From Bootstrap to CSS Grid - <AUTHOR> https://open.nytimes.com/bootstrap-to-css-grid-87b3f5f830e4?pagewanted=all <comment><USER2> "It took about three lines of CSS to write the grid layout I wanted, and I wanted to live in the bright and beautiful future where layout is always that simple."

This is so spot on. I've met many developers who tend to think Bootstrap is easier, but that's usually because they haven't experienced this part of CSS Grid. Just add a couple of lines and you have a very powerful grid layout.

I wrote an article on Bootstrap vs. CSS Grid a few weeks ago btw. Feel free to check it out:

[https://hackernoon.com/how-css-grid-beats- bootstrap-85d5881c...](https://hackernoon.com/how-css-grid-beats- bootstrap-85d5881cf163)

And here is a link to my free CSS Grid course, in case you're interested in learning it:

[https://scrimba.com/g/gR8PTE](https://scrimba.com/g/gR8PTE)

<comment><USER3> Not arguing the usefulness of CSS Grid, but Bootstrap is a whole bunch more than just a grid. All the components in Bootstrap kinda work together with the .container .row .col classes and that's still a crazy useful feature.

<comment><USER4> The thing about Bootstrap (at least v3) is that the component library is pretty bare bones.

But I'm curious to your statement about "working together". Are Bootstrap components "aware" of the layout css/components?

<comment><USER5> I took that to mean the style was out of the box consistent; that while not unique and perfect you have to work pretty hard to muck it up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does Grid work in IE 10 or 11?

`caniuse` says "partial" support with prefixes in 11. Anyone have experience of how well it works, with prefixes, how "partial" or compatible the support is?

> I implemented this CSS Grid progressive enhancement on The New York Times > Watching media card component. Users on old browsers see Bootstrap, but > users on browsers that support the display: grid property

Okay... yeah, I don't want to do that. Workaround with bootstrap or flexbox that don't really do _quite_ what I want as well as grid does... are still better than having to do the workaround _and_ grid, to get all browsers.

> You're absolutely ready to declare display: grid if you're the only person > contributing code.

I think it's the other way around. If you have a team big enough to do grid _and_ fallbacks with flexbox or float or whatever, you're ready for grid. If you're one person... you probably don't got time for that! If I got to do the good enough fallback anyway, I'd rather just be done then. At least if you're me. Sadly, so goes CSS improvements. In a couple years I can probably use grid. Hey, at least I can finally use flexbox, which is awesome too!

<comment><USER4> As I said in another post in this thread, I'm hoping Postcss and the autoprefixer plugin will work with at least IE11.

Is IE 10 even relevant these days? It seems that except for very outdated systems, everybody should have been autoupdated to IE 11 by now

<comment><USER7> Everybody except some companies with systems locked to an older version because of legacy software they need to consume. Which also happen to be amongst your big clients and despite representing 5% in your analytics, represent 20% of your potential business.

Now what? Do you make your new site unusable for them? Or do you create a complex intricate fallback css which defies the purpose of using css grids?

<comment><USER8> Then yeah CSS grid is not right for that project. But not everyone is in that camp - and some are a bit of both. We have clients like yours and then many others that don't even need IE11 based on their stats. The money saved because we can use more efficient tech like CSS grid mean more time to add features!

(All our websites _work_ in IE11 - they're just allowed to be "visually different from the approved designs" \- it's a pretty good compromise for many clients!)

<comment><USER6> Def report back if you try doing stuff with grid that works in both IE11 and up to date browsers. I'm curious to hear how it goes from someone that did it.

I've done that with flexbox, and it worked out fine for me with both IE 10 and 11, even though caniuse notes "large number of bugs" in IE11 flexbox implementation. Wasn't really a problem with my implementation. But it sounds like grid might be a different story, where IE11 implements things to an older spec with significant differences.

<comment><USER7> In a similar situation (support for ie11 and a usable site in ie10) I've found the susy grid system (v.2) indispensable.

Incredible flexibility and precision with just a few lines of scss. I know that in a few years I'll be writing pure css for grids, but until then it's susy for me. I just don't have the time or will to write multiple layers of redundant css.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's about time the web got a decent layout system.

Every UI toolkit that I know of (wxWidgets, Tcl/Tk, Qt) has some form of layout mechanism (box layout, grid layout, etc), and they'd had it for years/decades.

On the web though, people have been hacking around this omission for ages with tables and assorted "grid" systems (pure css, bootstrap, etc).

The needs for layout management was there for as long as I can remember, and this isn't a particularly tough problem to solve (Tcl/Tk has had "pack" since the late 90s, IIRC).

Why the hell did it take so long for the web to come up with a decent layout mechanism?

<comment><USER10> Web development is just starting to catch up to where we were fifteen years ago. Things like type safety, unit testing, and dependency management are still fairly new on the Javascript side of the house, and I'd argue that Maven is lightyears ahead of NPM or pack or gulp or whatever the fuck the kids are using these days.

The UI side is even worse. When you compare $todays_web_framework to QT or Swing, it's like dropping into some terrible alternate timeline where the size of a thing on-screen can only be divined by spraying the proper mixture of cattle bones and chicken entrails on a ouija board beneath a blood moon.

<comment><USER11> We intentionally moved from Qt to Electron for desktop app development. Electron apps look better generally and are far easier to maintain than Qt- based apps. CSS has its warts but it's very expressive these days. Don't even get me started on Swing versus React. A decent set of React components are more declarative, easier to maintain, and faster to develop with than Swing. You also have powerful testing tools in React like Jest snapshots and Enzyme, which allow you to inspect and test the output of your UI in ways that are not straightforward with Swing.

<comment><USER12> Swing has been obsolete for quite some while, if anything, compare with JavaFX

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My breakthrough moment for grid UI development was realizing that all of my layout code for a component is contained in the parent – rather than spread around the children.

For example, in bootstrap or some other older layout framework every "column" would need to contain some class or id to style it correctly. So for a 3 column grid you would need to give each element a class setup of something like "column-third".

With grid, all that layout logic is moved into a single container "display: grid" element, making it so much easier to add/remove/edit grid items. Even padding is declared in the container element with the "grid-gap" property! It's a small improvement that has immensely increased my developer experience building grid-like UI.

<comment><USER5> And it makes sense. That is define the properties of the container, not the individual items within it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm a recent convert to CSS grid, absolutely love it. There's no dilemma between flexbox + grid; they're complimentary. Just looking forward to full devtools support in Chrome (although Firefox's grid devtools are mighty fine).

</comment><comment><USER15> I recently converted my blog to CSS grid.

In the past I would have lazily used bootstrap as I've used that for over three years and know the grid inside out.

It was a touch intimidating at first. No framework!

But it is really quite expressive. It took me 12 lines of CSS to get a traditional blog layout that collapsed on mobiles.

<comment><USER16> Do you have a link? I am thinking about converting my blog to CSS-Grid, but would like some inspiration.

<comment><USER15> It is a touch hacky but here it is: [https://grillopress.github.io](https://grillopress.github.io)

Code here:

[https://github.com/GrilloPress/grillopress.github.io?files=1](https://github.com/GrilloPress/grillopress.github.io?files=1)

The idea behind my blog is every major article I style slightly differently.

Have an upcoming design kanban one where I've played about a bit more with grids to create the boards

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So I love CSS Grid very much, but have found myself still wanting/needing masonry-style "Pinterest" layouts, which I haven't been able to do without JavaScript. I've seen many of the CSS column and flexbox hacks, but nothing quite nails it.

Anyone have any good ideas here?

<comment><USER8> CSS grid can do this! Sure not as freedom as a JS implementation but its good enough in 95% of scenarios in my experience! [https://codepen.io/balazs_sziklai/pen/mOwoLg](https://codepen.io/balazs_sziklai/pen/mOwoLg) (not my code - just one of the examples on codepen)

<comment><USER18> Sorry, but this is not true masonry because the heights of the items are fixed. Masonry layouts have dynamic height elements.

<comment><USER8> Sorry I just linked to the first one that looked right as I was on the move. Flexible height is definitely possible as we're using it that in prod. Here's another examplei found with working flexible height :)

[https://codepen.io/Kseso/pen/ZJbEMe/](https://codepen.io/Kseso/pen/ZJbEMe/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Not relevant to the article, but her avatar is very cool - and apparently she generated it with SVG and stylesheets: [https://codepen.io/tallys/pen/mPBBXr](https://codepen.io/tallys/pen/mPBBXr)

<comment><USER20> Does anyone have a link to how to go about generating an image like this?

Did the writer hand make the individual polygons or generate it from an image of themselves?

<comment><USER21> It's possible to generate svgs from images, see [https://jmperezperez.com/svg- placeholders/](https://jmperezperez.com/svg-placeholders/)

<comment><USER19> That's really cool, but the results don't look much like her avatar. I'm guessing it's really hard to do this without a lot of human input.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Can someone illuminate me as to what are some of the reasons that would make someone style with CSS Grid with a Fallback to Bootstrap?

Considering you are already writing Bootstrap due to compatibility concerns why not just keep using that? I feel like adding another dependency like this would just create a risk of having design differences pop up over time.

Mind you, I don't hate CSS Grid. I really enjoyed learning it, and I look forward to be able to use it in a few years.

<comment><USER23> > Can someone illuminate me as to what are some of the reasons that would make > someone style with CSS Grid with a Fallback to Bootstrap?

Generous interpretation: graceful upgrade when CSS grid has sufficient browser support.

