How to fight back against Google AMP as a web user and a web developer - <AUTHOR> https://markosaric.com/google-amp <comment><USER4> I worked on amp for a leading newspaper, and everyone who says that amp is about "making the web faster on mobile" is either very naive or doing marketing for google.

For publishers, amp is about trying to top the results on google search and capture traffic, it's their only motivation to publish their content using amp, and the only metric they look in order to evaluate the results.

Once they have their amp content, they will look how to load it with ads and tracking, which very conveniently is supported on amp, just as they do in their regular sites.

So the "fast" part, besides using their CDN, actually comes from limiting what you can do on almost every other part of the site, you can only do the stuff that is packed in the amp components controlled by google, which in practice means that google controls the web behavior.

<comment><USER5> Of course AMP has other motives than simply making the web faster for mobile, but it also does make the web faster for mobile. I guarantee the AMP version of that paper's mobile website provided a significantly better user experience than the normal version. That is why AMP has been successful, and it's why I will continue to click on AMP links whenever available.

Is giving Google that much control ideal? Of course not, but from a user perspective it's a hell of a lot better than the alternative.

<comment><USER6> > it also does make the web faster

this is true

> That is why AMP has been successful

This is not. If google removes ranking incentive, people will forget about AMP the next day

<comment><USER7> >> That is why AMP has been successful

>This is not. If google removes ranking incentive, people will forget about AMP the next day

Google giving ranking incentive to sites that are faster seems like the exact sort of thing they should be doing.

<comment><USER8> > Google giving ranking incentive to sites that are faster seems like the > exact sort of thing they should be doing.

Really? I thought Google's purpose was to find information in the web, not to give me fast links. If I am looking for an article, I want that article, not a different but faster one. If I am looking for a piece of information, I want the best fit, not the second or third best but faster fit.

<comment><USER7> Information delivered slowly is less useful than information delivered quickly[1]. If there are 5 takes on an AP-wire article I _want_ google to give me a fast site over a bloated slow site. The finer points of how they get to a fast site don't particularly matter to me.

[1] One of the nicer features of HN is that it is snappy and responsive - <USER2> the polar opposite of many non-AMP news sites.

<comment><USER9> > If there are 5 takes on an AP-wire article I want google to give me a fast > site over a bloated slow site.

I'd want Google to give me the accurate, well-researched site. When the difference between "fast" and "slow" is a matter of seconds (or often milliseconds), I'm not sure why _better_ information delivered a few seconds later should be ranked lower.

<comment><USER7> Slower sites should be ranked lower for the same reason a dictionary that isn't alphabetized is less useful than one that is and both are less useful than dictionary.com. I'd rather have Webster than Oxford if Oxford will take twice as long and I'd rather not have urbandictionary.com over either -- hence a weighting.

Moreover that even if google could give me the canonical result[0] to my query its likely I will need to visit and view several sites to get the information I am searching for - information I will obtain faster when the sites are faster.

[0]Any ranking will be probabilistic and in all likelihood for common topics there will be multiple candidates within the expected error - why is it so great a sin to order them by accessibility?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Probably highly unpopular opinion, but as a user I've never had anything but positive experiences with AMP-enabled sites. They load massively faster than normal sites, especially on poor mobile connections where main sites sometimes hang indefinitely trying to load javascript, ads, etc.

While content publishers are continuing to overload their sites with further trackers, ads, javascript, remotely loading assets which slow down performance, AMP seems like one of the few counterbalances and is pro-user, even if Google's endgame is self-enrichment rather than benevolence.

Content publishers could easily fight back by independently improving their own performance and not forcing mobile users to suck down megabytes of trackers on shaky connections, but they seem to be choosing not to.

<comment><USER11> > They load massively faster than normal sites, especially on poor mobile > connections where main sites sometimes hang indefinitely trying to load > javascript, ads, etc.

Have you tried the normal mobile websites with an adblocker?

<comment><USER12> Good luck doing it on mobile phone. I'd say 99.99% users out there on mobile never even attempted to use another browser than safari or chrome for ios.

<comment><USER13> Firefox on android lets you install most of the available desktop extensions, so you can use your favourite ad blockers

<comment><USER14> But then you have to suffer using Firefox on Android.

<comment><USER15> There's nothing wrong with it, I've been using it for ages.

<comment><USER16> Well, once a webpage has played audio there's a notification that hangs around till you restart the phone. That's probably better than the cost of running Chrome, though.

<comment><USER17> You don't have to restart your phone. On Android you can close the app from the recent app list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm not a fan of Google's proprietary web, but it's worth pointing out that this is largely a response to the increasingly shitty way publishers treat their users. Just reading basic articles on the web has become a painful exercise in dodging "Subscribe" faux-pop-ups; trying to scan text while your vision is bombarded with unrelated video; and user-hostile scroll capture effects.

For much the same reasons Google AMP is a thing, I use Apple News for most of my news reading. The web has overcome commercial broadcast television as being the shittiest way of consuming content.

<comment><USER19> It's worth noting that Apple News take a 50% cut of the revenue. On the web, a publisher is free to do whatever they want so when Google can insert themselves into that, it is a fraction of the cut that Apple takes.

It's the sort of thing that reminds me why I want the web platform to remain competitive with iOS, Facebook, and Android. If not AMP, something like it was sorely needed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's tough to work-around the unilateral-disarmament problem here: if supporting AMP gives you a boost in Google SERPs it's difficult to boycott AMP if your competitors don't.

This is what is so insidious about what Google is doing here and seems to me to maybe make a good case that Google abuses its monopoly power.

(INB4: "It's a bad idea to make your business depend on Google traffic because that's fickle and outside of your control." Sure, that's true, but still, organic Google traffic is a pretty rich vein to completely ignore or cede to competitors.)

</comment><comment><USER21> I agree with all of this, but until google provides a way to appear in the discover box without having AMP-published pages, this is a non-starter for publishers. Ironically, by creating AMP, google has disincentivized publishers from making their canonical pages faster.

Publishers hate that google holds them hostage with AMP in this manner, but the situation is what it is, until someone from the Justice Department starts making the lords of Mountain View antsy.

<comment><USER5> >Ironically, by creating AMP, google has disincentivized publishers from making their canonical pages faster.

In theory, maybe, but I think history has clearly demonstrated that publishers will not make their pages faster if AMP didn't exist. That's why AMP has been so successful in the first place.

<comment><USER22> It would have been interesting if Google had openly added the same incentive (access to carousel at top of search results, search prioritization, special marker (lightning symbol)) to pages that follow the same guidelines AMP enforces (generally, avoid techniques that block page rendering or cause large layout changes), and published AMP as a reference implementation.

<comment><USER23> 100% agree with that and part of the issue is that they didn't. They had the option to begin aggressively de-prioritizing pages that have performance issues and are otherwise detrimental to user experience.. that would have resulted in some pretty swift changes to bad UX. Instead they created AMP and told publishers "you want to be on mobile search results, use this".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I would like to point out that it is possible to have web pages that load faster than AMP. It has not been made easy but many publishers have figured out (in some cases publishers have web pages that load faster than their AMP ones...)

Take a look: [https://webperf.xyz](https://webperf.xyz)

I have a number of issues with AMP but I will just mention two:

1\. If Google addressed how their ad system was being mis-used (and in many respects as-intended) that would have gone a long way to addressing webpage performance. Instead they pushed more work on the publisher to adopt yet another new format (add it to Facebook Instant Articles, Apple News JSON formats, Google News MediaRSS etc.)

2\. AMP helped killed some early momentum to make pages faster. They sold a bandaid solution that was 'good enough' for management and undercut engineering efforts to address the root cause.

<comment> 52-6F-62 And in the process introduced a whole new layer of cruft and the number of bugs I hear from the web teams trying to implement content with AMP is... it's constant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I used to use Google hundreds of times per day, literally everything I wanted to know I would type into Google.

Between their A) political activities (opinion influencing, censorship, etc.), B) business activities (user tracking, ruinous ads, etc.), and C) search quality issues (they have a major conflict of interest between providing good search results and maximizing A and B), I didn't even have to try to stop using them out of principle; I literally just don't get _any_ value out of using Google search anymore.

I use DuckDuckGo (starting circa 2013), which provides a fairly similar/mediocre quality search experience, but without all the other aforementioned problems. The truth of the matter is that these search giants ruined search so bad that I don't even really use search as much anymore. I've gotten to the point where I realize that I can no longer rely on finding things easily. This is not a problem of "the Internet has just gotten too big". This is a problem created by Google, which has now set a low benchmark.

</comment><comment><USER26> I have been using the "Redirect AMP to HTML" extension:

[https://www.daniel.priv.no/web- extensions/amp2html.html](https://www.daniel.priv.no/web- extensions/amp2html.html)

</comment><comment><USER27> My experience with AMP, immediately before seeing this article:

1\. On desktop, I clicked through a link on Facebook, leading to an AMP page

2\. The page was clearly meant for mobile, and looked bad on desktop; the images were full-screen size, the font was too big, and the text line length went all the way to the edges of my very wide browser window.

3\. I used Ctrl+Minus to adjust the zoom, which fixed the font size but not the images or the line length.

4\. I looked at the top and bottom of the page for a "desktop site" link, and couldn't find one.

