized basis in 14 states. By 2016, this number is expected to increase to 47 states.

Leading Market Position.

SUNE is well-positioned to take advantage of the long-term growth in solar due to its leading market position. SUNE is currently the largest renewable energy provider in the world. In FY 2015, the Company expects to install between 2.1 – 2.3 GW of solar and wind projects. By comparison, SolarCity guided for between 920MW – 1 GW of deployments in FY 2015. SUNE's competitive moat is significant. The Company's scale and first-mover advantage provides them with project development expertise, access to capital and a broad network of relationships. SUNE also has a geographically diverse business which mitigates country-specific risk.

Differentiated Business Model.

SUNE has a differentiated and diverse business model. The Company entered the wind power market through their acquisition of First Wind. More recently, SUNE entered the energy storage business through its January acquisition of Solar Grid Storage. Thus, as a "one-stop-shop" provider of renewable energy services, SUNE has been able to differentiate itself from competitors.

Terraform and Future Yieldcos To Unlock Significant Value.

The formation of the Terraform Yieldco has allowed SUNE to retain the majority of its solar projects rather than selling them to a third party. The Company's ROI from a retained project is significantly higher than the ROI realized from selling the project to a third party financial buyer. SUNE has announced its plans to form additional Yieldcos in the future, including an emerging markets Yieldco focused on projects in Africa and Asia. Terraform, along with the formation of future Yieldcos, will allow SUNE to maximize the value received from its solar and wind project developments.

Trading At A Large Discount to Fair Value.

SUNE shares are trading at a large discount to fair value. As I mentioned previously, the Company expects to install 2.1 – 2.3 GW of solar and wind projects in FY 2015. If SUNE sold these projects to a third party, I estimate that the Company would report ~$1.10 of EPS from its project development business. Comparable solar companies with a sizable project business trade at an earnings multiple of 25x or higher. For example, Sunpower currently trades at a multiple of near 30x FY 2015 earnings. Assuming a relatively conservative multiple of 20x FY 2015 EPS, I estimate SUNE's project development business to be worth $22 per share. Thus, SUNE's project development business by itself is almost worth the current share price. I estimate the remaining components of SUNE's business (e.g. Terraform, Samsung JV, Semi business) to be worth an additional ~$15.00 per share. Putting it all together, I estimate that SUNE is worth $37 per share on a combined basis. This represents a 67% premium to the current share price of $22.17 (as of March 10th). Thus, I would recommend going long SUNE at the current price level.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would worry about lead investors front running their trades; its pretty easy to make money in the market if you can get a large number of people copying your trades AFTER you make your own.

<comment><USER7> We don't allow stocks below a certain liquidity threshold, so this would be pretty tough to achieve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> While it's an interesting idea, it seems like this is suggesting trying to copy someone's short term stock wins. The current page shows someone (6 random faces, where you can't click on details without signup) making some alledly good gains over a couple of years with an unknown amount of money. (another post says you can't signup without a money transfer? yikes!)

As I understand it, you want a predictable gain year to year over a long haul. A three-year span where you gain a large percentage, offset by a large drop (which is possible if investing -- aka 2000-era tech bubble crash), results in you having significantly less money than a more subtle, even, diversified rate. Over the long haul, you may lose a lot of money by having a lot of volatility, or not gain as much. This is not to say you must choose very conservative investments, but this is why diversity in investing is useful.

I also worry that the site showcases people who made, say, 100%, by a limited number of investments over a short term. There's nothing saying these investments will hold over the long term, which means that following them is essentially random. There's also a bit of danger in investing in just what you know about, for instance, say you really follow donuts.

Various mutual funds seem unexciting because they don't offer "quintuple your money" in N months, but you'll end up with a lot of money in the end if you make regular investments.

This doesn't just have to be your 401k, it could be an IRA (if you qualify/etc), a combination or both, or some investment on top.

Obviously, a lot of people have made a lot of money investing in very specific stocks, but there's nothing to say the past history in investing in those stocks foreshadows future history, and I think the site owes people a bit of education about that, especially younger folks.

You may also wish to speak to a financial advisor.

<comment><USER4> To emphasize, Instavest is not a replacement for a financial advisor nor is it a replacement for a portfolio of index funds.

Rather, Instavest is a supplement to your portfolio and helps you access previously overlooked / out of favor investment opportunities.

Searching for high-returns on a small part of your portfolio is something people do already.

All we are doing is bringing this phenomenon online and aggregating ideas so people can invest easily.

-Saleem

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> In the active v/s passive debate it has now become widely clear that passive wins ALL the time when controlled for risk.

I wonder what the market for such a product is compared to main stream actively managed funds. Why should I choose some unknown "expert" off the Internet instead of say Bill Gross, Peter Lynch or John Neff?

<comment><USER7> You aren't choosing an unknown expert. You can examine their track record and investment rationale, and copy them on a trade-by-trade basis.

Think of this as an idea surfacing website, not a place to just blindly copy people (although some people may choose to do so).

Our thesis is that our platform will surface interesting small-cap investments that would otherwise be undiscovered by the average retail investor. There is a huge advantage to managing under $1M.

      "If I was running $1 million today, or $10 million for that matter, I'd be fully invested. Anyone who says that size does not hurt investment performance is selling. The highest rates of return I've ever achieved were in the 1950s. I killed the Dow. You ought to see the numbers. But I was investing peanuts then. It's a huge structural advantage not to have a lot of money. I think I could make you 50% a year on $1 million. No, I know I could. I guarantee that."

\- Warren Buffett

Finally, I agree passive management is an important part of someone's portfolio. I'd argue it should be the majority of most peoples' portfolio, but I would never say its a silver bullet. In my personal Instavest account, I search for higher returns in small cap, less efficiently traded companies.

<comment><USER16>
        > You can examine their track record

If they were choosing randomly, you would still see a population with a great track record ... but no reason to think it would continue. Given that active investors as a whole are shown again and again to be unable to beat the market, I'm not sure why this time is meant to be different.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> How are you controlling for survivor bias?

Unless these investors are highly leveraged, have insider information, or are simply 'lucky' (or a combination of all three) I would assume survivor bias... The best proprietary firms in the world don't make 50% per year...

<comment><USER4> Investment ideas are shared in a Twitter-like feed so regardless of performance all ideas get the same visibility on Instavest. Whether or not people decide to follow the idea is up to them. At the end of the day, Instavest is a market and funds will flow to quality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The "world's best investments"? From what I can tell you can only replicate what others are doing on your site right?