Realistic interpretation: to work with the 'new hot' and not the 'old stodgy'

<comment><USER11> It's not just "the new hot". Using pure CSS over a JS + CSS library like bootstrap has performance implications for your code. Besides avoiding yet another dependency, native CSS grid renders faster. Also, CSS grid being a native feature, you can use those skills in any project, anywhere, even one that isn't using Bootstrap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> What is the advantage of using CSS Grid instead of Flexbox? The Bootstrap v4 already uses Flexbox for its grid system.

<comment><USER2> Flexbox is built for one dimension layouts (e.g. a header), while Grid is built for creating two-dimensional layouts (e.g. an entire page).

Use both and you'll get the best of two worlds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Let alone using CSS Grid. Here in India, I can't even use Flexbox. Thanks to UC Browser having a 30% market share. Sigh, back to those IE 6 days.

</comment><comment><USER26> It's interesting to now have this, flexbox, and the multi-column module (that I never see anyone talking about).

Does anyone know if this can be used for dynamically wrapping columns? Ostensibly flexbox should be able to handle that, but without an explicit height your column will never wrap.

I recently needed to implement dynamically wrapping columns and I was able to get 90% of what I needed from the multi column module. However it seems to be really buggy at this point, it often ended up with elements sliced in half or missing. Also, the biggest issue for me was no way to target the columns and prevent reordering. I had sections of text that could be expanded or collapsed, and that would trigger a complete rearrangement of columns. Nasty.

I ended up coding my own column system for vertical wrapping, and it was so helpful I was thinking about open-sourcing it, but I'm not sure if CSS grid obviates the need.

<comment><USER27> As you found out, the CSS multi-column module is not very well specified, and browser support is severly lacking in both features and performance.

Unfortunately... no, there's no better css only alternative. Grids are not supposed to address that use case. For now you are much better off looking at "masonry" javascript implementations, because they actually work and exhibit better performance than css columns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's a full-length CSS Grid tutorial posted to HN a few days ago.

[https://medium.freecodecamp.org/heres-my-free-css-grid- cours...](https://medium.freecodecamp.org/heres-my-free-css-grid-course-merry- christmas-3826dd24f098)

</comment><comment><USER28> Just to add what others always mention: CSS Grid and Flexbox are compatible, CSS Grid lays elements in grid, while flexbox handles one dimensional layouts.

To create complex layout you need both and should be familiar with both anyway.

I think we are so familiar with css/html pain that we can't believe to see light in the end of the tunnel. :)

</comment><comment><USER29> What are the preferred solutions for people that are forced to support IE11?

I've seen fallback CSS and JavaScript polyfills used.

<comment><USER30> Here's a simple approach: [https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2017/06/building- production...](https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2017/06/building-production- ready-css-grid-layout/)

"Rather than using fallbacks and shims to ensure a design and layout look the same across all browsers, we'd provide the mobile vertical single-column layout to all browsers and then serve up advanced functionality to those browsers and viewport widths that can take advantage of them."

<comment><USER8> +1 This is a great solution that doesn't take a huge amount of time to implement. Esp if you only use CSS Grid for 2d layouts and use flex for which has decent IE11 support for laying out components (where mobile is often just stacked 100% width components).

A good way to bring a client round is to explain that the time saved on making IE11 pixel perfect is better spent adding features elsewhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> There were some good links in the article but my no. 1 resource for CSS grid is [https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/complete-guide-grid/](https://css- tricks.com/snippets/css/complete-guide-grid/)

</comment><comment><USER32> What I love about the CSS Grid is that it does a really good job of separating content from presentation.

I have used it in one project and it's awesome. What I struggled to do with Bootstrap for almost a week, I could do the same with CSS Grid in an afternoon.

</comment><comment><USER33> CSS Grid blew me away the first time I saw it. I didn't realize it was ready on the latest browsers. I switched from bootstrap recently to tachyons, this is just another reason to not miss it.

</comment><comment><USER34> what's the deal with IE11 and CSS Grid? Is it partial support or MS specific notion of CSS Grid? I keeps seeing both sentiments represented with regard to IE.

</comment><comment><USER35> is there a ui toolkit for react based on CSS Grid ?

<comment><USER4> Currently, probably not. I'm using ant design right now and it uses Flexbox as its underlying layout engine. I think Bootstrap 4 is the same. Once they ditch support for IE11, then they'll probably move to CSS Grid, but at that point you really don't need a UI toolkit to be based on CSS Grid. You either just use the css directly, or have a UI toolkit-independent component wrappers around the grid.

<comment><USER35> Well, I'm looking for component wrappers.

For example I'm using quite a bit of semantic-ui today. Makes the job of building interfaces really simple and easy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Completely off-topic: All five people mentioned as experts on CSS Grid towards the end of this post are women.

(I don't have anything else to add, just found this interesting.)

<comment><USER37> In another blog post they inform us that they have been ranked a Top Company for Women in Technology[0]. I'm not familiar with the Anita Borg Institute that did the ranking, but I think it's great to see anyways.

[0] - [https://open.nytimes.com/the-new-york-times-ranks-as-a- top-c...](https://open.nytimes.com/the-new-york-times-ranks-as-a-top-company- for-women-in-technology-22950f5a342)</comment></comment>


What do other developers look for in a job posting? - <AUTHOR> I'm the lead at a small, but growing company. We're trying to add to our dev team, but have a very hard time getting candidates who are anything but very junior - usually code school grads without much experience. Mid-level developers seem very tough to come by. Our CTO currently writes all of our job postings, but I'm concerned he is scaring off potential candidates with requirements like "a relentlessly positive attitude". I want to take a stab at rewriting the listing, but I'm struggling a little on specifics to focus on that will do a better job at getting the attention of the right people. <comment><USER2> I try to answer two questions quickly: Am I competent enough for this position? And can I see myself working there? Both are easier to answer if the posting gives solid examples, like a description of a recent project or the markets you serve. I want to understand your desired outcomes, not "required" skills.

More often than not, some "required" skills in the description become negotiable during the interview. But outcomes aren't negotiable because outcomes drive revenue.

I wouldn't abandon a job description for including the phrase "relentlessly positive attitude". But it's pure fluff and I would skim it looking for a concrete description of the work.

Recently I was impressed by this job posting from a small outfit in Kentucky [1]. It's a little long for my taste. But it was easy for me to answer my own questions.

[1]: [https://www.level12.io/careers/full-stack-web-app- developer-...](https://www.level12.io/careers/full-stack-web-app-developer- mid/)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's really helpful; thank you! I'm going to borrow a few phrases and ideas from your post. Your "two questions" approach is a really good insight for the kind of information that needs to be present and obvious in whatever we go with. I appreciate the feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You will get better advice if you share more about your company and possibly the specific job postings.

There is a "market for lemons" situation in hiring that works on both the company and the developer side.

If Developer A is a bad developer then Developer A is going to spend more time on the job market. If company B is a bad company it is going to have high turnover. The selection is strong enough that during the recession some companies would only want to talk with developers that already had a job.

The value that Developer A brings to Company B is a function of both A and B, however, which makes the effect even more pronounced. A developer could have very imbalanced strengths and weaknesses and still do great at Company B because the team makes up for it. Company B could be a disorganized mess with a toxic supervisor to boot that will take in great developers, burn them out, and leave them nervous wrecks. In fact, "functioning as a team" is the real magic. If you have a group of average developers who are perfectly coordinated you can beat a group of dev's who all want to be the prima donna.

</comment><comment><USER4> The most important thing to me as a senior developer is a company that will respect my personal time.

I want a company that treats me like an employee, not a friend. I don't need perks in the office.

When I apply to a position I expect that my unlisted experience is as valuable as the listed requirements. Have a list of technology that is comprehensive but make it clear what fraction of those should be prerequisite. (I encourage people to apply at 1/2 to 2/3 usually). If you choose to require a cover letter, be specific about what you're looking for in the letter.

Use a litmus test like a 10 minute coding challenge as part of the application process if you want a first level filter.

Also, use a tool like hemmingwayapp or textio to clean the post. You don't have to take all of its advice, but it helps to understand what in the text may be at distracting

</comment><comment><USER5> If you want experienced candidates, you can't bottom fish.

In the embedded space, I regularly see listings that say "Senior Embedded Dev needed: 3+ years experience in C and blah blah blah"

So what you're telling me is either A) you have no idea what a senior developer carries in terms of experience because the market has compressed the experience bands or B) you want senior competence at a junior rate.

Almost always, without fail, it's B. So I'm going to ignore the ad.</comment>


Can dogs help us overcome hiring bias? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20190211-can-dogs-help-us-avoid-hiring-bias <comment><USER2> _> Randomness may help reduce bias, Todorov says, but you can't avoid the signals you interpret unconsciously._

Randomness can eliminate bias completely. All you need is to make sure that every pair (candidate, recruiter) has it own random image for candidate. Each candidate should look different for different recruiters. Then, maybe, it would become a victim of unconcsious bias when communicating with recruiter A, but not with recruiter B. And every candidate would have equal chances for positive and negative biases.

The task of making an each individual case to be fair and the task of eliminating biases are different tasks.</comment>


Dunderdoc, a simple Python introspection utility - <AUTHOR> http://jugad2.blogspot.com/2015/03/dunderdoc-simple-python-introspection.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I added a couple of comments to the post, at:

[http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2015/03/dunderdoc-simple-python- in...](http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2015/03/dunderdoc-simple-python- introspection.html)</comment>


Learning about our customers - <AUTHOR> http://go-test.it/blog/2010/02/22/learning-about-our-customers.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not 100% convinced this is entirely wise. Following the advice blindly could lead you to build something which is wonderful, but impossible to sell.

