Duke Team Finds Missing Immune Cells That Could Fight Lethal Brain Tumors - <AUTHOR> https://corporate.dukehealth.org/news-listing/duke-team-finds-missing-immune-cells-could-fight-lethal-brain-tumors <comment><USER2> The mechanism by which a tumor suppresses and evades immune response is tremendously complex. And while directly "locking" helper cells in bone marrow may seem a most pernicious defense. It isn't the only one.

For immunotherapy to fulfill its promise. Every type of response for every category of tumor cell must be decoded. As well as every effective ligand to boost immune cell strategy.

Currently there are only a handful of therapies approved globally. Among hundreds of ongoing trials that need patients to sign up.

The inefficiency in the marketplace landscape then is a disconnect. Between patients for whom there may be a potential cure. And researchers who lack the reach to connect with them.

There is probably potential for a startup here that connects the two ;)

<comment><USER3> The problem is that clinical trials are pretty much not advertized to the public and rely on very inefficient doctor networks to find patients. It like the middle ages.

<comment><USER4> Also, consider that a clinical trials for Cancer may not be a first line therapy or ideal choice - it's often something that people who are desperate and at an advanced stage consider due to their options running out.

<comment><USER3> Yes, but even late stage patients don't have too many options because clinical trials are usually designed to follow very specific algorithms of treatments and reject patients who don't exactly fit in. So there is actually a lot of friction in the current system, and the fact that clinical trials are typically expensive for companies to run just exacerbates things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nature Medicine paper here : [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-018-0135-2](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-018-0135-2)

"Sequestration of T cells in bone marrow is therefore a tumor-adaptive mode of T cell dysfunction, whose reversal may constitute a promising immunotherapeutic adjunct."

</comment><comment><USER6> (from the second image)

"Duke scientists discovered an abundance of missing T-cells trapped within the bone marrow."

"an abundance of missing"

I know everyone makes mistakes, but I can't even fathom writing this sentence and thinking it sounded good

<comment><USER7> I guess it sounds alright to me? I didn't read the article, so I might be missing the context, but it sounds like there were fewer T-cells than they thought there should be, and they found that a bunch of them were in the bone marrow when they didn't expect it.

<comment><USER6> Oh... yeah that makes sense now. Very confusing wording though. I thought that they were ONLY saying "there were a lot less T-cells in the bone marrow."

I would have said: "Increased T-cells were found trapped in the bone marrow, a possible explanation for the decreased T-cells in the brain."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is it possible that glioblastoma cancer is a result of two different dysfunctions? The glioblastoma tumor in the brain, and an unrelated sequestration of T cells in the bone marrow?

The abstract states that the loss of S1P1 is tumor imposed, but not having access to the paper, I don't know what they mean by that.</comment>


Can the Terms of the GPL Prevent GNU/Linux being used for War? - <AUTHOR> http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/can_terms_gpl_prevent_gnulinux_being_used_war There's been a lot of noise on the internet recently about the fact that the Windows-based software being used in the remote control system of drones use by the American military has been hit by a virus and this has caused the Department of Defense (DOD) to use GNU/Linux which is a more secure option. This has, predictably, caused raised eyebrows and demands by some that any military organisation should be prevented from using GNU/Linux in offensive weapons systems. <comment><USER2> >It should be pointed out, infairness, that the US Navy will also be using these drones to detect drug running in the Caribbean and I don't think anyone would object to that

I'll object to it. It's nobody's business to dictate to people what they can do with their own bodies. The current drug laws create a black market and fuel gang violence. As demonstrated by countries like Portugal, treating drug use as a health issue instead of a criminal issue reduces addiction rates and side effects from drug consumption. Thus, anything which polices the current drug laws is destructive by it's very nature.

<comment><USER3> The good news is those drug-running submarines can run Linux just the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> War is pretty much the definition of "we don't care what you think and will do whatever we want", so this is probably a moot point.

<comment><USER5> "Right, so we'll shred the treaty, detain their diplomats, and prepare to shell their cities." "Wait a minute, general. Have you seen this clause in the GPL?" "Drat! Foiled again!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A few things to consider:

\- The government has the power of eminent domain, and the military has a history of "seizing" intellectual property to use for military endeavors.

\- The restrictions of the GPL are mostly associated with distribution. As the US Government is a single, sovereign entity, someone with a deep understanding of the law would need to determine whether modifying GPLd source code and putting it on a sovereign-owned drone was "distributing" the code.

<comment><USER7> Yes. I used to work for the government, and the question came up on several occasions whether it was permissible to download GPL software, make a few tweaks to suit our needs, and then use it only internally without releasing it. I never got a good answer.

<comment><USER8> Well, I can tell you it was. The GPL only forces you to distribute the code to whoever got the binaries, and employees don't count. So internal distribution is pretty much "do what you want".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting question, but IMHO a rather crap analysis. They don't seem to make any distinction between completely separate legal issues.

For example, I'm sure the DoD could classify some software that was a derivative work of some GPL licensed work as top secret. IANAL buy my guess is that the classification itself would probably be upheld by a court, but that wouldn't bring the DoD into compliance with the GPL. I cannot imagine that. It would be a complete carte blanche for the DoD in regards to any and all IPR. Even if they could legally do it I cannot imagine them doing it. It would be outright theft.

The same goes for modifying the GPL. I can go and rip off the GPL and license my software under the "Bjornsing GPL Derivative License" all I want. If somebody licenses my software under those terms they are no less bound by the license just because I stole the license itself. That's a separate issue between me and the FSF (and possibly between me and the state if deemed criminal copyright infringement). At least so I imagine. Again IANAL.

<comment><USER10> While you can certainly license your works under "Bjornsing GPL Derivative License" if you want. The point being made (by the FSF) is that your license would probably be incompatible with the GPL itself, thus your code could not be legally linked against any piece of GPL code, effectively separating it from that ecosystem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Another example of Betteridge's Law.

<comment><USER9> Yes! :) For those that's not familiar with it: "Betteridge's Law of Headlines is an adage that states, "Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no'"."

<comment><USER11> "Is Betteridge's Law generally true?"

<comment><USER12> Once you answer 'no' you contraddict it, but not invalidate it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does Java's license still forbid its use in medical equipment, aviation systems and nuclear facility control?

I imagine then that the licensor can put what ever terms in the license that they choose. I'd like to watch, though, as you go about enforcing a "No War" license on somebody who is prepared to wage a war.

<comment><USER8> _Does Java's license still forbid its use in medical equipment, aviation systems and nuclear facility control?_

Java is GPL licensed now, so no.

<comment><USER13> TYVM.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It seems to me that any country that would be worried enough about the legality of this clause, is unlikely to be a "bad actor" in any conflict.</comment>


How Pipedrive reached 50,000 paying customers - <AUTHOR> http://purde.net/2017/05/pipedrive-growth-50000-customers/ <comment><USER2> Great service, I have been using them for about 3 years.</comment>


Compensation Trends Of Post-Series A Startup Founder/CEOs - <AUTHOR> http://tomtunguz.com/compensation-trends

<comment><USER2> That Twitter popup every time you select some text is incredibly annoying, I wish they'd disable it.

I like to select paragraphs of text due to the higher contrast but here it's impossible since the 3rd click will actually try and select whatever box the Twitter button is placed in.</comment>


Show HN: View random wikipedia articles via Telegram - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/DtCarrot/WikiBot <comment><USER2> Nice way to wasting time and learn something new:D</comment>


The End to Apple's Cash Dilemma - <AUTHOR> https://www.aboveavalon.com/notes/2017/12/12/the-end-to-apples-cash-dilemma <comment><USER2> Not sure I agree with the urgency angle to this analysis. Sure, if sales and the influx of cash slows Apple will need that cash to pay off its bonds, but...

1\. There's no reason to believe that's going to happen anytime in the near to distant future. They are in the midst of a super upgrade cycle which figures to result in record profits again when they report in January and that growth is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

2\. Pulling the cash from overseas doesn't make sense simply because they can issue bonds at a far lower rate, practically zero, than what they would pay in repatriation. I'm not so sure if the repatriation rate were lowered permanently that they would even bring much back at all. If it were a one-time benefit, then sure. If/when they need cash they can hold their nose and pay the tax rate, but I would argue that the market has already priced the supposed tax penalty into the share price. To put it another way, if they were granted a one-time repatriation rate far below what they would be forced to pay currently, you would see the share price jump because that is effectively adding billions of cash to their balance sheet from the federal government's.