<comment><USER4> You can make your own investments as well.

The "replication" part of it is just to give you an opportunity to see what other people are doing in case you're interested.

What's really compelling is that you get to see investment opportunities that you wouldn't normally consider. Most people are investing in Apple and Google, which is fine. But there are inefficient parts of the market and for the retail investor, that's an interesting place to spend time researching.

<comment><USER19> It seems like the only automated replication that you can elect to use is upon sell. Are there plans to replicate buying as well? No doubt you're familiar with how other sites work: decide to "follow" an investor and your funds are effectively pooled into theirs and executed automatically on your behalf... at the cost of some percentage as management fee. I'm curious as to why you've chosen the model you have.

<comment><USER4> Many sites have gotten it wrong my doing auto buy. We built Instavest for ourselves. I don't want to give someone else a pile of my hard earned money and let them make investments without my approval. Additionally, I want the option to find investment "gems". That is, one off opportunities that I resonate with for any number of reasons. By sifting through a list of curated investments and choosing whether or not to buy in, I preserve my right to manage my money and do what I think is right for my risk / reward profile. M

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> How is this different from Covester ([http://covestor.com/](http://covestor.com/)), which has been around (and seemingly struggling) for awhile?

<comment><USER4> Covestor was / is a FA replacement; they take 12 months to onboard an Lead leader and charge management fees (make money regardless; +2% of AUM) Additionally, Covestor has a completely different customer who wants a passively managed account The Covestor account typically has $50,000 - $100,000 minimums.

Instavest is transactional and you get to invest in curated investments. No management fees, no upfront fees, and tips are optional. People want to retain control of their assets. If they didn't they would just rather give it to a FA at Morgan Stanley. .

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > Our team includes alumni from the U.S. Department of the Treasury, Goldman > Sachs, Braintree, and Oaktree Capital Management.

Where is the team page with their names and bio?

<comment><USER4> Thanks, we're adding this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Sounds awefully familiar to DittoTrade ([http://www.dittotrade.com](http://www.dittotrade.com))

</comment><comment><USER23> FYI. Your site is missing some key credibility elements that is hurting your adoption rate. You are asking people to blindly commit money to something without passing the critical trust measures. This site could be a phishing site at worst.

You tried the simple Robinhood approach, but you need to give much more detail than them IMO.

You can email me if you want more feedback. Brent at Mometic.com

</comment><comment><USER19> I've seen a few platforms like this and they're US only. Anyone aware of one that supports Canadian investors?

<comment><USER4> We hope to be working in Canada soon! Until then, all you need is a US SSN and a place of residence in the US.

<comment><USER24> Not according to your signup. It requires me to affirm that "I am a US citizen or permanent resident."

I'm a legal long-term US resident but not a _permanent_ resident (i.e. green card holder). I have a SSN, working permission, credit history, bank accounts but not a green card holder. Sounds like the word "permanent" should be removed or replaced with "legal".

<comment><USER4> We're fixing this now. Thanks for the clarification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Also, Why does it require me to be an US citizen?

<comment><USER4> This is a requirement of our brokerage partner. We are working as fast as possible to open it up the service in other countries. What country are you from / in?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Shame on you guys. Perpetuating the notion that "experts" can consistently beat the market is criminal. Instavest appears to be a typical sleazy financial business capitalizing on misinformed customers.

<comment><USER4> To emphasize, Instavest is not a replacement for a financial advisor nor is it a replacement for a portfolio of index funds.

Rather, Instavest is a supplement to your portfolio and helps you access previously overlooked / out of favor investment opportunities.

Searching for high-returns on a small part of your portfolio is something people do already.

All we are doing is bringing this phenomenon online and aggregating ideas so people can invest easily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Interesting - but I'm more interested in tracking investors with a longer track record/AUM ala [http://www.alphaclone.com](http://www.alphaclone.com)

</comment><comment><USER28> I hate it when sign up forms are very US-centric. Not allowing me to input 4 digit ZIP codes, entering birth date in US format, and more.

It's 2015. Everyone should be designing websites with other countries in mind.

<comment><USER29> Internationalization isn't easy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Cool!

But i would like to have it integrated with other brokers (robinhood!).

BTW: this is very similar to [https://zercatto.com](https://zercatto.com) , no?

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the feedback! Integrating with other brokers is definitely an option.

There are similarities between Instavest and other platforms. One thing I notice that's different is that you don't pay any fixed fees on Instavest. We also don't allow FX trading currently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Stock investments depend on the right timing a lot. Something that was a successful strategy in the past might not be so for the future.

<comment><USER4> Right, and that's why its up to you to decide what to do after you read the Instavest research.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> A lot of the criticisms and concerns in the comments seem completely valid... but in my mind, this is just one extreme of the risk/reward decision. This is high risk, high reward. Much higher risk than I want to partake in, to be sure, but I can see playing this game if they can afford that much risk.

</comment><comment><USER33> "Earn profits by syncing your trades to the lead investor."

So they always make profits? That's very impressive.

</comment><comment><USER34> The whole taking part in trades by a lead trader is nothing new. I previously worked for a FINRA licensed broker who's business model was exactly this.

Word of advice: Double check that you're not infringing on any patents.

</comment><comment><USER35> I was referred to a similar website, when I share this with my co-worker.

[https://www.motifinvesting.com/motifs#catalog=our](https://www.motifinvesting.com/motifs#catalog=our)

</comment><comment><USER36> Investing directly in the market (via EFT) is always a good idea. Look at this chart, percentage change of S&P 600 SPY EFT in the last 3y. 60% increase.

[https://www.tradingview.com/x/r6ahpcAy/](https://www.tradingview.com/x/r6ahpcAy/)

If your timeframe is long, buy & hold is alaways a good strategy.

</comment><comment><USER37> Ideas like this one smell of ponzi schemes. If this method were really a profitable idea they would not share it.

<comment><USER4> This is not a ponzi scheme. You are not giving your money to an individual. You're investing in a publicly traded company. Think of Instavest as an aggregation of research. You read the research and decide what to buy. If you do well, you have the option to donate to the author of that research. Hope that helps.</comment></comment>


Using Topological Data Analysis to Solve Complex Problems (2013) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3Hl85OBuc0 <comment><USER2> Interesting background on Ayasdi (literally, "to seek," in Cherokee, perhaps sparking the newest trend in startup names deriving from indigenous languages) and its DARPA roots:

[http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/16/ayasdi-a-big- data-s...](http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/16/ayasdi-a-big-data-start- up-with-a-long-history/?_r=0)

And a link to founder and Stanford Math Prof. Gunnar Carlsson's seminal AMS paper on "Topology and Data":

[http://www.ams.org/journals/bull/2009-46-02/S0273-0979-09-01...](http://www.ams.org/journals/bull/2009-46-02/S0273-0979-09-01249-X/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Hey. That's me. On hackernews :)

Happy to answer questions here regarding TDA but am no longer with Ayasdi so won't comment on company specific stuff.