5\. I looked at the address bar, and saw that the URL was an AMP URL. This is the first time I have noticed that I am using AMP in more than a month.

6\. I closed the tab and went to HN, where this was the top article.

When AMP works well, it's inconspicuous, so it's not so surprising that most of my remembered experiences with it are negative. Still, I think google needs to invest a bit more in preventing this sort of bad experience, because currently it comes across as "google breaking the web".

<comment><USER28> Every valid AMP page includes a <link rel=canonical href="..."> to the canonical URL for the document. If the aggregator (facebook in this case) parsed and linked to the canonical as the publisher recommends via this annotation, you would get the version the publisher preferred. This is how browser extensions that rewrite to the non-amp version work, they extract this URL.

The AMP viewer iframe share button (and share intents) all share this canonical URL, not the AMP url. Google's implementation is trying it's best to get you to that version as well when sharing links.

Link Rel Canonical is an old (2012) standard: [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6596](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6596)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I don't understand how Google's AMP business strategies are dissimilar to what Microsoft got in trouble for with Internet Explorer. Would be interested in what someone who is knowledgeable on that topic has to say.

<comment><USER30> One could argue, that it never really got Microsoft in _that_ much trouble. They retained Internet Explorer, and really all the requirements put on them by the U.S. and EU combined didn't amount to much.

Not saying it _shouldn't_ have gotten Microsoft into that much trouble, just that it did not.

<comment><USER31> It has been argued that Microsoft (higher management) missed the Web and/or the smartphone because they were caught up in litigation.

Imagine the position Google would be in today if both Chrome and Android were controlled by Microsoft.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> For those interested in security - AMP basically forces the iframe javascript sandbox security model.

[https://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/security/sandboxed-i...](https://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/security/sandboxed- iframes/)

Even reputable web pages tend to have a metric TON of non-sandboxed javascript from third parties. If you care about your security this is a risk.

If you stick with AMP - this is - by spec - prohibited.

Something to think about as you browse the web gobbling down javascript and all the other third party javascript being pumped at you.

<comment><USER18> Which conveniently ensures that the only way you can effectively monetize AMP articles is via Google's own advertising networks which don't have constraints on running javascript.

<comment><USER28> See the list of natively supported Ad networks in AMP: [https://amp.dev/documentation/components/amp- ad/#supported-a...](https://amp.dev/documentation/components/amp- ad/#supported-ad-networks)

There are about 200 in that list and any network can submit a config to be added, it's just a pull request away.

<comment><USER33> so AMP is like the play store but for advertisers?

<comment><USER31> Yes. The readers are the product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> "How to make your sites faster than AMP without using AMP" leaves out "locally cache a copy of your site in a CDN that is geographically close to your users." Which is the actual mechanical part of AMP that makes it technologically interesting / valuable to content providers and countries distant from the creation of most content.

<comment><USER21> It also omits the part where google starts preloading and rendering the AMP page when the user is still on the search results. Without that, AMP is often no faster than many non-amp pages.

<comment><USER35> This should be higher. By googling, you are using way more data because of AMP pages, that is big minus especially if you are on mobile plan

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I think there needs to be a real alternate solution from Google for longer term change. (if Google wants to stay relevant)

Can they just penalize slow/large file size sites in their index?

This seems like the underlying goal behind AMP and Chrome's Lighthouse (site audit tool) any way.

This would make a lot of sites fast in the next couple months. But maybe Google doesn't really want that?

<comment><USER37> > Can they just penalize slow/large file size sites in their index?

Well, that would be bad for the independent web, wouldn't it? I mean, you'd be penalising sites with large amounts of content, that aren't on a CDN. Large images or videos, for example, might be the entire point of the page in the first place. I don't want to be directed to to a webpage about an artist (for example) that has the crappiest, smallest and fastest loading images, I want the one with the best images.

<comment><USER38> The reason Google has penalties for page weight and loading time is that they have extensive user research on customer behavior related to loading time. If a flat page studded with a few dozen giant PNG's takes a minute to load, most people are going to click the back button.

It's worth spending some time optimizing your landing page so that it loads fast and renders cleanly on mobile, if you want people to see your content. That doesn't mean it has to use JS, or AMP.

<comment><USER39> > The reason Google has penalties for page weight and loading time is that > they have extensive user research on customer behavior related to loading > time. If a flat page studded with a few dozen giant PNG's takes a minute to > load, most people are going to click the back button.

Why is then basically every single page created by Google is a bloated monstrosity with multi-megabyte Pangs routinely embedded in them and loading megabytes of shitty JS?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Great post, although I'm a little _meh_ on lazy-loading images. I like when the whole page is finished loading the moment I think it's finished loading. But more to the point, lazy-loading _can be_ a crutch just like AMP is, for solving problems that shouldn't exist, such as: your page is big & bloated. If you keep it small, there's no need for lazy-loading. But you have to limit the number of images, and optimize the ones that are there. And probably only one video per page. Horrors! Obviously none of this works when the page is effectively infinite in size - such as when you're trying to give the user the addictive excitement of scrolling through a continuous, visually-rich "feed".

<comment><USER41> Yeah, please don't add lazy loading.

\- It breaks viewing the site with javascript disabled.

\- It prevents viewing the site offline (e.g. on an airplane) without first scrolling through the whole content while online.

\- Unless implemented perfectly it adds delays before content you have scrolled to becomes visible.

Deciding when to load stuff should be the browser's job. Don't reimplement the browser in javascript.

<comment><USER42> I'd love to see a lazy loading idiom implemented in pure HTML. But I'm not holding my breath.

<comment><USER16> What's wrong with ? Maybe some kind of semantic purpose  vs  but you can imagine every website owner will think that their logo is graphical content and respectful UA authors will need to disregard the semantic attributes and try to guess based on the presence or absence of some kind of caption, for instance.

UAs could easily lazy load by default on metred connections.

<comment><USER42> The page layout changes after the image loads, which is annoying as a user. Probably because users have been trained to hate page layout changes that happen a few seconds late because of that dark pattern where you change the page right as the user is about to click to change the thing they click on. How they achieve this on mobile is anyone's guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> On the topic of lazy load. If you are using non native lazy load, please have some kind of fallback if javascript is disabled. It stinks to have a page load and just get blurry images, and need to enable javascript for a couple pictures to render.

</comment><comment><USER44> I find it sad that Google bloats the web with all its analytics and fonts, and then offers a solution to fix the bloat by providing AMP instead.

And there are so many other third-party elements that are detrimental. It's sad that we have to use things like Firefox's tracking protection to remove all this bloat that people insert on webpages just because it's possible to do so today and it wasn't fifteen years ago.

It feels like a Pandora's Box at times. We can complain a lot but nothing is stopping you from adding just one more JS package to your app if you want to, because it's as easy as 'npm install' and you don't see the downsides.

</comment><comment><USER45> I moved away from all Google services (which I used to be keen to get involved with initially! How times have changed.) over the last few years. I don't miss any of them.

There are alternatives for everything. While you're at it, do the same for Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp, if you can. I only have Instagram left.

</comment><comment><USER46> Having separate URLs for the same target document is antithetical to the Web. See also TBL's essay, "Cool URIs don't change": [https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI](https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI)

</comment><comment><USER47> Another way to fight back against Google in general is to stop using Chrome and stop using google search.

Also stop using auto-update. Promote a diversity of browsers and browser versions.

<comment><USER48> I don't think recommending people to stop using automatic updates is a good thing because it likely means users will not receive security updates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I'd like to see a "vote with your wallet/attention" style search engine, where you can exclude certain sites from showing up based on the underlying and associated tech they use, and prefer sites that use tech you personally support, similar to ingredients lists on supermarket products. There is so much informational content out there that this kind of filtering wouldn't impact the user experience.

</comment><comment><USER50> The most annoying thing for me, as a vision-impaired user, is that AMP pages disable zoom.

I know that can be overridden in Chrome's accessibility settings, but it's a shitty practice that something like AMP shouldn't be promoting.

<comment><USER51> I think the idea is that you'll either use a screen reader or use the system zoom tool. Not defending it, but I can see the logic they used.

<comment><USER16> But what's wrong with using the web browser's zoom tool? Why is it somehow worse to get reflowing zoom? This idea that I'm using a phone optimised site so all text should be 8pt is just bizarre. It's not like the UA author has removed support for zoom: they're just disabling it arbitrarily.

<comment><USER50> It's not even about reflowing text, it's just the usual two-finger zoom gesture that gets disabled. I'm very accustomed to moving the large text as I read it, so don't even need reflow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> The only way is to make something better. Not using Chrome, not using Google Search, etc will have close to zero impact. Fix the mess so AMP isn't necessary. How? Your guess is better than mine.

</comment><comment><USER53> I like AMP. It's possible to write fast websites without it, and I do do that for my sites. For for big, non-tech sites AMP has provided sufficient motivation to offer a fast version. Nothing else has managed to do this before. I'd rather have fast AMP pages of all those news sites than having to load the slow default view. Experience suggests that the options aren't "fast with AMP or fast without AMP", but "fast or slow". It's for incentive reasons, not for technical reasons, but I'm still glad the fast version exists.

