Nimrod by Example - def- http://nimrod-by-example.github.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> _Sighs_. I wish Nimrod were more popular. It seems like a better version of D. But there can only be so many languages with a fully functioning ecosystem, and I just doubt Nimrod will ever get there. It seems to be a one-man shop at this point (as this demonstrates):

[https://github.com/Araq/Nimrod/graphs/contributors](https://github.com/Araq/Nimrod/graphs/contributors)

<comment><USER2> This. I'm on the lookout for expressive, statically typed, native code compiling languages for game development. Currently poking around with Rust, since Go seems to pretty much be settled on not doing the custom expressibility thing. Nimrod looks like something I'd really want to like, the game stuff I do doesn't really need Rust's hardcore garbage collection avoidance, but the ecosystem sparsity just scares me off. Meanwhile, Rust has both reasonably heavy institutional support and an impressive swarm of adventurous game developers with a C++ background working on stuff for it. I'm banking on Rust mostly for the potential ecosystem strength in being the only alternative to C++ for a high level of abstraction don't pay for what you don't use language.

<comment><AUTHOR> There really are only three ways to create a usable language, honestly:

1) Huge institutional support. See: C#, Java, Go.

2) Give it 20 years. See: Python, Haskell.

3) Weird, idiosyncratic factors. See: Javascript, mostly.

So it's hard for me to get excited about these sorts of things.

Edit: fair point, Javascript is really a case of #1, with Netscape as the institution.

<comment><USER3> How about Perl, Ruby and C?

pg said that for a language to become popular, it has to be the scripting language of something popular. That's the category where the three languages I mentioned are falling.

So the answer is simple: one has to build something really nice in Nimrod and use Nimrod as the extension language of that thing. Maybe the embedded world would be a nice field from Nimrod due to having nice interop with C? (I haven't used Nimrod in my life yet, although I am tempted because it looks very easy).

<comment><USER4> C had AT&T and was UNIX system programming language.

As UNIX spread into the industry, so did C.

All languages required by OS vendors as the official ones to target their OS, succeed in the market if the OS succeeds.

<comment><USER5> True, Objective-C comes into mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Anyone know the recommended way to do interop with C and Nimrod? I've been doing Project Euler problems in Nimrod, and wanted to use some library functions from GSL for bignum support, but I couldn't really get c2nim to work with the header files.

I think that I could use the 'importc'/'dynlib' with the compiled library, but there's not a whole lot of documentation on that in the Nimrod manual, and I ended up just doing that problem in C because it was easier (read: I was lazier) to get working.

<comment> def- For general C/Nimrod interop see these Rosetta Code tasks:

[http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Call_a_foreign- language_function...](http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Call_a_foreign- language_function#Nimrod)

[http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Call_a_function_in_a_shared_libr...](http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Call_a_function_in_a_shared_library#Nimrod)

[http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Use_another_language_to_call_a_f...](http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Use_another_language_to_call_a_function#Nimrod)

Making c2nim work with header files can be a bit difficult. The main information is here: [http://nimrod-lang.org/c2nim.html](http://nimrod- lang.org/c2nim.html)

When something throws an error I comment it out and try to see if I can fix it up by hand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm afraid the memory management scheme might cause the Nimrod ecosystem to end up with too many libraries that require GC, and since the building blocks are already using it, why not use it yourself?

Either make it fully manual, or do something like Rust (No small feat). A GC you can switch on and off sounds like a good idea, but programmers don't keep half the promises they make ("It's just an MVP, I'll refactor it to use manual memory later").

<comment><USER8> No, I think Nimrod's approach is absolutely correct.

What I hope will happen is that once Nimrod's effects system matures, the compiler will be able to figure out when it can statically free references when they go out of scope, rather than always using the GC.

Rusts approach, I think, is in the entirely wrong direction. You should only have one kind of reference, but if you use it correctly the compiler should figure out how to free it. You should then be able to make an assertion that a procedure (possibly "main") does not allocate any GC memory, and have the compiler tell you what part of your code violates this constraint.

<comment><USER9> > Rusts approach, I think, is in the entirely wrong direction. You should only > have one kind of reference, but if you use it correctly the compiler should > figure out how to free it.