The material in the video is dated but still relevant - I now have a better understanding of how to use "Shape" to improve Machine Learning models in an operational setting.

<comment><USER4> Any new talks, videos, or papers to recommend?

<comment><USER3> Sure. Gunnar's "Topology and Data" paper (already linked to by another poster) is the first place to go for an overview of TDA (although it's getting dated). A more updated version (but behind paywall) is "Topological pattern recognition for point cloud data" ( [http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0962492914000051](http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0962492914000051) )

Robert Ghrist has another take on TDA ( [https://www.math.upenn.edu/~ghrist/preprints.html](https://www.math.upenn.edu/~ghrist/preprints.html) ) that is more "engineering" focused and also uses a different mathematical tool set than the above (eg. Sheaves/Co-Sheaves). I particularly like the sensor coverage results.

Rob Ghrist and John Harer ( [http://fds.duke.edu/db/aas/math/faculty/john.harer/publicati...](http://fds.duke.edu/db/aas/math/faculty/john.harer/publications.html) )both have textbooks available if you want to get into the fundamentals in the field.

Jose Perea has some nice results using ideas from TDA in a variety of contexts. eg texture classification ( [https://www.math.msu.edu/user_content/docs/KleinBottleTextur...](https://www.math.msu.edu/user_content/docs/KleinBottleTextureAnalysis20150826163949977.pdf) ) and signal processing ( [https://www.math.msu.edu/user_content/docs/Sw1Pes_Theory2015...](https://www.math.msu.edu/user_content/docs/Sw1Pes_Theory20150826163903619.pdf) )

Here's a talk I gave at ICERM last summer using persistent homology as a feature generating method for drug discovery:

[https://icerm.brown.edu/video_archive/#/play/726](https://icerm.brown.edu/video_archive/#/play/726)

(slides available for download if you poke around on the icerm web site).

This is my "part two" of the video linked to in the parent article:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z73Wd2T1xE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z73Wd2T1xE)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the updated list, Anthony!

On the practical side, what packages are you guys using? I'm familiar with JavaPlex for Matlab:

[http://appliedtopology.github.io/javaplex/](http://appliedtopology.github.io/javaplex/)

<comment><USER3> For Mapper consider using PythonMapper by Daniel Müllner ( [http://danifold.net/mapper/](http://danifold.net/mapper/) ). The UI is touchy - I use it mostly via scripts only. Mapper is pretty simple to implement (just a series of well understood pieces - the magic is in the interpretation/understanding what you've done). As an example consider the kepler-mapper project ( [https://github.com/MLWave/kepler- mapper](https://github.com/MLWave/kepler-mapper) ). More lines of code are used for calling out to the d3 visualization than implementing the core mapper algorithm.

For my persistent homology calculations I always use Dionysus ( [http://www.mrzv.org/software/dionysus/](http://www.mrzv.org/software/dionysus/) ). Rumor has it a much improved parallelized version will be released soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Papers are available on Ayasdi's site: [http://www.ayasdi.com/approach/data- scientist/](http://www.ayasdi.com/approach/data-scientist/)

<comment><USER6> There's also a very nice open-source R implementation of some of the TDA mapper functionality that I played with a while back:

[https://github.com/paultpearson/TDAmapper/](https://github.com/paultpearson/TDAmapper/)</comment></comment>


The "C" in VC Doesn't Stand for Corporation – But Maybe it Should - <AUTHOR> http://technori.com/2012/10/2647-the-c-in-vc-doesnt-stand-for-corporation-but-maybe-it-should/

<comment><USER2> It's a much easier decision in the UK. You incorporate.</comment>


Why Blind People Are Better at Math - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/why-blind-people-are-better-at-math <comment><USER2> Someone once told me about a maths student in grad school who said they couldn't really visualise 3D shapes. Like they could tell you what the definition of a cube was but they couldn't picture one.

Their field of research was something like algebraic geometry.</comment>


Information Theory and the Foundation of Life - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/20170126-information-theory-and-the-foundation-of-life/ <comment><USER2> > Aging, too, has conventionally been seen as a trait dictated by evolution. > Organisms have a lifespan that creates opportunities to reproduce, the story > goes, without inhibiting the survival prospects of offspring by the parents > sticking around too long and competing for resources.

Can someone with more bio expertise explain this theory to me? I've heard it said before, but it doesn't seem right to me. Some species disperse widely, and the offspring end up far from their parents, not really competing for resources. Wouldn't such species evolve quickly not to age, if possible? Similarly, wouldn't it be far better for non-migrating species not to age but instead evolve to migrate when old?

It seems intuitive to me that keeping an old body from falling apart takes great resources / evolutionary focus, and there are diminishing returns the further out the age. e.g.,., if a species were only 1% likely to make it to old age T in the wild, then it would be hard to select for traits that led to it being in good shape at that age.

<comment><USER3> I agree; that line of thinking is only valid if aging is considered to be "beyond the ability to reproduce." If the organisms can still reproduce at the same rate, they are not too old to contribute to natural selection. However, a cumulative distribution over the number of offspring created by age for a particular fitness model will regardless overshadow reproduction in old age with the aggressive reproductive periods during youth, and there are likely diminished evolutionary returns for keeping an organism around longer.

On an ecosystem/gaia scale, there is also the argument that organisms that never die will break the ecosystem by failing to return nutrients to the nutrient cycle. However, this is not necessarily an argument against biological immortality, as there are plenty of other ways to die (starvation, predation, etc.)

<comment><USER4> To expand on your second paragraph, I would say it's not argument at all because it implies purpose. There is nothing to stop the ecosystem from breaking.

If there was a species that "fixed" aging and continued to reproduce, it would be so successful it would take over and break the ecosystem. This was never observed, not because of "purpose", but most likely because there is entropy limit to extending lifespan (mentioned in the end of article).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you liked this article, you'd probably also enjoy the book "The Information", by James Gleick.