3\. Going back to the first point, if sales did slump they would probably need the cash anyway with or without the bond issuances. Hoarding enormous piles of cash to avoid taxes is a luxury of the few extraordinarily profitable international companies of the world, not those that have diminishing sales.

<comment><USER3> On number 2, there's no need to "pull" the cash from overseas because the 14% is a deemed tax rate, i.e you have no choice in the matter. Going forward it changes to a territorial system so the US won't be taxing international profits.

Apple will likely still issue debt because they can take on a lot more leverage given their cash flow and interest payments will still be deductible up to 30% of EBITDA or EBIT (depending on whether the House or Senate wins out on that) so it will still lower their cost of capital.

This does give them more flexibility on financing decisions and it will increase GAAP profit because Apple has been conservative and has been booking deferred taxes until now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The question is why was there ever a dilemma in the first place. We were the only country to tax corporations this way, which made us incredibly uncompetitive -- but worse kept money from being invested in the US. This is great news for the USA and bad news for everywhere else in the world that would have otherwise received the investment. We should be doing everything possible to bring that money home.

<comment><USER5> _kept money from being invested in the US_

Not really. Much of the money "kept offshore" is invested in the US[1]. Apple's money, in particular, is managed by their subsidiary in Reno called Braeburn Capital. It just happens to be owned by a Caribbean subsidiary.

[1] [https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/subcommittees/investigations/me...](https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/subcommittees/investigations/media/new- data-show-corporate-offshore-funds-not-trapped-abroad-nearly-half-of-so- called-offshore-funds-already-in-the-united-states)

<comment><USER4> Think for a minute about the circuitous steps Apple must take just to invest in the United States with overseas revenue. Everyone in the United States should see this as a huge win.

<comment><USER6> I haven't seen anyone here argue that it's difficult to invest foreign money in the US. Apple's only complaint is that they couldn't funnel the profits from such investment back to their US shareholders, without paying taxes.

<comment><USER7> That's the point. Being unable to pay profits to shareholders makes your business very unattractive. If Apple had directly returned its profits every year, over 60% of their profits would be paid to taxes.

<comment><USER8> Citation on the 60% tax rate?

<comment><USER7> Foreign corporate income tax, which averages around 8%.

CA Corporafe income tax, 9%.

Federal corporate income tax, 35%.

State personal income tax, 0-12%.

Federal dividend taxes 15-20%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > "Apple owes 35% tax to the federal government on all revenue earned"

Tax is assessed on income, not revenue. It's an important distinction. Apple had 52.6 billion in revenue, and 10.7 billion in income.

<comment><USER10> Yeah that sounded odd to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Excuse my completely naive and ignorant views and questions.

Moral issues aside, do they _have to_ bring it back to US? I dont see what's wrong with it sitting there doing nothing.

Are there no other way to invest the $250B cash generating 2% yearly interest? i.e Additional $5B / year? ( Isn't that is what subsidiaries are doing ? )

Why is it every call to maximize _only_ shareholders value? Could they not provide more value in their product or product line up with those additional Interest from Cash? Investing into better after sales services particular in South East Asia Region?

Apple could provide iPhone as a Services, much like iPhone upgrade program in the US but worldwide. Combining iPhone + Apple Care + iCloud Backup as basic, and with top up like Apple Music and future Apple TV. Making Apple being the actual creditor themselves, that needs lots of cash.

As a matter of facts I have long wanted Apple to be a Virtual Mobile Carrier. There are lots of people in the world without Credit Card or dont want themselves associate with credit cards, which is different to US. And prefer to have Mobile Billing, a monthly payment. These people also failed to get iCloud backup, which is increasing dangerous as we put more important things in our phone. Apple could finally offer Visual Voicemail, and free iCloud Backup over LTE during off peak hours like 1AM to 5AM, iPhone, Apple Music, Carrier Services, All under one monthly fees.

There are lots of thing to help and improve, invest to bring more value and future returns, dividends is ok, but share buy back to me seems dump. This is speaking from a long time $AAPL investor.

</comment><comment><USER12> > Given Apple's current balance sheet strategy and assuming no change to the > U.S. corporate tax code, the company is on track to soon have $300 billion > of cash, almost all of which is located abroad, and $150 billion of debt.

I don't understand business. If I owed $15,000 and had $30,000 in the bank, I'd pay off my debt. Why is this different?

<comment><USER13> It may be better to invest that money if the rate of return is higher than the interest on their debt.

<comment><USER14> Good luck finding a guaranteed rate of return higher than the interest rate on any of your debt. Most credit cards are >10%. Even on the low end, if, say, my mortgage was 4% and I had the cash to pay it off, it would certainly make sense to do it. It would only make sense not to if I could find an investment that paid over 4% guaranteed. Such an investment does not exist, period. (If it does, please let me know and I will put all my money into it).

<comment><USER15> LOL… Apple does NOT pay 4% on its debt. It's effective combined interest is 2.38%.

In my naive back-of-the-envelope calculations, it would have to hold this debt in a non-tax-effective way for more than a decade to be worse off with this debt versus repatriation. An in the meantime it can use the interest it pays in the USA to offset it's US tax bill for income earned in the USA making this effectively a lot longer.

The long-term average for the S&P500 is 12.11%… not to mention the fact that Apple can probably make better use of its money by investing in itself, rather than passively on the stock market.

All round, no matter your actual moral and ethical opinions on the matter, this is the smartest financial decision Apple can make (and they probably spend tens of millions a year on advice, legals and research to prove this).

And as much as Apple goes on about them being a California company… they're mostly a multi-national with much of their money being earned and spent outside of the USA.

<comment><USER14> Right--I was just responding to the parent's post to the grandparent's comparison to personal debt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > One fear that investors have with companies holding excess cash is that > future management teams will waste the cash on frivolous M&A and other > questionable investments. This results in the value of the cash being > discounted, leading to a lower stock valuation.

Great example of why I maintain that price != value. The former is an objective metric while the latter is probably subjective to a problem, context, application, etc..

</comment><comment><USER17> > Instead of using M&A to buy revenue or users, which is a disastrous strategy > in Silicon Valley, Apple looks to fill asset holes in terms of technology > and talent.

Um, Facebook buying WhatsApp and Instagram or Google buying YouTube wasn't a disastrous strategy.

<comment><USER18> For every smart buy like YouTube there's been dozens of utter failures. MySpace. Netscape. Flickr. Softimage.

It's to the point where being acquired is the kiss of death for most start- ups. Sure, you get your exit, but your product is toast.

Apple has a very _particular_ culture and it's difficult for other companies to integrate into that. Google was more accommodating, like with Nest, but even then they realized they had to restructure and make Alphabet for it to actually work.

Sure, Google bought YouTube, but they also bought Boston Dynamics and fumbled it.

<comment><USER19> Motorola too!

<comment><USER18> It's quite a list, isn't it? Sony's aquisition of Ericsson, Microsoft of Nokia's phone business, which like Danger did not end well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's insane that corporations are taxed less than individuals abroad. If you live abroad and work - you pay income tax, whether that money is repatriated or not.

<comment><USER21> That is the case for a handful of countries, the US among them. In the vast majority of countries you don't have to pay income taxes when you live and work abroad. Of course you still pay such taxes in the country where you live and work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wonder what $80b in extra tax receipts could do for American education, healthcare or social mobility.

Ah well, at least Apple shareholders get a few more dollars.

<comment><USER23> Sad thing is we don't need the tax receipts to pay for those things. Its a political problem , not a fiscal one .

<comment><USER22> That may be true, but the political problem is one where American politicians put low taxation above almost all social issues.

Having the political will to collect that money is the first step to correcting the political problem you refer to.

<comment><USER24> Orrin Hatch, after voting for a trillion-dollar tax cut, said there wasn't any money for CHIP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> How could one profit off of this? Buy Apple stock now?

<comment><USER26> That assumes some of this isn't baked into the price already. But yes, if you think the market hasn't factored in any one or more of these potential actions, then buying the stock would be the most logical way to profit...

<comment><USER27> > if you think the market hasn't factored in any one or more of these > potential actions

And if you believe that, I have a bridge you might be interested in buying.

<comment><USER28> The market does seem to be frequently bad at that sort of thing. I've done pretty well (better than my index funds) over the years by reading the news and buying shares in companies that seem to have more wealthy futures. I very rarely sell so I can see how they've done over many years and, by and large, pretty well.

