Most Sampling Java Profilers Are Terrible - <AUTHOR> http://psy-lob-saw.blogspot.com/2016/02/why-most-sampling-java-profilers-are.html <comment><USER3> I've had good results using DynaTrace for profiling .NET code. They have a Java version that I would try if I needed such a thing: [http://www.dynatrace.com/en/technology/java.html](http://www.dynatrace.com/en/technology/java.html)

What is really helpful is that you can run DynaTrace in production without impacting performance. DynaTrace agents run on the production web/app servers and send data to DynaTrace collectors.

This makes resolving production issues way easier. You sort by CPU time in descending order and work down the list. You already have the stack trace and data associated with the request or SQL query.

<comment><USER4> Sure but the issue with Dynatrace and similar ilk (NewRelic also) is they still attach a profiler and do have some impact.

Now, I wouldn't typically care, but you can get at lest 95% of the same information, including yes, stack traces, with ETW for basically free - <USER2> cost and in perf impact on Windows at least. Throw the results in a flame graph and boom, done. Windows in particular has so much great inbuilt stuff for troubleshooting perf but its hard to find and not well marketed, so these other folks make a killing selling an inferior product.

<comment><USER5> ETW is definitely great to get started and I am sure you find a lot of hotspots with it. The benefit of APM tools such as Dynatrace (keep in mind that I am also working for them) is that they automatically tag & trace requests across thread and runtime boundaries. So - besides stack traces of individual CLRs you get a full end-to-end (browser to database) view including capturing method arguments and return values where it makes sense, e.g: SQL Query, Bind values, Web Service URLs + parameters, ... - as we hook into the profiling APIs we get some good information about GC and the impact GC has on your execution times, ...

Good news is that all APM vendors provide free trial versions. So - give it try if you want to see if it gives you more than ETW!

<comment><USER5> And if you want to give Dynatrace a try - here is the link: [http://bit.ly/dtpersonal](http://bit.ly/dtpersonal). I also have a free YouTube channel with tutorials that explain how the whole thing works: [http://bit.ly/dtpersonal](http://bit.ly/dtpersonal)

(end of commercial) :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sampling profilers in general are terrible. Unfortunately I can't get code instrumenting profilers to work on the eclipse process.

The worst thing about the JVM aprofiler won't tell you about how much time the JVM spends JITing/class loading. For short running processes you might be surprised to find that the profiler tells you everything is okay but in my case the program still needed one second to start.

I was pleasantly suprised that the equivalent python programm merely needs 100ms from start to finish (essentially feeling instant) even though it should be slower overall.

<comment><USER7> Instrumenting profilers are also terrible because they make tiny methods look way more expensive than they should be, warping the results. Not only does the instrumentation cost, but they can prevent methods from being inlined, interfere with optimizations, cache, and generally give misleading results.

For a sampling profiler to give meaningful results, it shouldn't be waiting for safepoints. Ideally it would capture stack traces very cheaply (just walk the stack frames, noting the return addresses) and turn those numbers into symbolic locations on its own time. Yes, inlining is going to confuse things - that's the downside of working with optimized code. Optimization inherently intermingles code that may be separated by some distance, and any one instruction may be a fuse of multiple source lines. If your instrumenting profiler prevents this, you're no longer measuring the actual production code.

Java makes it harder, of course, with code on a GC'd heap, dynamic codegen, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Was trying to dig up the HN discussion for this article from last summer, but haven't found it yet:

[http://techblog.netflix.com/2015/07/java-in- flames.html](http://techblog.netflix.com/2015/07/java-in-flames.html)

 _Java mixed-mode flame graphs provide a complete visualization of CPU usage and [...] can identify all CPU consumers and issues, including those that are hidden from other profilers._

</comment><comment><USER9> For me, this is a storm in a teacup. I use Netbeans Profiler regularly, and it produces decent results for me.

It's only when the profile starts getting pretty flat that the inaccuracies of this method start showing up, but for run of the mill performance problems where you have nice fat spikes sticking up here and there, it is perfectly adequate.

</comment><comment><USER10> Throw .Net into this category. Spent weeks of my life and our clients' lives wasting time with, not inaccurate, but grossly incorrect results from a paid product. It either confused locks for CPU time (obscuring real hotspots) or simply reported CPU time where there was none.

So far, only VTune has resulted in actionable profiler results (there may be others); within hours (not weeks) we had solved many issues by switching to it. A profiler is as indispensable as a compiler, don't skimp on it - you're going to end up spending that money one way or another.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've never ever gotten any good results with a Java profiler. HPROF runs, but its results are garbage. Yourkit and VisualVM are apparently not able to handle the heat of a CPU intensive application and crash or are generally unusable (and this on two different computers with different OSes). If you must know, I was trying to profile a parser.

<comment><USER12> I have had good results with Yourkit. And so far in my experience, that is the only profiler that has been able to survive profiling busy services running large heaps. ymmv.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've only started profiling Java code this week, and I've been shocked by the poor state of affairs.

Does anyone have any recommendations, preferably that can tell you (some) information at the line level. I never realised how spoilt I was with C/C++ options (gcov and valgrind aren't great, but they mostly do the job).

<comment><USER14> If you want coverage tools then you should be looking for coverage tools, not profiling tools. Jacoco is a good library that you can plug into your build processes, or add as an agent on the command line, and it has an Eclipse plugin. It will tell you about partial and complete coverage of lines, and about the number of branches taken if coverage of a line is not complete.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Well, a bit click-baity.

Yes sampling profilers are inaccurate, and most users know the limitations. It is deliberately a profiler on the one side of the trade-off.

The google paper was more interesting.

<comment><USER16> Except you can have a sampling profiler that does better than what most sampling profilers on the JVM are doing?

IOW the point of the blog post is not that sampling profilers are bad or that sampling profilers on the JVM are bad, but that some sampling profilers are bad because they use bad methodology. At no additional cost you could be using profilers that use a more accurate mechanism.

To me that is very useful information. I'm always looking for opportunities to get something for nothing.

I would also not characterize users of sampling profilers as knowing their limitations. Taking a WAG I would guess less than 50% understand the limitations. A much larger percentages know limitations exist, but I don't think they actually know what to do about them.</comment></comment>


Antitrust Troubles Snowball for Tech Giants as Lawmakers Join In - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/03/technology/facebook-ftc-antitrust.html <comment><USER3> Allow me to temper some of the glee exhibited in the comments and even in some of the reports but a key line here is:

 _" The divvying of antitrust enforcement does not mean that the agencies have opened official investigations"_

It is worth keeping in mind that antitrust enforcement in the US doesn't care about whiny competitors but if the enduser and customer is harmed and it doesn't appear to be the case when it comes to any of these corporations.

This whole thing is terribly misguided, there is a long list of companies and markets worthy of antitrust scrutiny and these tech companies if they are on that list then they are at the very bottom of it. The real drag on the economy are the high prices of healthcare and housing, there is also the case that ISPs have obvious monopolies and are providing inferior products and services and the list goes on.

The role of the media here shouldn't be ignored, they coined the term "big tech" to conjure negative associations and they continuously publish alarmist coverage about any combination of these firms, they also stand to benefit if any enforcement action were to occur.

<comment><USER4> Visa and Mastercard have a pretty effective duopoly, too! Their fees and chargeback procedures are a drag on the entire economy. Getting banned by them effectively kills your ability to accept payments, and many legal but politically unpopular businesses find themselves in the crosshairs.

<comment><USER5> Can we include Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion to the list of monopolistic anti-competitive financial companies?

<comment><USER6> Not to put too fine a point on it, but we've almost immediately started down the road that HN user fyoving is cautioning us against. The idea that our government is going to go after financial firms is a bit fanciful. (In all honesty, legally speaking, fyoving is even correct in asserting that they aren't even going after tech firms.)

When you're getting people's hopes up by making them think that something is going to happen, and then nothing happens. People immediately blame big banking, big finance, big tech, corrupt politicians, corruption in general, etc etc. Which is entirely understandable. People get upset at dashed hopes. They look for something or someone to blame. And to be fair, sometimes it's even true that corruption is part of the reason.

But this time I have a strong suspicion fyoving is likely correct for a more systemic reason. Any sort of action against a lot of these companies, tech or finance, won't pass muster with the courts. It's not corruption, it's just the law. Which we can change, but it's really hard to do so because there are good reasons for some of these laws. (One way to address that problem though is to add new laws instead of changing the current ones, but there is going to be natural resistance against that too.)

I suspect that's the entire reason a certain segment of politicians are trying to bring action against the tech giants within the parameters of current law. Because they _know_ it won't work already. They know how the supremes will rule on any such actions. (Rulings the supremes won't even have to hand down because the agencies in question will probably decide against wasting the time taking any actions in the first place.)

It's terrible. A likely diversion of 10 years minimum, during which no one will actually be able to gain any traction towards _changing_ the laws because these elites will be wagging the dog making people think something is going to happen under current law. We should have pushed for changes in the law first. Then gone after the big businesses. But that was probably just a pipe dream of mine anyway. It was never gonna happen.