<comment><USER2> If it's truly wonderful (useful, satisfies a need, fits into customers' lives), how could it be impossible to sell?</comment></comment>


Wartime Spies Who Used Knitting as an Espionage Tool - <AUTHOR> http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/knitting-spies-wwi-wwii <comment><USER2> Neal Stephenson also wove this idea into his historical fiction trilogy, The Baroque Cycle, set in early 1700s Europe. One of the protagonists keeps a journal encoded in binary cross-stitch as she moves across enemy lines.

<comment><USER3> Sounds like a lot of work, for not much information recorded lol.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The mucher higher tech version of this is Little Old Lady memory: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_rope_memory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_rope_memory)

Wires "knit" around ferrite cores to form ones and zeroes. Bit twiddling anyone?

</comment><comment><USER5> I have to wonder by how long this technique predates WWI, since history is littered with subversive cues and signals.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_in_the_American_R...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_in_the_American_Revolutionary_War)

Probably, any earlier than the 19th century and textiles were probably still pretty valuable, that they weren't just thrown around.

Also, perhaps most notably is the scytale which is pretty much the same concept, although probably minus the steganography.

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

<comment><USER6> Even more analogous are Quipu, which encode information in knots. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is so cool. Related: "Knitting for Victory" (about actual knitted goods, not secret codes):

[http://elinorflorence.com/blog/wartime- knitting](http://elinorflorence.com/blog/wartime-knitting)

Edited to add:

[https://judyweightman.wordpress.com/2012/10/09/more- knitting...](https://judyweightman.wordpress.com/2012/10/09/more-knitting- history-world-war-ii/)

</comment><comment><USER8> If you like this topic, check out this mini-series 'The Time in Between', where a seamstress uses sewing for espionage purposes during WWII

</comment><comment><USER9> What to buy for that burgeoning spy?

How about the new Amazon Best Seller: String of Purls!

</comment><comment><USER10> It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

<comment><USER10> Spoilers!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Knitting steganography, who would have thought.</comment>


'We sold our home to build a social network' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39744294 <comment><USER2> A few things:

1\. An "idea" is nothing. An "idea" is not a competitive advantage. If it does take off in even the slightest, Facebook will just copy it, throw resources behind it and crush them.

2\. What is their "unfair advantage"? From what I can tell none of them are developers, designers, or have a network of people that they can leverage in the industry.

I, like most other people here, have what I think is a great idea for business. I'm not going to quit my relatively well paying job for it or risk my family's well being for it.

I'm going to talk to people I know in the industry I'm targeting, I'm going to personally use my skill set to develop the web site and the backend on nights and weekends and host it on AWS.

After I do the first rough design using Bootstrap. I'm sure I can scrounge up enough money to find a real designer to do high fidelity mock ups that I can use to make a presentable site.

The most realistic case is that it will turn into a little extra income. Worse case, I'm out of a few hundred bucks in AWS hosting cost, spent some time getting better at a few technologies, and I have a portfolio of well designed code I can show when I'm interviewing.

</comment><comment><USER3> I work for a mobile design and development agency. We get many inquiries from clients with zero budget and a "million dollar idea" that is doomed from the start. When they hear the cost, that's usually the last we hear from them.

Looking at the app, I really can't believe they spent this much creating it. My immediate reaction is it's a bad outsourcing job with clipart purchased from Fiverr. Also, the screenshots and App/Play Store presence is just awful.

</comment><comment><USER4> I had to check the date to see if this wasn't published April 1st. Someone should protect these people against themselves.

Why did no one at the bank said "this might not be the best idea" when the family told they wanted to sell their house to finance the new social media revolution?

<comment><USER5> I think this is the trouble with being an entrepreneur. You are crazy right up until the moment you are proved right. At which point, the idea is 'obvious to everyone'.

Of course, most ideas fail. Most entrepreneurs are just proved crazy.

It is a lonely existence where even other entrepreneurs are unsupportive.

These guys have a nice PR piece on the BBC. That will give them a big temporary boost in traffic. Maybe not so crazy?

<comment><USER6> There are some business which are known to fail miserably.

Like, when you want to lend money to open a restaurant in some places, a reputable bank should be able to tell you that xx% of restaurants go bankrupt within the next 2 years.

<comment><USER7> Like the already saturated social media market. What can a new social network do that can't be done already on Facebook?

<comment><USER8> ...or, if it isn't already being done by Facebook, can't be developed and rolled out incredibly quickly to a billion users if they decide that they like what you're doing and want to do it too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Come on, this is just a blatant PR piece. Lot's of people do lots of things to fund their struggling startups, but very few get a full article plus advertising photos on the BBC. Well done guys, kudos, but come on there is no story here.

<comment><USER10> Unless my google-fu has let me down, the father is Perry Hughes a music agent who used to represent Salford born pop-operatic tenor Russell Watson (British mums love 'im). Sounds as if the pair had an acrimonious split and according to this article ([http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/local- news/watso...](http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/local-news/watson- what-have-you-done-for-me-lately-1127538)) Russell had to pay out big.

So I'm guessing Perry has a few connections and can get some PR when he wants. Perhaps 'selling one of the family homes' doesn't provide the same punchy headline.

<comment><USER11> so maybe they sold ONE OF their homes as a funding vehicle and this article made it seem like it was their ONLY home?

if that's the case then that sounds much more reasonable (though still kind of weird; why put your assets on the line when cheaper capital is available? especially if you're well connected and can obtain it?)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I pity them; gone are the days when someone could pitch "a social network for X" and an investor would raise and yell "shutup and take my money".

These days, whenever I go to a pitch contest and some poor guy starts with the social blah blah, the jury starts yawning and the participant is quickly dismissed: no one really could explain the business model behind his social network, besides mentioning ads.

So, does anyone know how this sports social network is going to earn money?

<comment><USER13> > So, does anyone know how this sports social network is going to earn money?

If you offer a free fantasy football game and a million players use it, you could probably gamble on sports using the data.

<comment><USER14> The bookies will likely still have better data than you, so I doubt gambling using the data would be a good idea.

But e.g. using the data on the teams people have put together and marketing real bets on their real matches to those players and playing on it accordingly (" _your_ player is playing a real match - show your support here", coupled with e.g. "in game" trophies if you win) might b an option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It would be interesting to see how many of the startups that got really huge had an initially negative reaction on HN. We know that most startups fail, that means GDX (the subject of the article) will probably fail, so all the negativity is really just a statement of the bleeding obvious.

There is a big chicken-and-egg issue here, in that they need to get a large number of users on the site in order to make it somewhat self-sustaining. That pretty much seems to be what is happening now - yes, this is a PR puff piece, that means they're serious about growing the site.

If there's an interesting enough niche, people will come to this. I remember seeing boxrec.com in the very early days; it was still a server under someone's desk and had a handful of users - but the guy who set it up knows boxing inside out. We don't know the background of this family, but I don't think this is just a "let's set up a social network!" hail mary.

The play-by-play looks genuinely interesting, and we know people want to talk sports in real time. They use Twitter for this (poorly), and Facebook, but it's not a venue for hard-core sports fans. If they can bring together detailed play-by-play across a variety of sports, and enable people to talk about it together, and maybe bring in streaming / commentary (maybe this is phase 2), this is a very interesting proposition. Building that kind of audience would be massively difficult of course, but also clearly very valuable. Bet-in-play is _huge_ , and that's just one aspect.

I wish them luck. I hope they're not as all chips-in as described, but it feels to me like an interesting idea that should create a valuable product.

</comment><comment><USER16> Seems kinda selfish to risk your family's wellbeing for the sake of your business dream.

<comment><USER17> If they are all active in the family project as implied, then I think their children have a high chance of being notable and employable whether or not they make a dent in the market as a startup.

It seems like they are giving their children a chance in life that is a little less morbid than waiting to inherit half a house.

<comment><USER18> Or perhaps the parents are setting their children up to have to support them in their dotage as they no longer have a home of their own, putting further strain on their children when they may already be facing a difficult economic future. There are ways to do this and selling the farm is one of, if not the, worst ways.

<comment><USER17> Many parents of that generation leave important jobs to be unemployable, maintain their unrealistic costs of living until or beyond retirement age and leave their children with nothing but complications.

That there might be better ways doesn't mean they are as bad as the average. I'd take 4X at these odds at 10X the average UK salary (even if 2 of them might be short careers) and a possible business over a less than certain chance of 2 mediocre UK employee lives with not as many family obligations. But each to their own.

<comment><USER18> "many" is unquantifiable but it suggests lots, I don't see that being the case. In the UK house prices tend to result in the parents downsizing to afford retirement and/or end of life care. I'm not saying they should let the kids inherit the house, I'm just saying that they could have ensured that their children did not need to support them when they may be trying to buy their own home or start their own families.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Well, that seems drastic. After reading the article i am not convinced. They don't have the one big argument why one should use their app. Just being a bit better in something is not enough when building something like this (though i don't think they are actually better, just look at their app [0]). I use onefootball and it works fine, i don't even use most of it's features (especially the social-media ones)!

[0][https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.app.gameda...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.app.gameday)

</comment><comment><USER20> > Russian investor

What path does one take to find themselves in a conversation with foreign investors?

<comment><USER21> Sit at the smaller bar in a very high class London hotel (usually there are two - one intimate and one grand). Wear a good quality suit - no tie. Make sure you're impeccably clean (manicure), but not too tidy. Strike up casual conversation with absolutely anybody who seems up for it: so anyone who is alone and any couples whose conversation is flagging. Always be ready to suggest a glass of champagne. There's no need to lie but always imply you're a guest of the hotel.