Maybe everyone assumes that the market has already factored it all in so they don't bother buying so it isn't factored in because the increased demand never arose. Maybe I'm just out of sync, and as other people start to notice this they'll start buying and it'll turn back around and then the market _will_ have factored these things in because lots of people assume it hasn't.

<comment><USER5> Or maybe you got lucky. Not saying you did, but how would you tell the difference?

<comment><USER27> This. If you throw darts at the stock page you have a 50% chance of beating the market.

<comment><USER28> I have thrown a dozen or so darts, and my rate seems to be around 80%. But then, I'm not just throwing darts; I'm reading that companies are going to do better in the future and will see a rise in stock price, and it makes sense, so I sometimes buy them. Maybe I'm just the lucky one. I started with ARM a good eight years ago, when I read that they were going to do really well by supplying Apple. Of course, if I'd done the same thing with Imagination technologies 8 years ago, it would have been a less happy ending; I can only assume that the news I read at the time was more effusive about ARM.

Most recently (13 months ago - this isn't a regular thing), a British pasty retail outfit named Greggs. The news said things were looking good, I could see their stores were busy, I bought some shares, they're up about 40% in 13 months (which is unusually good, I freely admit, and I certainly didn't expect that). That's really all I do, and it seems to work out (and it really is rare when I do; typically, I just dump all my pennies into index funds - easily 80% of my pennies are in index funds). I think some of the big name successful investors do something similar, but obviously on a much grander and more informed scale. Plus the British house-builders. Every time the UK government announces another plan to help young people get fifty year mortgages, it's time to buy some more of them! They will crash eventually, I'm sure :(

<comment><USER27> > I have thrown a dozen or so darts, and my rate seems to be around 80%.

The odds of that happening by chance are <50% but still quite high, about 6-7% depending on exactly how you reckon it. So one person in 15 will get this result purely by chance.

There are studies that show that very few (like <<1%) professional money managers can beat the market consistently. You may well be one of those rare people, in which case you could make billions on Wall Street. But until you amass a much longer track record than you have, the odds are much higher that you are just one of the lucky ones. There are a lot more lucky people out there than most people realize.

<comment><USER29> Yea, all that's true, but Eli has a significantly easier job. A professional manager has to make a lot of decisions and still has to invest money even if they don't have any insightful ideas. On the other hand Eli will only invest if he gets a good idea, and if not, then no investment.

<comment><USER27> That's no excuse. Eli can always park his undeployed capital in an index fund. So if he can consistently pick winners 80% of the time he'll still beat the market even if he has fallow periods.

<comment><USER29> Excuse for what? Of course Eli can do that, and it has nothing to do with my point.

<comment><USER27> Excuse for not taking his (alleged) talent to Wall Street and making billions of dollars.

> it has nothing to do with my point

which was:

> A professional manager has to make a lot of decisions and still has to > invest money even if they don't have any insightful ideas.

Implying that Eli's talents could not be deployed on Wall Street because he could not operate under the constraints on which professional money managers have to operate. But that's not true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Do also remember Apple also has over a $100B of debt which you subtract from the cash.

<comment><USER31> > the company is on track to soon have $300 billion of cash, almost all of > which is located abroad, and $150 billion of debt

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> > This has led Apple, along with other Silicon Valley firms, to keep foreign > cash offshore as it is the financially prudent thing to do for shareholders.

The kept the cash offshore with the belief that they would eventually be able to bring it back without paying taxes. They started a multi-year political lobbying campaign to change the tax system. And it worked. If our political system was not up for sale they would have eventually had to bring the cash home and pay their damn taxes.

<comment><USER33> Why should American corporations pay both foreign _and_ US corporate tax on income made overseas? Almost no other country requires this of their companies and it's a major competitive disadvantage for American businesses.

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

Edit: I'm rate-limited, but in response to below I'll reproduce what I've posted in prior discussions about this:

We're really better off eliminating the corporate tax altogether. It's a pretty small portion of tax revenue and the only reason it exists is to be a plank for politicians who want to tax the "greedy corporations." All corporate income is either paid as dividends, paid as salaries, or reinvested. When it is paid as dividends, it is taxed as capital gains. When it is paid as salaries, it is taxed as income. When it is reinvested, it is either lost, or eventually becomes income and capital gains. There is no need to have another layer of taxation that just makes a giant accounting mess and creates all sorts of ridiculous incentives to use tax shelters.

<comment><USER34> _Why should American corporations pay both foreign and US corporate tax on income made overseas?_

They don't. They pay the highest rate in either jurisdiction, so either the US or the foreign rate. In the US, they get a tax credit for the amount of taxes paid to a foreign tax authority so that they are never double-taxed on their corporate income. Note that every country in the world of significant economic size taxes corporate income.

Dividends are taxed twice, as corporate profits and again when received by the shareholders as dividends, but they should be. Dividend taxes are the price shareholders pay for getting limited liability and all sorts of government protections and incentives.

<comment><USER33> > _Dividend taxes are the price shareholders pay for getting limited liability > and all sorts of government protections and incentives._

We provide for limited liability because we think it is beneficial to society in encouraging investment and risk-taking; it is not a sacrifice or expense we expect compensation for.

<comment><USER35> It's both/and, there are costs associated both with the laws around llcs and providing the need to play the of liability holder of last resort in certain circumstances.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Pixaver – Google Photos backups made super easy - <AUTHOR> https://pixaver.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi YC friends—

We're Eric and Eric (or @shelkie and @karj) and we built Pixaver. It's an app you'll hopefully install—but never need to use.

Last summer, Google uncoupled Photos from Drive. When they did, I got a little antsy. I didn't like the idea of all my photos being in one basket. (Admittedly, they already were, but this change broke any illusion of redundancy.)

So, I went looking for a backup solution, but they all involved too much admin. This led me to build something for my own use—and (of course) we figured there might be a product in there.

Pixaver (pic + saver, get it?) is so easy to use, anyone can put it to work.

You create an account, link it to your Google account, and you're done. It does an initial backup of up all items, then automatically maintains an external backup of your Google Photos library as new items are added.

It doesn't replace Google Photos in any way. It's just added peace-of-mind. Let's say you accidentally delete a bunch of images on Google Photos. Or, you lost access to your Google account. In either of those situations, Pixaver would offer a way to recover your images.

We soft-launched a few months ago. Then we applied to the Google Photos Partner Program (in part for more API calls). That has now been approved and we're ready to accommodate more users.

If you have feedback, questions, or criticism, we'd love to hear it. :-)

<comment><USER2> Where does this second backup live: cloud, or local? You might want to clarify that on your website.

If it's local, I wouldn't make it tiered by library size.

I think you're being perhaps optimistic with your $15/mo tier. I'd love to be wrong, but that money would pay for a new 10 TB HD every year. Maybe other people won't think that way? Are you using s3? Your costs might be lower using glacier or backblaze.

You should also take a look at [https://github.com/mholt/timeliner](https://github.com/mholt/timeliner). Open source, easy to install, runs locally for free. Worked perfectly on my very large library.

However, both your service and timeliner have to deal with Google Photos and the file mangling they do. Most tags are deleted, and several are modified (!!?) when you fetch them via takeouts or timeliner. I don't think there's anything you can do about it, because you're downstream of where the damage happens.

Good luck! You should try PhotoStructure, BTW. Link in my profile.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're using Wasabi for storage (wasabi.com) They offer S3 compatible hot storage at at fraction of the cost of AWS or any other cloud storage service.

Timeliner looks cool, but tools such as this are only suitable for the tech- savy crowd. I think there certainly is a market for these sorts of things, and PhotoStructure should be a good fit for those who want to keep thier data local.

Pixaver is targeted toward the vast majority of Google Photos users who don't have a technical background or the desire to maintain local physical backups. Backups running with just a few clicks and they don't to think about buying hard drives or fiddling with code.