</comment><comment><USER54> Marko, bravo for making that clean and readable site (and having 0 trackers, as reported by Firefox Klar)!

There's one issue I noticed when clicking the links to page sections (#anchors). Those lazy-loaded images make the page scroll away from the section title I jumped to. Is it possible to fix that by having images replaced by placeholders of the same size?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind words and yeah no trackers/third-party calls/cookies etc. Have tested on regular Firefox for mobile and on Firefox Preview too (you should try it if you like Klar) and it works fine on both. I'll see if I can add placeholders when all this traffic slows down. Don't dare to touch much at this time.

<comment><USER41> Please remove lazy loading completely and instead leave the decision when to load content to the browser. Static content should never use any scripts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Another way to fight back is to promote alternatives such as DuckDuckGo. I just ordered a swanky tshirt

[https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help- pages/community/...](https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help- pages/community/swag/)

</comment><comment><USER56> If you have Android, deAMPify is great.

It seems to be abandoned, but still works for most sites.

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.joaomgcd.d...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.joaomgcd.deampify)

</comment><comment><USER57> As a user, AMP gives me a better experience than non-AMP search results. It's a tough sell to tell people like me that I should prefer the worse product (the slow, tracking infested, bloated full website).

<comment><USER58> As an iPhone user I find AMP to be painfully buggy. Rotation doesn't work properly, the URL bar doesn't hide properly, reader mode is routinely broken, pinch to zoom doesn't work, etc. I wish I could disable it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I don't particularly care to because I find it convenient.

</comment><comment><USER60> I remember looking at the original HTML5 spec and going, there is no way lower power / low bandwidth / high latency devices will be able to handle this efficiently. Nevertheless, we moved fast and broke things, ratified the HTML5 spec and paved the cowpaths without a second thought to language or efficiency.

Somewhere along the line, things came full circle. HTML was slow again, so we needed a new new way to efficiently render content, thus AMP was born.

<comment><USER41> In what way is HTML5 is inherently slower than previous versions? Pages tend to be slow because of the tracking and adds addded to them as well as client- side "rendering" for static content. None of that is required by HTML5.

<comment><USER60> Essentially html5 is significantly harder to parse because the amount of branching that has to be done. If you go look at the amp specification and the reasons behind it, they designed it to be a stripped-down light version of HTML5.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> I'm more likely to click AMP links in search results than non-AMP links. The reason for this is the pre-loading that Google does for them. The links load almost instantly, where some non-amp link might take up to 20 seconds to finally load enough where I can start scrolling past the ads.

The Facebook instant links (or whatever they're called) have much the same effect on me. I'll usually open those if the headline even makes me a little curious.

</comment><comment><USER62> > Just visiting a site with Firefox's Enhanced Tracking Protection on makes a > faster and less intrusive web. It's a built-in blocker of intrusive ads and > invisible scripts.

What am I missing here? I installed FireFox, set Enhanced Tracking Protection changed to "strict", and went to typical sites that track you (news sites). I still see third-party hits in the Developer Tools (e.g. facebook) and it says it blocked 0 trackers so far.

</comment><comment><USER63> This holiday season I'm putting DDG and FF on all the families machines. Flipped some over the summer. They hardly notice. The icon for "internet" is now orange and the search still finds all the stuff they are looking for.

The big G makes money off our non-tech associates, not us, so moving them is, IMO, more important than me and tech-folk moving.

</comment><comment><USER64> The best way to fight back is to use DuckDuckGo. After the "controversial twiddler", Google is going to have to have to do something significant to earn my trust back. I do occasionally switch back using "g! <query>" on duckduckgo when I don't get any decent results, but for the most part duckduckgo is fine.

</comment><comment><USER65> Everyone should start using Brave or Firefox and DuckDuckGo and stop using all Google things as much as possible.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's funny that, if it was a net neutrality issue, e.g. Comcast pushing a new video format and prioritizing video for their own streaming service, the internet would be a warzone by now. But we all love google. And google used to be all fuzzy and unevil. But now they 're evil

<comment><USER12> How can anyone categorize AMP as evil? They are improving and leading. No one needs to use Google, they have alternatives. This is how things evolve. Someone else will create another amp alternative and things will change later. Netflix was #1, then Hulu, Disney, amazon video came. No one lasts forever, everyone needs to evolve and this exactly is what google is doing.

<comment><USER6> amp is a vehicle to a) turn web content owners to gig writers for google and b) push Signed HTTP Exchanges, a dangerous protocol on the web. I can't attribute stupidity to google because they re very smart, so it must be malice

<comment><USER16> Why is signed HTTP exchanges dangerous, and indeed, what are they?

<comment><USER6> [https://github.com/ipfs/in-web- browsers/issues/121#issuecomm...](https://github.com/ipfs/in-web- browsers/issues/121#issuecomment-489182127)

> Google Chome makes SXG indistinguishable from regular HTTPS, which breaks > basic assumptions around how users understand the green padlock in location > bar (aka "nobody but me and the Origin server can see the payload"). UX of > regular HTTPS is reused as-is, pretending that end-to-end HTTPS transport > was used with Origin from location bar, which is not true.

[https://blog.intelx.io/2019/04/15/a-new-type-of-http- client-...](https://blog.intelx.io/2019/04/15/a-new-type-of-http-client- attacks-is-around-the-corner-and-its-really-sneaky/)

[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ha00dSGKmjoEh2mRiG8FIA5s...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ha00dSGKmjoEh2mRiG8FIA5sJ1KihTuZe- AXX1r8P-8/edit)

> Big changes need strong justification and support. This particular change is > bigger than most and presents a number of challenges. The increased exposure > to security problems and the unknown effects of this on power dynamics is > significant enough that we have to regard this as harmful until more > information is available.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> I've written a similar post on how to remove AMP from your blog, without sacrificing SEO rating and performance [https://pawelurbanek.com/amp-seo- rating-performance](https://pawelurbanek.com/amp-seo-rating-performance)

</comment><comment><USER67> Imagine if Cox or Comcast came up with AMP. Same technology, same idea.

If websites use the Comcast AMP framework, Comcast will cache their sites and make them faster for users. See, it's about the users! Because the Comcast AMP framework is open, and has nothing to do with the business interests of Comcast. Comcast will give a bit to open source and have a few conferences per year to make sure developers know that it's not all about the company.

I believe the fight against AMP will not be won by users or individual action -- it will be won with legislation. What are users going to do? Plain HTML pages are on the 10,000th page, below a hundred thousand AMP tracker loaded piles of shit. It is a de-facto content restriction.

Even if I use an alternate search engine -- it's results are polluted by those of Google, because 90% of search is Google. We do not have a choice.

I'm sure a Google lawyer will successfully argue that I can recieve IP addresses in the mail via U.S. post for any odd, esoteric plain text HTML pages I'd like to visit, though.

<comment><USER68> > If websites use the Comcast AMP framework, Comcast will cache their sites > and make them faster for users.

They probably do it with Netflix, some ISP do it with Steam too... there's nothing wrong with multilevel cache (except cache invalidation).

<comment><USER67> mmmh, I don't think this really holds up.

They do it with Netflix/Steam because they have to, because if they did not those services would choke bandwidth for everyone. With your Netflix example, there are maybe a dozen players with this type of arrangement -- it is the exception to the rule and has more to do with physical limitations of the network than political control. With AMP/non-amp websites, there are hundreds of millions of separate players, and no physical need to discriminate (my neighbor's network performance is identical whether I look at 2mb websites vs. 300kb websites)

I believe there is a fundamental difference between the two -- google's play is about control, not physical limitations.

<comment><USER68> > I believe there is a fundamental difference between the two -- google's play > is about control, not physical limitations.

Control of what? The search result are from Google, they already have control over them. The existence of AMP doesn't make you go to Google (except if AMP is actually superior, but then any search provider can provide it too, just like Cloudflare does it now).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> > Don't use Google search.

This is easier said than done, as the other search engines are still not as good as Google, even though Google's results have been getting worse. This may be a controversial opinion, but it's not what my comment is about. I'm going to make a more scandalous suggestion.

Don't use search engines at all.

The idea that a centralized one-size-fits-all search engine is necessary is preposterous. The Web makes available all kinds of information, and unifying it all under a single data model is difficult, and doesn't even make sense. (Does anyone remember the semantic web?) Unifying the world's information behind a single search facade is likewise a Very Difficult Task (TM), one that's likely to fall into the trap of big business, as search has done, because the required resources are so huge.

But what if it's solving the wrong problem? Information of a particular type tends to gravitate to local centers of storage, so to speak, which are specific to the type of information being stored. For example:

\- Encyclopedic knowledge is in Wikipedia.

\- You can find places by searching Foursquare, Yelp, Apple Maps, OSM, ...

\- Q&A about programming (and lots of other topics) is on StackExchange.

\- News aggregators have been beaten to death, and multiple are available.

\- You can search Twitter using Twitter, and Facebook using Facebook.

I can go on, but the point is clear: every single Web-connected system offers a search function of its own, one that's likely specialized to the type of information stored in that system. It'll most certainly do a better job at searching that local store, and will do so more quickly and cheaply than a centralized, generic search engine. This also avoids the moral hazard of search centralization.