<comment><USER4> Thank you for this recommendation. The book is fantastic so far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I believe I might have been the first person to correctly analyse the thermodynamics of evolution by natural selection: [http://thinkinghard.com/evolution/2ndlaw.html](http://thinkinghard.com/evolution/2ndlaw.html) (originally [http://web.archive.org/web/19961221074218/http://www.xmissio...](http://web.archive.org/web/19961221074218/http://www.xmission.com/~gastown/dorrell/therm.htm)).

<comment><USER7> Unfortunately, people often get credit for popularizing ideas rather than being the first to conceive of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if this can also explain the variable success of different societies and cultures. Perhaps societies in environments of greater disequilibrium will "evolve" cultures that most efficiently model their environments and thus are most efficient at dissipating energy and hence increasing the external global entropy.

</comment><comment><USER8> I would like to see a new approach to/insights from this idea using the Fluctuation Theorem. Maybe even in the language of David Deutsch's constructor theory..!

(I can already hear the scorn)</comment>


How Do You Spend Your Time? - <AUTHOR> http://howtosplitanatom.com/questions/how-do-you-spend-your-time/

<comment><USER2> Answering questions posted to news.yc</comment>


A Python script that saves Google Reader unread items to Markdown files - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tslmy/Grum

<comment><USER2> How about saving starred items?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's easy to achieve: [https://github.com/tslmy/Grum/tree/starredItems](https://github.com/tslmy/Grum/tree/starredItems)</comment></comment>


Google gets 'ungoogleable' off Sweden's new word list - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21944834

<comment><AUTHOR> Xerox is a common example of a trademarked name becoming the generic colloquial term, so if you make a xerox you may or may not be using a copy machine branded as a Xerox. Even my Mac OS X dictionary defines google (lowercase G) as "search for information about (someone or something) on the Internet, typically using the search engine Google," so it shouldn't be that big of a deal if the Swedish word ogooglebar isn't specific to Google searches. As the article and my Rice linguistics professors say, it's the speakers that define the language, not some prescriptive overlord. So I recommend everyone start throwing around ogooglebar or ungoogleable in all conversations about things that can't be found with ANY search engine. ;)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just noticed there's a poll going on whether or not you think ungoogleable means:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5446558></comment>


App Engine's New Go 1.11 Runtime - <AUTHOR> https://blog.golang.org/appengine-go111 <comment><USER2> I'm the tech lead and primary software engineer on the Go runtime. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask! I'm super thrilled to announce that Go 1.11 is now available on App Engine! We now support...

* vendoring

* regular best-practice package structures

* go modules

* the regular Google Cloud client libraries: [https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/google-cloud-go](https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/google-cloud-go)

This is a "second-generation" runtime ([https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/gcp/introducing- app-e...](https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/gcp/introducing-app-engine- second-generation-runtimes-and-python-3-7)), meaning that we're now running stock Go in the gVisor sandbox ([https://github.com/google/gvisor](https://github.com/google/gvisor)). We've removed all of the restrictions present in the old runtime, like limited socket and file access. You can even import "unsafe"!

If you're a current Go-on-App Engine customer, you should check out our migration guide at [https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/go111/go- di...](https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/go111/go-differences) to learn how to migrate from the Go 1.9 runtime to the new Go 1.11 runtime. For the time being, you can still use the legacy App Engine APIs with the Go 1.11 runtime, but you should start migrating to the Google Cloud client libraries.

<comment><USER3> Hey buss, thanks for stopping by.

How do you feel about the distinction between Google and Go? It sometimes feels like they're joined at the hip, something which historically had made people queasy (Java and Oracle, .NET and Microsoft, etc). Though Go is a project which came from Google, I personally feel that it better serves the interests of the Go community to treat them separately. Google receives special treatment from Go - the announcement that AWS Lambda would support Go did not receive similar fanfare on golang.org.

Side note: there is some activity on the Go blog which is more mutual cooperation and less Google hivemind:

[https://blog.golang.org/go-cloud](https://blog.golang.org/go-cloud)

But I still wonder why this stuff belongs here.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. To even submit content to the Go Blog requires a Google account. Ugh.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not trying to stir shit up...buuut it seems odd that an announcement for a Google Cloud product is being published on the Go project's blog?

I say this as a huge fan of Google Cloud and the experience of using Go on App Engine.

<comment><USER4> Likely because it's clearly Go related?

"Announcing [some cloud]'s New Go 1.11 Runtime"

That being said, I have no idea how similar submissions of Go content from competing vendors would er... go. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does this new classic+ environment now supersede the Flex environment?

I'm curious because now it's seems like there are 3 solutions. Although I really like the simplicity of this solution and the modernizing from the constraints of true classic mode.

<comment><USER7> (GCP Gopher here)

If you can run within the standard environment, I'd suggest you do (but you should check pricing, etc to see if it suits). Especially if you want 0-1 scaling.

I migrated golang.org from standard to flexible a couple weeks ago, primarily because of increased control over the runtime (custom Docker image) and increased instance sizes (configurable memory, CPU past the App Engine limits, which caps out at 2 GB). See [https://golang.org/issues/27205](https://golang.org/issues/27205) if you want to read more.

<comment><USER8> Do you have blog post with data, number of instances etc previously and now ?

<comment><USER7> I don't, sorry. While the app was unhealthy, it was spinning up dozens of instances. While it was healthy (on standard), I recall it ran on less than a handful of instances.

It currently runs on two fat flexible instances (GCE VM), but could easily run on one. We only run on two for some redundancy.

I've measured throughput of ~thousands of requests per second on a F4_1G on apps I've worked on previously. They were CPU-constrained, but not doing very much (JSON serialization).

The new runtime might be even better, since GOMAXPROCS is no longer 1.

correction to my post above: 1 GB is the max memory for standard: [https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/#instance_c...](https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/#instance_classes)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm loving the new vendoring via go modules. Can't wait for it to be the default in Go 1.12

</comment><comment><USER10> Before anyone asks, this is still a beta release that's not covered by App Engine SLA.

</comment><comment><USER11> Wonder if it's still possible to get answers here :) giving it a shot although it's 13h old by now.

We use Go for a production server for multiple of our games, it's used to sync gamestates between devices and allows us to remotely inspect and change player's gamestate. Super handy and it's worked flawlessly! We used to use python, but Go is much better suited as it's less error prone.

One question though, we've been having connectivity issues in China, the GAE is deployed in the US, and as it seems there's no multiregional support. What can we do? Ideally keeping as much of the convenience of the GAE as possible.

</comment><comment><USER12> This actually seemed to be live a week or two ago, I managed to run Miniflux [1] on App Engine with no changes though to get it working properly it would need it's scheduling changing.