Over time you'll get good at measuring people's potential. Rich people in these contexts are always bored. They're always looking for something to play with. Either shopping or investing - or a mix of both. It's intimately connected to their social relationship with the supplier.

It's a lot like being on the game.

Disclosure: I have never done this - however I grew up knowing someone who made their very good living in this way.

<comment><USER14> My first startup was funded almost that way. One of my co-founders was a navy officer that had a thing for putting on a suit and sitting in fancy bars ordering black russians, and on one of those occasions while we were consiering where to get funding, he got talking to a recently returned long time expat who was wealthy, bored and looking for somewhere to invest. Two weeks later we had the cash in hand.

This was someone who knew nothing about our area. We were starting an ISP and he had never had a computer on his desk (this was '95...) - he'd always had secretaries to do "that stuff"; to him it was pretty much a game and a gamble based on getting on well with my co-founder that evening in a bar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I had a marketing client/photographer have me build a web site for local sport clubs. They updated the site with scores plus thousands of photos of the athletes. The idea was to sell the photos to fans and parents. It was a decent idea, but I think they priced the (digital) photos too high, and the amount of work for the return just never surfaced.

This doesn't sound like an organic growth social network, and I feel they are misjudging the ROI on all the investment of time, effort and money.

</comment><comment><USER23> I can imagine an app for managing small amateur sports teams, Little Leagues etc. Club secretaries take a lot of time on this work and its pretty thankless, plus they have a modest budget, so something that charges a $50 a year to host your team data with easy to use tools for booking matches, managing email lists etc could be a viable business. But I wouldn't call it a "social network".

<comment><USER24> there already are companies in this space though. In the UK we have Pitchero (FD: previous employer of mine) who provide a pretty great service for small- to-medium-sized sports teams. I'm sure there are similar offerings in other countries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Not to denounce their work but the website and app looks pretty terrible. I would imagine they would have enough funds to hire good developers after selling their house and cars. The article also talks about a funding from a Russian investor.

I was really interested in knowing how and where did they actually spend money. I dug further:

\- They have 100-500 installs on app store.

\- A good amount of their twitter followers are spam with most of their tweets with keywords such as giveaways and contest.[2]

\- Their play by play commentary is coming from performgroup.com. I would think this would be their highest cost.

\- Their site is hosted on aws.

[1] - [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.app.gameda...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.app.gameday&hl=en_GB)

[2] - [https://twitter.com/GamedayXtra/followers?lang=en](https://twitter.com/GamedayXtra/followers?lang=en)

What could be the significant cost here?

<comment><USER26> I imagine the major costs are their living expenses. They've sold their house and cars, but still need somewhere to live, they'll still need to travel and of course eat.

Additional costs could be through marketing, not sure if they're doing paid ads? Or simply the costs of travelling to events and investors to pitch it?

Despite being based in Manchester they seem to have registered their company ('GameDay Xtra Ltd') in Gibraltar. I assume as some sort of Tax Dodge? Or do they incur some other benefit by having an Ltd in Gibraltar vs in the UK?

<comment><USER27> Registering your company in Gibraltar is a common practice when it comes to gambling site companies in the UK. They could eventually try to dip into that market.

<comment><USER26> Ok that actually makes sense, owning a sports social network it seems a logical step to go from there to allowing people to bet on the sports.

<comment><USER28> If they go for online-sport-betting site, at least they are consistent in the sense that they just put their whole family life on a single bet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I think the only way to pitch a social network would be for it to be the product and not the customer base.

Who would pay $1/month?

But then if you can freely share anything you could rival netflix?

</comment><comment><USER30> doesn't sound all that crazy...already I like their homepage summary better than what I get from the bbc sports section or espn...also this could prove valuable experience for the kids even if this doesn't work, their subsequent attempts might.

</comment><comment><USER31> I clicked on this expecting a metaphor where home == society.</comment>


Tesla is heading for a cash crunch - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/news/business/21739981-road-ahead-elon-musks-car-company-looking-more-perilous-tesla-heading-cash <comment><USER3> I feel like the author missed the dip caused by the April Fools joke, and tries to create another one.

I think what's Elon is trying with the automation is very similar to difficulties that SpaceX had initially with reusable rockets. At first people doubted SpaceX can replace NASA, then that it was possible to do have rockets to return back, later when it started looking reasonable but SpaceX rockets were still crashing, company like Blue Origin were making fun of them by posting video that they can already land (omitting that just getting 100km up and back was far less challenging than what SpaceX was trying to do).

Eventually SpaceX succeeded and this resulted with much cheaper cost to send satellites to space.

To me it looks like Tesla is going through same thing, they try to automate all manufacturing instead of doing what everyone else is doing, this might make things bad at first, but once they succeed it will be very easy to scale the production and the only limitation will be the supply.

I believe in Tesla primarily because of Elon, he is kind of a guy who doesn't have word "failure" in his dictionary, if Tesla doesn't succeed then most likely what they were trying to accomplish was impossible.

<comment><USER4> Elon is a fundamentals kind of guy and that drives his strategy. The fundamentals with respect to electric cars from the time he started were: a)electric is a _much_ better technology than ICE for automobiles. Electric is way simpler, lower center of gravity means better handling, smaller and lighter motors mean more interior space and better performance. Battery tech is a pain point but no CO2 is essential for everyone.

b)Large automakers know this but simpler for them translates into less maintenance which means lower profits. Automakers therefore will pay lip service to electrics, drag their feet and kill off any real electric competition if they can. The world's environment is not a shareholder in the large automakers.

So his "master plan", (the Truth but not the whole truth) he published in 2006. What he left out was that he knew as he moved to a high volume model that's when the large automakers would try to cut Tesla off at the knees and then go back to resting on their laurels.

If his high volume model was mediocre and expensive to build Tesla would be dead in the water. He needed an excellent car but even more than that he needed Tesla's cost to be much lower than the majors could match so they couldn't low ball the market long enough to cut off Tesla's oxygen.

When Tesla got 400k Model3 pre-orders that's when he decided to double down on the 'low unit cost/large production investment' strategy for the model3. Making this work is _critical_ to Tesla's strategy. You can be sure Musk and his team put a lot of effort into the production tech knowing it was make or break for Tesla.

The Economist is under estimating Musk and they should give him a little more credit given his track record. Telsa is not a slam dunk but it's also nowhere near as fragile as they make out. Musk also has a bit of equity in SpaceX he could lean on if the markets demur at the end of 2019.

<comment><USER5> > The Economist is under estimating Musk and they should give him a little > more credit given his track record. Telsa is not a slam dunk but it's also > nowhere near as fragile as they make out. Musk also has a bit of equity in > SpaceX he could lean on if the markets demur at the end of 2019.

[https://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2018/3/1/37229846-15...](https://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2018/3/1/37229846-1519910035030181_origin.png)

Tesla is going to run into issues in 2019 if they are unable to ramp up the Model 3. Tesla lost $1.6 Billion last year, and they only have $3 millionish in cash. Furthermore, Tesla has debt that is due in 2018 (~$300 million or so) and early 2019 (~$900 million).

Over the next year, Tesla needs to pay off $1.2 Billion in debt, AND needs to increase revenue by ~$1.6 Billion or so to stay even. They're not exactly in a good situation.

I'm relatively confident that Mr. Musk can raise another $3 billion in capital through stock offerings or rolling over their debt in the short term, but those options have some risks involved. Furthermore, people will not want to lend money to Tesla if they think that the company is sinking.

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

All the while, Tesla has bought SolarCity and also inherited all of its debt and issues. Tesla was having enough issues ramping up Model 3, but now they ALSO have to make the solar company profitable too. It was a bad time to buy SolarCity.

</comment><comment><USER6> I understand people WANT to defend Tesla here, but there are some really rubbish arguments people are trying to push and especially some that border on conspiracy theories.

Tesla has real problems: The first is that it's failing to meet production targets. There's no way around this, the company is on rocky times and while I'm sure that given unlimited time and resources they could get to the production targets we don't live in a world with infinite time and money. Other players in this market are moving quickly, if you want to see a compelling example of electric technology the Hybrids from Toyota are great, and they're producing 10 million cars a year. So it's not a sure thing that Tesla ever becomes a leading car manufacturer (and therefore pays off its debt and shareholders).

Even then, there are serious questions about the full automation of their production line - what is that point of a robot doing everything if you're paying more to run the robot than a human would cost to do the same thing? Industry analysts aren't idiots, and neither are the other car manufacturers. Even if the Tesla factory goes fully automatic years before other car companies you might find it's actually not economically beneficial. So all these problems they've imposed on themselves may not even provide benefits.

The second is that their self-driving program is hitting similar bumps to the automation. They've rolled out something early and they've opened themselves up to huge liabilities. There's good reason other car manufacturers are being very careful with the roll out- liability from accidents could bankrupt your company.

The final thing is that Tesla's accounts as a standalone company don't look stellar. They have a lot of short term debt and they need to roll that over at a time where they're missing targets and killing customers. That's a huge economic problem. The result will be either they fix problems 1 & 2 or Musk will have to issue stock at the risk of losing some control, or pump more of his own money in.

One final point I'd like to make about this: Elon Musk wanted Tesla to move everyone to electric cars. For him, Toyota or Ford selling electric cars would be a victory. For Tesla and it's shareholders that's not true. So whilst Musk may succeed, it's not necessarily going to happen through Tesla. He's done a great job of scaring other companies into Electric and autonomous vehicles. That does not mean Tesla will ever pay off to shareholders.