This leaves the little guy: the random small website or blog, where the majority of true gems are found. Google locates these by sheer brute force: they literally index the entire web. They've taken a relative eternity to do so, but it's a problem that could have been solved by something better than mere force.

Does anyone remember webrings? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webring) What if "the little guys" organized in webrings and directories? This doesn't seem like a technical problem, as a webring or directory is trivial to build. Could this be a UX problem that hasn't been solved to the satisfaction of a modern Web user? Is anyone or anything taking another stab at this?

In closing, I'll throw out one last vague notion: that of an openly federated search. How cool would that be? We don't need Google for that at all.

<comment><USER70> !bangs in DuckDuckGo enables you to do searches right on the destination website

[https://duckduckgo.com/bang](https://duckduckgo.com/bang)

<comment><USER71> Why even ddg? Chrome and Firefox support this out of the box in the browsers.

<comment><USER72> Most importantly, DDG comes with a host of bangs, whereas firefox And I assume chrome as well) require some configuration. Secondarily, bangs work regardless of their position in your query. At least in Firefox, they must be the first word. Finally, I can use DDG with bangs from anyone's device, that I might not want to do any setup on.

I do primarily use bangs from Firefox's address/search uni-bar, so if they added bang support from there, I would start using that feature without changing my habits at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> The client I'm assigned to has resigned themselves to using AMP. Nobody likes it, it breaks so much working code, and I personally hate it. Thankfully our SEO is top-notch, so we're doing well without it, but I'm not looking forward to implementing it.

</comment><comment><USER73> I figured how to avoid amp as a user years ago. Switched to DDG and its bangs are very convenient. Google, in its efforts to customize user experience often gives worse search results than it did ten years ago.

</comment><comment><USER74> Despite the tracking, I'd suggest allowing google fonts, it's not _that_ much different than other CDN content (assuming you're only using the CSS).

</comment><comment><USER75> Yes, and use [https://webtest.app](https://webtest.app) to show the world we can speed up the web by blocking ads.

</comment><comment><USER76> Also make sure to sign the AMP letter: [http://ampletter.org/](http://ampletter.org/)

</comment><comment><USER77> Also, Bing is really good! I'm the only guy in the company that uses it, but seriously I love it!

<comment><USER78> Bing also uses AMP. That might be why you love it.

<comment><USER77> Interesting. Maybe it is, but wouldn't I be able to see that in the url?

<comment><USER79> The AMP standard doesn't need use URL hijacking anymore: [https://www.cloudflare.com/website-optimization/amp-real- url...](https://www.cloudflare.com/website-optimization/amp-real-url/)

<comment><USER80> That is more of the same IMO: yet more code to wipe off a symptom of a problem that we created with more code, as opposed to solving the problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> Gatsby.js could be added as a solution to make sites load faster, it's awesome what it does

</comment><comment><USER82> How it's this not copyright infringement? Can't we fight it on those grounds?

<comment><USER83> Websites choose to use AMP because it has favourable search results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> Sorry for the dumb question, but:

What does Google gain with AMP? How does it make money with it?

<comment><USER83> Google is trying to monopolize the internet, and they also sell data / ads. So inherently "spending more time in google ecosystem" leads to inherent value.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> Serious question, what is a free alternative to Google font?

<comment><USER86> You can still use Google Fonts, but download the font files and host them yourself to prevent your users/visitors from being tracked by Google:

[https://google-webfonts-helper.herokuapp.com/fonts](https://google-webfonts- helper.herokuapp.com/fonts)

[https://github.com/gabiseabra/google-fonts-webpack- plugin](https://github.com/gabiseabra/google-fonts-webpack-plugin)

<comment><USER85> Ahhh, I wasn't aware that it is possible to download Google fonts. Is it copyrighted though?

<comment><USER87> Directly linked on that page: [https://fonts.google.com/attribution](https://fonts.google.com/attribution)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER88> If you run a NAS at home, you should also setup syncthing. It's replaces Google drive for your phone's camera, seemlessly.

<comment><USER42> I've been looking into doing this, have you got any pointers to setting this up? I'm trying to do it with a raspberry pi and a big external hard drive. Darned thing keeps shutting down on me though, and the pi won't boot with the HDD plugged in. Thanks for reminding me to pick up a powered USB hub...

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> Is the answer, just say no. ?

</comment><comment><USER90> Here's one great takeaway:

> Treat the cause: Third-party requests slow down the web

> ...

> \- Google owns 7 of the top 10 most popular third-party calls

> ...

> So you can see why there must be some kind of internal struggle at Google. > They understand the value of a faster web but they also cannot go after the > main cause of the slow web. And this is how technology such as AMP gets > invented and makes things worse.

It blows my mind how many devs around here are devoted to their browser and search.

Stop using chrome. Honestly, wtf?! Firefox is awesome. FF dev tools are awesome. FF, like Wu Tang, is for the kids.

STOP USING google SEARCH! USE DUCKDUCKGO! Use the `!gm` google maps bang when you need it. Use the `!g` google bang in a pinch, but for all of our sake, please wean yourself off of google search.

These two steps are immensely easy to do, and yet a MAJOR investment in all of our future.

<comment><USER91> > _Stop using chrome. Honestly, wtf?! Firefox is awesome._

I think plenty of people have found Mozilla to have made some poor decisions over the years. It feels as though you have to choose between two options that aren't great, so is there a point in switching? Take the add ons situation. At least on Chrome I can run my own add ons.

<comment><USER90> Yes there is a point to switching. Mozilla is 10000000x more on our side.

<comment><USER92> From a purely philosophical standpoint, Mozilla has always been the browser of "choice". Its humble beginnings never included "world domination"... and Firefox was an extraordinarily bold attempt to unseat IE. Chrome did a lot of good things in the beginning. It brought web standards to the forefront. The past few years though, the same old tired story has played out. Company gets too much market share, and subsequently believes they should own/police/decide the future of the web. In the case of Google, naturally, their motives for web "ownership/domination" are fiscally motivated. (I'm not saying this is wrong in regard to making money for their shareholders. I am saying that this often is not what's good for their average user) But that's the issue, they never promised they were doing this for "freedom" or any other reason.

<comment><USER93> >Chrome did a lot of good things in the beginning. It brought web standards to the forefront.

To be fair to Google, I think it is important to acknowledge the good things Chrome did in the beginning. I remember when it came out, and most (non - <USER3> users) were still using IE, it was fantastic! I remember jumping on board immediately. But for me at this point, it has become too much to bear.

At this point they are making so much money from tracking users and selling to advertisers.. who could blame them for continuing to do so? I sure can't, haha.

But after a while, I started realizing all the intrusive & creepy advertisements I was seeing were simply a result of the browser software I chose, and the website I chose do do my searches on, so I started looking for alternatives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER94> I really doubt google will become "irrelevant" anytime soon. What most of us nerds forget is that tech products become popular when they solve real life issues for non technical people. We can sit here and debate all day what protocols are better, and which browse is cooler, and why Google is evil, because it will not become irrelevant anytime soon unless there is a better end user product. Happy bashing Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc because no one cares, really. What they care is "how to cook potato soup" showing relevant results, and having their pictures generate likes and their unneeded products delivered tomorrow.

<comment><USER95> And that's exactly the reason AMP is so popular with end-users. It's fast, and opens instantly on slow networks with your phone. End-users don't know what AMP is, and most don't know that the lightning symbol is AMP. What they know is clicking it gives them fast results, and that's what 99% of people care about.

<comment><USER96> > And that's exactly the reason AMP is so popular with end-users. It's fast, > and opens instantly on slow networks with your phone.

Is that the reason, or is it that the results are at the top?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you know of any basic android handset with only wifi, no cellular? - <AUTHOR>

We are looking for a very basic android handset that could be deployed to employees that will cost around $150.  It only needs to have wifi and no other capabilities like cellular or gps?  Something like an iPod Touch or an Archos 5 but even more stripped down and basic. <comment><USER2> I'm looking for the same thing, except I don't expect to find one.

I'm just wondering how practical using a regular android phone without a sim card is.

Are there parts of the phone that just don't work over WiFi (i.e. work only over a cell connection)?

Are there unexpected things that won't work without a data connection of some kind? (Excluding the obvious of course.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Check out the Zii EGG from Creative Labs:

<http://www.zii.com/Developer/Landing.aspx>

It's basically an Android "iPod Touch" for $399.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, the Zii looks really cool. Has anyone tried it?

<comment><USER4> <http://lmgtfy.com/?q=zii+egg+review>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Google should have left the cell radio out of the Nexus 1, and sold it at the iPod Touch markup instead of the iPhone markup.

Then they'd really have filled a huge hole that isn't being met by the market, helped developers immensely, and not pissed off their partners.

</comment><comment><USER6> Get a bunch of them as 'pre-paid' phones and ditch the sim ?

The motorola lajolla is due to be out and should be one of the cheapest android handsets.

<comment><USER5> I doubt that will have WiFi, intentionally omitted to make it useless for this purpose.

It's also almost definitely not the right form-factor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Would the Nook count?</comment>


Why N95 masks are hard to make - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/16/814929294/covid-19-has-caused-a-shortage-of-face-masks-but-theyre-surprisingly-hard-to-mak <comment><USER2> I do believe these masks are also made in the US, but this situation highlights exactly why a country having its own major manufacturing base is not just an economic need but rather also a national security need. The US needs to invest in itself immediately to rebuild its lost manufacturing base.