<comment><USER7> Are you arguing that politicians would spend ten years investigating companies with the full knowledge they won't get anywhere with it beyond political brownie points?

If so, I agree 100%.

<comment><USER8> I agree < 100% as this is one of many benefits for a politician to take this stance. Another benefit is leverage over an industry. Leverage is a tool that can be used for different purposes. Even if the courts thwart one possible outcome, there are other possible outcomes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In my career, first it was IBM, the unstoppable juggernaut that was going to take over the world. Then it was Microsoft, and everyone forgot about IBM. Then it was Apple, and everyone forgot about Microsoft.

Before IBM, it was RCA. Everyone has forgotten about RCA.

It's like in retail. First it's Sears, the unstoppable juggernaut that will take over the world. Then it's Walmart, and Sears is bankrupt. Now it's Amazon, and Walmart is the underdog.

It's almost as if the theory that monopolies inevitably grow to take over the world has serious problems :-)

<comment><USER10> For both IBM and Microsoft, I would argue that anti-trust cases at least contributed to their fall from the top.

[https://www.nytimes.com/1981/02/15/business/us- vsibm.html](https://www.nytimes.com/1981/02/15/business/us-vsibm.html)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp).

<comment><USER11> Don't know about IBM, but in case of Microsoft it was some really horrible technical decisions and a lot of internal fights that caused their downfall.

Well, maybe downfall is a harsh word for a company still very successful & profitable...

<comment><USER12> IBM is still very successful and profitable as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So the companies that have more or less sprung up out of nowhere are...to blame for the economic stagnation of the middle class over the last 40 to 50 years?

Pardon the editorial but here we go again, politicians pinning the tail on the wrong donkey (i.e., spinning root causes out of symptoms and correlation); the voters will fall for it, and five to ten years down the road we'll all realize we wasted our time (as the root causes further strengthened their stranglehold).

</comment><comment><USER14> Unsurprising. The government needs to appease the public after killing net neutrality.

And, now that ISPs don't need to follow net neutrality, the regional broadband monopolies are free to zero-rate their own video services like AT&T openly does [1]. Next they can throttle Netflix, charge them a premium, and pass costs to the consumer without taking any sort of financial hit for doing so.

[1] [https://potsandpansbyccg.com/2019/02/13/isps-are- violating-t...](https://potsandpansbyccg.com/2019/02/13/isps-are-violating- the-old-net-neutrality-rules/)

<comment><USER15> This seems unrelated. What does this have to do with net neutrality?

<comment><USER14> Fair question. IMO this is the government trying to appease the public after they refused to maintain net neutrality, despite overwhelming public support for the policy. I've edited my comment to make that clear.

<comment><USER16> I have not heard anyone complain in person about the government killing net neutrality. The general public is not harboring resentment about it.

<comment><USER14> You must be joking. It was front page here and r/technology for months before net neutrality was repealed.

There is no question that public support for net neutrality is broad and bipartisan. The only question that remains is which 2020 candidates will stand up to say they support net neutrality.

<comment><USER17> I think their point is that outside of some online communities (i.e. most people in the public sphere) there isn't interest or even awareness to net neutrality.

<comment><USER14> Oh I see now. Thanks for pointing that out.

I agree it's not a top 5 issue now, but I believe this is our generation's first amendment torch. We can carry it, or let it go out. To that end, I tend to ignore anyone who suggests "this isn't important" or has the defeatist view that "nobody else understands this" because it is our job to share it with them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Disappointed that the telecom media conglomerates aren't getting more scrutiny.

<comment><USER14> Agreed. Net neutrality needs to be an election issue in 2020. Red/blue agree. The most upvoted comment ever removed from t_d was about NN [1] [2].

[1] [https://revddit.com/user/yiannopoulos_m?after=t1_dirwgoo&lim...](https://revddit.com/user/yiannopoulos_m?after=t1_dirwgoo&limit=1&sort=top&show=t1_d5tn1eg)

[2] [https://revddit.com/r/the_donald](https://revddit.com/r/the_donald)

<comment><USER19> Huh? red & blue definitely don't agree on NN. I know some might point to poll numbers that suggest a majority of republicans support NN, but its important to remember that republicans are ideologically opposed to _politicians_ that support NN. This is similar to how a majority of republicans support universal background checks for firearms but nobody suggests that "red/blue agree" on this issue because, despite supporting universal background checks, republicans are ideologically opposed to the type of politician that supports background checks.

<comment><USER20> >despite supporting universal background checks, republicans are ideologically opposed to the type of politician that supports background checks.

You don't sound like you know much on this topic.

When the poll question is asked as: "Do you support background checks when purchasing a firearm to keep criminals from getting guns" the answer is high.

When the question is more appropriately asked as: "Do you support the government requiring permission via an unrelated third party who has no obligation to comply before you are allowed exercise your civil rights?"

A lot less support when the real question is asked.

I don't think that examples helps your argument in this case.

<comment><USER19> Your proposed wording is disingenuous partisan spin that encodes your own point of you into the question. Fortunately, even partisan polling organizations wouldn't waste their time with such a stilted questionnaire.

<comment><USER20> The second wording reflects the indisputable reality of the proposal. But... please feel free to tell me why I'm mistaken.

You can start with why the Federal Firearm License requirements make sense to only 1/2 deploy to citizens while preventing their access from the NICS system directly, that a citizen's rights should be directly tied to a 4473.

Then also please tell me why the compromise of the 1993/4 Brady Bill where private sales were EXPLICITLY protected in order to get the votes to pass - were only two years later called a "loophole".

I look forward to being educated on this topic.

<comment><USER19> > _reflects the indisputable reality of the proposal_

No, it reflects your stubborn partisan viewpoint which I'm uninterested in debating.

[https://www.people-press.org/2015/08/13/continued- bipartisan...](https://www.people-press.org/2015/08/13/continued-bipartisan- support-for-expanded-background-checks-on-gun-sales/8-12-2015-3-56-39-pm/)

The numbers speak for themselves. Unless you have some alternative polling data to show I am not interested.

<comment><USER20> >The numbers speak for themselves

Except that's exactly my point that you can't argue.

How about in Washington. I-594 required background checks. The NRA spent a lot of money fighting it - but was outspent by gun control groups over 14:1, 10:1 of that was Michael Bloomberg alone.

You know results when it was actually put to a vote? 60/40.

A far cry from the polling lie that 92% want mandatory background checks on all sales performed by a dealer for a fee who has no obligation to perform using a system that has no obligation to be online.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I realize this is probably not a popular opinion but Amazon, Google and Facebook are natural monopolies in the businesses they operate in. That is to say the optimal market structure in almost all internet businesses is high concentration with a single organization controlling +80% of market share. So breaking up these organizations doesn't necessarily solve the problems we are facing today. This is not an antitrust issue. Economically speaking, it will likely be impossible to prove that someone like Amazon behaved in a anti- competitive manner. Same goes for Google. Facebook is the only one I can see broken up largely due to all the negative publicity.

<comment><USER22> Those markets are pretty "winner takes most". Not quite sure if I would call it a monopoly per say as anyone can compete but few can scale close.

I would expect most would agree the network effect serves them well - <USER2> all may fall in the face of a new competitor who actually manages to be "better" \- especially if they do something stupid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The potential cases against the large tech firms are all coming in at the same time. I wonder what could be driving it.

If they move foward, I hope that the nature of the results are good for the public (i.e. preventing anti-competitive behavior)

<comment><USER24> Government finally had it with the amount of power they have over culture and messing with their 3 letter agency initiatives?

I am one of those pessimistic folk who views everything on a geopolitical stage as a power struggle, so..

<comment><USER25> From the left, populist economists calling for Big Tech to be broken up for monopoly and tax dodging.

From the right, culture warriors calling for regulation so their chosen avatars of free speech are not de-platformed.

From the bottom, consumer advocates angry at the privacy abuses of large corporations, not to mention increasingly shoddy quality caused by lack of competition.

From the top, as you mentioned- tech companies flouting state power, including in the realm of state surveillance.

十面埋伏 - attack from ten directions.

<comment><USER26> Holy smokes, since when did interest in our constitutional rights of free speech become a "right" thing?

It seems like the "From the right" should be "right-wing belief that tech platforms push left-wing biases", true or not, that is their gripe.

<comment><USER27> And the down votes prove your point... Incredible.

<comment><USER28> Or perhaps its just a reminder to the user that free speech does not need to be extended by private organizations...They have in their TOS to remove content they do not deem fit in the same way users do not need to use these services.

<comment><USER29> Was it okay for communists to be blacklisted in Hollywood in the 40s and 50s? I personally don't have a problem with it, but I am not a communist.

<comment><USER30> > _I personally don 't have a problem with it, but I am not a communist._

The way this reads to me is: If you were against it, it could _only_ be because you were a communist. #mcCarthyism

<comment><USER29> It's a reference to a rather famous text from Martin Niemöller, about what happened in Nazi Germany.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is the part where the people who brought us PRISM tell us how the real problem is facebook and they are the solution. Ok.