<comment><USER7> > Other players in this market are moving quickly, if you want to see a > compelling example of electric technology the Hybrids from Toyota are great, > and they're producing 10 million cars a year.

Toyota is mass-market. It's not hip. Everyone can drive a Toyota - a Tesla, though, is a status symbol. The competition in the "status symbol" range is BMW (the 7er series) - which is primarily an ICE-vehicle based company. Yes, they have the i3 and the i8 experience but that's low volume - when they try to scale up, also BMW will face issues AND they will have to either convert entire assembly lines or retrofit, both of which is expensive - compared to Tesla which HAS an assembly line, and only has to figure out how to make it work at scale. The question is, who will be faster to solve their issues - <USER2> or Tesla?

<comment><USER8> Wasn't the business goal for Tesla to become mass market? Toyota and BMW have their relative status symbols sold and resold by numerous dealers worldwide. And their status symbols have very regular body panel seams - the very definition of quality. These 2 companies have vast experience bringing a new car model or drivetrain component to scale, along with more factories to test with. Not to mention they could form a business partnership with each other, just like Toyota and GM did at NUMMI[0].

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Isn't this last week's problem? I thought Tesla was fine this week.

<comment><USER10> I like your humour.

TSLA stock fluctuations really keep me on my toes. -10% on one day, +10% on the other. It is an emotionally charged stock.

<comment><USER11> you mean like Autopilot [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/31/apples-steve-wozniak- doesnt-...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/31/apples-steve-wozniak-doesnt- believe-anything-elon-musk-or-tesla-say.html)

"Man you have got to be ready — it makes mistakes, it loses track of the lane lines. You have to be on your toes all the time," says Wozniak.

<comment><USER12> I don't think Woz should be seen as a particularly relecant commentator on Tesla (Tim Cook, despite not being an Apple co-founder, would be far more interesting). But as usual, I find myself nodding in agreement with Woz's worldview.

<comment><USER13> ... why not relevant commentator? He's got the geek cred.

<comment><USER12> Not necessarily about cred, but because he's not in an industry position or otherwise has the insight that Apple "co-founder" suggests. Don't get me wrong, I think he's was as vital to Apple as Steve Jobs was in its pre-iPod era.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Most of the Tesla threads seem to directly jump from Tesla to Musk to SpaceX. The question on viability and profitability are never answered during such comparisons. I dug around to see how SpaceX was doing and I only found this article from early last year:

[https://www.nasdaq.com/article/will-spacex-earn-a-profit- in-...](https://www.nasdaq.com/article/will-spacex-earn-a-profit- in-2017-cm875897)

> Moreover, if SpaceX achieves its stated goal of sending 20 rockets into > orbit by the end of the year, the $1.44 billion in revenues that implies > suggests rising levels of profitability. And if SpaceX achieves its targeted > 30 launches in 2018, the company should be even more profitable next year.

When I look up the launches from SpaceX's site:

[http://www.spacex.com/missions](http://www.spacex.com/missions)

There were only 18 flights in 2017. So, SpaceX also missed their target but they might be in better financial health than Tesla.

For the most part defense of Tesla is similar to the ones seen for Cryptocurrencies. People often go - "This is FUD and author is trying to spread FUD to buy more coins. This coin is trying so and so technology. If it succeds then the price is going to the moon. HODL".

That said I am curious to hear well reasoned arguments on what Tesla is doing which is better than the others. Or rather going to do better.

</comment><comment><USER15> [http://archive.is/CCY8Y](http://archive.is/CCY8Y)

</comment><comment><USER16> Another article that mentions the $35k Model 3, which is vaporware. The Model 3 starts at $49k, $54k with autopilot.

<comment><USER17> Do you have a source for that? According to [https://mashable.com/2017/08/01/tesla-model-3-true-cost- more...](https://mashable.com/2017/08/01/tesla-model-3-true-cost-more- than-35000/), the Model 3 only costs $49,000 if you buy it with an extra-large battery pack and Autopilot. Those are cool, of course, but it's still a perfectly usable car without them (220 mile range). The base price is indeed $35,000, and that doesn't include tax incentives or any other "cheating".

<comment> well-here-we The only version you can buy right now includes the extra-large battery pack and the premium interior, which adds up to $49k.

Source: my reservation number has come up and that's my only option.

<comment><USER18> I suppose it hinges on how we define vaporware, but it's consistently been the case that the lower priced options arrive later.

Source: sub-$70k model S buyer who had to wait longer than preferred for that to be available.

<comment><USER19> I guess the way to resolve this is by asking, when does the $35k Model 3 become available?

Once the answer is known it's not vaporware, but until then Model 3 isn't quite finished, as that's the one that many folk will be waiting for.

<comment><USER20> The answer, for your queue position, is:

[https://3.tesla.com/model3/delivery- estimate](https://3.tesla.com/model3/delivery-estimate)

<comment><USER18> Early reservation holders will see "Late 2018".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm really glad I dumped TSLA stock while I still some profit. For a while I had drank the koolaid and it really tasted good, I even had my preorder for a Model 3. But it has become clear they aren't that great as a car company. Other manufacturers will surpass them, and then what? I rate this as a sell.

</comment><comment><USER22> "Saloon" as a British-ism for "sedan" is a new word for me. As for the article, likely needing to "raise additional capital during the second half of 2019" is a far cry "uncomfortably close to the truth" of totally bankrupt.

<comment><USER23> "Estate" is British-ism for station wagon, too. (A model S wagon would be pretty nice...)

<comment><USER24> Such a thing does exist[1], though it's a custom build. Incidentally, "shooting brake" is yet another British-ism for station wagon.

[1] [http://www.fullychargedshow.co.uk/tesla-model-s-shooting- bra...](http://www.fullychargedshow.co.uk/tesla-model-s-shooting-brake/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's incredible how "the money" believes jokes, uses one accident to throw all the work out of the window... I see how they believe on the project... As musk said "It kinda sucks running a public company".

</comment><comment><USER26> I thought that a Tesla bankruptcy would be cataclysmic. But then I realized that Elon would kind of welcome it.

Spacex has established itself as a sort of technological monopoly, where its launch prices are $70m, but the competition is $90m, but because of their technological monopoly, and their true cost of launch is $20m. And now they are on a launch cadence of every two weeks, (that is $50m in contribution margin every 2 weeks, that is $100m in profit per mo., locked in _forever_ well at least until ULA has a competitive offering (forever+1).

With that as your option set, why fuxk around with 200 versus 300 cars made a day.

F it, just bk it and be done with it.

<comment><USER27> "The point of [building Tesla] was, and remains, accelerating the advent of sustainable energy, so that we can imagine far into the future and life is still good."

It's not all about the money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> How does Teslas strategy fit in with the ascendance of for hire vehicles like Uber? It seems to me rich coastal types who can afford a Tesla, may just decide to ditch driving all together and just "Uber" everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER29> Tesla as a company will be fine if they start focusing more on other initiatives (trailer trucks, solar panels, batteries, etc).

"Self-driving" fancy/family cars aren't a good solution for the future of our already populated cities. Mass transit is. Hyperloop/TBC have a lot more growth potential than Tesla's Model (x) line does.

I was one of Tesla motors' biggest fans but I can't in good faith support them (not Tesla Inc) over a proper public transport solution. It is at best a short term solution and doesn't push humanity forward.

10-20 years down the line I can see them spinning off the Passenger car division, or they will see it impacting their other projects negatively.

<comment><USER19> They should. It looks like Waymo & partners will easily beat them to market on the electric & autonomous car future, anyway.

Big energy companies tend to have a market cap at least 10x big car companies, anyway. That's where their future is.

The only way I see that they could turn the car business around is if they somehow get to full autonomy in the market very soon, and then (per master plan part deux) essentially are selling cars as a means of having car owners investing in their autonomous rides network. The clock is ticking on that, though; Waymo seem to be scaling very aggressively.

<comment><USER11> Yes Google/waymo has been at it since 2009. Musk better deliver the self- driving vaporware [1] he started selling since Oct'16 as shown in the video in [https://www.tesla.com/autopilot](https://www.tesla.com/autopilot) before he can stall the lawsuit [2] any further...

1\. [https://www.hbsslaw.com/uploads/case_downloads/tesla_ap2/tes...](https://www.hbsslaw.com/uploads/case_downloads/tesla_ap2/teslaclassactioncomplaint.pdf)

2\. [https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/21195146/Dean_Sheik...](https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/21195146/Dean_Sheikh_et_al_v_Tesla,_Inc)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> They've been having a cash crunch since day one; the only reason they exist is that the American taxpayer has been milked to the tune of $4.9 billion to support them.

<comment><USER31> how have tax payers been milked with regard to Tesla?

<comment><USER30> [http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk- subsidies-2015...](http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk- subsidies-20150531-story.html)

Now to be fair, that's a small fraction of the taxpayer funds used to prop up a seemingly countless number of crony "capitalists".

<comment><USER27> >This $4.9 Billion figure has been thoroughly debunked. It includes hypothetical tax breaks that Tesla could receive 20 years from now, discounted loans that Tesla long ago paid back in full and in advance, and even money from programs that Tesla never receives, but customers can potentially benefit from.

(from Right-wing group led by Trump propagandist launches campaign against Elon Musk, Tesla and SpaceX [https://electrek.co/2016/11/22/elon-musk-right- wing-trump-pr...](https://electrek.co/2016/11/22/elon-musk-right-wing-trump- propaganda-campaign-against-tesla-spacex/))

Apparently the "Trump propagandist" was Laura Ingraham who's recently getting some news coverage.

<comment><USER30> Okay, say it's half that. It's still crony "capitalism", just the same as when regular car manufacturers or coal mines receive subsidies.