This has been an area of intense research for four or five decades now, and it's probably not going to get better than what we have now, in the general case. In the presence of general recursive data structures, the compiler can't know when each object is going to die. I'm pretty sure you can easily reduce this to the halting problem.

To date, you've had three sorts of solutions: 1) explicit malloc/free; 2) tracing GC or reference counting + various tricks to take advantage of special cases; and 3) putting additional information in the type system to help the compiler infer when objects might become free while preserving memory safety (this is the direction taken by Rust, Cyclone, MLKit, and to an extent C++ too).

<comment><USER8> I think if your code does use references in a way that does not let you guarantee memory safety without an extremely convoluted type system, you should perhaps just be using GC.

For most code I personally know, that does not play well with GC (firmware, hard real-time, etc.), you really don't want to do much allocation after initialization anyway, and the little you do can be handled by malloc/free style manual memory management, or perhaps by escape analysis. And then I think Nimrods approach might work well, because you could declare that everything done by a proc should be verified by escape analysis, rather than manually tagging each pointer used in that procedure.

But I recognize that Rusts approach should be extremely useful in a few applications. But then again I wonder if Nimrods type-system eventually will be able to implement its most useful pointer types in a library.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> How does Nimrod compares to Go regarding concurreny,does it have some libs or some language onstructs ? thanks, I like how the language looks.

<comment><USER11> Nimrod's concurrency support is still evolving but it already implements a builtin thread pool: [http://build.nimrod- lang.org/docs/manual.html#spawn](http://build.nimrod- lang.org/docs/manual.html#spawn)

You may also be interested in the C#-like async await as shown in the following news article: [http://nimrod- lang.org/news.html#Z2014-04-21-version-0-9-4-r...](http://nimrod- lang.org/news.html#Z2014-04-21-version-0-9-4-released)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is there a list of "X By Example"-style tutorials around? I learn best from these sorts of things and would love a compendium of sorts.

<comment><USER13> The HN user def- posted a link to the Nimrod section of rosettacode.org: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8048939](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8048939)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I always wanted to go back to C kind of language, let me wait for few more years to pick one Go,Rust,Nimrod...</comment>


How Bad Is Selfish Routing? (2001) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://theory.stanford.edu/~tim/papers/routing.pdf <comment><USER2> The paper is pretty coy about what they mean by "network", "congestion" and "latency". It doesn't just apply to computer networking -- the original motivating example for this kind of model was road network traffic, and it also applies to things like choosing which bus to take to work with some "overcrowding discomfort" function.

This research could motivate how self-driving taxis are routed through a city. The Braess network example shows that cooperative routing could decrease everyone's travel times simultaneously compared to the "everyone takes the shortest path given traffic" Nash equilibrium (called "Wardrop equilibrium" in the continuous network flow domain.)

<comment><USER3> I guess you mean that they're not too specific about concrete situations to which their analysis might apply. But in some sense the network model was already fairly specific, since the analysis would become yet more general in e.g. Perakis 2007.

[https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Georgia_Perakis/publica...](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Georgia_Perakis/publication/37596069_The_Price_of_Anarchy_Under_Nonlinear_and_Asymmetric_Costs/links/0046353529498b6476000000.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Aw man I freakin love this paper I did my whole undergrad honors project based on this and this paper by Tim Roughgarden [https://theory.stanford.edu/~tim/papers/optima.pdf](https://theory.stanford.edu/~tim/papers/optima.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER5> I have always found selfish routing to have interesting implications for a world in which traffic is more coordinated and centrally managed -- be it through present-day apps like Google Maps and Waze, or some near-future technology with autonomous cars communicating with one another. The happy Roughgarden/Tardos result that selfish routing is only 4/3 as bad as coordination is great, but it also means there's not much slack to be picked up: fully coordinated routes would only be 3/4 as long as the status quo.

(Of course that's not the entire story on autonomous cars, for instance, because they will also get into fewer accidents, react to changing traffic conditions faster, can potentially drive more tightly at high speed, etc.)