[1] - [https://github.com/miniflux/miniflux](https://github.com/miniflux/miniflux)

<comment><USER13> (App Engine PM here) Nice to hear! Yes indeed, we announced Go 1.11 on App Engine last week at Cloud Next London.

<comment><USER12> Ah I hadn't seen that, I was quite surprised when I used goapp111 and it deployed successfully. It's great to be able to take a normal Go application and run it on Google Cloud. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is this a GA product or still "beta"? Google's consistent announcement of products as available while in beta is getting annoying, because their SLAs for "beta" products are still 0 and thus impossible to be able to use in actual business applications.

<comment><USER7> (GCP Gopher)

Yes, it's beta.

You're right - if you require an SLA, don't use beta products.

As per [https://cloud.google.com/terms/launch- stages](https://cloud.google.com/terms/launch-stages):

> Beta is the point at which we are ready to open a release for any customer > to use. There are no SLA or technical support obligations in a Beta release, > and charges may be waived in some cases. Products will be complete from a > feature perspective, but may have some open outstanding issues. Beta > releases are suitable for limited production use cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hmm, I was just running into some context annoyances but this seems to remedy some nuances regarding that. Cool! Good timing!

I'm assuming urlfetcher is deprecated now too? I'll go read the migration guide now ...

Awesome work! Love Go and GAE! Very happy so far.

<comment><USER2> You can use net/http to fetch URLs now :)

Glad you're enjoying both Go and GAE!

<comment><USER15> What was the reason urlfetcher had to be engineered in the past? Curious.

<comment><USER2> I don't think I can say much more than: technical choices that required a different path to fetch resources from the broader internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Am I understanding this correctly, App Engine has made it so "go run goapp.go" on my local environment is basically accomplished with "runtime: goapp" in the app.yaml? No other changes necessary in the code?

<comment><USER2> runtime: go111, but otherwise -- yes!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I haven't used GAE since early days, but I heard it supports Docker now. Why wouldn't I just use Docker with whatever runtime I want?

<comment><USER7> (GCP Gopher)

We support custom images for the flexible runtime, but not for the standard runtime.

If you're as keen for that as I am, sign up here: [http://g.co/serverlesscontainers](http://g.co/serverlesscontainers)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have some C++ libraries called from Go - can I use them now?

<comment><USER19> cgo is supported.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> F</comment>


Bill Gates on quest to reinvent the toilet - <AUTHOR> http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-08-15/bill-gates-on-quest-to-reinvent-the-toilet/4199962

<comment><USER2> Didn't he already create Vista?</comment>


Ask HN: Should I change name of Clippopo? - <AUTHOR> English is not my native language, so that may lead to some biases in perception of English words.
I'm building a www.clippopo.com — clip-sharing platform allowing to share moments in long videos.
People of Reddit advised that "popo" can refer to slang "cops" or related to "butt" in some languages.
When I made up that name I was referring to Limpopo river in South Africa. And there is also at least a Hippopotamus.
How are those excepted in English-speaking world? Is "popo" a real problem in "Clippopo"? <comment><USER2> I don't think "popo" is really a problem, but the name just doesn't sound good to me. It feels awkward to a native English speaker.

If it were my project, I would first look to the generic TLDs, and choose one that pairs nicely with the word "clip" or "clips", or something similar (but not Clippy LOL).

I would look through [https://domcomp.com](https://domcomp.com), filter by "gTLDs" (and maybe ccTLDs also).

Here are a few I see at a glance (not checking whois):

        clip.stream
        clip.link
        clip.dog (with a dog mascot / logo maybe)
        clip.show
        clip.watch
        clip.zone
        clip.rip
        clip.it / clips.it
        clips.lol

Good luck with your project :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for response. I thought about clip.X, but didn't found any I like. Will think again. BTW opened site you linked only with www. added.

I wonder why Clippy is not and lol?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't think "popo" is a problem in the U.S. or the U.K.

Maybe people would have a problem in Jamaica or the Philippines or other minor market.

So far as "cops" are concerned, consider the word "pig" which is a slang for cops. My neighbors have pigs, there is "pig iron", the word is used plenty and unless you have some site which exists to defame the police ("Clips" of police acting badly) I think you don't have to worry about obscure slang.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for response. I also tend to think so. Seems like it's a bit of a stretched problem.

But after thinking a bit I found clipleap.com and consider switching to it. Could you please suggest how it sounds to you? If you were to chose would you switch?

<comment><USER3> I like clipleap.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Moved to [https://www.clipleap.com/](https://www.clipleap.com/)</comment>


Did Bankers Rob the Middle Class?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/01/did-bankers-rob-the-middle-class/69248/

<comment><USER2> The argument is really simple. Big banks (and the bigger of the enterprises) benefit disproportionately from cheap or free money. These businesses are receiving real goods in exchange for "printed" money.

Tyler Cowen's argument is less strict than that though: big banks (or related enterprises) benefit disproportionately from taking high risks. Individuals or small companies would go bankrupt, while big companies are saved with printed money. This money will displace regular consumers from the market, making them relatively poorer (than otherwise).

<comment><USER3> Privatize profit,

socialize loss,

blame the free market,

and strut like a boss.

<comment><USER4> "I've abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system."

\- George W. Bush

<comment><USER5> At least Bush never presented himself as an expert on economics, what about this classic:

"we today in our country have economic stability not boom and bust"

\- Gordon Brown

<comment><USER6> said on March 28 2002, speech to the TGWU conference, Manufacturing matters.

When this might have well been the feeling. For everyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Kevin Drum responds to this argument here: <http://motherjones.com/kevin- drum/2011/01/matt-yglesias>

Basically, here's arguing from deduction: increasing prosperity from productivity enhancements could have gone to workers, but their wages have remained flat while the top 0.1%'s have skyrocketed. The mechanism is unclear (he suggests the wealthy have manipulated government policy and smashed unions), but the action is not.

</comment><comment><USER8> The author introduces the topic of banks skimming money off the top during good times and receiving bailouts in bad times, but does not make the connection to the real economy.

Huge interventions in the economy do not happen in a vacuum. If capital chases high returns in the financial sector, it does so at the expense of investment in productive industries. If profits are generated by financial institutions leveraging the "privatize profits, socialize losses" system and then paid out to their employees, they are in essence feeding off the taxpayer to pay their bonuses.

Further, wages rise in a sector when the sector is growing: seeing increased profits and/or increased investment. It's natural to see wage stagnation if the financial sector continues to skim off the top of productive industry.