As you mention, the data provided by the Google Photos API is sometimes not ideal. Geolocation data and some other metadata are omitted. Currently, only the "optimized" version of videos are provided. That said, our service is not meant as a replacement for Google Photos. We just want to be a way to get your images back if the unthinkable were to happen.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Help me come back and choose the right technologies - <AUTHOR>

I am attempting a come back as a programmer, after an unbelievable absence of 3 years. I need your help to refocus, and select the right technologies for what I'm going to need in the near future. Here is my story: Java developer for about 10 years, up to exactly 3 years ago when I quit because of some major family issues that required my full time attention all this time. But there was something else, that is important for me to always keep in perspective: I was really burnt down and I also became unhappy because my profession took so much time from me, actually all of it, for constantly having to learn something new and being good at what I was doing. I actually love learning, but I my profession didn't leave time for learning anything else besides computers, and life is so much more than computers. I guess I'm a generalist more than a specialist. So this is the first half of my question, how can I be a hacker but in the same time have a real life outside computers. How do you balance both?<p>Having said that, I am ready to start again and I thought I'd start fresh, since my Java is probably already a bit rusty.
I've been looking these days at things like Ruby, Python and a few LISP flavours. I am attracted to LISP because of the paradigm change it requires, and I'm not really new to it, I used it a bit in the university.
The reason I want to come back is because I do love technology, always did, and I already have a project lined up, for which I'm looking to select a set of technologies that will make productive ASAP. This project is a directory of local activities for people. The closest model I can think of is Craigslist, with the major difference that all the listings have a temporal dimension, they start and end at some time, and that people can rate and comment on those listings. As an example of such activity, let's say a chess class, that starts in 2 weeks and goes for 3 months, 2 days a week. The project is about aggregating such activities, broken down on categories and geographical areas. How would you do such project, most efficiently? This project is important for me to get it done successfully and on a timely fashion, I don't have time for too much trial and error, to spend much time learning something that turns out not a good choice. That's why I decided to ask you guys. I would like to choose something that doesn't have a steep learning curve, so I can became proficient with it sooner than later, something with great support for web applications, tried and stable.
Should I stick with Java, since it's the only language I am now familiar with it, and it has so many mature web frameworks? Or is this a good time for me to take the leap towards something like LISP? I must admit the idea of a paradigm shift associated with my comeback sounds very appealing to me. I've already started replacing relational databases when it comes to the data model with something more semantic, like TopicMaps and/or RDF. In the same time I want to be realistic and maximize my chances of a successful comeback and project completion. Sorry for the long post, thanks a lot for your kindness. <comment><USER2> Welcome back!

I recently "came back" so to speak. I spent 4 years after college on a development team for a Fortune 500 company that didn't actually develop that much and I came to see my profession as just a paycheck... I got a wake-up call and I've re-discovered my passion.

Congrats. Honestly, I didn't read your entire wall of text there but if you want to get into something cool (and use something you already know) you could do what I'm doing right now and learn Android development. It's a lot of fun and I didn't even know Java starting out. The docs are great.

<http://developer.android.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks so much for your welcome. I have a question for you: what are the reasons that determined you to learn and develop for Android? I'm asking because to me it's all about motivation. If I have very meaningful reasons for what I'm doing, then I enjoy doing that, and don't quit too soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It sounds like you have a good idea of what you want to build, which is great!

Now it sounds like the thing you have to do is figure out the data architecture - that could help make the rest of your technology stack decisions for you. For instance, can your data structures be modeled in something NoSQL like MongoDB or CouchDB? To me, it sounds like you'd want to use a relational database, but it would be fun to experiment!

<comment><AUTHOR> yes, that is sound logic. The data structure model is very important to me. I would like to create a framework that I can reuse, where data is modeled semantically. I can't believe there isn't such framework out there already. I'm thinking TopicMaps. Java might be the top choice if going this way. Thanks for the idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you want to be productive ASAP, and have done Java for ten years, I would suggest Java.

Picking up new technologies is great, but even the most user-friendly ones will have a learning curve. IMHO it's best to start with a new language/framework/etc as just a small, isolated chunk that takes advantage of its sweet spot.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've always been a fan of learning what interests you. If you like Java, stick with it. Learn what has changed in the past few years so you can capitalize on your experience.

That said I want to give a vote for Python. I knew Java and python just seemed to feel right for me. YMMV!

</comment><comment><USER6> Turn off email, your phone and the TV.

Try Google AppEngine, Java and JDO. Install IBM Eclipse and the Google AppEngine plugin and deploy in two clicks. Move to VPS if you need more than what Google offers.

Do LISP/RDF research when code is up and running.

<comment><USER7> I'd recommend Objectify instead of JDO.

<http://code.google.com/p/objectify-appengine/>

The reason why Google chose JDO as the default interface to the AppEngine's datastore instead of JPA is because the datastore is not really a relational database and JDO is much better suited for non-relational backends.

However, there's a lot of stuff in JDO that you will never use in an AppEngine application.

Objectify is a thin wrapper around the low-level datastore API. It's a pleasure to work with and it will save you a lot of time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Believe it or not, but I lived without phone and TV for a few years now, it's great :) I'm giving Google AppEngine a serious try. Otherwise I'll have to look for a Java Web framework, the problem is that there are too many out there. thanks for the advice!</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft case: DoJ says it can demand every email from any US-based provider - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/sep/09/microsoft-court-case-hotmail-ireland-search-warrant <comment><USER2> >The DoJ contends that emails should be treated as the business records of the company hosting them

what? are my DropBox files "business records?" or that youtube video I uploaded? or my Google Contacts?

Perhaps I was foolish enough to define "business records" as "documents that record the actions of/facts about a business?"

It is almost certainly against the spirit of the law's definition of "business records" \-- ledgers, internal emails, receipts, etc.</comment>


Redistogo Price Increase (on Heroku) - <AUTHOR>

Surprised and a little disheartened to see the cost of cloud infrastructure increasing in this case. I'm so used to Amazon decreasing end-user costs as their costs go down.
I'm wondering if its related to underestimating support costs, freeloaders in the Nano tier, or if it's an experiment in pricing elasticity.
Note: old prices (emphasized), via Google's cache, added to original email below.
--
Dear Redistogo User,
We're contacting you to inform you of a price increase for the Redistogo add-on. Effective today, the new monthly pricing will be as follows:
Nano - free
Mini - $9 (up from $5)
Small - $39 (up from $25)
Medium - $169 (up from $110)
Large - $390 (up from $300)
Super - $1200 (up from $1000)
More details on features can be found at http://addons.heroku.com/redistogo.
As an existing user your current pricing will remain for 30 days. On August 24, 2012 your service plan will switch to the new pricing.
Best,
The Heroku Add-ons Team <comment><AUTHOR> Heroku addon: <https://addons.heroku.com/redistogo>

RedisToGo homepage: <http://redistogo.com/> (seems to still have the old pricing)</comment>


Ebay - Bebo partnership. Interesting monetisation option for social networks - <AUTHOR> http://users2.wsj.com/lmda/do/checkLogin?mg=wsj-users2&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB117271875199822976.html <comment><AUTHOR> I don't access to the whole article, but that pretty much sums it up.</comment>


Covid-19 in Iceland – Statistics - <AUTHOR> https://www.covid.is/data <comment><USER2> Icelandic version has a little more data: [https://www.covid.is/tolulegar- upplysingar](https://www.covid.is/tolulegar-upplysingar)

At the bottom you can see the percentage of new cases each day that are detected in people already in quarantine.</comment>


How to hack someone's Facebook over public wifi - ely-s https://disconnect.me/security

<comment><AUTHOR> Now "hack" means "disconnect"?

<comment><USER2> Most misleading title ever</comment></comment>


Sourcehut welcomes Bitbucket refugees - <AUTHOR> https://sourcehut.org/blog/2019-08-21-sourcehut-welcomes-bitbucket-refugees/ <comment><USER2> When you register, you notice that:

> Notice: sr.ht is currently in alpha, and the quality of the service reflects > that. As such, payment is currently optional, and only encouraged for users > who want to support the ongoing development of the site.

Caveat emptor.

<comment><AUTHOR> For more details on what the alpha entails, see also:

[https://sourcehut.org/alpha-details/](https://sourcehut.org/alpha-details/)

<comment><USER3> Is that page in a repo somewhere? There's a typo or two to fix.

<comment><USER4> [https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/sourcehut.org/tree/master/conten...](https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/sourcehut.org/tree/master/content/alpha- details.md)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They violently break all the recent frontend best practices. Where is the React or Vie, SPA architecture, tons of JS?

There should be a federal law prohibiting making fast and simple UIs so that nobody will have concerns that the UI frameworks war leads us to great future.

<comment><USER6> It's written in Python so as soon as they have enough users it will be as slow as any webpage with tons of JS. Thankfully, that CPU load won't be on the client side... so it's still an improvement

<comment><USER7> I recommend you relax your convictions about Python performance a bit.

Server-side bottlenecks are more often than not database reads/writes and other IO. And the few CPU-intensive operations can be delegated to libraries written in C.