How about not expecting taxpayers to subsidise _any_ industry?

Quibbling about the exact dollar figure doesn't change the moral issue.

<comment><USER32> Air Pollution is estimated to cause ~200,000 early deaths annually in the US. [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S135223101...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231013004548)

If an industry has a realistic prospect of making a serious dent in that number, subsidizing it IS the "moral" thing for a government to do, in my opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> sure is quiet in here.</comment>


Why Are There No Democracies in the Middle East? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/politics-explained/why-are-there-no-democracies-in-the-middle-east-1e3bbae2a62a <comment><USER2> [https://ourworldindata.org/democracy](https://ourworldindata.org/democracy)</comment>


Neil Young Archives - <AUTHOR> https://neilyoungarchives.com/ <comment><USER2> I love this. Such a perfect web presentation for a man who has both experimented with cutting-edge technology (e.g. drum machine, vocoder and synclavier in 1981, the ill-fated Pono player) and been a near-luddite in his approach to digital music. Skeumorphism is due for its return!

Probably everyone reading HN in the last 8 years has seen the excellent video by Monty / xiph.org specifically addressing Neil Young and sample rates/bit rates (for delivery, 44.1kHz/16-bit is really truly all you need), but one thing very appreciated with this website's audio streaming is the option of _uncompressed_ audio, which is much more significant than any high-sample-rate file would be. And they even have a 320kbps fallback! Finally even Neil Young can see the benefit of being 12x more data efficient for 99.98% of the perceived quality.

<comment><USER3> Whats the benefit? \--With todays bandwidth and storage prices, do we really need to compress audio for delivery over the net?

<comment><USER4> If you are on a cell phone or a cellular hot spot, data caps are still a thing. I pay $10/GB for my hotspot bandwidth ($5/GB when it is on sale).

40 minutes of streaming music at 4 Mbps is 1.2GB, so up to $12 for me.

<comment> mark-r Comcast has a cap on my cable modem. I keep my music files local so I don't need to pull them from the internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Holy skeuomorphism, Batman!</comment>


Westworld (1973): the first film with CGI, and its source code (2017) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzvbAm0y8YQ <comment><USER2> Fun rabbit hole here about the III FR80, the computer used to make the effects. 1970s computer that could scan and print to film stock. There's a great website that's preserved a lot of info on this computer here: [http://www.chilton- computing.org.uk/acl/technology/fr80/over...](http://www.chilton- computing.org.uk/acl/technology/fr80/overview.htm)

III (or Triple-I) was a computer company founded by Edward Fredkin. He's a fascinating early computer scientist, doing pioneering work in cellular automata, reversible computing, as well as more mundane things like the trie data structure. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Fredkin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Fredkin)

<comment><USER3> ZOMG - a brain neuron from decades ago woke up - worked on some weird stuff in reversible computing in the '80s (think of assignment always preserving functional state at assignment) - my boss used to talk about his gates, usually referring to them by a more profane name . :-)

<comment><USER2> I've wondered if reversible computing research has had any real world impact. The theory is it would reduce heat since you're not increasing entropy, but I wonder in practice if that has ever been useful.

<comment><USER3> All the experience I had was theorem proving for crypto apps - that said, I think there is only the appearance of reversibility at the symbolic level, underneath its the same old mess - I vaguely recall that at full tilt, the room with all the Suns would get quite toasty . :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The first film with computer generated imagery would be 1958's Vertigo, and the computer in question an M5 gun director mechanical computer.

<comment><USER5> The title sequence, created by John Whitney, right?

His brother James' 1966 abstract piece 'Lapis' is a favourite of mine, created using John Whitney's analog computer tech. There's a version on youtube[1] sadly only 480p, which gives you an idea, but if you see it projected it's just amazing..

1: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzniaKxMr2g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzniaKxMr2g)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very interesting!

I'd always thought Tron was the film with the first CGI, I've just been reading [https://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/history- cgi/](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/history-cgi/) apparently it wasn't the first film to use 3D CGI either. Although Tron did make extensive use of 3D CGI.

<comment><USER7> Tron was noteworthy for the sheer amount of CGI mostly.

<comment><USER8> Also noteworthy for being the first film to market itself as a "CGI film"

<comment><USER9> Aslo noteworthy that Tron was not nominated for special effects because they 'cheated' by using computers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Anyone remember Max Headroom? I did not realize until a few years ago how much of that was done with fiberglass prosthetics and makeup.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom_(character)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom_\(character\)) [https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2015/4/2/8322327/max- headroom-photo-gallery-makeup-design)

<comment><USER11> I love the era of people making practical effects to look like computer graphics. The Hitchhikers Guide tv-show also had hand-drawn animation which was supposed to look like computer graphics.

<comment><USER12> Also the 1979 orbital insertion graphics display [0] in Alien.

[0] [https://typesetinthefuture.com/2014/12/01/alien/](https://typesetinthefuture.com/2014/12/01/alien/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> That's interesting! But by golly, was 1973's Westworld a chore to sit through. The remake has the technology and a compelling story.

<comment><USER10> I wasn't as impressed by the remake, thought it was pretty obvious the writers ran out of source material after the first season. It's one of those stories that would have worked as an episode of Black Mirror, and you could stretch it out to a movie format, but don't think it lends itself multiple seasons of hour long episodes. Remember the 70s tv spinoff Beyond Westworld? Don't feel bad if you don't.

<comment><USER14> The second season was directly teased from the first season. (I called a lot of the reveals of the second season assuming they'd be twists in the first season.) The problem with the writing in the second season was assuming enough people had read at least the Wikipedia summaries of the primary references they had cited directly and indirectly in the first season. Which is a tricky problem with "mystery box" writing in that you assume at least some of the audience will do the research, but you have to keep the show accessible enough for the people following the show but not the mystery solving / ancillary materials.

So far the promos for S3 make it sound a lot more straightforward with less "required reading", but we'll see.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Surely this would have been easier to recreate with practical effects? You can get the same pixelated effect looking through translucent privacy door screens.

<comment><USER16> Westworld wasn't just a fantasy, they were doing 'real' science fiction in that they were saying look, this is happening. Here's what computers can do right now.

There are plenty of examples of faked CGI back in the day. As has been pointed out, alongside some CGI TRON had a lot of hand drawn cell animation. The 'wire frame' of the skyscrapers in Escape From New York was done by building it with black painted models, edged with neon strips. In both cases it is possible to tell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> My lab purchased a digital color frame buffer in 1980 for 30K. That would be around 150K in current prices. It had a screen buffer of 512 by 512 of one byte, i.e. quarter megabyte memory. It was dual port- write to memory, read onto display. Memory price was the bottle neck then. Four years after that the Apple Mac came out with 1/8 megabyte B/W memory for $3K, e.g. arguably the first consumer graphics computer. Again its price was memory bound.

</comment><comment><USER18> One comment from 2 years ago is "Awesome.. I posted this video on Hacker news today!".

<comment><USER19> Sure enough: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14348085](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14348085)

Posted by John Graham-Cumming, Cloudflare CTO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This channel is full of interesting content. It's sad it didn't last very long (something like 4 months between the channel creation and the last video).

<comment><AUTHOR> I just didn't have that time to keep making these videos. The research alone took a huge amount of work and then there was writing the script, recording, editing and finally fighting YouTube's copyright mechanism that won't recognize what I'm doing as fair use.

Also, being Cloudflare's CTO is time consuming.

<comment><USER21> Thank you for doing what you did!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Ironically, not 2001. 2001 animated the computer displays onto film, and then pasted the film into the scene.

<comment><USER23> The computer displays were showing films, yes. It is unclear to me that the wireframe animations were not computer generated, I always thought they were.

That is, for the wireframe animations when a ship is docking, I always thought that the animation was in fact a film of a series of discrete computer generated vector images, maybe displayed on a CRT and frame-by-frame stop- motion animated. It looks like that to me, and the tech was clearly available at the time.

Maybe they were drawn by hand and not CRT vector images, but if so they went out of their way to simulate it. I guess I wouldn't put it past Stanley.

<comment><USER8> For Escape from New York (1981), it was cheaper to build a New York skyline set, paint it black and then paint all the edges white and film it, than create CGI wireframe graphics.

<comment><USER24> Yep. Here's an article with several photos of the artists constructing the physical set: [http://www.theefnylapage.com/pressexclusiveinterviewsjohncwa...](http://www.theefnylapage.com/pressexclusiveinterviewsjohncwash.htm)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Introducing Project Loon: Balloon-powered Internet access - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/06/introducing-project-loon.html <comment><USER2> I took a screenshot of one of the videos: [http://i.imgur.com/nppgVPG.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/nppgVPG.jpg)

Perhaps Iridium refers to the Iridium satellite constellation ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_satellite_constellatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_satellite_constellation)) (Edit: or maybe one of their products [http://www.iridium.com/Products.aspx](http://www.iridium.com/Products.aspx)) and "SBD service" refers to something like this: [http://www.iridium.com/products/IridiumSBD.aspx?section=supp...](http://www.iridium.com/products/IridiumSBD.aspx?section=support) ?

Edit 2: Perhaps they were tracking the balloon?

<comment><USER3> Looking at the solar information (on the left), power doesn't look too good.

Would these balloons still work during the night? Would they need to stay in the day? Would that even be possible, given the speed of the wind?

<comment><USER4> It says on the site that they charge during the day and run off batteries at night.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am impressed with both the ambitiousness and nobleness of the project that Google is pursuing here. It's true: most of the world's population is not actually online despite how it might feel otherwise to most people who are already online.