And finally- the prices of education and healthcare mentioned by the author are most definitely tied to loose monetary policy that benefits the financial sector. While some of these costs aren't measured in core inflation, inflation is still happening, the end result being that people make the same but have to pay more to send their kids to school, take care of their health problems, eat food, drive cars...

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder about the "value of degree" graphs in these articles. I don't think they tell the whole story.

In particular, over a person's working life they'll typically increase income by gaining experience and probably jump jobs a few times for a pay raise, particularly early in the career.

Consider that college student with a summer job or the waitress putting herself through school; they will be part of the income statistics for "no degree" but clearly the lack of a degree isn't necessarily holding that person back. The fact that they've chosen to go to school rather than work full time hurts their income.

If that's not clear, consider two people, one who graduates high school and becomes an electrician, and another who has a part time job and goes to college. They're both included in the high-school graduate category before the student graudates, and the student's income drags the statistic down.

Now the student graduates and immediately gets a job with a salary on par with the electrician. Even though they're now making the same amount of money, the statistics show the "no-degree" person is far worse off.

It seems there's a significant demographic bias at play here. Arguing that a specific person is likely to benefit financially from getting a degree based on that data seems wrong.

And the salary chart doesn't include the opportunity cost of not working during the time it takes to get a degree, or the actual cost in tuition, etc.

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't understand how this gets dropped in every single article on this. They don't differentiate between different types of education. Patio wrote a great blog post about this recently, and there was a ton of HN discussion about it. The shortest answer is that not all the degrees are the same. All these studies really show that a lot of engineers, doctors, lawyers, and yes people in finance, make a good salary and are less likely to be unemployed. That does not mean that college is a good value for everyone. Many people would more likely benefit greatly from learning to be a plumber, mechanic, or other trade than getting a degree in american history. Sure, if you have the money to burn on the experience, fine. But, the idea that a degree in a non-professional field (especially if financed via loans) is worth it should be over.

Link to discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2074044>

</comment><comment><USER11> To me the major problem seems to be that anyone who is in a position to fix the problem has no incentive to do so.

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't see why his argument, however weak it is, makes an argument as to whether or not banks 'robbed' the middle class. Oddly, he didn't mention that banks underwrote many educational loans. The whole article can be summed up as: "You think banks robbed the middle class? Well, I think education costs did; oh, and probably other things too."

IMO, this is particularly low-caliber for the Atlantic.

</comment><comment><USER13> of course. robbing poor people is the credit card companies' job.

<comment><USER14> People don't have to get credit cards. They don't have to buy stuff they can't afford.

People should be taught self restraint and living within their means in schools.

Personally I wouldn't blame credit card companies one bit. They are taking money from silly people who are giving them money in return for crap they don't need.

<comment><USER15> > People should be taught self restraint and living within their means in > schools.

People should be taught self restraint and living within their means at home.

<comment><USER14> Sure... both.. Society should change and stop relying on credit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> _Every statistic tells the same story: If you want to earn more, learn more. Between 1973 and 2007, real wages fell 15 percent for non high-school grads; stayed flat for high school grads and workers with "some college"; and rose 18 percent for both college grads and advanced degree grads. Upshot: Just as the cost of college has become prohibitive for many families, the benefits of college have only increased._

Perhaps OP spent too much time memorizing textbook details in college when he failed to learn what almost every Hacker News reader has long known:

Correlation != Causation

Just because there is a correlation between "years of education" and "income", it does not necessarily follow that "less education" _causes_ "lower income". Just a few scenarios where correlation != causation:

\- One without the ambition for education may similarly lack ambition for _anything_ , including hard work.

\- One with family responsibilities may lack the opportunity for _both_ college and a better job.

\- One with health issues will have equal difficulty pursuing higher education and a higher earning job.

\- One able to afford long years of schooling may already be better positioned by family/friends for higher paying possibilities.

\- One who cannot even imagine going to college (for any reason) may have equal difficulty imagining succeeding in _anything_.

In each of these cases, lack of education didn't cause lower earnings, but _both_ were the results of some other cause. I imagine there are many other scenarios, as well.

<comment><USER17> I think you are, perhaps, playing with the definition of causation in a strange way.

Causation is constant conjunction of events; that these things are correlative, and that there are other mitigating factors possibly leading to both at the same time, does not mean that there is not a causal relationship between them.

Correlation does not imply causation, but it also doesn't prohibit causation. None of the things that you listed really have an effect on a causative relationship between education and income (even though they might be contributing factors to both).

From a common sense perspective, quite a number of high paying jobs require a technical or professional degree. When you post a job listing, there are often educational requirements. If you don't have a college degree, the highest paying fields, such as doctor, lawyer, engineer... are completely closed off to you. With the industrialization of HR in modern companies, certain things, like years of education, are certainly used to 'weed out' candidates. (Try applying to an engineering job with just a GED).

Aside from that, the author isn't really implying a causal relation, he is just stating a strong statistical correlation. If you want to make a boatload of cash, chances are that getting an education is a good idea.

<comment><USER18> I think the "correlation != causation" response is overplayed. Thank you for your reply. I was about to respond similarly but what you said was more succinct than what I was going to write.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Money, power and greed. It's a force like gravity. Let's call it MPG The more some people get the more that seems to fall their way. The acquired resources will be used to keep the MPG going, everyone else be damned.

The number one enabler is the politicos who bend rules, ignore laws and create laws that disrupt an otherwise functioning system in an effort to strengthen MPG for those who have it and potentially acquiring some leftovers for themselves.

<comment><USER20> I knew a guy who once said the following:

"It takes money to make money, but once you make money, money makes itself."

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Cached copy (site is down):

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/01/did- bankers-rob-the-middle-class/69248/)

</comment><comment><USER22> Not a very informative article. There's nothing in it other than baseless speculation and weak inferences.</comment>


Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/17/business/media/denver-post-blockchain-colorado-sun.html <comment><USER2> > _People who purchase the CVL token, a form of cryptocurrency, will have a > say concerning the projects hosted by Civil — meaning that they can vote on > whether one of its websites violates the company's journalism standards, > which are outlined in the Civil Constitution_

This features the worst elements of public ( _e.g._ the _BBC_ ), private ( _e.g._ the _Wall Street Journal_ ) and patronage ( _e.g._ the _Washington Post_ ) media.

Letting token owners "vote on whether...websites violate the company's journalism standards" explicitly removes editorial independence. Worse, it ties editorial control to tokens/votes which are bought with money. Worse still, since ownership is pseudonymous, there is no way to detect someone ( _e.g._ a wealthy individual, company or foreign government) amassing control across disparate wallets. Pseudonymity also makes shaming owners for bad behaviour difficult or impossible.