Pure Python is slow for CPU-intensive tasks, but that doesn't mean that a Python webserver is necessarily slow.

<comment><USER6> So what you're saying is that the author of Sourcehat is expected to rewrite Flask, Jinja2, etc in C?

As an example, [https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/git.sr.ht/tree/master/gitsrht](https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/git.sr.ht/tree/master/gitsrht) takes 600-800 ms to generate, and it's probably heavily cached already. What will happen when they get more users? The site will be unbearably slow, unless the guy starts spending thousands in servers.

<comment><USER7> I imagine that the CPU-intensive parts of Flask and Jinja2 are already written in C. Much of Python's standard library is.

800ms is a reasonable response time, and if they scale up according to their userbase, they will hopefully maintain that time.

(Also, we don't know how much of that 800ms is Python vs. IO)

<comment><USER6> [https://github.com/pallets/flask](https://github.com/pallets/flask)

[https://github.com/pallets/jinja](https://github.com/pallets/jinja)

0% C

Also 800 ms is NOT a reasonable response time to generate what basically is a bunch of text, that is absurd, but I guess this is the baseline in 2019.

I trust all IO is cached. The author can confirm it. This is just how slow Python is.

<comment><USER8> Almost none of the IO of that page is cached actually[0]. The only thing I'm sure that is cached is the templates themselves. I'm pretty sure that neither git lookups, nor DB accesses are cached, where you can save time. And mind you, this is served from a single data center in USA, and the latency can already eat up a lot of that. I in Europe have 300ms ping to it, so it might be that you are simply far away from the physical location.

[0] [https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/git.sr.ht/tree/master/gitsrht/bl...](https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/git.sr.ht/tree/master/gitsrht/blueprints/repo.py#L136)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I literally forgot about Mercurial. It's been years since I've even heard it mentioned. Are there any strong arguments for using it over Git these days? Is this just about supporting legacy code bases. I'm sure there must be a way to migrate to Git [and maintain history]. I'm not trolling, I would love to hear from someone who prefers Mercurial over Git as to how it benefits them.

<comment><USER10> In my limited experience with Hg, I thought it had a well designed, human- friendly interface. After a decade with git, I still feel like it's an ugly, awkward tool that just gets the job done and I still occasionally make weird mistakes with it. I'm not sure that's the case with other tools I've been using this long.

Git has a pretty gross interface, such that people have struggled to make it nicer to use with GUIs for as long as I can remember. I also feel as though every junior developer has panic inducing moments with git where they think they've lost work or something terrifying like that. It's like a hazing ritual in programming. Wait for git to give you a heart attack. If you survive, you're one of us.

Hg didn't really give me that impression at all and I was excited to begin using it more, but like with most technologies I want to adopt, work and family won and I stuck with git at work and otherwise had no time to use Hg more. It seems like git won largely because it has the right buy-in from the right people.

<comment><USER11> ...and because Atlassian let Bitbucket's Hg support wither and die.

<comment><USER12> I would say GitHub was the deciding factor. Atlassian at least supported hg, though BB never impressed me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Serious questions...

What does mercurial offer that git doesn't? Is the transition to git difficult for projects currently housed in a mercurial repository?

<comment><USER14> There are a few good things about it compared to git (and a few bad ones). One I like is that it has an excellent GUI that is cross platform, called TortoiseHg. I know hackers can be a bit snobbish about GUIs but I really think a GUI is essential for version control: flicking through the revision graph in one pane while looking at the modified files in another and a file's changes in a third is much more efficient than anything on the command line. And picking source and destination commits for a rebase is much easier visually on the commit graph than making note of hashes on the command line. Plus, at our company we do have a few people who use version control but are a bit less compsci focused.

Related question: does anyone know of a good git GUI that works on Windows and Linux? (Ideally, but not essentially, free.) I tried GitKraken and it failed at the first thing I tried to do with it (I wanted to stage a file I had just created, but it didn't have a way to display untracked files).

<comment><USER15> I know you said GUI, but this single-line git alias that goes in ~/.gitconfig changed my life and I don't look for a git GUI anymore:

        [alias]
     l = log --date-order --date=iso --graph --full-history --all --pretty=format:'%x08%x09%C(red)%h %C(cyan)%ad%x08%x08%x08%x08%x08%x08%x08%x08%x08%x08%x08%x08%x08%x08%x08 %C(bold blue)%aN%C(reset)%C(bold yellow)%d %C(reset)%s'

Next, go to one of your git project directories and type "git l"

If you don't want to learn rebasing and other Git fun, I'm not sure how much this will help you, but for me it's invaluable when it comes to identifying the base of my branch and where I would like to transplant it to.

Along with the basic "git pull --rebase" I also frequently use "git rebase --onto" and "git pull --rebase=merges" or "git rebase --rebase-merges" in my projects in order to manage branches that were created in an order other than what I want them to merge in. This keeps the history nice and linear, so I can avoid having any commits with two or more parent commits.

I don't find there's much else I would want to have a GUI to help with. But without a git graph that I can scroll freely, I feel as if I could not do my day-to-day work with such ease. This makes the most usable git graph with colorized edges and may be all you need. That, along with a nice PS1 setting so you get some branch status information right in your terminal status line without asking for it every time.

<comment><USER16> How on earth did you create that format string? That alias generates really nice output!

<comment><USER15> It appears to have come from this guy, here is the original gist: [https://gist.github.com/msroot/6206676](https://gist.github.com/msroot/6206676)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I am looking to preserve the pull requests and corresponding comment threads from bitbucket. I'm thinking the way to go might be to save static HTML of the pages and host them somewhere, modifying the links to issues to point to migrated ones, and links to PRs to the hosted pages. Anyone else thinking of trying this approach? Advice, criticism?

<comment><USER18> At some point it should be possible to adjust the import script to also generate an mbox of pull requests discussions and import it into lists.sr.ht, but that's a lot more complicated. Happy to talk over the details if anyone is interested in taking a crack at this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's not clear how to send you feedback and/or ask questions, so I created a new sourcehut tag on Stackoverflow and posted my first question: [https://stackoverflow.com/q/57628020/14731](https://stackoverflow.com/q/57628020/14731)

Looking forward to hearing more about your service. Thank you.

<comment><USER20> I believe Drew is responsive to email at his (work?) email address firstname.lastname@example.com. You may want to send him a message directly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is it possible to reconsider the decision on status codes for unauthorized access to private repositories:

[https://lists.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/sr.ht- discuss/%3C2019040716131...](https://lists.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/sr.ht- discuss/%3C20190407161316.mb644ldmmqtis6br%40kazhap.dbalan.in%3E)

?

It's actually a drawback.

</comment><comment><USER22> So what happened to Bitbucket? Don't got any opinion either way, just wondering about the "refugee" part

<comment><USER23> See previous:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20745393](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20745393)

[https://bitbucket.org/blog/sunsetting-mercurial-support- in-b...](https://bitbucket.org/blog/sunsetting-mercurial-support-in-bitbucket)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Starting using Sourcehut a few days ago for two repos and have had a good experience so far (being a new paid user is my only affiliation with sr.ht):

\- Very clean, simple UI/UX providing deceptively rich feature set

\- A build system among the easiest I've used

\- Solid, straightforward documentation

Currently it's a little slow to push to repos but the creator says it's a known problem with ongoing regular improvements occurring.

I'm a long time GitHub user with many repos there and there are lots of GH features I like (like Org Mode READMEs). But I'm a big fan of this sort of business model: someone puts together a simple, solid, independent service; I pay a small amount monthly/yearly (I chose to pay voluntarily even though it's currently optional).

I hope this service thrives.

</comment><comment><USER25> People seem pretty interested in keeping their pre-git source control system, even if it means switching repository hosts. I know the default attitude is "they're just curmudgeons who don't want to change," but Hg could have some advantages.

<comment><USER26> Mercurial shouldn't be considered a pre-git source control system.

It's initial release date was actually 12 days after git and it is far more comparable to git than it is to SVN and other pre-git version control systems.

<comment><USER27> I think he meant "the source control they used before using git" \- not that it came out first.

<comment><USER28> But there really are people that purposefully went from git to hg. Calling hg a "pre-git" version control system makes some assumptions that just aren't true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is how websites should always be. Great job!

</comment><comment><USER30> I tried sourcehut a while ago but I found the pull request flow to be confusing. There aren't actual pull requests but instead some sort of email flow that I didn't have time to figure out.