I am glad that they are working on important issues like this and I hope the project is successful in bringing more of the world's people online.

<comment><USER6> What are you celebrating about? What they do is deliver advertising, nothing more, nothing less - ADVERTISING.

<comment><USER7> Oh no, a company is building out a network of Internet-connected balloons, but I might have to look at some text advertising links. The horror. You see ads everywhere, t-shirts, bus stops, billboards, your friends/family, etc. It's a trade-off I'll take.

<comment><USER8> We're living in 2013, and this is a tech forum, so let's get real: advertising is about tracking, about total surveillance, not sticking a logo on a bus.

That's what Google does, that's what Google's motives are. Every damn time, so there is no reason to assume this is any different.

That's not a "trade-off", that is surrendering.

If the government would set up a balloon network to track everyone you would be screaming bloody murder, but it's Google and people get internet access in exchange it's okay?

<comment><USER9> It's okay if I agree to it. I'd rather see ads than pay for all the services Google provides to me free of charge (money). I don't and I'd never agree that a government tracks me. For me, that's a big difference.

If a company uses their profit (e.g. from ads) to provide and finance something as extremely useful and important as free internet access to developing countries - then yes, that's totally fine for me.

Yes this is a forum, people have their own personal opinion.

<comment><USER8> > It's okay if I agree to it.

That's the typical fallacy. If Chinese factory worker agrees to be exploited in conditions close to slavery doesn't mean that that kind of exploitation is "okay".

Tempting people for whom the price of these services is too high to surrender their basic right to privacy is ethically questionable at best, and in my personal opinion should be made illegal.

What if Google asked people to give up their right to vote, would you think that was okay? Were do you draw the line?

The protection of civil liberties includes the protection of those who don't care about them, because if they can sell out their rights to greedy corporations, it affects _all_ of us.

It's not just about your personal choice. A world in which corporations yield such power affects everyone.

<comment><USER10> A normative statement that you disagree with is not a "fallacy".

Also, seeing as there is no legally enforceable way that Google could ask anyone to surrender their right to vote, it's an odd hypothetical to base an argument on. Especially an argument for restricting people's freedoms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If there ever was any justification of using up our limited helium is this one. However, I wish for these types of projects they would use hydrogen instead. I understand the safety concern, but a century after Hindenburg, we should be able to make these safer. At least for non-human flights. Not to mention Hydrogen is a bit better in creating lift.

<comment><USER12> The solution is, of course, for Google to build lunar fusion reactors to make helium and power the Earth.

<comment><USER13> We need a cheaper way to move freight between the Earth and the Moon first. I believe here is what Filligree is talking about if anyone else is curious.

> > [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3)

> Materials on the Moon's surface contain helium-3 at concentrations on the > order of between 1.4 and 15 ppb in sunlit areas, and may contain > concentrations as much as 50 ppb in permanently shadowed regions. A number > of people, starting with Gerald Kulcinski in 1986, have proposed to explore > the moon, mine lunar regolith and use the helium-3 for fusion. Recently, > companies as Planetary Resources have also stated to be interested in mining > helium-3 on the moon. Because of the low concentrations of helium-3, any > mining equipment would need to process extremely large amounts of regolith > (over 150 million tonnes of regolith to obtain one ton of helium 3), and > some proposals have suggested that helium-3 extraction be piggybacked onto a > larger mining and development operation.

(removed citation notes for readability)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You know what would be awesome? If they'd open-source the technology behind these balloons - so that we could build and launch our own!

My relatives live in a tiny village on the south coast of India and whenever I visit them I have to use the extremely slow 2G network. I tether my Android phone and basically setup a little WLAN hotspot there. The next bigger city with fast internet connectivity and 3G coverage is almost an hour bus drive away.

Every student in the village now possesses a laptop with WLAN capabilities. They got them for free - basically as a bribe so that the villagers stop protesting against the construction of a nuclear power plant the government is building nearby: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koodankulam_Nuclear_Power_Plant](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koodankulam_Nuclear_Power_Plant)

But that's another issue.

I would love to build a wireless mesh network using cheap routers with an open-source firmware like OpenWRT for these kids. Internet connectivity could be achieved by using a single uplink antenna to Project Loon.

Speaking for myself, I had the privilege - unlike most of my family - to grow up in Europe and believe me, having access to the Internet completely changed my life. I've had access to free resources, taught myself how to program and I am now making a living out of it.

I want anyone on this planet to have full, free, uncensored and fast access to the Internet.

Thank you Google for doing such a project! I really hope it will work as planned and I wish you all the best on this journey.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is, without any doubt, the most incredible thing I've seen for the past 15 years I'm the citizen of the internet. The scope of this plan and its possibilities are just amazing.

Sadly, my enthusiasm is quite clouded in the light of recent events involing the whole NSA/PRISM thing but then... it's governments that are the problem, not Google.

I sincerely hope that this will change the world for the better and not the worse.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's all a plot to monitor everyone all the time. Naturally, I think it's awesome.

<comment><USER16> It's not hard to imagine some political tensions if these things are supposed to do a full circuit of the Earth on a given latitude. It's true that balloons in the stratosphere have a lot in common with satellites in orbit, but that may not be enough to stop people getting annoyed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I find this to be really clever and it kind of reminds me of The Pirate Bay's plans to build servers that actually float above the ocean to prevent being taken down. People laughed at The Pirate Bay for the ridiculousness of the idea, but here Google is essentially proving it's not a pipe-dream and bandwidth capable balloons can one day be a reality.

</comment><comment> mh- their acquisition[1] of Makani and their "airborne wind turbine" tech suddenly makes more sense to me.

[1] [http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/22/google-x-acquires-makani- po...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/22/google-x-acquires-makani-power-and- its-airborne-wind-turbines/)

<comment><USER18> I may be wrong, but I believe all the high-altitude-wind-energy thingies work by having the flying bit tethered to the ground, while this baloons seem to fly much higher, making the two seem incompatible to me.

<comment> mh- you're not wrong- the airborne turbines are operable tethered to the ground.

but, there previously wasn't much value to Makani in exploring untethered solutions; they needed transmission lines going back to the surface, anyway.

I don't believe Google intends to use the two technologies together directly. there's just more synergy here than it may appear, on the surface.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Another cool part about this is the balloons will be floating at twice the height of commercial flights. That would mean commercial flights could get internet through these as well.

Commercial airliners travel at 30-40k feet. Twice that would be very high. Won't the service be sluggish and slow because of that?

<comment><USER20> Google says:

 _(80 000 feet) / the speed of light = 81.336269 microseconds_

So no, that's not a very big amount of latency. Not to be confused with the latency you get to satellites, which is much much larger due to them being way further out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Anyone know (and able to tell) what radios, frequencies, and antennas are being used for the experiments? The antenna balls on the houses are interesting - I'm guessing there is an actively pointed directional antenna inside.

</comment><comment><USER22> Obviously very cool (but not without precedent). The things I'm wondering about is cost and resilience. What do they cost? And could bad actors bring them down with lasers?

<comment><USER23> As long as they cost less than putting up cell phone towers in the middle of nowhere, its all good. Idk but I don't imagine cell phone towers cover a 40km radius. Telco's have no great incentive to do this so kudos to Google.

And as Larry Page said, stop already with the obvious negativity. Bad actors can bring down cell phone towers too. And who cares about precedents.

<comment><USER18> AFAIR the GSM radius was about that (35-40km) I imagine more recent technologies may have some more. But of course this suffers a lot from topography.

<comment><USER24> There's reason why they extended it (Enhanced Extended Range). It was only technical limit due TDMA timing advance. It had nothing to do with the actual signal reception strength / transmission power required. So in 800 MHz range 120 kilometers should be well achievable with 2 W transmitter.

"GSM has a fixed maximum cell site range of 120 km, which is imposed by technical limitations. This is expanded from the old limit of 35 km."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is New Zealand now the test-zone for everything? App betas, and now this project lol.

<comment><USER26> It's a small, english-speaking country, relatively isolated in space and time from the primary markets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This combined with Tor could be interesting....

</comment><comment><USER28> Why don't they focus their energy on making satellite access more affordable? Looks like Google is trying to make its own emerging niche demographic to profit from. You've got to be kidding yourself if you think a floating balloon has anything to do with sustainable, lasting infrastructure. Balloons are cheap, and that's the end of the story.

Another thing: satellites don't pop.

</comment><comment><USER29> So will satellite things will get blocked due to these balloon s ??

<comment><USER4> I would guess not. They're on a different frequency and their cross-section is almost nothing. It's probably no worse than a large bird flying in front of your dish.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> April 1st? Hm no, awesome!

</comment><comment><USER31> I think it would be nice for there to be some reserved places on the Earth's surface which can remain undisturbed by the internet. Soon, you're going to need a boat just to escape its corrupting influence.

PS If I was a Cantabrian farmer and I saw one of these above my property I'd have my shotgun out, quick as.

<comment><USER32> You'd probably need a missile to shoot it down. The balloons are probably 80,000ft above ground. I'm not sure if there's anything that can shoot a bullet that high. Maybe a high powered railgun?

<comment><USER33> You can use another "attacker" balloon to do it.

<comment><USER32> There are probably many ways to shoot down the balloon, but it's probably out of the technological reach of a farmer. I don't think there's anything off the shelf that could shoot something down from 80,000ft.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/ff_webrip/all/1 <comment><USER2> This article basically uses the graph as a jumping off point to make the same old 'apps will take over the world' argument we've been hearing since the iPhone opened its SDK (it seems like people have completely forgotten the evolution of the Desktop PC and are intent on reliving those same mistakes with the smartphone)

The problem I see with the graph is it's based on percentage of total traffic but it doesn't take into account a huge increase in bandwidth and internet users. Put it in perspective and you realize the web's "peak" according to this graph was when most people were using 56k modems (2000 which was about a year after V.90 modems started hitting the street).