Anyone interested in selfish routing should check out Braess's paradox, which is wonderfully unintuitive and strange:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess's_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess's_paradox)

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't completely understand on a skim through. They are imagining a network where nodes are never assessed on their performance by other nodes?</comment>


Netflix ditches Webkit to roll out new UI for smart TVs, Roku boxes, consoles - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2013/11/12/netflix-ditches-webkit-to-roll-out-slick-new-ui-for-smart-tvs-roku-boxes-and-game-consoles/ <comment><USER2> I think the same pattern is repeating over and over again, a company uses something like HTML 5 to get traction cheaply on multiple platforms, then when they want to provide a better user experience, they go some kind of native to provide more/better features on specific platforms.

It seems like an entirely pragmatic approach.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm still amazed how much effort is laid on the UX for consoles, while the browser version needs some urgent attention.

<comment><USER4> Why? Most people watch Netflix content on a television through a console or a set-top box. It makes complete sense to concentrate resources developing the experience for those markets rather than the browser. On tablets and phones people will use the app. I'd guess that the number of people looking at Netflix content in a browser is probably in the low single digit percentile range.

<comment><USER5> You'd be forgetting about the college kid with a laptop segment.

<comment><USER4> No I'm not. Netflix has about 40 million subscribers. 5% of them ('low single digit percentile') would still be 2 million - easily enough to account for college students, people who travel a lot, children, etc once you discount those who have tablets.

There are 21 million college students in the US. 10% having Netflix accounts isn't completely out of the question, but it'd be a _very_ impressive level of market penetration.

<comment><USER6> Anecdotally, when I was in college, no one paid for their own account, they just used their parent's.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ok, so web browsers that use Webkit will still be supported. "Ditches Webkit" means Netflix no longer bundles Webkit in their non-browser clients.

<comment><USER8> Isn't that what the title says? Or did it change?

<comment><USER7> I don't believe the title has changed, its just the way I interpreted it upon first reading lead me to make that (hopefully) clarifying comment.

It read to me that Netflix is stopping Webkit support entirely, which I realise is nonsense.

<comment><USER9> The title has changed, it used to read: "Netflix ditches Webkit and HTML5 to roll out new UI"

Which seems to imply they ditched it entirely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I initially took this as a condemnation of HTML5 as a common runtime, but it looks to be more a condemnation of "shipping webkit yourself to get an HTML5 common runtime"

I'd love to know more about what they're doing on platforms that have webviews.

</comment><comment><USER11> Will the Apple TV App be updated, too, or is it completely separate from the other implementations?

<comment><USER12> The AppleTV app doesn't use webkit; it's the standard, very limited AppleTV UI kit. This is why it's less terrible than most Netflix clients; less rope to hang themselves.

They did manage to make it slightly awful within the constraints of the model, though; see the mechanism used for moving between seasons of a TV show.

<comment><USER13> Here's am article on the Apple TV UI framework. It's called Back Row

<comment><USER13> Whoops! Forgot the actual link. Shouldn't be commenting when I'm half asleep I guess

[http://nshipster.com/backrow/](http://nshipster.com/backrow/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> That article doesn't have much details on what the new UI is based on... does anyone know?

</comment><comment><USER15> This is interesting to me personally as Netflix had contacted me to potentially work there specifically on the WebKit engine and apps roughly 18 months ago. That is, at the same time they were already making it obsolete. I wonder if it was secret even within the organization.

</comment><comment><USER16> Although the older Roku's are not initial targets for deployment, the timing nonetheless seems to roughly correspond with when my Roku XD started rebooting every hour or two while playing Netflix.

If there's some correspondence on the back end, I hope Netflix will sort it out, as the reboot takes a good couple of minutes; additionally, the glitch strikes suddenly and hard enough that the current location in the playing stream is not saved.

</comment><comment><USER17> There was something minimalist and efficient about the old design - lots of information in front of the viewer, easy to pan across 100 movies quickly.

Now, two rows, lots of bandwidth used to update the ad frame dominating half the screen. Its slick and showy and ... less useful for browsing movie titles?