<comment><USER32> The FTC and the DOJ brought us PRISM?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> The WP reported that Rep Cicilline said the "Internet is broken". I agree -- because the ISPs broke the internet, and Congress is letting the FCC allow that. Why aren't they fixing that?

</comment><comment> cljs-js-eval I'm glad we're finally taking anti-trust seriously, but this timing is incredibly suspicious. Right after we put sanctions on Chinese tech, we start taking steps to limit our own?

A good, plausibly deniable soft power attack would be to make an antitrust case, present it to the feds with the work already done, and let them do their thing now that they basically have to take action or look foolish.

No malicious actors involved, except for the people who choose to trigger the audit at the opportune moment.

<comment><USER12> > Right after we put sanctions on Chinese tech, we start taking steps to limit > our own?

I don't see this as taking steps to limit our own tech at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I guess we'll see how this plays out. I would of course like to see anti competitive behavior be minimized, but how they will go about that I'm not sure. Even if they are broken up, I doubt we will see much improvement for lowering the barrier of entry for these industries. I would like to hear what other users' thoughts are about what to do to prevent anti competitive tactics without regulating the market too heavily.

<comment><USER9> Just recall what happened to Standard Oil. SO's market share continued to decline throughout the anti-trust trial against them. Rockefeller was unable to stem the tide of nimbler competitors.

What happens is when companies exceed a certain size, the inefficiencies of central planning tend to paralyze them and they fail to adapt to changing circumstances, and go into decline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> And not Comcast, Walmart, AT&T? ... I wonder why

<comment><USER36> Gotta give money to the winning team...

Alphabet: [https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/totals.php?id=D000067823&cy...](https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/totals.php?id=D000067823&cycle=2018)

Apple: [https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/totals.php?id=D000021754&cy...](https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/totals.php?id=D000021754&cycle=2018)

Amazon: [https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/totals.php?id=D000023883&cy...](https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/totals.php?id=D000023883&cycle=2018)

Facebook: [https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/totals.php?id=D000033563&cy...](https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/totals.php?id=D000033563&cycle=2018)

\---

Comcast: [https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/totals.php?id=D000000461&cy...](https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/totals.php?id=D000000461&cycle=2018)

Walmart: [https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/totals.php?id=D000000367&cy...](https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/totals.php?id=D000000367&cycle=2018)

AT&T: [https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/totals.php?id=D000000076&cy...](https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/totals.php?id=D000000076&cycle=2018)

<comment><USER37> To be clear, it's illegal for corporations to give money directly to federal candidates. This is a tally of donations from employees of those companies, which makes this a function of workforce ideological leanings more than anything else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Surprised to not see Amazon on here, esp. given DJT's hatred of Bezos. But maybe they're saving the best for last. Certainly would not be surprising given Amazon's developing vertical monopoly on all things bought and sold.

<comment><USER39> Amazon is on the list. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20087732](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20087732)

<comment><USER14> And Netflix is not, probably because Hastings once said net neutrality is no longer their primary battle. IOW, they will pay to play. Disgusting. The selections make this a transparent move.

<comment><USER40> Netflix is nowhere even remotely close to being a monopoly.

<comment><USER14> I agree that Netflix dominating does not make them a monopoly. No more than Google or Facebook.

<comment><USER40> Netflix is far less critical, and has far less marketshare (as a proportion of the general population), and far more competitors than either Google or Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> When tech companies become collectible trading cards. Clearly this is the best timeline.

On a more serious note, I hope the government gets to the telecom, oil, tobacco, military arms, and financial industries too at some point...

</comment><comment><USER42> This is literally politicians co-opting popular rage to make themselves look good, and everyone here is stroking themselves because their old tech fantasies aren't cool anymore (and everyone loves a good car crash).

There are so many horrible companies in the world that are actually anti- competitive, but _this_ is the force of evil that needs to be dealt with? An ad company, a consumer products company, a social media company, and an incorporeal futuristic version of Walmart? The last one is perhaps the most applicable, the rest are just pointless makers of gadgets nobody actually needs, like wanting to break up Hasbro.

</comment><comment><USER43> Not MS?

They're all kinda up to the same shenanigans really

<comment><USER44> Does Microsoft really have any monopolies? They have a big OS market share, but operating systems have become less and less relevant as mobile computing grows. Same deal with office.

Bing is nowhere near the market share as google. Azure competes with AWS and others. Xbox competes with Sony and Nintendo. Microsoft store competes with Steam. IE and edge are also being beaten by Chrome. I think the argument that Microsoft has a monopoly is much less feasible.

One acquaintance of mine that works at MS humorously remarked on the irony of situation along these lines, "Back in the day Microsoft was the Big Bad. But now we're not big in social media, we're not big in advertising or search. All these other companies are taking the heat now - not for our lack of trying to get into these spaces, though (laughs)."

<comment><USER43> >Same deal with office.

Excel? I'm in the finance world and I can say with confidence that they've got 100% market share.

We use google sheet too. Every day even....for tracking everyone's QuizOfTheDay scores. Great track but not even close to Excel replacement.

<comment><USER45> That means Microsoft has a better product, that doesn't mean it's a monopoly.

<comment><USER43> Better product for sure. But that doesn't mean it's not a monopoly.

>That means Microsoft has a better product, that doesn't mean it's a monopoly.

Actually that's the text book definition of monopoly.

Monopolies are thus characterized by

* a lack of economic competition to produce the good or service - nobody else is making commercial spreadsheet tools

* a lack of viable substitute goods - all the other stuff (google sheets, openoffice) isn't workable in practice

* high monopoly price well above the seller's marginal cost - a MS office download costs MS near nothing...selling price is still sky-high.

There are crazy network effects at play which create near insurmountable barriers to entry. Another sure sign of a monopoly vulnerable to monopoly pricing/profits.

<comment><USER45> I've taken plenty of business law classes, and I've never heard such a thing in terms of what defines a monopoly. Your 1st point is debunked by your second point. Your 2nd point of "isn't workable in practice" is just bunk. For your third point, GSuite costs more per seat than O365 in some cases...so I don't even know what you're talking about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands Considering FB just handed over a private citizens data to a convicted hacker simply because he requested it, I would say I'm pretty happy about this development.

</comment><comment><USER46> More regulation just makes it more difficult for smaller companies to comply. The giants will just expand their legal departments.

</comment><comment><USER47> Advertisers, and others, could be paying higher prices due to market dominance, while users of so-called free services could be experiencing lower quality offerings with reduced innovation and variety, as well as excessive data appropriation. These effects, and others, would constitute reduced consumer welfare.

</comment><comment><USER48> I would like to see Paypal added to the list. Although, part of this monopoly is a very high regulatory barrier of entry for Paypal competition. But they should look if paypal engages into practices 'steer' regulators (or politicians) to not to allow others in.

I also thought about Ebay monopoly, however we have newEgg and Amazon, and unless they are setting up barriers for others to entry, or fixing prices, or coordinating to black-list certain business/consumers -- I doubt that they will be looked at.

</comment><comment><USER49> I think this might be because of the right wing of the Republican party that thinks that Google/Facebook etc are unfairly censoring their point of view. This action might be designed to cut them down to size.

</comment><comment><USER50> Know what else is a drag on the economy? Banks and their high interest loans.

</comment><comment><USER51> Watch them start sucking up to Trump to make this stop.

<comment><USER52> Highly unlikely. Rage clicks drive their ad revenue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> I can't log out of Facebook on Firefox, FB seems to have bugged the dropdown containing the log-out button so it loads forever instead of appearing :(

</comment><comment><USER54> Rant: But I thought the EU just wants to punish all the good US companies. Now DOJ and FCC?

</comment><comment><USER55> The Chinese government must be slathering at the mouth about this. Assuming there are some inherent advantages to large tech companies (a collection of smaller companies can't achieve the same economy of scale as one big one), then if America breaks up its large tech companies it will be the perfect opportunity for Chinese ones to fill their place. This would not only expand China's soft power but also their ability to monitor global information flows. Given that much recent development in deep learning is also funded by the deep pockets of monopolistic tech companies, breaking them up (and removing this surplus profit) would slow down US AI development relative to China.

<comment><USER55> To the downvoters, I'm curious why you think America weakening its largest tech companies wouldn't help China? The fact that people are calling for breaking up large tech companies suggests they have an unfair advantage over small companies (otherwise they wouldn't need to be broken up), so why wouldn't large Chinese tech companies have an advantage over small, broken up American companies?</comment></comment>


Outbreak of Lung Illness Associated with Using E-Cigarette Products - <AUTHOR> https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/basic_information/e-cigarettes/severe-lung-disease.html <comment><USER2> I've been following this for months and New York State seems to be reporting the most accurate information.

[https://www.health.ny.gov/press/releases/2019/2019-09-05_vap...](https://www.health.ny.gov/press/releases/2019/2019-09-05_vaping.htm)

[https://www.flickr.com/photos/nysdoh/sets/72157710703391248/](https://www.flickr.com/photos/nysdoh/sets/72157710703391248/)

The sickness is suspected to be caused by blackmarket THC vape cartridges which have been cut with Vitamin E Acetate.