There's also an efficiency factor. Ajax type technologies have dramatically shrunk the size of the data chunks being passed back and forth. Back in 2000 most were still resending the whole page on every refresh.

<comment><USER3> Excuse my ignorance, but i thought Ajax sends the whole page but only renders a part of the page?

<comment><USER4> The server sends a client a whole page and once that page renders in a browser then you can use Ajax to transfer arbitrary bits of data to and from the server. You typically would not send an entire page to a client via Ajax, but you would use it to tell the server that 'User A' has voted on 'Story B' without having to load an entirely new page or refresh the page you're on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting graph, but is 'video' really a different class of traffic to web? Every other type shown in the graph is literally a different internet protocol (email, telnet, web, etc). Separating 'video' from 'web' seems a little unwarranted.

It's true that you could make a distinction - the web is hyperlinked multimedia and video isn't very web-like according to that definition.

But I don't think you can claim from that graph that 'the web is dead'. The weaker claim that 'traditional hypermedia is giving way to video' would be better supported, but less interesting.

tldr - false dichotomy

<comment><USER6> The Web is moving to include video. Just look at the <video> tag in HTML5.

<comment><USER7> The parent's point was that only a myopic definition of _the web_ does not already include video.

<comment><USER8> But I agree with the article that video is not an integral part of the Web -- up until HTML5 the browsers even didn't have the ability to play video natively, relying on plugins like Flash.

If you watch YouTube videos on your iPhone, you don't even have a browser to play the video at all. It's true that it's still transferred using the HTTP -- the Web protocol -- but that's the whole point of the article: a new Web, which uses much the same protocols but don't rely on the browser for consumption.

I've previously given a thought to the whole concept at [http://berislav.lopac.net/post/615858128/the-future-of- web-b...](http://berislav.lopac.net/post/615858128/the-future-of-web-browser)

<comment><USER9> But 9 times out of 10, I'm viewing video in a web browser. Splitting it out only makes sense if they track which videos are being viewed in a web page and which ones are viewed in apps, and they aren't doing that, so the graph is meaningless.

<comment><USER8> Should Gmail be counted as Web or email?

It's all about usage, not about the technology. Think out of the box.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why does the graph end _five years ago_? That seems silly given how short the whole time scale is.

Also, that graphic is very confusing and I'm not too sure how to read it. Peer to peer hasn't changed much in the last five years on the graph, but it looks like its in decline. Am I reading that right?

Edit: Also, it says "Wired September 2010" at the top. What? This is from the future, and yet the data is 5 years old? Silly website...

<comment><USER2> The graph is skewed but to be fair Peer-to-Peer saw an upswing from 1999-2001 when the original Napster introduced the technology to the masses. Then declined for a while between Napster being shutdown and more decentralized systems taking hold.

<comment> loup-vaillant And, there is the big, centralized, web-based, file sharing services like MegaUpload and RapidShare. Thanks to the silly asymmetry in our connections (and if you pay), they are faster than bittorrent based file sharing. Thanks to some laws (like HADOPI in France), they are legally safer than bittorent (for copyrighted work). I suspect bittorent based file sharing is losing ground to them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is stupid. Of course video percentage will grow. Every time you double the resolution, you quadruple the amount of data you have to transfer.

<comment><USER12> It's not really that linear because of compression. As an example, I shrunk a bunch of photos to 1/4 the resolution, and they only dropped in size about 1/4.

Plus, video can get even more aggressive about compression because it can reference between frames.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The graph is interesting but gives a skewed view of the facts, since it's relative to each other. A more interesting graph would be one where absolute numbers are shown. I bet the "web"-part would still be on the rise, however not as fast as the "video"-part for example.

</comment><comment><USER14> Even if you accept the author's premise that the world is moving to "apps", how many of those are just built on a webkit core? I'd say half of the "apps" on my iPhone are just wrappers of varying complexity for good old port-80 HTML and HTML5 content.

</comment><comment><USER15> i think the author follows a similar idea as Tim Berners-lee with this paragraph in the "Giant Global Graph" article:

"So the Net and the Web may both be shaped as something mathematicians call a Graph, but they are at different levels. The Net links computers, the Web links documents."

published at <http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/node/215>

so, if it is something that is not a html document that can can be reached via a hyperlink is not part of the web but it just uses the internet.

</comment><comment><USER16> "At work you scroll through RSS feeds..."

...is the author of The Long Tail really this ignorant of technology?

<comment><USER17> I think he meant to imply that one scrolls through RSS feeds using a news reader. He wasn't being literal.

<comment><USER18> Still, RSS readers use plain old HTTP requests (Web Traffic). Transition of users from browser to reader apps shouldn't matter if we count traffic by type.

<comment><USER16> Right, that was my point (which was written from my phone, so it was terse). RSS is just XML, but to my knowledge, no one's _delivering_ RSS over anything but HTTP in a generic way. Indeed, it's a syndication system _for_ the Web. I will admit, I didn't read the entire article (again, on my phone), but as another commenter pointed out, most of the examples were either pretty-printed data over HTTP, or were services that have never existed in the sphere of the Web.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't have time to read that huge article. Question for those who did: If video is counted as video delivered from the web excluding video delivered from torrents because that would count as P2P, then 51% + 23%= 74%

So, if you told me text is not the king medium it would be more real than web is dead. But that wouldn't make it a title for retweeting, or would it?

*edit: a quick search on the content of the article for the word video has only 1 result.

</comment><comment><USER20> read: Cisco want to sell video-on-demand stacks and other software.</comment>


Will you trust your medical information to Google? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=8062

<comment><USER2> Funny, after reading about the NSF's top engineering challenges, I was just thinking about this. There are a number of challenges in this problem:

* privacy * interoperability with existing systems * ease of use (for patient and doctor)

I'd rank privacy as the most challenging problem. You have to create a system that can guarantee privacy from the government, system compromises, and other snooping third parties, while keeping the ability to share selected information with selected individuals. Not just that, but if you do it right, you have to make it so that somebody can access a person's health records in a time of emergency, without compromising trust.

I think the door might still be wide open on this one.

</comment><comment><USER3> I already trust Google with my medical information, whenever my doctor tells me I have something, I always run home and Google it.</comment>


Mental Models: The Best Way to Make Intelligent Decisions - <AUTHOR> https://fs.blog/mental-models/ <comment><USER2> Pretty similar to Super Thinking: [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41181911-super- thinking](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41181911-super-thinking)

Can anyone compare them?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have not gone through this one. Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for this. Didn't know they made a book.</comment>


Developers Ar Becoming Lazy - <AUTHOR> https://themisir.com/developers-are-becoming-lazy/ <comment><USER2> > In another case, I saw an NPM package that detects if the number is odd or > even. Writing n%2 == 0 is that hard thing?

Repository in question:

'use strict';

var isOdd = require('is-odd');

module.exports = function isEven(i) { return !isOdd(i); };

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Are _</comment>


Chinese DRAM Industry Spreading Its Wings: Two More DRAM Fabs Ready - <AUTHOR> https://www.anandtech.com/show/12681/chinese-dram-industry-spreading-its-wings-two-more-dram-fabs-ready <comment><USER2> Picture of a Fab is a very bad CG, pictures of 300nm process on Chinese website are directly copied from Intel. :o</comment>


Inspiring talk on programming by creator of CouchDB - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/presentations/katz-couchdb-and-me

<comment><USER3> In his personal, excellent talk (as the 1st commenter on Damien Katz's blog post wisely notes), Damien Katz shares and talks about quitting to do a startup when you are not young and single but older and responsible but still have that startup urge on simmer/low.

Laura (his wife) and Damien's share their differing responses/perspectives on what the personal/family risks were in the comments on his blog post below:

<http://damienkatz.net/2009/02/couchdb_and_me.html#comments>

In the beginning...

"Sell our house, live off the savings and build cool stuff... There were a lot of reasons not just money...

The first was just educational - I had interests in a lot of areas. The first was, distributed systems. I wanted to know more about them. I wanted to know how to build them... It seems crazy but if you're going to go off and pursue a Master's degree - you're going to quit your job, you're going to have to pay your tuition - and there's no income - and the end of it you have a degree. An Education...

It was about more family time. I had a beautiful one-year old and I didn't want to spend all my time at the office, working on somebody else's crap...

I wanted to see what I could do...

And this is the reason why my wife was interested. It would be an interesting story...

No wants to be wrapped up in this consumerist lifestyle, where if you have money you spend it...It was a good thing it forced us to downsize...

I wish I had sort of a vision... It wasn't like that - it was just day after day and letting it bubble into my consciousness...

The development process...It was really stressful once I decided I wanted to build it because I didn't know _how to build it_...I couldn't see past all the complexity...It just took a long time grinding at the problem, thinking about it...

I really just went into a panic mode. I was thinking I was a total fraud, I don't know what I'm building, I've got my family wrapped up into this - <USER2> don't know how to build it - so I got on Amazon and ordered _Code Complete_ "

</comment><comment><USER4> Agreed, here's a previous submission for past comments: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=465653>

</comment><comment><USER5> He recently was interviewed on the StackOverflow podcast ( <http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/06/podcast-59/> ). A bit of repeated material, but overall it was a fairly interesting program.

</comment><comment><USER6> Awesome. I really hope this gets to front page.</comment>