In economic terms, under certain definitions and assumptions that are typical under modern economics, a trade war such as the current US-China trade war result in welfare losses. I believe, however, that when national security is taken into account (ie having the ability for the country to rapidly respond to productive capacity needs in a time of crisis), the trade war along with serious investment in expanding industrial capacity is likely net good.

<comment><USER3> All the workers being replaced by automation and having to rely on "gig economy" work could pursue manufacturing instead. We have the workforce.

We can pay workers livable wages and give them meaningful work. Cost of goods could be reduced through greater efficiency. Research into robotics and automation could fuel a new decade of American growth.

<comment><USER4> _> We have the workforce._

That's the problem - you don't. By definition, the kind of efficient, highly- automated manufacturing you're thinking of doesn't need many unskilled or semi-skilled workers, but it does need skilled and experienced engineers and machinists. It needs a massive and complex ecosystem of suppliers and support.

The depletion of America's industrial base has created a massive skills gap that would take decades to remedy. You can't create a new Silicon Valley with a bunch of bootcamp graduates and some wishful thinking; likewise, you can't create a manufacturing economy through sheer force of will.

<comment><USER5> This reminds me of a conversation I had at a New Year's party not too long ago - a gentleman I'd never met before and I got to talking, and in the process of getting to know one another (however much you can know someone after 4-5 drinks at a black tie party you go to once a year), he bemoaned the issues he was having trying to open a US branch of his company. Apparently medium scale sheet metal forming operations in the States have all but disappeared - everything is either outsourced to China, or is small scale, high precision work that can't meet demand of more than N hundred pieces a week. It's a boring issue - "oh no, there's no one to subcontract this work to, you have to buy from China for X percent of what it would cost to do here" \- but speak volumes as to the loss of a critical component of that manufacturing ecosystem.

<comment><USER6> >Apparently medium scale sheet metal forming operations in the States have all but disappeared - everything is either outsourced to China, or is small scale, high precision work that can't meet demand of more than N hundred pieces a week.

I can personally confirm this. Very unfortunate, and I'm positive it's helping stifle innovation. Having to go to China for your custom sheet metal needs (with the communication difficulties and shipping times involved) can be -really- debilitating.

<comment><USER7> You can get custom sheet metal work, if you're willing the pay the price and possibly are in the right industry. Sheet metal, welding, carpentry, pipefitters, and pretty much every trade are in massive demand in shipbuilding/repair.

NNSY fails a significant portion of welder applicants just because they can't lay a proper weld. They pay... a lot of money.

<comment><USER6> "the price" being something borderline extortionate, in many cases. And there aren't a lot of options. In China there's someone everywhere that can do what you want; in America, you'll have to search.

You can get lucky and find someone with some brakes and benders that does cheap work for farmers, but people like that are usually extremely hard to find and mostly in rural areas.

And yes, welders do make more than someone at McDonalds or doing landscaping, but the myth of the super-high paid welder is mostly that. I just looked up NNSY welder salaries - average of 49K, and that's with a lot people there being experienced and there for a long time.

<comment><USER7> Completing the welding apprenticeship at NNSY results in an hourly wage of $29.73. The overtime pay schedule at NNSY. The issue online is complicated because NNSY also has "shipfitters/welders". They are paid substantially less than production welders. Production welders at a repair yard like BAE/Colanna/Lyon make in the range of $27-$30. They also make significant overtime.

I agree that the myth of the super-high paid welder is mostly fabricated, but when it comes to shipbuilding at a nuclear yard it's a lot higher than you would expect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Currently, of the 200 million masks China makes a day, only 600,000 are N95 standard masks, used by medical personnel, according to the National Development and Reform Commission, a state planning body. "

Wow, that is not enough.

<comment><USER9> There is quite is quite a bit of information readily available about sterilizing disposable N95 masks with UV-C light. While not nearly as good as a fresh mask, this might be a preferable alternative to reusing the same mask unsterilized.

[https://www.ajicjournal.org/article/S0196-6553(18)30140-8/pd...](https://www.ajicjournal.org/article/S0196-6553\(18\)30140-8/pdf)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4699414/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4699414/)

[https://www.peakprosperity.com/forum-topic/can-uv-light- disi...](https://www.peakprosperity.com/forum-topic/can-uv-light-disinfectant- box-kill-viruses-off-n95-mask/)

The UV light needs to have a wavelength around 260nm (shorter wavelength than standard UV light). Such UVC lamps are cheap and readily available, commonly used in consumer products for aquarium water sterilization and air purification. Example replacement bulb: GermGuardian LB4000 GENUINE UV-C Replacement Bulb for AC4300BPTCA, AC4825, AC4850PT & AC4900CA Germ Guardian Air Purifiers [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0055522F6/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_4D...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0055522F6/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_4DzCEbW8QFQ9V)

<comment><USER10> I believe that microwaving a used mask could also be an effective way to sterilize the mask. (0)

I found this information by following links from the CDC website a few weeks ago when I was exploring the possibility of buying masks for my family and found that they were already being hawked online at ridiculous prices.

Perhaps steam and/or use of a pressure cooker could also be effective. Many people who do home canning of food goods have a pressure cooker and are already familiar with usage and cleaning.

The article posted suggests that this could be a viable method of home decontamination of used masks if I read it right. I also found an article that touched on use of a steamer to accomplish similar results. I can't find that article right now but if I do I will post it for review. Microwaving alone, without adding water to generate the steam should kill most water-based organisms. The article I read stated that microwave times from 30 seconds to 5 minutes were used. I need to find that article...

What does everyone else think? I'd be interested in hearing.

(0) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3078131/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3078131/)

<comment><USER11> This[0] article goes over recommendations for extended use, reuse, and risks. It also has a healthy list of references, some of which are by Fisher et al., the author of the paper you linked.

Most masks have a metal tab bending over the bridge of the nose, as well as metal staples for the elastic bands, which would prevent you from microwaving. Cartridge type filters would work though.

[0][https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3373043/#!po=12...](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3373043/#!po=12.5000)

<comment><USER10> I had considered the metal parts of the mask to be a potential problem. In the worst case scenario it should be relatively simple for mask owners to remove the metal tab from the nose and the staples holding the elastic bands before microwaving.

Once they are done in the microwave the bands could be stapled in place with your ordinary stapler and the band reattached with hot glue. Those who have a needle and thread could also stitch a sleeve onto the nose piece that is open at one end and just reinsert the metal nose piece once it is out of the microwave. The thin metal should withstand several bend cycles before needing to be replaced and it can be replaced with any thin aluminum strip which one could obtain from lots of places around the house or at the hardware store.

The bands and straps could be washed in ordinary soap to sterilize them before reuse.

Just thinking outside the box here. What do you think?

<comment><USER12> Apparently salt on the mask kills viruses [https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170105160228.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170105160228.htm) [https://www.businessinsider.com/mask-coated-in-salt- neutrali...](https://www.businessinsider.com/mask-coated-in-salt-neutralizes- viruses-like-coronavirus-2020-2)

I was going to DIY. Soak in brine then dry the thing.

<comment> Engineering-MD I believe it also recommends the addition of a surfactant to make small crystals and a more even coating

<comment><USER10> I read the same thing. Glad to see others investigating their options.

I'm not sure a DIYer could accomplish this without compromising the filter media unless there were kits available or a crystal clear guide for the task.

I realize that you can just wash the mask to remove the salt and surfactant and in the process any pathogens will be killed by the salt and soap. However, if you have to wait on this to dry between uses since the washing will fill some percentage of the pore spaces with water then you haven't accomplished as much as you could have if you had simply microwaved the mask in a boil-in bag allowing the steam to do the same work. As a bonus, people already know how to use microwaves and most have them at home.

I'm not trying to say that salt and surfactant doesn't work, only to say that this is better accomplished in a controlled environment with equipment that can insure that crystal size is controlled and filter media is relatively unaffected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As has already been talked about on HN, during Ebola, research was done into any mask.

And yes normal masks do work.

Once again the medical community needed 100% and people thinking of they are clever because they know a factoid are hurting reality.

</comment><comment><USER14> > China now makes 200 million face masks a day — more than twenty times the > amount it made at the start of February.

That's an insane number of masks.

Does one in seven Chinese wear a fresh one _every day_? Is this gonna be the new normal?

<comment><USER15> Only 600,000 of those are N95 standard, suitable for health care and using the special fabric in short supply.

Mask wear in Asia is common, for smog, smoke and controlling flu. The cheap ones don't last long, and often replaced instead of put through the wash. Common mask usage requires use of cheaper, more comfortable masks rather than the health care certified ones.

<comment><USER16> I would wear an N95 mask sometimes in Asia, to mitigate the pollution. I didn't throw it away after each use. I imagine their use by medical professionals to be a much different case though.

I think a lot of Asian people wore the cheap cloth ones. I have learned recently that these sometimes have replaceable inserts inside them.

<comment><USER17> The masks filter pollution about as effectively after prolonged use as when they're new. The problem for medical use is contamination with germs.

<comment><USER18> > The masks filter pollution about as effectively after prolonged use as when > they're new.