There is a huge problem with black market / counterfeit THC vape products.

There are two communities tracking this on Reddit:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/fakecartridges/](https://www.reddit.com/r/fakecartridges/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/cleancarts/](https://www.reddit.com/r/cleancarts/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Is it worse than regular smoking? or how about the new IQOS type?

Obviously not smoking is the best option but assuming smokers will continue smoking even knowing the risks - which is the case unfortunately for a big majority, i believe the best thing to do is give them a way to get their fix that poses the smallest risk.

<comment><USER4> Surely there are several ways to deliver nicotine that are far safer than electronic cigarettes. There is mounting evidence that these are worse than tobacco.

<comment><USER5> Disclaimer: I'm Swedish so I guess you could say I'm culturally biased, but I have no economic interest in this.

You can always try "snus". Snuff has a bad rep in the US because of the association with chewing tobacco and old westerns, but snus in a pouch under your lip is actually very hygienic, easily disposable, practically invisible and obviously spares your lungs, while still giving you a nicotine buzz.

Obviously no way of consuming nicotine is risk free, but I use it every now and then and I enjoy it, especially with beer or coffee.

I think Swedish Match is attempting to market snus in the US under the "General" brand[1], might be worth checking out if you want to try an alternate way of consuming tobacco.

[1]: [https://www.generalsnus.com](https://www.generalsnus.com)

<comment><USER6> A lot of hockey players here in Canada use snus and even after learning how to do it properly it still makes me want to vomit. Plus the idea of a 'spit bottle' is even more anti-social than massive vape clouds (which are entirely unnecessary and becoming taboo).

<comment><USER5> There's no such thing as a "spit bottle" required for "proper" usage of snus. Perhaps if you are using snus that isn't portioned in bags and you wish to keep it in for a long time, you'll need to spit at some point -- but the vast majority of people _do_ use portioned snus, and it is normally discarded before it starts running in a dedicated part of the box you took it from.[1]

[1]: [https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fd13o5qkgojw...](https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fd13o5qkgojw0n2.cloudfront.net%2Fimage%2Fcache%2Fcatalog%2FPresenter%2FSnusdosor%2F2019%2Fsnusdosa- portion-med-gravyr-innebandyzap-1002-4822-4-0-1-2-800x800.jpg&f=1&nofb=1)

<comment><USER6> Strange, I wonder why all the hockey players I know used one. I'll ask them next time, I'm not much an expert on the subject. But I do know one gets his from Europe.

<comment><USER5> > I wonder why all the hockey players I know used one.

My guess would be that they did not use "portioned" snus. It's a bit of a macho thing, so the prevalence of the loose kind that you have to bake into a ball yourself and get your hands dirty is much higher among professional athletes, car mechanics and the like, while most regular consumers prefer the portioned bags. If you're interested in the statistics, about 77% prefer portioned snus.[1]

I believe one of the major reasons that people prefer to take their snus "straight" is because it's stronger, but the whole thing about dirtying your hands, making a mess when discarding it, going around spitting etc. creates some obvious issues for regular office workers or other consumer groups with similar opinions.

[1]: [https://news.cision.com/se/nordic-snus/r/hur-snusar- svenskar...](https://news.cision.com/se/nordic-snus/r/hur-snusar-svenskarna- egentligen-,c2881751)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In Vienna, the shop I bought my supplies had all products tested by local TÜV NORD and they mixed liquids on site. Nowadays I buy and mix myself from standard 50/50 PG/VG mix from known source. I had mixed results with imported premixed liquids (off smell, not consistent viscosity - went to bin) and that promptly stopped me from buying more of premixed stuff (along with problematic regulations of container sizes).

Anything you add to the liqiud other than nicotine and PG/VG may be problematic. You never really know what is in imported premixed liquid, what cutting agents were used, what purity of source material was.

It seems that CDC is seeing some results of cost cutting, using stuff that was not really meant to be vaped mixed to keep margins better.

</comment><comment><USER8> I have asthma and have lived in Denver since before legalization.

When vape pens first came out I never had any issues. In the last few years I very well could have easily been one of those statistics.

Vape pens make my lungs _hurt_ and I have to use my rescue inhaler for days afterwards. It's terrible. I don't know if they changed how they make the oil but I completely gave up on vaping. I tried one with pineapple flavoring and man... it almost was the death of me.

<comment><USER9> Shouldn't any kind of smoking be a big no-no with ashtma? Really curious because I have rhinitis and can't stand smoke around me.

<comment><USER8> I mean, probably. Cigarettes make me hurt (haven't smoked one in a decade at least). Vapes make me hurt. Smoking weed from a clean pipe gives me almost zero negative effects unless I smoke significantly more than usual over the course of a few days.

<comment><USER10> What's the effect of not smoking anything?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> i said right at the beginning when people were starting to recommend e-cigarettes as a replacement for cigarettes that they should keep the good old 'unknown unknowns' in mind and that a recommendation without knowledge of long term risk is dangerous.

This should maybe be a general lesson when people advocate unproven replacements for unhealthy habits.

<comment><USER12> Yet all we know is that these people vape and many of them were vaping black market THC oil with high levels of vitamin E. An estimated 10M people vape in the US and here we have an acute health issue with a few hundred people.

[https://www.nbcnews.com/health/vaping/vitamin-e-now-focus- in...](https://www.nbcnews.com/health/vaping/vitamin-e-now-focus- investigation-some-vaping-illnesses-n1050361)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Pretty certain I've had lipid pneumonia through vaped bad oils; but the gastrointestinal involvement and elevated heart rate and white blood cell count sound like there might be something more specific happening? Please someone educate us further?

</comment><comment><USER14> I thc vaped for a little while. Everything seemed fine till the next batch which was a cough factory. It is unregulated and blackmarket. For all I know huffing paint is safer.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm another person who for whatever reason was never able to adjust to vaping. It quite literally hurts, even with modest inhales, despite trying numerous models (disposables, cartridges, expensive sub ohm systems, you name it). This applies both for nicotine and thc vaping. I just wrote it off as something that was a personal eccentricity.

Honestly it was for the best - I ended up using gum and eventually just quitting, and stopped using thc for other reasons.

</comment><comment><USER16> Related discussion yesterday:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20899523](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20899523)

</comment><comment><USER17> Bit confused how they've got 450 cases but no certainty?

Surely 1 out of 450 has a sample left that can be tested thoroughly?

<comment><USER6> Hasn't stopped them from making completely generic recommendations against vaping when most information points to specific kinds of THC pens.

<comment><USER17> Well no. As I pointed out in another comment. All have vaping in common...only some have THC associations (with some allowance for underreporting).

So they're right to ere on the side of caution here. The CDC isn't exactly incompetent...if they could pin this down to THC pens only they would.

I do think you're right in that this is probably some dodgy THC solvent, but based on current known info I think CDC called it cautiously...but right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Recommendation is to not use e cig until they finish investigating but I wonder if a real cig is a worse alternative still?

<comment><USER19> It's hard to imagine anything worse than a real cig with regard to the wide scale negative effects it has on nearly every system in the body. Maybe inhaling plutonium. :)

<comment><USER20> The most harmful part about cigarettes is inhaling byproducts from something burning. I'm even mildly allergic to pretty much every vape product, and I'd acknowledge that provided there is nothing toxic in vape juice, it has to be much less harmful than smoking - simply because of the lack of combustion products.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm not a doctor but are there any theories on how one might die from vaping?

<comment><USER8> I have asthma. Even legal dispensary bought THC cartridges put my lungs in such a bad spot that my rescue inhaler barely brings relief. If I wasn't well aware of that and hit one a dozen times over the course of the day I would be in serious trouble.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The way this is being reported, I feel quite confident that this is some sort of a _deliberate_ propaganda campaign.

The two biggest red flags for me:

1) Language used in official press releases, weasel wording like:

a) "over 450 possible cases of lung illness _associated with_ the use of e-cigarette products"

b) "The investigation has not identified any [single - my addition] _specific_ substance or e-cigarette product that is linked to all cases. _Many_ [how many? do you have no statistics on that? why?] patients report using e-cigarette products with liquids that contain cannabinoid products, such as tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)".

It seems written in a manner to maximize plausible deniability, hinting at one thing strongly [but not saying it _outright_ ], and making an _extremely_ subtle acknowledgement of alternative causes [in the spirit of professionalism and "full disclosure"], but not reporting the magnitude of the "many", which could very well be 100%.

That's the beauty (and shortcoming) of written language for communication - when something is written in a _seemingly_ deceitful style like this, there's no way for sure of knowing whether it is accidental or not. Unnecessary vagueness from a facts based organization like the CDC and #2 (below) make me lean strongly towards the deliberately deceitful interpretation.

2) Vaping has been _extremely_ widespread for years, with few reports like these. And then out of the blue, 450 cases (5 deaths) occur _in one country_. No curiosity whatsoever about why everything is fine for years and then a massive spike in a very short period of time, in one country.

I could very well be wrong, but I will make a prediction: this will play _heavily_ in the media for a few more weeks and then subtly degrade to a "gee, we don't really know what the real issue was, but our research is ongoing", and we won't hear about it again.