If there was a video walkthrough for the process, it would help people like me get the ball rolling faster

<comment><USER31> There's no video (that I know of) but Sourcehut has put up a website with a set of steps/instructions for email based pull requests:

[https://git-send-email.io/](https://git-send-email.io/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I found Sourcehut extremely confusing to self-host so I went with RhodeCode recently.

Prior to this I tried cgit (I _really_ like how it looks) and gitolite. I even bought a book on gitolite configuration and couldn't figure that out.

Oh well.

On topic, it's great that Mercurial users have an alternative that's not Github.

</comment><comment><USER33> I honestly would have been surprised if Sourcehut shunned Bitbucket refugees. Water is wet, news at 11?

</comment><comment><USER34> Doesn't it seems like a bit of an abuse of language to refer to former bitbucket users as "refugees"?

<comment><USER35> It's a commonly used figure of speech.

<comment><USER34> Lifelong english speaker, American. Never heard this one in software until today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> why you would want to continue to use Mercurial at this point is beyond me. Pull the plug and just switch over to git already. People make a big deal out of it.

</comment><comment><USER37> There are dozens of us who use Mercurial! Dozens!

</comment><comment><USER38> …all five of them ;)

</comment><comment><USER39> Am I the only one who can't find the source of this "open source software"? How they can beat Bitbucket while they hide the code under unusable UI?

<comment><USER40> > Where is the source?

The homepage links to [https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/?search=sr.ht](https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/?search=sr.ht) (EDIT: which is now also the URL in the blogpost with the link text "100% open source software")

There are also Hg repos at hg.sr.ht; idk how easy it is to find git.sr.ht from hg.sr.ht.

> how can they beat Bitbucket while the code is unusable

Well, for Hg users, it's not like there's going to be much of a choice in a year (given BB is sunsetting Hg support), right?

<comment><USER39> Mercurial users can use their builtin Web UI unlike Git users

<comment><USER18> git has gitweb:

[https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-on-the-Server-GitWeb](https://git- scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-on-the-Server-GitWeb)

But in both cases, the user has to have a server to put it on, making services like Sourcehut and Bitbucket (may it rest in peace) useful.

<comment><USER39> gitweb requires server setup, while Mercurial web ui can quickly start locally without any configuration and that was the one of mercurial selling point until github and other services arrives.

<comment><USER18> `git instaweb` is sufficient to get a working gitweb stood up.

<comment><USER41> $ git instaweb

lighttpd not found. Install lighttpd or use --httpd to specify another httpd daemon.

Apparently, not.

<comment><USER18> You have to install the dependencies of a piece of software to use that piece of software.

<comment><USER42> Epic win response lol

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> How was this upvoted so often without a single comment?

<comment><USER44> My guess would be because HN likes sourcehut's open source approach (I still read it as 'Sir Hat') since its announcement on here. There are some projects that HN as a community tends to like and upvote just for visibility without feeling the need to comment on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Am I the only one who reads that as "source chute"?

Also - nice initiative, I guess, but I have to say their web UI seems to be stuck in the 1990s.

<comment><USER18> The goal is to be simple and easy to use. The UI should get out of your way ASAP - you're there to get things done, not to gawk at the pretty UI. As a bonus, it's very fast and small, easy on your web browser even on old computers or slow internet connections. And it's not spying on you!

That being said, I have been working on conservative improvements to make it a little bit more pleasing to the eye, without sacrificing the principles behind it. More color, for example, is not going to be added, or will be added cautiously, because color is used sparingly to attract your eye to the most common reason you would come to a page. Each element of the page should be intuitive and have purpose before it's pretty.

<comment><USER45> More power to you, I'm shifting today

<comment><USER18> Welcome!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> This looks suspiciously like a spam campaign to fish for users desperate enough to go anywhere but bitbucket.

<comment><USER47> SourceHut / Sir_Cmpwn deserves all the support he can get. I don't know if you realize that this guy is earning 10 times less that what he could earn by accepting any of the job knocking at his door. But instead he chose to be a full time free & open source developer financed only by people donations and SourceHut (which is 100% open source too)

Moreover there is very frequently on HN "Github is introducing feature X" or "Company Y is announcing product Z" where those company are multi billlionaire making money by exploiting people data and abusing their monopoly. And all you find to do is be rude about SourceHut, developed by an independent, which is 100% open source, which contains no analytics and respects you

<comment><USER48> Obviously independent developers are supposed to slave away at big companies that pradvertise their products on HN, not make attempts to escape and work for themselves - at most they can work passionately for a VC-backed startup on some free product until that is bought by one of said big companies for reasons unknown. But working for oneself independently is immoral and something to be frowned upon.</comment></comment></comment>


Chicago to Roll Out Universal Basic Income - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2018/07/18/universal-basic-income-chicago-trial/ <comment><USER2>
      to 1,000 families in Chicago

They seem unclear on the definition of "universal".</comment>


How to Fall Asleep in 2 Minutes or Less - <AUTHOR> https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/fall-asleep-fast/ <comment><AUTHOR> Kind of a cool article!

> The cadets at the pre-flight school had been broken into two groups: one > which took the relaxation course, and the other a control group. The former > outperformed the latter in every mentally-taxing class, discipline-requiring > drill, and physically-intensive test. And after six weeks of practice, 96% > of the aviators were able to fall asleep in 2 minutes or less — anywhere and > anytime. Not only that, they could do it even when they drank coffee (though > having caffeine in your system does make it harder), and even while the > simulated noise of machine gunfire and cannon blasts played in the > background!

</comment><comment><USER2> I found this awhile ago. It does work for me.</comment>


Justice Department suing AT&T to block $85B bid for Time Warner - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/11/20/the-justice-department-just-sued-att-to-block-its-85-billion-bid-for-time-warner/?utm_term=.ae1463c2b8dd <comment><USER2> Hmm. FCC allows rules to let Sinclair Broadcasting expand to becoming a monopoly. OK! Net Neutrality? Possibly gone by next month.

AT&T and Time Warner to merge together?: "It would mean higher monthly television bills and fewer of the new, emerging innovative options that consumers are beginning to enjoy."

Yes I know the FCC is not the DOJ, or the FTC. Just seems like Republican-led departments and commissions can't seem to get their story straight on whether mergers and fewer options are beneficial to customers or not.

I'm not for this merger. But certainly seems like Trump's interference in this is probably going to udnermine any semblance of partiality by the DOJ.

<comment><USER3> The FCC loosened media ownership rules (a complete ban on owning a newspaper and TV/radio station in the same market) that have no counterpart in most EU countries. The DOJ sued to block a merger that would get intense antitrust scrutiny in most EU countries. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.

<comment><USER4> The point is that Sinclair is _very_ pro-Trump, to the point that all affiliates nationwide are forced to run pro-Trump editorial content while CNN publishes things Trump doesn't like.

<comment><USER5> CNN is extremely anti-Trump

<comment><USER6> But only one of those companies is suspected of a quid-pro-quo deal with Trumps son in law from before the election.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Everyone is quick to bring up President Trump. If you don't think about the media landscape (big scary picture) and are quick to say this is lawsuit is a political move you are naive and uninformed. If this isn't blocked overtime you will see companies like Google and FB attempting to gain more power and control in the same way. The DOJ had no other choice. They had to sue to protect the interest of consumers. They see where things are heading and its not good.

These deals are never good for consumers. When a few companies have too much power and control their only goal is to get more at the expense of the consumer. This is dangerous and should not be taken lightly.

<comment><USER3> Consolidation can be both good and bad for consumers. Consolidation can permit economies of scale which can drive down prices of sufficient competition remains in the market. Amazon, for example, just couldn't offer the same services at the same price if it were say, 20 different competing companies. Same thing for Wal-Mart, or Google.

<comment><USER8> Amazon, Walmart, and Google were each one, focused company that got to where they were that way. Mergers of companies that scheme on their customers with oligopoly or monopoly tactics have almost always been bad for their customers. Also, if they were so great, they wouldn't be lobbying to block taxpayer- funded alternatives because it's always better when it's the private sector. The municipal versions would be slower, have worse service, cost more, and fall apart due to red tape. Yet, many that occurred despite Comcast et al's bribes to politicians were delivering better and faster service at same price or cheaper.

Better to split them up even further with regulations on things like sharing lines to force them to improve speed and service.