Filters generally get _better_ at filtering as they get dirty. A pore with a mountain of dirt/dust over it gets even better at only permitting gasses through. But that also means less and less flow, until you're letting nothing through at all.

I think the other problem for medical use is moisture buildup. A damp/wet/sweaty N95 doesn't let gasses through very well.

<comment><USER19> Do you have a source for that? The recommendations I've seen suggest otherwise, and this matches my intuition.

Wear creates and enlarges pores, and also, pores of the right size get clogged resulting in more flow over pores that are too large to filter.

<comment><USER18> Depends on what's hitting the filter. All "wear" will enlarge pores by definition, otherwise it's not wear.

And in your example, if pores are 0.1-0.3micron, and you have uniform 0.2micron particles hitting it, yes. But reality isn't usually so uniform.

Shards of glass will create more problems for the filter media than shredded N95 mask dust :)

A mask covered in saw dust will slow down and make a particle hit against the filter more turbulent = less chance of forcing its way through.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does anyone here have any personal, specific, actionable knowledge of the melt-blown plastics process? Are there alternatives for achieving the N95 (or sufficient) filtration levels in a different sheet material?

Automating many steps of assembly are [more] straightforward, but this precursor material supply really is a problematic bottleneck.

</comment><comment><USER21> Not all masks are N95 people. It's crazy the amount of grandstanding and virtue signaling going on here. I have had a P100 mask for years with filters in stock, and I am wearing it out on town if I have to.

[https://www.coopersafety.com/respirator- types](https://www.coopersafety.com/respirator-types)

<comment><USER22> P100 doesn't stop coronavirus...

<comment><USER23> Can you explain why a P100 would be worse than N95?

<comment><USER24> N95 doesn't "stop" COVID19 other unless you wear it over your eyes too.

<comment><USER25> but it does stop covid from entering through your nose and mouth....which is the most likely path you are to get it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Difference between surgical and N95 mask characteristics straight from CDC:

[https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/pdfs/UnderstandDifferenceInf...](https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/pdfs/UnderstandDifferenceInfographic-508.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER27> In fact, ordinary people do not need N95 masks. General medical surgical masks will do. Even as long as the mask is waterproof. After all, wearing a mask is mainly to prevent the virus from spreading through saliva.

<comment><USER28> Ordinary people benefit from the extra protection as well. N95/FFP2 masks are more effective protecting from virus in the coronavirus family and this is tested.

Obviously, the more exposed you are the more you benefit from extra measures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> They become so scarce that Turkey has put these masks under a prescription regime.

</comment><comment><USER30> Generally good quote about Chinese manufacturing:

> China can be all over the place. Sometimes you think you're in a Western > factory. Others are kind of like a dirt floor sort of shanty trying to pass > their stuff off as good as the other guys. And maybe it is.

<comment><USER31> Not representative of medical equipment manufacture in China (I trust), but an interesting look nonetheless into typical manufacturing process and it's utter lack of OSHA and environmental controls:

[https://youtu.be/83GDV0xsTTs?t=545](https://youtu.be/83GDV0xsTTs?t=545)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> any simpler process to make nanofiltering ? not necessarily tissue but maybe ceramic, or other solids (like activated charcoal)

<comment><USER33> Do we even have to do nanofiltering? What about a breathing mask/apparatus like firefighters use? In theory they should be quite reusable.

<comment><USER34> A gas mask is very taxing to breathe in. I'd imagine the doctors doing 12-16h days would be passing out left and right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Surgical and homemade masks are much better than nothing. And by better than nothing we mean reasonably effective.

Going into close contact with a person who has a known transmissible respiratory illness? N95 is minimum if you are a professional. And get your union to scream bloody murder if you are not allowed this essential safety equipment, and put complaints in writing so your heirs can later sue to oblivion.

Trying to massively reduce your risk when going out for supplies, or living with someone infected and have no other options? Surgical and homemade are vastly vastly vastly better than nothing.

Extremely antisocial, harmful, dangerous? Shaming those wearing masks.

<comment><USER36> Surgical and homemade masks are much better than nothing.

/Thats basically a misinformation. They are completely useless, and if you dont change them each 40-50 minutes - bring you more damage then good

<comment><USER37> > Thats basically a misinformation. They are completely useless, and if you > dont change them each 40-50 minutes - bring you more damage then good

Evidence required.

If mist forms on my glasses from breathing, I assume the mask must be doing something.

I read a comment the other day on how many efforts are impeded by the "quest for perfection"

I know such homemade masks are not 100% proof. But even if they only work to reduce 10% of the risks if everybody wore them, than can be the difference between a R0 of 1.1 and 1.0 - and gives great results overall.

Don't just think about yourself. We are young and at no real risk of dying (0.1%, whatever). But we may cause the death of other people by simply contaminating more people.

Small actions are better than doing nothing when facing exponential growth

<comment><USER15> Even the N95 are not 100% proof, even if used correctly. Any barrier helps, and the claim that mask use promotes false confidence is highly dubious.

<comment><USER38> So, are condoms, they fail, can be worn improperly, etc... yet they are recommend over and over for safety reason....

Same with masks, they are not perfect, they could be miss-handled, yet they provide some degree of safety and are better than nothing.... otherwise why would health officials wear them at all?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This is the price we pay for outsourcing our manufacturing capabilities. We should have kept in-house manufacturing alive, there is plenty of capacity for it here in the States.

<comment><USER40> Easy to say now, but there's just not enough manpower to make _everything_ in house that we deem strategically important. And if the price isn't viable on the free market, how is it justifiable long term? I generally agree with your sentiment though.

<comment><USER39> Not enough manpower at the moment, for sure, but we should create it through education and social investment. It's generally a strategic advantage to have manufacturing capabilities no matter what discipline; it's less that we are reliant on China for this one particular thing and more that we have allowed our once-strong manufacturing muscle to atrophy. We subsidize gas heavily because it's a strategic advantage to the nation; call it a hunch but I think there are more knock-on benefits to being able to make stuff than is readily apparent (and I thought such a view would be more popular on _Hacker_ News to be frank).

<comment><USER41> I think you are bang on with capabilities vs capacity. We should have one factory for anything critical so that in case we can't get as much as we need on the free market we can ramp up capacity by building more of the machine that makes the product. If you don't have all of the know how that is in that machine or plant design already in your one factory making the product you are starting from zero. Hence why all of China's cheap labour deals had technology transfer riders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I made a dozen good homemade masks in a few hours, and I am inept at sewing. With some practice I could make 200 a day. There's no point to doing so, it would be illegal for me to sell them.

US is doing nothing whatsoever to ramp up mask or ventilator production. It's going to result in a lot of deaths.

<comment><USER2> Of a material that is sufficient to meet the standards of N95 masks?

<comment><USER15> Doubtful, given poster said masks and not N95 masks. Like the 199 million masks being produced in China daily that are not N95 per the article. Cheap, easy to make, comfortable enough to use for extended periods of time, and reduce chances of catching and spreading respiratory disease (but not considered good enough for hospital use, at least until the good ones run out).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> To all those MBAs who excelled at squeezing out the last dollar at any cost to the US society, thanks.

<comment><USER43> What? How is it the MBAs fault that production was cheaper elsewhere and that consumers always seek the lowest prices? Do you think they should've just ran losses to cover for the rest of us in case of a global pandemic? This has nothing to do with corporate executives and everything to do with national policy.</comment></comment>


Boeing identifies new software problem on grounded 737 Max - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-06/boeing-identifies-new-software-problem-on-grounded-737-max-jet <comment><USER2> All software is buggy. The problem with the MCAS system is that pilots were not informed that it was there, nor were they given a way to override it and take full control of the airplane. Also, while the MCAS system relied on two sensors, if either failed, the MCAS system itself failed, so there was no built in back-up for it.

Bugs in software happen because situations where they arise are sometimes hard to predict. You can test your software all you want but it's not until it's in the field that you start discovering new issues because people tend to do things in ways developers didn't consider.

Tesla's software has over a billion miles of data on it and it still has issues in some basic functionality. And let's not talk about Iowa which in itself was a major failure in software release management.

<comment><USER3> Not all software is buggy to the point of killing almost four hundred people. Comparing some shit app some interns built for Iowa with avionics software is frankly insulting to the people who work hard to make avionics software. The same goes for Tesla. The avionics industry, including Boeing, used to have a great record in this area. Even if the mcas bugs were unavoidable, the fact still is that the design was fatally flawed due to either sensor being a single point of failure. And of course, the main problem that the whole, entire airplane is unstable in the air. How can you still make excuses for Boeing at this point in time? The only reason this bug should be irrelevant is because this plane should never carry another commercial passenger. But I'm sure profits will prevail over lives once again starting this summer or whenever the FAA gives their go ahead.

<comment><USER4> > _And of course, the main problem that the whole, entire airplane is unstable > in the air._

That's not really true. The airframe is fine, except it doesn't handle like a 737. MCAS was meant to make the MAX handle like a 737.