EDIT: From another HN comment:

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

[https://www.health.ny.gov/press/releases/2019/2019-09-05_vap...](https://www.health.ny.gov/press/releases/2019/2019-09-05_vaping.htm)

New York State Department of Health Announces Update on Investigation into Vaping-Associated Pulmonary Illnesses

Department Warns Against Use of Black Market Vaping Products

Lab Test Results Show High Levels of Vitamin E Acetate, Now Focus of Investigation

The Department issued a health advisory in August, alerting health care providers of this emerging health threat and listing symptoms they should look for in patients. As of September 5, 2019, the Department has received 34 reports from New York State physicians of severe pulmonary illness among patients ranging from 15 to 46 years of age who were using at least one cannabis-containing vape product before they became ill. However, all patients reported recent use of various vape products.

Laboratory test results showed very high levels of vitamin E acetate in nearly all cannabis-containing samples analyzed by the Wadsworth Center as part of this investigation. At least one vitamin E acetate containing vape product has been linked to each patient who submitted a product for testing. Vitamin E acetate is not an approved additive for New York State Medical Marijuana Program-authorized vape products and was not seen in the nicotine-based products that were tested.

As a result, vitamin E acetate is now a key focus of the Department's investigation of potential causes of vaping-associated pulmonary illnesses. Vitamin E acetate is a commonly available nutritional supplement that is not known to cause harm when ingested as a vitamin supplement or applied to the skin. However, the Department continues to investigate its health effects when inhaled because its oil-like properties could be associated with the observed symptoms.

The Wadsworth Center is testing both cannabis and nicotine-containing vape products as part of this investigation and continues testing the purity of New York's approved medical marijuana products. More than a dozen product samples, in some cases multiple samples from a single product, from patients reporting symptoms have been tested. These samples have been tested for a range of substances, including THC and other cannabis-derived cannabinoids, nicotine, synthetic cannabinoids, opioids and pesticides. Products tested include a variety of labels and packaging. Many are suspected to be counterfeits of recreational cannabis-containing vape products available in other states.

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

It's rather interesting that absolutely none of these extra details, which have been available for quite some time now, appear in any official CDC reports.

</comment><comment><USER23> Lungs were made for air, not smoke or atomized vapor (aside from drugs meant to be administered as a vapor).

Is this really that hard for people to figure out?

<comment><USER24> > air, not ...

Relevant: [https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air](https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I am not surprised at all, and I'm surprised that anyone is surprised. The idea that one can breathe particulate or droplet matter into their lungs without causing problems seems absurd on its face given everything we've known about the effects of air pollution for decades. Tobacco is not special.

<comment><USER26> The more I read the comments of any discussion about e-cigarettes, the more I am convinced that there is a dedicated astroturfing campaign so any real discussion of the possible risks of e-cigarettes is derailed.

Any suggestion that e-cigarettes could be dangerous at all is instantly downvoted into oblivion or shouted down with, "you want me to smoke? It's deadly!"

Well, either a dedicated campaign or just a lot of addicts with their head firmly buried in the sand.

Is there any real chance that e-cigs could be more dangerous, or comparable to smoking? Would we even know yet? It can take decades for smokers to start developing bad symptoms, could vaping be similar?

<comment><USER25> It's possible. I would go further and say that the idea that smoke and vapor -of any kind- might not be great for your lungs is also suppressed by people who want marijuana legalized. I'm one of them, but the idea that breathing non-gaseous things doesn't have negative health effects is just weird.

<comment><USER26> There's also edibles if people don't want to smoke or vape.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Let's fast forward a few years from now to the point where we determine that e-cigarettes contain some sort of cancer or lung disease-causing product / additive, just like we figured out with cigarettes decades ago.

What I don't understand is why the FDA will not outright ban them immediately. (Well I probably do, and the answer is lobbying.)

Regardless of your stance on whether or not the FDA _should_ ban ingredients that pose health risks (government intervention on liberties et cetera), the fact is that this is the FDA's policy. It bans harmful ingredients (usually).

So with that policy in place, what's the deal here? If and when e-cigarettes are found to contain a chemical that is directly linked to cancer or lung disease, will the FDA ban it? Or will it conspicuously let it slide, and just slap a warning on it, like it did cigarettes?

[https://www.fda.gov/cosmetics/cosmetics-laws- regulations/pro...](https://www.fda.gov/cosmetics/cosmetics-laws- regulations/prohibited-restricted-ingredients-cosmetics)

[https://www.fda.gov/food/food-additives-petitions/food- addit...](https://www.fda.gov/food/food-additives-petitions/food-additive- status-list)

<comment><USER28> There's no evidence that any of the ingredients of e-cigarette vapour are significantly carcinogenic. That may well continue to be true; there is no natural law saying that a habit you dislike must be carcinogenic.

There are many possible formulations of e-cigarette liquid, with the only common factor being nicotine. We are extremely confident that nicotine isn't carcinogenic, although it may cause mild cardiovascular harm. If we find out that some of the other ingredients in e-cigarette vapour are toxic or carcinogenic, the industry will voluntarily stop using those ingredients immediately; they already did so with diacetyl.

<comment><USER29> "We are extremely confident that nicotine isn't carcinogenic"

I would not say that's the case. This article is a good place to start:

[https://tobacco.ucsf.edu/cellular-evidence-how-nicotine- and-...](https://tobacco.ucsf.edu/cellular-evidence-how-nicotine-and-e- cigarettes-increase-cancer-risk-humans-and-mice)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Review our web app: Eyes And Feet - Social media for Local Businesses - <AUTHOR>

Eyes And Feet is a web based application that will help local businesses get more customers from social media.
For starters, we're primarily looking at the following categories of local business: Restaurants & Cafes, Bars & Clubs, Salons & Spas
We're going into private beta very soon. For now, to show you the app, we've put up a video at http://bit.ly/eaftour
Please take a look and let us know what you think - about the product & the opportunity.
To understand the 'opportunity' better, and know more about the problem we're trying to solve, see http://bit.ly/eafopp
One last thing...if you'd like to be part of the Private Beta, please sign up at http://www.eyesandfeet.com and use the invitation code: ASKHN We'll send you an invite as soon as we can.
Thanks for helping.
Lux Founder & CEO lux AT eyesandfeet THISISADOT com <comment><USER2> This seems really cool. I imagine there is a large audience out there of people who keep hearing they should get more involved in social media but have little to no idea what that really means or how to go about doing it. I think this could really strike a chord with small business owners - the one challenge would be finding these people who may not be as web saavy - but I don't think that's too hard of a problem to overcome.

I don't know if "Eyes and Feet" really makes sense as a name for me, but I'm not sure if the "perfect" name is really a big deal.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Yes, finding them will be a challenge - but we think that can be addressed, one step at a time. Our first tagline was "Eyeballs & Footfalls for your Local Business". And we thought, EyesAndFeet was 'earthy' and related to the promise. But, like you say, the name's not too big a deal.

<comment><USER2> The tagline makes the name make sense. When thinking about the name it seemed like it should be relevant but I just couldn't put my finger on what it was trying to conjure up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Putting it rather crudely: get your customers online through social media (eyes) and then get them through the door (feet)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


PracticalAI – Discovery and organization of top community-curated ML content - <AUTHOR> Platform: https://practicalai.me
Tweet with platform details: https://twitter.com/GokuMohandas/status/1220186794936811520
Is this type of curation and content discovery useful or even needed? <comment><USER2> I like the idea but people are lazy and just expect a platform like this to be constantly curated and up-to-date. With that said, it would be a fantastic tool with just a handful of active and enthusiastic curators who really care while the rest of lurking (most platforms work this way).</comment>


Scraping traffic-cams to capture police violence - <AUTHOR> https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/15/raffi-and-jaffee/#sousveillance <comment><USER2> This is an inversion of the surveillance society? Suppose I walk in the city from Grand Central to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, I must be captured many times by that system: "just anybody" could match the images at different places and times and put together something about as good as a GPS track.

It used to be that the police and the extended security system would have this technology, but now it is free.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> > The project is seeking technical volunteers to help manage the video they > can get.

> They have an open call for sysadmins, UI designers, and ML specialists to > help improve the tool, and they're actively seeking connections in the NYC > DOT and with activists in other cities to expand the tool's reach.</comment>


A practitioner's guide to reading programming languages papers - <AUTHOR> https://blog.acolyer.org/2018/01/26/a-practitioners-guide-to-reading-programming-languages-papers/ <comment><USER2> This is a nice post! Jeremy Siek wrote a similar post a few years ago:

[http://siek.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/crash-course-on- notation-...](http://siek.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/crash-course-on-notation-in- programming.html)

If I could add one thing to these two posts, it would be to learn Prolog.

We write inference rules top-down ("from these premises, we draw this conclusion"), but we often read them bottom-up ("given this goal, what facts could have lead to it?").

This double-vision thing, where you simultaneously view a set of inference rules in both a deductive and goal-directed fashion, is IMO one of the main stumbling blocks for people new to type theory. Luckily[1], however, it's fundamentally the same intuition that Prolog programmers develop -- and learning new programming languages is usually easy for programmers.