<comment><USER3> That reasoning makes no sense. Consider the article on the front page today about taxpayer-funded cafeterias in India. Everyone rightly pointed out that these cafeterias could crowd out privately owned restaurants. There is no real "competing" with a government-backed service. (The postal service, for example, is subject to elaborate rules to prevent unfair competition with private carriers. And countries like the UK and Germany have privatized their postal services for good reasons.)

That is not to say that municipal alternatives don't have a place. My view is that state and local governments should get rid of build out requirements that restrict the development of competition while building municipal service to areas left unserved by the market. That's a traditional government function: serving as the safety net. But that's not what's usually proposed.

<comment><USER9> > postal service ... elaborate rules

Such as that the USPS must be self-sufficient and doesn't take tax revenue.

<comment><USER3> [https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2016/10/25/postal- regu...](https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2016/10/25/postal-regulatory- commission/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm against media consolidation in general, but Trump has so polluted the waters with his crusade against CNN that there's no way they'll win the court case. AT&T and Time Warner will enter in his twitter feed as evidence and courts will side with them.

Really the only thing that's preventing Trump from being one of the worst leaders in history is that he's so bad at his job that he can't successfully implement his own bad ideas.

<comment><USER11> _> >but Trump has so polluted the waters with his crusade against CNN that there's no way they'll win the court case. AT&T and Time Warner will enter in his twitter feed as evidence and courts will side with them._

You think federal judges give a rat's @ss about what Trump tweets? Plus it will be appealed and appealed.

<comment><USER12> >You think federal judges give a rat's @ss about what Trump tweets?

Yes, in fact there already have been multiple cases where his tweets were used against him.

<comment><USER11> Executive orders issued by him.

No doubt Trump wants to screw CNN, but the courts will not care what he wants. That was my point: "don't give a rat's @ss" meaning thy will not follow /bow to him.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The reality here is that the President is blocking this deal because of his issues with CNN (To those that think this is not being driven by the Whitehouse...I have this bridge I am trying to sell....). This is purely political and I am sure the President's statements will be front and centre in the court battle.

Never though I would be on the side of AT&T or a cable company.

<comment><USER14> > The reality here is that the President is blocking this deal because of his > issues with CNN ( (To those that think this is not being driven by the > Whitehouse...I have this bridge I am trying to sell....).

Alright, give us your best pitch.

How do you see this happening, Trump calls DOJ and tells them to block AT&T merger because of CNN?

<comment><USER15> A lot of messaging in politics is unspoken and unrecorded to avoid culpability. You do things that favor someone higher up without being asked to (or based on available public signals), and get rewarded without having ever asked for it.

<comment><USER14> Yup, many things are done that way in politics. But lately it seems it's also pretty hard to keep things from leaking, someone there would probably let it slip to the media that "Trump wanted CNN gone". So far it's "Some Democrats have expressed concern" that's the only source.

Any is it all of the sudden these people started loving monopolies. "Well DOJ wants to something about, we clearly have to oppose it and support exactly the opposite".

The same thing happened with the TPP. Every Bernie supporter was against TPP. As soon as the White House pulled out of the TPP, I saw messages on /r/politics about "Well, we can't support it now once that Trump did it", it wasn't even ironic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is the THIRD time that AT&T has been sued for antitrust reasons. So for, they are 0-2.

Side note: with net neutrality going away, doesn't AT&T have the ability to raise rates on Disney, Netflix, and others to stream across their network without a slowdown?

</comment><comment><USER17> Love the photo of the building with the old Bell logo still somewhat visible.

<comment><USER18> It's Creative Commons-licensed! [https://www.flickr.com/photos/mrbill/418219038/](https://www.flickr.com/photos/mrbill/418219038/)

<comment><USER19> Mr. Bill has been running the sunhelp.org website and ran the Sun Managers distribution list for years. He's quite into the old Bell System.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Doesn't the FTC usually conduct review of mergers? It has authority to deny mergers without resorting to suing, right?

Why does this need the DoJ to sue?

<comment><USER21> In America, we have a concept where only the Judicial branch can interpret the laws. So, Congress passes a law, those laws sometimes give agencies like the FTC regulatory powers- but only a judge can interpret the laws to ultimately decide what those regulatory powers are.

In this case, a judge will need to look at the laws passed by Congress, any relevant regulation (and if that regulation was legally authorized by Congress), and determine if this merger would violate those laws.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm not for this merger, so I'm pleased but . . .

I want DOJ to start doing their job and monopoly busting (without regard to politics). We have several industries engaged in anti-competitive behavior at a scale far larger than big oil.

</comment><comment><USER23> Let AT&T spend $85B on fiber optics upgrades.

<comment><USER24> They are buying Time Warner. Not Time Warner Cable. The latter is owned by Charter.

<comment><USER25> Wow, I'm not GP, but thanks for that comment. I was surprised that no one is talking about how this will affect internet quality and price in many regions. Turns out, no one's talking about it here because it isn't the issue I thought it was...

The more you know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is great. Unless Trump is doing this for a petty grudge, then it is super fucked up.

They should split nbc from comcast as well.

<comment><USER27> Which he is. [1]

I'm all for antitrust, but to block this (which is a largely orthogonal merger), break up Sinclair first.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/08/business/att-time- warner-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/08/business/att-time-warner-cnn- trump.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Why would donald trumps mnssages matter? Is the justice departments case based soLely on the president wanting the merger to not go through? Those are two seperate cases. This lawsuit is going to court motives are a seperate crime.</comment>


Apple stifling the work of web standard - <AUTHOR> http://timkadlec.com/2015/02/apples-web/

<comment><USER2> I completely disagree. Apple supported the defacto standard for handling touch input ([http://www.w3.org/TR/touch-events/](http://www.w3.org/TR/touch- events/)) before any other browser vendor, and Google followed them very quickly. The w3c decision to abandon touch events and pursue pointer events was only after Apple submitted to the w3c patent advisory group that they held patents on the standard (with no indication of requiring royalty -- and no indication of going after other browser vendors supporting touch events such as Google).

Furthermore, what is a pointer event going to do on an Apple or Google platform? Apple devices only support touch and mice as of this writing -- why do they need pointer events, which adds things such as stylus support with tilt? What would be the purpose of implementing that? Same goes for Google, only Android products I can think of with stylus support are the Samsung Note series, and I don't think those even support the special features of pointer events (I'm thinking tilt and pressure).

Anyways, if you feel that strongly about it, you can use pointer events, and polyfill them on Apple platforms with this: [https://github.com/jquery/PEP](https://github.com/jquery/PEP)

Or you can keep using touch events and polyfill them on to platforms that only support pointer events with this: [https://github.com/CamHenlin/TouchPolyfill/](https://github.com/CamHenlin/TouchPolyfill/) (disclaimer: I helped write this one :) )

<comment><USER3> The article isn't about polyfills, and polyfills don't make up for specs everybody agrees on. You say you disagree with the article,but nothing in your message is related in anyway with the article.

Pointer events are a better spec, Touch events are like Mouse events, a narrow definition of the possible interactions with a device.Each time there is a new medium, are we going to write a new spec? no ,that's what pointer events are about.It's a better spec. Apple thinks touch events are good enough right now and choose not to give a fuck, well, if other vendors choose to act like Apple,there is no consensus anymore. If Microsoft did the same right now, they'd be insulted out of existence by developers, but when it's Apple,hey free pass.

<comment><USER2> I'd like to point out that Microsoft did the exact same thing with pointer events with IE10-11 up until the very latest version of Windows 8.1 which is still not rolled out to all devices on all networks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the key thing here is Google "following". Google have their own fork of WebKit, they can implement pointer events if they so choose, and they also have a far, far larger share of the desktop browser market.

Except for on mobile Apple are a minor player, and even on mobile Google is still the major player.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm struggling to understand how Apple is stifling this standard. I don't even know why Apple is being given this much power in the first place. Yes, the article mentioned some but it cannot be the market share and some developer bias.

Apple doesn't have much of a market share in the first place. They have what <8% of the PC market share and maybe ~10% of the mobile market share?

Google owns 80% of the mobile market share, they have far more influence than Apple.

Google managed to get stuff done via its SPDY2 work to the point that the HTTP/2 standard adopted most of their work, without any help from Apple. So what's the problem here? I know it is not the same analogy as the Pointer Event/Touch Event but still, it is possible.

> Too many times, we've seen browser vendors with the best intentions fall > victim to Apple's reluctance to work with standards bodies and WebKit's > dominance on mobile devices. We cannot let this continue to happen.