<comment><USER3> Can't emphasise this enough. Any system that lets (rich) people vote on what the truth is cannot be called journalism. It is simply not how facts work. This is also why Elon Musks recent initiative ("Pravduh"?) has all the populist appeal in the world, yet contains the risk to do serious damage to journalistic independence.

<comment><USER4> And who exactly do you think owns the current media companies in the US?

<comment><USER2> > _who exactly do you think owns the current media companies in the US?_

Point being we can answer this question. If you put ownership on the blockchain, we can't. It's exactly what we have today, but worse.

<comment><USER4> This is shifting the goal posts. The point is we have a media that's already well under the thumb of 'rich people', to use the phrase of the person I originally responded to. And so comparing any idea to an ideal of an independent media free of this control is rather disingenuous.

For your shift, is anonymizing control in exchange for a clear ledger of control a bad deal? I'm not sure. Seems like an interesting idea at least, and given the current state of our media I'm more than happy to see any idea trying to change the game.

<comment><USER5> You have a good point, but that doesn't make this proposal any more viable.

> _given the current state of our media I 'm more than happy to see any idea > trying to change the game._

Sounds like an intuitive statement until you really think about it for a second. Then, you realize that it's a reckless and possibly dangerous approach to problem-solving.

If you start down the solution path by asking the question "how could things get any worse?", then it's very likely that you'll find out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Like Steemit, this cannot incentivize production long term unless it has more efficient means of monetization, which it doesn't. Steem subsidizes content through inflation of a token during a speculative mania. To put it mildly, this is not sustainable. Though the founders did astonishingly well on their exit.

Putting a newspaper on a blockchain, to the extent the idea is even coherent, does not exempt it from the economics that makes journalism unremunerative.

This is not to say that we cannot use crypto currencies to perform activities that were traditionally performed by journalists. However, this will look more like anonymous information bounty markets or prediction markets.

But even prediction markets need someone to subsidize them, willfully taking a loss to provide liquidity. I think there is a good case to be made for using demurrage to do this. But for this to work there has to be actual long term economic value on the blockchain, which most lack.

<comment><USER7> Hello! I'm an engineer at Civil.

While our TCR will not solve the economics of journalism on its own, we believe it will help provide transparency into the inner workings of newsrooms and increase media literacy in ways that could encourage more people to fund journalism organizations. Furthermore, we think it can vastly improve discoverability especially for smaller (but still ethical and reliable) news organizations.

From there, it's about giving newsrooms tools to run and monetize their business how they want. For some this might look like traditional newspaper subscriptions, for others we might see more experimental monetization schemes that are only feasible on the blockchain (such as bounties).

\-- Nick Reynolds

p.s. - Have you looked into TCRs generally? There's a fair amount of overlap with prediction markets, you might be interested in learning more about the incentive system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Now I am no expert on blockchain and business administration but... Since these CVL tokens could be tradeable, and they grant "a say concerning the projects hosted by Civil"...

Uhm...

Doesn't this all look like, basically, company shares? Doesn't this mean that the problem has just been shifted but potentially not solved ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Stockholders, especially retail investors, don't typically have privileged access or ability to give input to a newsroom.

<comment><USER9> And they shouldn't. News should not be determined by its shareholders. The idea that such privileges should be able to be purchased is so incomprehensibly stupid, I'm at a loss for words.

<comment><USER10> You don't think it already isn't purchased and hasn't been for a very long time? There are only a handful of media companies, at least in the USA.

<comment><USER11> It's obvious when the _Washington Post_ writes articles about Amazon that there's a conflict of interest. They definitely write them, but I don't remember anyone sharing any stories from them about e.g. the HQ2 process. People know to look elsewhere. And conversely, the moment the _Post_ publishes a news (not opinion) article about how every city should want to be HQ2, or worse, mentions it off-hand in an article about something else, everyone knows not to trust that and possibly to lose trust in the news source in general. So they don't.

It's not obvious when ownership is a thousand pseudonymous private keys when there's a conflict of interest. If a random article about a random company looks a little more negative than it should be, who knows if the current pseudonymous owners are shorting that company?

Publicly-disclosed ownership of the media by the rich has a ton of disadvantages, yes. But I don't the blockchain solving any of those disadvantages, and I see it introducing a new one that is specifically avoided by publicly-disclosed ownership by the rich.

<comment><USER10> How many people are actually informed that the Washington Post is owned by Jeff Bezos? How many people know that Jeff Bezos has contracts with the CIA[1] & sits on a pentagon board[2]? I doubt many. It's one of the few "left" wing newspapers I refuse to read for the reasons above.

I'm not arguing for this blockchain solution, I think it makes things worse exactly as you said.

[1][https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/07/the-d...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/07/the- details-about-the-cias-deal-with-amazon/374632/)

[2] [http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos- joins-p...](http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-joins- pentagon-defense-advisory-board-2016-8)

<comment><USER12> Every time the Washington Post mentions Bezos, or a company he owns, even in the abstract (for instance, in this spaceflight article, which mentions blue origin: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2018/06/15/f...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2018/06/15/feature/what- does-it-mean-to-be-a-nasa-astronaut-in-the-celebrity-space-age-of-elon-musk- and-richard-branson/?utm_term=.409568fbd10d) ), they say that Jeff Bezos owns the washington post, in those exact words.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I propose a new rule of the internet, much like the rule of "if you can think of it, there's porn for it." If you can think of it, there's a alt coin for it.

It's genuinely difficult. One friend suggested "a coin for space travel". Nope. Mars coin is a thing. What about a coin for students? Nope. A coin for Kanye West. Nope. A coin for porn? Nope, of course that already exists. There's even a coin for keeping track of blockchains.

<comment><USER14> A coin for Cymothoa exigua. COBOLCoin. A coin based on MD2 hashing for proof- of-work.

<comment><USER15> Are you accepting investments?

<comment><USER14> ...

Not _yet_ , I guess?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Ridiculous story. When was the last time you heard of a newspaper going under because its stories weren't "written permanently into the secure digital ledger known as the blockchain"?

Newspapers are dying because other kinds of companies ate their advertising revenue.

We can add the Denver Post to a list of old-guard companies desperately grabbing for blockchain straws on their slide to oblivion (Long Island Iced Tea, Kodak).

I'm all for innovation in applied cryptography. But these desperate stories of blockchain cargo-cultism need to stop.