[1] It's not really by luck, of course: Prolog is called a logic programming language for a reason...

<comment><USER3> Do you have any recommendations on learning Prolog with the goal of writing practical/real type systems? Ideally a book that has runnable example programs?

I had bookmarked this awhile ago but haven't gone through it:

 _Writing custom type systems for Python in Prolog_

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12108041](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12108041)

<comment><USER4> Well, hmph. I've been meaning to experiment with Prolog-as-a-type-system-for- a-language for a long time.

The wayback machine has a valid link to the article: [https://web.archive.org/web/20170216030548/http://code.aleha...](https://web.archive.org/web/20170216030548/http://code.alehander42.me/prolog_type_systems)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is great! I wish I had seen something like this years ago.

Related: "It's Time for a New Old Language" by Guy Steele.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HKbjYqqPPQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HKbjYqqPPQ)

He gives a history of metalanguage notations (for both language semantics and syntax, including regexes and CFGs). And then he criticizes the inconsistency that has cropped up in these notations over the years.

The irony is that people who are formalizing precise semantics of programming languages do not agree on the syntax/semantics of the metalanguage.

I guess this is what you notice when you read hundreds of programming language papers, as I'm sure Guy Steele has.

\-----

Also, does anyone know if what he refers to as "progress and preservation" are the same / related to "liveness and safety" in distributed algorithms? It sounds like the same kind of idea.

<comment><USER2> > Also, does anyone know if what he refers to as "progress and preservation" > are the same / related to "liveness and safety" in distributed algorithms? > It sounds like the same kind of idea.

Progress and preservation are used to prove type safety, which (like the name says) is a safety property. Informally, safety means "a bad thing never happens", and liveness means "a good thing will eventually happen".

Informally, progress means "a typed program will never immediately exhibit undefined behaviour", and preservation means "a typed program always stays well-typed". Together, these two properties mean "a typed program never exhibits undefined behaviour".

This has the shape of a safety property. All this can be made much more formal, but that's the intuition.</comment></comment>


'Science Guy' condemns parents for preaching Bible studies over evolution - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.com.au/technology/sci-tech/science-guy-bill-nye-has-condemned-parents-for-preaching-bible-studies-over-evolution/story-fn5fsgyc-1226480663416

<comment><USER2> Previous extensive HN discussion:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4568426></comment>


Taming Complexity with Reversibility - <AUTHOR> https://m.facebook.com/notes/kent-beck/taming-complexity-with-reversibility/1000330413333156/

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9958492](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9958492)</comment>


Debugging launchd on OS X 10.10.3 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wuntee.sexy/osx/kernel/debugging/2015/05/11/debugging-launchd/

<comment><USER2> _I initially thought this was some anti-debug trick Apple introduced to prevent debugging of the service. However, I got to thinking - if launchd is PID 1, and everything is spawned off of it, then if lldb was able to break lauchd, then lldb should be halted as well - something like the "chicken or the egg" problem. It would be like if you spawned a thread, and then put a breakpoint in the parent, but the thread still was running. It is just not possible._

Hold on... So if you break on a parent process the children stop?

However, the error is that the connection is lost to the debug server. I don't think you are having the problem for the reason you are saying.

</comment><comment><USER3> So I don't know much at all about kernel debugging, but when the author mentioned not being able to attach a debugger to launchd since it's PID 1 I got to wondering if it would be possible to use a debugger by launching OS X in a VM instead.

<comment><USER4> Well at that point you have to sift through the noise of the hypervisor and understand an entire OS you can't really see. Sort of...

<comment><USER5> Test</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: what's the best python-supported web hosting out there? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for a very good python-supported web hosting service. Do you guys have any suggestion? <comment><USER2> If by python-supported do you mean lets you run python code?

I use nearlyfreespeech.net.

They don't let you do long running processes so that rules out several frameworks.

</comment><comment><USER3> webfaction is a great shared host. They do let you run long-running processes and are Django and Turbogears friendly.

<comment><USER4> I'll second that. They have good customer support.</comment></comment>


Learning to build startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.starternotes.com/2012/08/star-tup-think-it-build-your-ship-beam.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I am learning the basics. This is an attempt to compile the things I am learning. Hope I wont be ashamed of it after a few years :).</comment>


Elon Musk's Caltech Commencement Speech: Begins at 31:20 (video) - <AUTHOR> http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/23331324

<comment><AUTHOR> A full transcript can be found here:

<http://commencement.caltech.edu/archive/2012_address>

The address beings at 31:20, so make sure to skip ahead.

Some choice quotes:

> _I'd like to thank you for leaving crazy person out of the description._

> _I'm optimistic about the future of Earth — things will most likely be O.K._

> _The United States is a nation of explorers, and people came here from other > parts of the world ... It's a distillation of the spirit of human > exploration._

> _You guys are the magicians of the 21st century. Don't let anything hold you > back ... Imagination is the limit ... go out there and create some magic._

> _There's a lot more that must happen beyond this in order for humanity to > become a space-faring civilization, ultimately a multi-planet species ... > But it's imperative for the preservation of consciousness and civilization._

> _[Caltech] helps you get your foot in the door ... After that, they hire you > for what you can do._

> _Back up the biosphere with planetary redundancy_

> _[I went] to Russia three times ... [to] buy a refurbished ICBM, because it > was the best deal._

> _I started SpaceX against the advice of everyone I talked to ... One person > made me sit down and watch videos of rockets exploding._

> _The thing about a rocket is the passing grade is 100% ... It's a huge > relief. I still can't believe it actually happened._ -> Launches succeeding.

> _It's right on the border of impossible._ -> Mars Landing</comment>


Announcing Free Tier and Live Migration Tool for MongoDB Atlas - <AUTHOR> https://www.mongodb.com/blog/post/announcing-free-tier-and-live-migration-tool-for-mongodb-atlas <comment><USER2> Disclaimer: I used to work for MongoDB, but left more than 2 years ago.

I'm really happy to see the free tier as an option - I was a big fan, user, and advocate of MMS back when that was a free option for monitoring, and accessibility to Atlas has been lacking a "try before you buy" option (though I did pick up free credit from the MongoDB booth in Re:Invent, it makes it hard to recommend to others).

Also great to see an official utility for migrations with MongoMirror too. These things, along with the Jepsen tests now being in CI (and passing in 3.4) seemed so far away when I left MongoDB, really great to see them come to fruition :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Can you migrate your data from the free sandbox version over to an M4, for example?

<comment><USER4> hey - this blog post handles basics to do such a migration:

[https://www.mongodb.com/blog/post/atlas-on-day-one- importing...](https://www.mongodb.com/blog/post/atlas-on-day-one-importing- data)</comment></comment>


Making AJAX applications crawlable - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/web/ajaxcrawling/docs/learn-more.html

<comment><USER2> Considering that it's Google, I'm honestly surprised they haven't created a crawler application that can execute the javascript on a given page and re- parse it based on the new layout.

You wouldn't think it would be that hard, either-- take Chrome, remove UI, add crawler. Chrome's already got the functionality in "Inspect Element" to show dynamically-created content.

<comment><USER3> That would be a fairly bad idea. Javascript execution, and in particular AJAX calls, frequently change data. I wouldn't want my crawler to delete or edit somehow lots of data if I where Google.

<comment><USER4> As long as the crawler can't execute POST requests, no one who has built their web application properly will have any problems.

<comment><USER5> > no one who has built their web application properly will have any problems

In other words everyone will have problems (to an accuracy of 3-4 decimals)

<comment><USER4> Related: <http://xkcd.com/327/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wish they would make it possible to do the whole bit with "pretty" urls. Example:

Users go to: /#/abc Google goes to /abc and they both see the same content. Obviously you'd need some way to tell Google that your site follows this scheme but then you don't have to change all of your URLs and existing external links to pages on your site would accumulate page rank appropriately.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've been thinking about writing a blog article on this subject. Basically AJAX is like Chocolate - it's really tempting, but eating too much or for the wrong reasons is not a good idea.

I've just rewritten one of my sites which used AJAX to load content on a single index page. I've now made sure every unique resource has a unique url. This is good for browser navigation, good for Google, and good for promoting a single resource on a service like Twitter. Now my site which looked like 1 page to Google is almost 500 pages.

</comment><comment><USER8> I just recently implemented this. The thing I'm having trouble with is the fact that they don't limit the amount of time (or specify a limit, rather) which is acceptable to make the crawler wait. For instance, what if it take 20 seconds to load an acceptable amount of JavaScript-created HTML?

</comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone know when this went live? I'm assuming it is live already.