I totally agree but Apple's not required to work with any standard bodies. Focus on getting your standard out and then call on Apple for failing to support it when the rest of the market supports it. Let Apple realize they can't get away with not being involved.

Also, WebKit is an open platform. Apple does not own it completely and look at Google's Blink fork along with Opera helping out. Blink probably now has more users than Webkit.

<comment><USER6> The Google's "80% of the mobile market share" is misleading, when a majority of those phones don't complete with the iPhone and aren't developer targets. Its like saying "8-bit CPUs are 90% of the CPU market, so I don't get why anyone cares about Intel".

Android had well over double Apple's marketshare in 2012 when FB bought Instagram for $1B, and they had yet to (or just had) released their Android app. Despite having 80% marketshare, Apple's App store generated more revenue than the Play market last quarter[1].

When the vast majority of mobile revenue is generated by iPhone users, that means if it doesn't work on iOS, it doesn't work at all - 80% marketshare be damned.

When Apple holds the most important card - revenue - its not hard to see that they are in the best position for stifling standards. If you are a developer are you going to sacrifice your revenue for standards, or play by Apple's rules?

> _Google managed to get stuff done via its SPDY2 work to the point that the > HTTP /2 standard adopted most of their work,_

And it was something that could be deployed to the vast majority of users without a single finger being lifted from anyone outside Google.

> _I totally agree but Apple 's not required to work with any standard bodies. > Focus on getting your standard out and then call on Apple for failing to > support it when the rest of the market supports it._

Unfortunately most standards don't work this way. When standard bodies were left to their own devices, we got XHTML. Most standards seem to work like SPDY - one or two companies (Google, FB) use their market position to rollout a huge change to large number of clients and then make that the standard while everyone else cries about binary headers. In the PointerEvents case, the company with market position is Apple.

I'd imagine the best thing to do is commented on the article. Create a Polyfill, and if PointerEvents are better than the rest, developers will naturally use them. Eventually given the huge amount of developers on the polyfill Apple may be inclined to make it native.

[1][http://www.techspot.com/news/58456-google-play-vs-app- store-...](http://www.techspot.com/news/58456-google-play-vs-app-store- downloads.html)

<comment><USER5> I am probably extremely naive here but I just don't understand why technical companies are willing to allow one single company to slow things down just because they seem to have the most "revenue" that shouldn't matter for technical standards.

> The Google's "80% of the mobile market share" is misleading, when a majority > of those phones don't complete with the iPhone and aren't developer targets.

Are majority of these phones capable of running a browser that'd adopt support for Pointer Events or Touch Events? Yes, then they're counted, no?

> Android had well over double Apple's marketshare in 2012 when FB bought > Instagram for $1B, and they had yet to (or just had) released their Android > app. Despite having 80% marketshare, Apple's App store generated more > revenue than the Play market last quarter[1].

I still don't understand what it has to do with web standards that everyone will be using in the browsers? Are you telling me that because Apple users bought more apps, they should have more influence on technical standards for mobile browsers that has nothing to do with the apps they bought?

> When Apple holds the most important card - revenue - its not hard to see > that they are in the best position for stifling standards.

Seems like a bad idea to allow them to keep doing this. We didn't get the best outcome letting MS pull this crap back in 90s. But then again, history tend to repeat itself.

<comment><USER6> > _I am probably extremely naive here but I just don 't understand why > technical companies are willing to allow one single company to slow things > down just because they seem to have the most "revenue" that shouldn't matter > for technical standards._

They aren't. Microsoft submitted PointerEvents forever ago. But I'm assuming naivety is leading you to believe that standards mean much. Everyone could today agree make PointerEvents a standard. Now Android, WinMo, Opera and Firefox support PointerEvents. Now what? You still have a large number of developers targeting iOS not using the standard. You can shame Apple, but Apple always gets a free pass. Worse still, lets say Apple comes out with "iEvents". Now every developer is now using "iEvents" in web, despite PointerEvents exists. Of course Google wants Android browsers to be performant with whatever is popular, so they adopt "iEvents" as well. Now everyone is using "iEvents" even though PointerEvents is the standard. All because Apple controls a lot of developer mindshare.

Remember, everyone doing "bleeding edge" mobile work is pretty much targeting iOS first - so "hyped" technologies are usually supported by Apple's platform.

This is less about tech companies "willing to allow a single company to slow things down" and more about the fact a single company, because of its dominance, can and will slow things down.

> _Seems like a bad idea to allow them to keep doing this. We didn 't get the > best outcome letting MS pull this crap back in 90s. But then again, history > tend to repeat itself._

It IS a bad idea. Its the same position MS had in the 90s. Thats what we should be saying here and not deluding ourself into thinking that Apple's position matters less because Google has more market share.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> From the specification linked in the article:

> The normalized pressure of the pointer input in the range of [0,1], where 0 > and 1 represent the minimum and maximum pressure the hardware is capable of > detecting, respectively. For hardware that does not support pressure, > including but not limited to mouse, the value MUST be 0.5 when in the active > buttons state and 0 otherwise.

What kind of non-sense is this? It's like saying 0 is white and 1 is black, but when a grayscale is not available, 0.5 is black.

<comment><USER8> It means that for pressure-sensitive applications mouse or touch input behaves as if the stylus was used with moderate pressure. Which makes sense if you consider something like a drawing application where the pressure makes the brush larger. You neither want no brush at all (0 pressure), nor something blown out of proportion (1) but rather what is similar to when using a pen normally. (Full pressure for a stylus is usually a _lot_ of force that's rarely, if ever, used.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's true and obvious that Apple slowed down innovating the web since the core of their business is iOS and apps. They should not have an interest in a fast innovating web that gets on par with native apps which is their main lock-in for iOS, just like Microsoft did 15 years ago. They only speed up their rendering engine and JS core but don't try to help on standards improving the web experience.

BUT: I doubt this pointer event thing is a good example for their strategy because it's really just a nice-to-have feature for the Surface and the Note series which is for my taste a too small target to justify a standard.

A good example for Apple reluctance to innovate the web is CSS Flexbox. CSS Flexbox is the best positioning standard I encountered, every vendor supports it, only Apple still prefixes it with -webkit.

Another example is their reluctance to make WKWebview fully workable, since months there is still a bug which prevents WKWebview loading local files, the bug was already fixed in an early beta of iOS 8 but then they put it again in. WKWebKit is way more performant than UIWebview and can produce butter smooth HTML5 apps with Cordova/Phonegap but this one bug makes it hard (people already build local web servers to work around this problem).

</comment><comment><USER10> In general, browser vendors all have a history of doing things that stifle standards progress.

Pointer Events (which is a good idea) has been stifled, as have lots of other relatively good or promising ideas, such as Web SQL, WebCL, etc.

I'm sure browser developers have legitimate concerns about these emerging standards, but I doubt any of these concerns have warranted dumping these ideas.

</comment><comment><USER11> Are pointer events actually a good way to write high-quality web apps? Maybe Apple and Google have reasons for opposing the standard.

<comment><USER8> They unify the way you deal with mouse, touch, stylus and potentially other pointing devices. While this can mean that developers using only one of those in a single application still have less to remember, it's mostly meant for actuall being able to write applications that support both touch and mouse, for example. For Microsoft, with a device that supports all three modes of pointer interaction, it's actually quite important if it's even possible (remember, you can write Windows 8 apps with HTML, too – and no one's going to be happy if your UI stops working with a finger or stylus just because the developer forgot to replicate the logic three times).

If you only deal with touch input then pointer events isn't more complicated than touch events, but with the added bonus that things work as expected with a mouse or stylus, too (except multi-touch, of course). Apple in this respect doesn't really need to care, because no one uses iOS with another pointing device than a finger (or a capacitive stylus, which, from a software standpoint, is just a thinner finger).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Seem both Apple and Google are doing this. (as in "stifling")

<comment><USER5> Microsoft is adopting support for Touch Events:[https://status.modern.ie/touchevents?term=touch](https://status.modern.ie/touchevents?term=touch)

<comment><USER2> Which is hilarious after talking to a few IE team leads last summer, who told me I should write all of my code using pointer events and polyfill browsers with touchevents, just so I could support their mobile browser with no market share.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've (privately) heard suspicions by other browser vendors that Apple stopped innovating on the web when the App Store blew up because they now have a commercial disincentive to support a open, vibrant web. They're accused of intentionally dragging their feet on new standards, only capitulating _after_ something has succeeded without them when their lack of support makes them look broken.</comment>