<comment><USER17> I believe I've seen claims that classified ads used to support newspapers, and the internet took that away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Like in most cases a blockchain is useless here. Why not just used a centralized system? Nothing is gained from decentralization since the organization has to be trusted to recognize the voting power of the tokens either way. Totally pointless.

<comment><USER7> Hello! I'm an engineer at Civil.

I'm not really sure what you mean by this. Once the Registry contract is deployed on the blockchain, it will continue to function and provide utility no matter what happens to the "Civil Media Company". No involvement on our part is needed to "recognize the voting power" as any individual, entity, or website can use the information contained in the registry however they want. A social media site, for example, could query the registry and decide to render a "credibility badge" when displaying links from a news organization that is whitelisted.

Happy to help clarify if you still have questions.

\-- Nick Reynolds

<comment><USER18> > _A social media site, for example, could query the registry and decide to > render a "credibility badge" when displaying links from a news organization > that is whitelisted._

Yes, the key word is "decide". To use your "credibility badge" example, an organization could ostensibly behave like they accurately respect the registry while also surreptitiously ignoring the registry in situations that suit them. You might say, "well those organizations will develop a reputation for dishonesty", which might be true _if they get caught_ , but also isn't at all different from the status quo today where selective reporting and partisan bias are bemoaned loudly and often by every side regarding every issue.

<comment><USER7> Since the registry is public, it would be very easy to write tools like a browser extension that would handle validating against the registry, preventing the type of fraud you're talking about. More generally, there's an interesting project called MetaCert that is doing just that (fraud/phishing prevention) using their own cryptoeconomic incentive system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Cure middle age balding .... with Blockchain.

</comment><comment><USER20> What makes this different than a co-op, aside from the "definitely not a scam guys, honest!" overtones of selling unregulated stock disguised as tokens? That and hosting everything "on the blockchain" for some inscrutable reason?

And what does hosting news "on the blockchain" even mean in any practical sense? That I'll have to install a crypto-mining client just to read their articles? Or that they won't use normal webservers to host their content?

</comment><comment><USER21> I often click a bunch of links on here and receive a "Sorry, you've exceeded the free limit" message. Why can't I dump $5 into an account on NYT and then be able to click "I want to read this, use my tab." I'm not talking about a subscription. I'm talking about a "buy 10 reads" which I would absolutely use. I will not subscribe.

<comment><USER22> Having run a business (in an unrelated field) that offered both a subscription and a paygo model, the reason was pretty clear: you lose more from people who would have subscribed opting for paygo than you gain from people who would never subscribe but would choose paygo.

The subscriptions are surprisingly valuable. Paygo not so much.

Usual caveats apply: on average, in my experience, YMMV, etc etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Steemit has been running for some time to demonstrate that a blockchain based publishing platform is possible. I suspect many more papers will launch private blockchain based storage, it provides transparent voting and censorship resistance, both valuable to a publisher.

</comment><comment><USER24> There are many good studies from more than ten years ago, about participatory voting systems. I think many of the knee-jerk cynical posts here are premature.

<comment><USER25> I'm curious about these studies, do you have a link?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is the _only_ application I've seen for a blockchain that isn't totally brain-dead. I'm certainly skeptical, but skepticism is better than certainty it will fail.

I'll be watching it with interest.

<comment><USER27> While not completely brain-dead, a blockchain still is not necessary to solve this use case.

<comment><USER6> I think it is fair to say it is completely brain dead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > They will be partnering with the Civil Media Company, an ambitious New York > start-up that aims to use griddles and pancake recipes to start 1,000 > publications nationwide by the end of the year.

...actually I think the original quote said something about crypto, not pancakes, but I don't think it changes the underlying meaning. Why do you need a distributed, trustless database to run a local paper?

> The new publication will have a conventional website whose data will be > written permanently into a MySQL database.

Whups, sorry, that actually was meant to say "...into the secure digital ledger known as the blockchain." Which...okay. 1) I think they mean "a blockchain", and 2) why do we...care? Is this so people will notice if the article is edited? Why not just push the content to a public git repo when it's published? Maybe sign the commits?

> People who purchase the CVL token, a form of cryptocurrency, will have a say > concerning the projects hosted by Civil — meaning that they can vote on > whether one of its websites violates the company's journalism standards

So in other words, it's a lot like...a public company, that owns a newspaper, that then strips out every hint of editorial control, and then lets its shareholders directly have a say in every detail of what gets printed? So it's like...literally an attempt to create a newspaper even worse than the one they're quitting in order to form this one?

> Matthew Iles, the chief executive of Civil, said that by selling ownership > stakes to the public, the company seeks to eliminate the possibility of one > company or a small group of investors exerting power and influence over a > journalistic organization and compromising its mission — exactly what many > employees of the Denver Post accused Alden of doing.

By selling ownership, they think they're stopping one rich person from amassing a major ownership stake, as happened when their last newspaper sold ownership and allowed one rich person to amass a major ownership stake? What must it feel like to live with this level of blinding naivety?

The good news, such as it is, is that ownership of the tokens doesn't actually give anyone control over the newspaper, meaning that this is _actually_ just meaningless hype. But, by the same logic, there's also no reason to actually buy the tokens. They have value only to the extent they allow editorial independence to be violated. So either they'll be valuable (but will undermine the journalistic ethics of the organisation), or they'll be worthless. There's no upside here.

It's early Monday morning in this part of the world, and I literally cannot figure out if this is an overly subtle troll or merely the dumbest idea I've heard in quite some time. This basically seems to be an attempt to use inappropriate technologies in order to carefully craft a "solution" that will make the problem worse. If you're worried about local newspapers being financially unviable and subject to intrusive editorial control...how does this do anything but make it worse?

<comment><USER29> > Matthew Iles, the chief executive of Civil, said that by selling crypto > tokens masquerading as ownership stakes they could raise a large amount of > capital without setting any expectation of returns.

It's just another coin capital scam. Launch a crypto coin, get suckers to buy it, go yacht shopping.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I am not sure what newspapers should look like now... it doesn't seem like they can be local and profitable any longer. Hm....

</comment><comment><USER31> another blockchain hype?

</comment><comment><USER32> Hahaha, oh wait you are serious, let me laugh harder.

<comment><USER33> Please don't do this here.</comment></comment>


Exam Cheats Cited in Three-Day Internet Shutdown in Ethiopia - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-13/exam-cheats-cited-in-three-day-internet-shutdown-in-ethiopia <comment><USER2> This happens every year.</comment>