Mentour Pilot, a 737 instructor with a youtube channel, has covered this fairly extensively: [https://youtu.be/TlinocVHpzk?t=951](https://youtu.be/TlinocVHpzk?t=951)

<comment><USER3> Great video. But he says the exact same thing I did. The MCAS is necessary because of the different engine placement. So the airplane cannot recover from a stall without it. That, to me, makes the entire airplane unstable and improper for commercial flights as this is an expected condition at times that the plane should be able to recover from. The airplane cannot function without a deeply flawed software system no one understands and no one knows how to operate. Changing the software doesn't change any of these things.

<comment><USER4> > _That, to me, makes the entire airplane unstable_

That's fine, but know that the way you're choosing to use the word "unstable" doesn't square with how it's actually used in the aviation industry.

<comment><USER3> Ok. I should have said completely unsafe for commercial passenger use instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think the main thing we are seeing here is hundreds of smaller fixes that usually form the steady stream of Airworthiness Directives that an aircraft currently supported by the manufacturer sees turning into a news event every single time one comes out.

So far only one "aircraft" has had perfect software, and that was the Space Shuttle, every single other aircraft out there has had software issues that are worked out over the life of the aircraft, just like every piece of software, even that which has very strict testing regimes, has had defects in it.

<comment><USER6> > So far only one "aircraft" has had perfect software, and that was the Space > Shuttle

Actually it had 3+ known bugs.

<comment><USER5> Drat, we have no known examples of perfect software.

<comment><USER7> 10 goto 10

<comment><USER8> Great for those cold winter nights!

Will probably be optimized out by a modern compiler though. Sad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I really wonder about these large engineering corporations, Toyota seems to have similar problems with software.

Part of me feels like many of these companies don't keep code secret to protect IP, instead they do it because they know it's a burning train wreck and don't want people to find out.

<comment><USER10> That's interesting. Toyota would be one of the last companies I'd expect to hear that about. They're notorious in Quality circles for taking Quality seriously; at least as far as their production line is concerned. Do they not apply that same philosophy to in house software?

<comment> mark-r The investigations carried out for unintended acceleration in Toyotas didn't paint a good picture.

[https://www.safetyresearch.net/blog/articles/toyota- unintend...](https://www.safetyresearch.net/blog/articles/toyota-unintended- acceleration-and-big-bowl-%E2%80%9Cspaghetti%E2%80%9D-code) [https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/pubs/koopman14_toyota_ua_...](https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/pubs/koopman14_toyota_ua_slides.pdf)

<comment><USER11> Damn...

\- "No configuration management"

\- "No bug tracking system"

\- "No formal specifications"

\- "9,273 – 11,528 global variables"

\- "Uses recursion, no mitigation for stack overflow. Memory just past stack is OSEK RTOS area"

I thought of Toyota as a much better company in terms of safety and reliability. I can't imagine other manufacturers and their code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So not only are they trying to fix a fundamental hardware issue with a software patch, their inability to do software properly extends beyond just their MCAS system? This is a good reminder that air travel's extraordinary safety record isn't just a given, it's something that takes real work to achieve and when the people responsible for putting in that work (Boeing, regulators) begin taking safety for granted, that's when people die.

<comment><USER13> I agree. But we should keep in mind that there's no such thing as a bad apple; we can't blame individual executives or regulators.

It's a bad barrel: a company that has, on a cultural level, put its business motive above its responsibility to deliver a safe and high-quality product. We have seen documented evidence that employees knew there were dangers and problems, and discussed these issues, but nobody cared enough to slow things down and get the product right.

<comment><USER12> Absolutely. That's why I said Boeing and the FAA failed their responsibility as opposed to a Boeing exec or a particular legislator - there are organizational, structural problems. Sure, some individuals made the decision to ignore reports or set a new culture, but the fact that they succeeded is concerning - why did everyone else enable them? Is there anything we could have done to encourage those engineers to whistleblow their concerns before the planes crashed? Would they have been taken seriously by the FAA or the media or investors who were pushing for growth at all costs? These are deep, structural problems.

<comment><USER10> Interesting you're getting downvotes. Not sure if the general audience or not. Regardless, the primary motivation to get a worker in a highly consolidated industry to blow the whistle is for them not to feel like they only have one choice. I can see where Boeing having consolidated as much as it has can give the culture extra resilience against employee disruption simply from the fact there isn't anywhere else to go.

<comment><USER12> I think if you get one or two downvotes for whatever reason, as hn starts to grey out the text, a bit of bandwagon effect happens, not sure why.

Good point about whistleblowing. Perhaps the faas reliance on self regulation alsobplayedbibto that consolidation, so even the one other place they might have gone was just something that looped right back to the monolith.

<comment><USER14> Perhaps the threshold for graying out text should be much higher as the current setting is very path-dependent in that the first few people to vote on a comment have a disproportional effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As a former software defense worker, I wish there were 3rd party audits of code and dev ops. If you saw the code that's flying in missiles, aircraft, etc and how they got there youd want to go live in a cave.

<comment><USER16> Some whistleblower should one day post an archive of Airbus or Boeing's software archives. That would make for interesting reading.

<comment><USER17> It's usually worthless without knowing what is attached to the input/output of the microcontroller. A lot of things are done ecternally on the wiring.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > designed to warn of a malfunction by a system that helps raise and lower the > plane's nose

So, they can't even name the mcas system anymore?

<comment><USER19> I thought that's what the MCAS was. Unless there's more than one system that overrides the pilot to pitch the nose down?

<comment><USER5> Speed trim and the trim system in general.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> In their defense, probably every piece of software of any complexity at all has bugs waiting to be found, and it's not super surprising that they found some new ones while doing a rigorous testing regimen.

<comment><USER21> In their defense, the software industry is a complete joke in terms of quality control. I hope that this and the spate of ransomware will wake the industry up to realize we need new processes, languages and tooling to make software provably correct. It's clear we can't use our existing languages and tooling to make high quality software. Realistically though, that's not going to happen. The smart move is to eliminate as much software from your life as possible. It's only going to get worse as decades of laziness catches up to us.

<comment><USER22> Watching Android descend from a place of dorky stability to sleek sealed glitch-city, kinda makes me think it's the institutions, as opposed to the tooling, that's behind the plunge in the quality of mainstream software.

<comment><USER23> Feed me features I shit backlogs.

<comment><USER10> I couldn't help but laugh, because it is so damn true.

It's taken me a while to come to the realization that all project management is is a backlog manufacturing and prioritization layer that operates on top of actual software engineers.

Most just want to implement things, and don't care what it is they are implementing as long as they are getting paid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> There is a less than zero chance I'll be boarding one of these planes again, ever. Trust is an important idea in any product, but particularly in areas like aviation, and I don't see how they can possibly build it back.

I _do_ see an opportunity for software that ensures you are only booking journeys on the aircraft you feel are safe.

<comment><USER25> on the other hand, the software for this plane might be the most scrutinized ever when all this is over.

<comment><USER26> The hardware remains fundamentally flawed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > Asked about a likely date for a return to service for the Max, Dickson said > it isn't helpful to talk about timelines. Boeing needs to concentrate on > making complete, quality submissions on its fixes for the plane, he said.

Ahh, "we'll ship it when it's ready, not on some arbitrary deadline." Music to any engineer/builder's ears.

</comment><comment><USER28> Can someone explain how a hugely complex machine with mostly parallel working analog parts fits into the digital computing paradigm? Isn't it predetermined to fail under extreme conditions, like those that are found while flying inbetween clouds and thunderstorms with all that pressure and fluctuations? How does sampling not fail, like, all the time? What kind of tooling is being used to mitigate for all these? Does anyone know?

<comment><USER29> I am very naive to commercial aviation but this is my experience with building and crashing model aircraft repeatedly. I fly mostly FPV which puts me in the first person view from the cockpit.

Yes, electronics fail in the most weirdest ways due to connector failures, RF interference, software error, sensor failure.

When my systems start failing or acting up due to improper stabilization PID gains, etc. I have a big switch for MANUAL mode. I am able to fly this thing as long as the servos, radio, and camera get power. All sensors could be sheared off. I have no idea what my airspeed is ever because I don't use pitot tubes so I use a known engine throttle % whose stall characteristic I understand for level flight in various wind conditions and I don't make sudden maneuvers at throttle below this point.

Fixed wing planes have remarkable aerodynamic stability and I don't understand why 737 MAX cannot be piloted in a fly by wire manner with all computer aids disabled, giving the pilots direct control of the servos with a big red switch that mechanically disconnects the flight computers. This requires almost no code to implement.

<comment><USER30> On Boeing aircraft, the pilots essentially _do_ have "direct control of the servos" at all times. MCAS was implemented to make the MAX fly just like the NG despite the difference in engine size and placement. What MCAS actually did was not modifying the pilots inputs, but adjusting the stabilizer trim in certain scenarios.

The pilots _do_ have direct control over the stabilizer trim, and have always had the ability to disable the electronic system in case of stabilizer trim runaway. This was not new to the MAX, and would have effectively disabled MCAS.

<comment><USER31> Pilots do not have direct servo control of the aircraft if there is any possibility of any computer system adjusting the servos aside from the throw commanded by the sticks held by the pilot.

Reading comments such as:

> The problem was that an indicator light, designed to warn of a malfunction > by a system that helps raise and lower the plane's nose, was turning on when > it wasn't supposed to, the company said.

Implies that there is intrinsically some computer system that continually parses the commanded stick deflection and applies an overlay.