I see it was proposed in Oct 2009: [http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/10/proposal-...](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/10/proposal- for-making-ajax-crawlable.html)</comment>


Ask HN: Can this work? - <AUTHOR>

Hey everyone,

  I've been learning Rails the last few months, and
 my main project to learn with has been something called Isement. It's a marketplace for buying and selling physical ad space on people's property.
In other words, advertising in certain areas of a yard, a rooftop, an office wall, a semi trailer, on long haul bike gear, etc etc. Users place their space up for sale, and then other users who want to advertise can search by area for available spaces where they can place their ad.
I realize that some people despise ads, so obviously this won't be liked by all, but I have actually gotten mostly positive feedback on this so far, and I have decided I would really give this a go. I know getting "good idea" feedback is nice and all, but when it comes down to it, I need to find users who will actually use this.
I have a few people lined up to help beta test so far, but I still am looking to get as much feedback as I can on this idea.
What are your thoughts?
If you were launching something like this, or any marketplace really, how would you go about it? What would be your first few steps?
The lovely chicken and egg problem will certainly be an issue, but I'm thinking I will try and work the hardest on finding people who have spaces available first, give them perks for helping to launch, and then work on finding people who want to advertise.
Thanks everyone, and I really hope I can get some feedback. Even if it's all bad!
(Oh, I do have a landing page setup at http://isement.com if anyone wants to critique that as well.) <comment><USER3> This will likely be against local zoning laws in residential areas. Usually they have very specific rules about what can and cannot be displayed on residential property.

Even if there are no rules on record for the municipality, nothing stops a motion being passed that would outlaw advertisements being sold on residential properties after the fact.

Assuming you can get around the above, I would solve the cold start problem by first focusing on a single geographic market. Small, local businesses are more likely to purchase this type of alternative/non-traditional advertising - <USER2> they'll want to be able to market in their specific towns.

I would also make sure that you provide some sort of science in terms of how the advertisements are targeted. Agencies will look for that. For example, an agency ad trafficker is going to want to market in neighborhoods with mean household incomes in line with their target audience.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ahhh, thank you! Great point about the mean household incomes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Business hat:

This sounds like a profitable idea, but will likely be subject to odd local zoning regulations. Expect a fight from people opposed to advertising in general, and from incumbents who will throw anything they can at you. Get legal advice early, and be prepared for a bit of nastiness.

Personal hat:

Please God no, the world does _not_ need more advertising. Make it STOP! I used to carry a TV-begone, now I use an app on my Galaxy Note, and I still can't stop the constant bombardment with ads; these days they're even on screens at the local service station while I'm fueling my bike. You are making the world a worse place by creating this service, and that makes you a bad person.

You might prefer me when I'm wearing my business hat :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hahaha, I hear you loud and clear. Thanks for your input!</comment></comment>


Stack Overflow 2010 Analytics - <AUTHOR> http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/12/stack-overflow-2010-analytics/

<comment><USER2> The size of India vs. United Kingdom and the relatively similar visit percentage is interesting. Does this mean the UK has a large number of devs or India has a small number?

<comment><USER3> You should not compare absolute population of two countries. Rather you should compare population with Internet/computer access which I'm guessing should be similar.

PS: On a similar note I'm surprised China is missing from the list.

<comment><USER4> And the number of people comfortable with English.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm surprised by the number of IE users—seems high for a community of devs.

<comment><USER6> I was more blown away by the number of Windows users, the IE numbers seem pretty reasonable, especially considering the huge .NET crowd there.

<comment><USER7> Well these are World stats, not Palo Alto stats. Windows dominating shouln't be a surprise really.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> tl;dr; - visitors are more spread out on the globe, Google is the undefeated referrer, SO visitors love Firefox, Windows, and screen resolutions are getting bigger and wider.

Nothing too interesting, really.

</comment><comment><USER9> Can anyone explain to me how they get user screen resolutions?

<comment><USER10> Google Analytics provides resolution and colour depth info.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why no Russia in top countries? Do they have a similar site?

</comment><comment><USER12> iOS will jump up sharply from 0.4% in 2011 if the folks at Stack Overflow make the site usable with that system. From mobile Safari the site is crippled. You can type in an answer, but the formatting tools and preview panes don't work at all.

<comment><USER13> The most common use case of Stack Overflow will be a programmer working away on code encountering a problem, googling for a fix, and finding it on stack overflow. I don't see how mobile would enhance that.

While I appreciate there are a few hardcores who will want to answer questions on the go, I can't see that being a big priority.

<comment><USER14> As an anecdotal point of reference, I monitor a number of stackoverflow categories with RSS feeds. I commonly read and answer these feeds with Reeder on my iPad sitting in a comfy chair in my living room, not at my computer.

I answer less questions than I normally would if the interface were better.

(maybe this is fitting into the definition of "a few hardcores" for you though)</comment></comment></comment>


Meural Digital Art Display for Walls - <AUTHOR> https://www.meural.com/ <comment><USER2> How does this work? I thought Bill Gates bought all the rights to digital representation of famous artworks.</comment>


55 Speed and red light cameras infected with WannaCry - <AUTHOR> https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/06/55-victorian-speed-and-red-light-cameras-infected-with-ransomware/ <comment><USER2> "human error is the cause" \- indeed. What is the purpose of a desktop system inside a traffic camera?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Apparently a maintenance worker infected them with a USB stick.</comment>


2 Simple Ingredients That Will Boost your Morning Energy - <AUTHOR> http://www.dumblittleman.com/2008/04/2-simple-ingredients-that-will-boost.html <comment><USER2> I read the post, but I don't know what either of the simple ingredients are. Sugar and caffeine does it for me, though ;)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure how excercise _after_ the breakfast would help. I think one should take excercise before the breakfast. But has anyone tried it?

<comment><USER4> I think you should take food first. The idea being that no food + demand for nutrients (exercise) tells your metabolism that resources are scarce. This makes your metabolism burn protein from your body (muscles) instead of fat from your body or proteins from your food, so if you are trying to gain energy or lose weight, eating first will be better at kick starting your metabolism.

<comment><USER5> There is no clear consensus. The few studies done suggest the opposite of what you are saying - that the glycogen depleted state your body is in when you wake up leads to burning fat before muscle. That said, most physiologists suggest you should eat something before working out. THAT said, most bodybuilders suggest doing "fasted AM cardio." I tend to go with the bodybuilders' advice as they are the ones actually putting their ideas into practice and figuring out what works and what doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was expecting suggestions on what to EAT for breakfast.

<comment><USER7> Here's your alternate article, then:

1) Protein & Fruit (say an omelette & cup of blueberries)

2) Not sugary stuff, ie most cereal, white bread toast, anything that begs to be slathered in Aunt Jemima.

I slept through a year of Trig because of Aunt Jemima.

<comment><USER8> _I slept through a year of Trig because of Aunt Jemima._

That's the best sentence I've seen on News.YC this year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Getting a full night's sleep makes a big difference, too. I find I actually get out the door quicker when I get a full night's sleep.

</comment><comment><USER10> The three set push-up routine alone will give you a great boost of energy.

</comment><comment><USER11> Wait. So, getting 4 hours sleep, then showering and rushing out of the house with a cup of coffee within 15 minutes of waking isn't optimal?

</comment><comment><USER12> exercise is a great source of energy and i've found it also decreases appetite. I didn't feel the benefits until after a few weeks of a regular exercise schedule; during the initial ramp up the changes in energy and appetite were inverted.</comment>


Automatic Emergency Braking: A Case Study - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@comma_ai/aeb-a-case-study-using-comma-ai-dataset-2fc08a2397f4 <comment><USER2> >Car manufacturers also lack the ability to issue Over-The-Air (OTA) software updates, which is another strong limitation in developing and deploying new features.

I am actually very happy about this. I want definite times (ie after servicing) that my car is going to change algorithms, not whenever the car company decides.

In addition, I think this is a very large potential security hole.

<comment><USER3> I've seen it pointed out in the case of Tesla's OTAs, for instance, drivers may get used to the behavior of Autopilot for their car in a certain segment of road and then have an OTA change that behavior without much warning.

(Of course, there are trade-offs here in that OTAs could also bring important safety functionality, such as Tesla's fix for braking distance on the Model 3.)

<comment><USER4> That's what emergency recalls are for. It has the benefit of making it very clear to the owner that something in the vehicle is changing because you have to physically bring it to the shop. Not that it can't be solved by software, but it's not solved well today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I disagree that the "turning vehicle" scenarios represent false positives. The driver can't possibly know that there isn't e.g. a scooter in front of the turning vehicle. It isn't safe to drive full speed ahead with the assumption that once the turning vehicle is gone, there isn't another obstacle in front of it, and the EAB is correct to brake in these instances.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure in those cases, but we make assumptions all the time based on not having seen a scooter previously, and assuming a scooter couldn't have gotten into a car-occluded area without moving faster than X mph. Most AEB maybe doesn't use long term temporal data to make decisions or trust its own non- observations as being definitive (it may assume there was a strong chance of a false negative in detecting a scooter in a previous frame too easily and not allow that non observation to rule it out in the current frame; it may also have enough of a false negative detection rate that what it is doing is rational).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > This is about one AEB event every 3,300 driven miles:

What the hell are people doing when they're driving? I don't mean the ones distracted by cell phones or whatever. I mean the ones who _appear_ to be looking out their windshield, but simply don't react when something unexpected starts to happen in front of them.