What I am suggesting is a single toggle to make everything shut up and reset all servos to their midpoint all at once in one shot and let the pilot just fly the plane.

I have not seen any evidence that such a system exists. It is the elephant in the room. Airplanes do not need complex electronics to just fly if they are aerodynamically stable, and this plane is more or less stable except that under some conditions it will make the pilot soil their pants at higher AoA, which is where the promises of MCAS come in. Big deal. They can mentally compensate against that manually better than fighting a computer system working actively against your commanded inputs.

I have experienced the joy of a badly tuned PID controller turning my stabilization system into involuntary high speed descent. The fix is always to tell the computer to shut up and just fly the plane 100% manually.

<comment><USER32> _> Implies that there is intrinsically some computer system that continually parses the commanded stick deflection and applies an overlay._

That's not how the 737 works. The 737 is not a fly by wire aircraft. The pilots control the rudder, ailerons, and elevators electrohydraulically; there is no computer filtering. The electric stability trim system, which is what MCAS feeds its input into, controls the trim tabs on the elevators. This does not change anything about the pilots' inputs to the elevators, but it does change the aerodynamics of the elevators in a way that can limit the pilots' ability to control pitch.

 _> this plane is more or less stable except that under some conditions it will make the pilot soil their pants at higher AoA, which is where the promises of MCAS come in. Big deal._

If the 737 MAX had been a new aircraft type, it would not have been a problem. There might still have been some adjustment needed to meet FAA certification requirements for stick force (basically, the stick force is supposed to increase with increasing angle of attack, so the pilot has to pull harder to keep the nose going up as you get closer to a stall). But there would not have been a need to cobble together anything like MCAS.

The problem was that Boeing wanted the 737 MAX to be certified under the existing 737 type certificate (because otherwise the potential customers wouldn't want it, since they didn't want to have to re-train and re-certify all their pilots), which meant that the stick force as a function of angle of attack had to be the same as for previous 737s. But the new engines on the 737 MAX made the plane aerodynamically different, so the "natural" stick force was different. MCAS was a software kludge to try to change the stick force.

<comment><USER5> >If the 737 MAX had been a new aircraft type, it would not have been a problem.

If the aircraft was a new type this still would have been an issue that would have to be corrected, see FARS 25.173.

<comment><USER32> Yes, which is why I said: "There might still have been some adjustment needed to meet FAA certification requirements for stick force"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Throw in the towel on the 737 Max and go back to the drawing board.

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm shocked they keep publicly working on this plane.

I get that planes cost more money than I can fathom, and that making a whole fleet of impossible amounts of money costs a gazillion dollars. Still, this one seems spent. Nobody is going to knowingly fly on a 737 Max.

They ought to have retired the plane last year. They can design a new plane (that because of economics, will probably be very similar to this plane), release it when it's been properly vetted, swap out Maxes for it, retrofit those Maxes, etc.

I realize this is naive armchair quarterbacking from someone who has never worked in aviation, but there's a reason that Philip Morris is called Altria now and that Weinstein Co was merged into Spyglass. If the public doesn't trust your brand, no amount of "but we fixed it with this patch we rushed out the door" is going to change that.

<comment><USER35> > Nobody is going to knowingly fly on a 737 Max.

I will respectfully disagree with you. Most airlines won't tell you your aircraft when you book a ticket and even if they do, they seem allowed to change it at the last minute. If you have spent $500,$1000, $XXXX on a ticket, will you not board if you discover the plane has been switched? Will you avoid airlines that don't guarantee you a certain plane?

There are not many great options to travel long distances quickly. If this plane becomes commonplace, I'm afraid consumers will be forced to use it. If there are other ideas on how this could play out, I'm happy to consider them, but I fear this is nearly a given.

<comment><USER36> > Most airlines won't tell you your aircraft when you book a ticket

I don't think this is remotely true. I just checked Delta and British Airways; both show the aircraft type in "details". (Pick the 747 flights from BA while you still can!)

> even if they do, they seem allowed to change it at the last minute

Airlines shuffle aircraft occasionally, but usually the aircraft type for a particular flight is predictable. If airline A flies the 737 Max and airline B flies the A320 on the same route, people will flock to airline B.

<comment><USER37> Last time I was on a delta flight, their terms of service (or whatever they call them) explicitly reserved the right to swap out the type of aircraft at any point in time. That was less than a year ago, I assume it is still the case.

<comment><USER26> They won't swap you to a 737-MAX if they don't own any of that aircraft. Delta, your example, does not have any in service and has not ordered any. It's not hard to find out which airlines use the plane and which don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> There are two kinds of software:

\- buggy

\- the one where bugs were not yet found

<comment><USER39> \- formally verified software

I only remember hearing about "mathematically proven software" as an undergrad and just googled to find this name. I've always been interested in learning more of what it's about but never jumped in.

<comment><USER40> Formally verified software still has its limitations. Knuth's famous "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." is funny but true.

Formal verification is a good and useful tool, but it provably cannot cover the entire system, and practical limitations will limit it even further.

Formal verification of source code is still subject to compiler bugs. Formally proven compilers are subject to bugs in the larger system (IIRC Csmith was able to find an incorrectness in code generated by CompCert because of a bug in a system header file).

<comment><USER41> Also formally verified code may behave very badly when the underlying hardware fails.

<comment><USER37> If the hardware is behaving out of spec, it's not the software failing.

If the hardware is behaving in spec (e.g. 1 out of 3 computers fails) and you properly formally verified the software to that spec, the software will not behave badly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I hope these planes get scrapped and never see flight again. Tear them down and recycle the parts, and build something that's modern from the group up instead of recycled, deprecated bullshit.

<comment><USER43> This just isn't going to happen.</comment></comment>


Mozilla says Firefox 3.0 bug-free, launches RC2 - <AUTHOR> http://www.macworld.com/article/133785/2008/06/firefox3.html <comment><USER2> "Mozilla says Firefox 3.0 bug-free" - anyone who says such a thing is both an idiot and a liar.

<comment><USER3> It sounds like they just quoted the weekly project meeting, which anyone can dial into. In that context, everyone knows Beltzner meant _blocking_ bugs. So yeah, just sensationalism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ironically, when I tried to view this link, firefox crashed.

</comment><comment><USER5> that Beltzner sounds a bit cocky. He said in an email that all bugs that remain are "server or web-site related"? Is he high?

<comment><USER6> It seems quite obvious that he's quoted out of context: FF3 is obviously not "bug free", but there aren't any further browser fixes slated for 3.0 final (as opposed to fixes that are "server-side and Web-site related"). The headline is just link bait.

<comment><USER5> before downmodding, did you actually read the article?

<comment><USER6> Yes -- what else did you think I was paraphrasing?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Where In The World Is Innovation? - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2009/03/02/where-in-the-world-is-innovation/

<comment><USER2> The measure of innovation is patent registrations? I'm not convinced by this measure. Sure, it allows them to draw a nice graph, but if the underlying data is trash, the graph is less than useful.

<comment><USER3> That's the scale for the chart - The article (that it links to) claims: " _analyzed over 700 variables, including those driving innovation (business environment, government and regulation, human capital, infrastructure, and local demand) along with proxies for innovation output (for example, economic value added, journal publications, patent applications) to identify trends among the success stories_ "

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice to see Tokyo floating big. There is a lot of great stuff going on here, even more than is commonly noticed by the press.

</comment><comment><USER5> Nice to see Brisbane, Australia on there, although the whole reason I left is because it certainly didn't seem like a "hot spring". That said, universities there were certainly doing some great research (very cutting edge all things considered), and getting a lot patents, etc.

<comment><USER3> Where are you now?

I know the McKinsey is a subscription - but does anyone know if the complete data set available? In particular, I'd like to know how other Australian cities were positioned (I'm in Melbourne).

<comment><USER5> I'm in Mountain View, California now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the author is missing the point. You can find people anywhere in the world to fund a website that "shows cat videos" as long as you don't approach investors with that thesis. And really, it's ok to fail anywhere, not just Silicon Valley. It's what you learn from it that counts. Sure, it's probably not ok to fail because you became a heroin addict (even in Silicon Vallye). But if you're a computer scientist in Utah that tried to come up with, for example, new encryption methods for banking software security but failed to get funding, does that make the technology itself irrelevant because your business failed?

</comment><comment><USER7> Hot springs, dynamic oceans, silent lakes, and shrinking pools??

Sometimes consulting doesn't seem like such a bad career, then reality smacks me in the face.

<comment><USER8> Why not use colorful language?

It's not like the Flickr, Twitter, Rumblr, Tumblr, Dumbler, Fumblr thing we have going on in the web 2.0 world is any better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Original source:

[http://whatmatters.mckinseydigital.com/innovation/building-a...](http://whatmatters.mckinseydigital.com/innovation/building- an-innovation-nation)

</comment><comment><USER10> Interesting that Chicago had the 3rd highest diversity (after SV, Tokyo)

</comment><comment><USER11> sigh... and london did not fare well :( There are a number of "things" going on here, and all I can imagine is the scale of SV :)

<comment><USER8> Eh, I wouldn't romanticize it too much. Silicon Valley is just a bunch of strip malls, suburban homes and office parks.</comment></comment>