I routinely find myself braking before the driver ahead of me. Passengers have even commented on it because -- I guess -- it's... unusual? So I can't fathom what. are. people. looking. at?

</comment><comment><USER7> Do comma.ai make this data available for researchers, or is this something that they are hoping to monetise?</comment>


Why Twitter is underhyped and is probably worth five to 10 billion dollars - <AUTHOR> http://scobleizer.posterous.com/why-twitter-is-underhyped-and-is-probably-wor <comment><USER2> Absurd. I love how he randomly throws out a ridiculous number, $5-10 billion, but never breaks down the justification numerically.

</comment><comment><USER3> Who _is_ this guy, and why do we keep listening to him? Really? Who the hell is he?

<comment><USER4> He's famous for being famous which, if you think about it, means he is a _perfect_ match for Twitter.

In more ways than one.

<comment><USER3> I use Twitter for all sorts of stuff. It's been awesome for me. I filled up a cryptography class I wanted to give, I ran 2 different surveys, I crowdsourced the content for a poster, I've started innumerable conversations on things, I've directed people to blog posts I wanted to highlight, and I've got 3 months of marketing plans that all hinge on getting the word out over Twitter.

Twitter is useful.

Now, can someone explain how Scoble is useful? Because again I don't know why the hell we've _ever_ listened to him.

<comment><USER5> I'm curious, do you know about <http://identi.ca> ? If so, why would you consider Twitter to be more advantageous?

<comment><USER3> Nope. Don't know anything about it. I use Twitter because my Twitter network is large enough to do cool things with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well, now that FriendFeed is a lame duck he has to have something to rave about. This is textbook Scoble. How he ever became "a thought leader" is beyond me.

</comment><comment><USER7> "The experiences I'm having with business owners in every city makes me understand some things:

....

2\. Twitter is underhyped. I'm now convinced that Twitter has locked up a whole raft of businesses and that Twitter is actually worth five to 10 billion dollars.

....

Anyway, this all leads me to understand that Twitter is way underhyped and is worth more in the marketplace than anyone has estimated yet."

So the author "understands" that Twitter is underhyped because, citing item number 2, "Twitter is underhyped." What kind of silly argumentation is this?

</comment><comment><USER8> yeah, I think that what the world really needs is more hype about twitter...

</comment><comment><USER9> I think a lot of his points are somewhat true, but he is a bad judge of degree, and a worse judge of valuation. I'd bet money that if they raised another round it would be valued at far less than $5B.

That kind of number is incompetant from a journalistic perspective because it will never be openly validated.

I fucking hate that pundits can bloviate without consequence to their reputation.

</comment><comment><USER10> Beyond the hype, Twitter is significant because you can crawl their complete social network graph of millions of users. Delicious et al offers a similar crawling but they don't have the same user base, and facebook doesn't permit to do this.

Why it's important? from a business perspective you can quickly analyze the customer sector of companies: look at dell followers, compare it to the apple ones, what's the difference? (don't know if apple is on Twitter so take this as an example)

<comment><USER4> And this tells you _what_ , exactly? How does knowing which social marketers, spam bots, and celebrities a nonrandom sampling of 50,000 technically inclined hipsters follow help me sell computers to them?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The deification of twitter continues.

</comment><comment><USER12> He is Michael Arrington's best buddy, so its only fitting that he sensationalize things and pull numbers out of his ass.

</comment><comment><USER13> There's no answer to the "why" in the article beyond celebrity mentions and saying that businesses will pay.

A valuation of $5 billion would mean about $200 per user at the 25 million users mark, which would be reasonable were it a porn-site with paying members. But it's not, it's Twitter.</comment>


Direct-to-consumer companies bypass traditional retailers via online stores - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/news/business/21731429-direct-consumer-revolution-bedroom-and-bathroom-new-class-startup-upending <comment><USER2> If you're a clothing company, the margins you can reclaim if you're able to pull off direct to consumer, are astounding.

That $60 shirt you make that is getting sold in a store like Neiman Marcus or Macy's, you're getting $12.75 for it as the maker. Stores charge obscenely for their distribution access (and for the most part they have to, their costs are very high; a higher margin store like Macy's, in good times, only has a 6% net income margin).

Ten years from now the direct to consumer segment is going to be massive. The online platforms that can generate sales referrals (distribution), are going to become the new margin-eating department stores, the middlemen providing access to the buyers. That's eg: Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, et al. There will be dozens of more specialized players as well. Right now businesses are commonly selling (leads &or transacting) across two dozen platforms (from eBay to craigslist, from YouTube to Poshmark, from Instagram to Etsy or Shopify), ten years from now that'll be four or five dozen. Sometimes you'll get lucky and get quasi-free distribution on them virally; most of the time you'll have to pay up for reliable distribution. There will be the occasional rare direct to consumer success story that has truly crazy margins because they spread entirely virally, they'll be the magic unicorn story that gets frequently written up as the trend gets larger and larger.

<comment><USER3> All these DTC clothing stores I've seen only tend to target the high end crowd. I don't want to pay $100 for a basic t-shirt or jeans. If someone can get good fitting t-shirt and jeans for the prices at Target but online, I'd be happy to buy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For many products, the store is simply an artifact of a technical limitation, one that is now going away. Record shops, electronics shops and the like at best add little value and often (in the case of Best Buy/Frys/Circuit City etc) remove value.

Bookstores are a funny one: I miss the days when there were 7 bookshops in Palo Alto an still refuse to buy books from Amazon. But in other places books are sold sealed in shrink wrap, I see no reason to go to a physical shop rather than buying online.

<comment><USER5> Even though i purchase nearly everything online these days, record stores are a nice experience. hunting in amoeba bins just cant be replaced even if it isnt the cheapest way by far.

<comment><USER6> I'm with you on the record shop experience. You can't beat digging about shelves and boxes of vinyl. I don't mean the big high street chains like HMV or Virgin (bleh), but the small to medium size store (unfortunately killed off by the likes of HMV/Virgin) where the owner and staff had truly amazing knowledge about what they were stocking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For clothing I don't like the online trend much. But already today a lot of stores have a much smaller choice than years ago. So sometimes customers are forced to buy online, because stores just don't have it anymore.

<comment><USER8> I really like mixed-mode stores for clothing: try things on in person, and order online. Bonobos follows this model, and it's great: they can have one article in store in every size for every line, and one of each color or pattern. But they don't need both: I can see what fits the best, they can keep their store well organized and easy to find what I want, and I know what I'm getting is what I wanted, without wasting a ton of time trying to find the exact size/color matches in a giant pile of clothes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hopefully this trend continues. Every mile of my overcrowded and high COL city dedicates a few square blocks to huge retail outlets - Office Max, Kohl's, Best Buy, etc. Besides the stores themselves, they all include huge parking lots which are often completely empty.

Though I've made purchases from these companies regularly, I probably step inside the physical stores no more than once every six months.

Knock em down, build more smaller residential neighborhoods, and maybe those of us under 40 can begin setting down roots, buying affordable homes, starting families.

<comment><USER10> Seattle has a lot of land-use faults but I actually kind of like the recent "shopping center" trend here. Next to Northgate Mall (a traditional, sprawling, flat mall with huge parking areas) are two multi-story retail buildings. All of the usual chain stores, save Barnes and Noble, are in them. Target, Best Buy, a movie theater, Petco, a sporting goods store, and so on. If we build more like that and less like Northgate or Westwood Village, I'd be happy.

(As for actually going into the stores, I do rather often mostly because ordering online has turned into such a mess for me. Having the stores "stacked" like that makes them a lot more convenient to manage.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder if we'll start seeing small, modernist physical stores pop up with nothing in them but kiosks linked to all these DTC startups (maybe offering high end coffee or booze to differentiate the experience from your couch)

<comment><USER12> It would be like a "Virtual" mall. A site with "all" these DTC companies? Wait like does amazon do this already?

<comment><USER13> That was the big thing that Yahoo used to offer -- easy store setup. They did it by buying Viaweb, which was founded by some guy named Paul Graham...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There is something to be said for physically holding an item. Recently I was on the fence about getting some Lifx light bulbs, but I was in Best Buy holding the box and found myself at the registrar before I knew what happened.

</comment><comment><USER15> Amazon itself is a middle man these days.

With technology I forsee a future were people directly order from the factory line. But today we already see the rise of Chinese websites undercutting Western webshops. And in my own country it is quite popular to buy mobile phones straight from Samsung and others bypassing telecom operators and retail.

The internet has really slaughtered traditional retail space.

</comment><comment><USER16> How are they going to deal with logistics then? Or inventory management? I see that is the essential reason why Amazon will be relevant for a very long time.

<comment><USER17> Seems like that would be easier for DTC companies than for Amazon. The companies just have a handful of different SKUs and therefore can probably fit everything into one warehouse (where they also make the products).

<comment><USER18> If you have everything in one warehouse you can't do fast delivery that customers demand now. A lot of the big retailers have started leveraging their store networks to do same-day pickup and delivery.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > A .. startup is upending ... industry

Of course it is.

<comment><USER20> Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.</comment></comment>