</comment><comment> chestnut-tree On a related note, the BBC has an open source library for building HTML apps on TV called the TV Application Layer (TAL) which looks very promising:

[http://fmtvp.github.io/tal/](http://fmtvp.github.io/tal/)

</comment><comment><USER18> They should forget about all that and spend the money on MORE CONTENT. I don't give a shit about the UI, I want something worth watching. I don't go to Netflix to ooh and ahh over the pretty UI.

<comment><USER19> spending money making current customers happy with a better experience is never wasted

if their current UI sucked you'd be complaining about having trouble finding a movie -- which you kind of are doing already. IMO one of Netflix's major problems is the UI, when i'm on my PS3 and looking for something to watch, there are 75 movies from different subsets (most of which are unrated by me - promoting me to watch something i haven't seen) - the problem with this is i often like to watch things i have already seen (hence the reason i buy a dvd). That content isn't readily available or easy to search unless i remember or already know what i want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I doubt my two year plasma will get the update

</comment><comment><USER21> I thought that Netflix required Microsoft Silverlight to play?</comment>


Fusion in a magnetically-shielded-grid inertial electrostatic confinement device - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1510.01788 <comment><USER2> As this paper is from 2015 and I can't claim to understand it, is the follow up paper by the first author [0] the reason why it actually doesn't work?

[0]: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1808.00622](https://arxiv.org/abs/1808.00622)

<comment><USER3> they are using electric charge to move plasma particles around, and a magnetic field to enclose the charged electrodes and protect them from the plasma.

the electrode setup was a concentric ring setup so it was simpler than a spherical setup like a fusor kind of device

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

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

the most common fusion concepts nowadays involve magnetic enclosure and or compression, of plasma, and electric charge based acceleration of the plasma.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> (2015)

Abstract:

> Theory for a gridded inertial electrostatic confinement (IEC) fusion system > is presented that shows a net energy gain is possible if the grid is > magnetically shielded from ion impact. A simplified grid geometry is > studied, consisting of two negatively-biased coaxial current-carrying rings, > oriented such that their opposing magnetic fields produce a spindle cusp. > Our analysis indicates that better than break-even performance is possible > even in a deuterium-deuterium system at bench-top scales. The proposed > device has the unusual property that it can avoid both the cusp losses of > traditional magnetic fusion systems and the grid losses of traditional IEC > configurations.

<comment><USER4> > Our analysis indicates that better than break-even performance is possible > even in a deuterium-deuterium system at bench-top scales.

That means it should be relatively easy to verify in a laboratory, right?

<comment><USER5> Fusion over breakeven releases a boatload of ionizing radiation. So, it's not exactly a safe thing to put on a lab bench. As even a single watt of power requires the kind of wall you put on a nuclear power plant.

As a rule of thumb, fusion is only really vastly better than fission once you turn it off.

That said, I agree there is likely something wrong with the design.

<comment><USER6> you can build your own fusion reaction in the comfort of your home. Apparently fusor devices [1] are hobbist level difficulty. They are nowhere near break even, but they do generate a lot of radiation which can still be contained safely on a benchtop apparently.

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

<comment><USER5> At the hobbyist level they are making detectable amounts of radiation, but only something like 1 trillionth of a watt worth of fast neutrons per second.

<comment><USER6> Right, I completely missed the point that you were concerned about the amount of radiation at break even.

I wonder whether you could detect the increased efficiency well before reaching break even (that wouldn't prove that you can reach break even of course)?

<comment><USER5> Starting with HH vs DD fusion gives you validation with orders of magnitude less radiation, lower pressures would be similarly useful. But, IMO partnering with someone in the nuclear industry is probably the best bet.

Really, if your not asking for money just a location that's a fairly easy sell. If it doesn't work at all that's no real cost to them. If it almost works that's a cheap neutron source that's easy to turn on and off which is valuable. And if it actually works that's one of those world changing things people are willing to support.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This design sure looks a lot like the illustrations I've seen for Lockheed's fusion reactor design. Scroll down on this article, for example:

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2018/08/01/will- lock...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2018/08/01/will-lockheed- martin-change-the-world-with-its-new-fusion-reactor/#6bd10de34c49)

Compare that to the paper's figures, starting on page 2.

<comment><USER8> Above the illustration in the text, the paper references work from 2001-2006 for motivating that geometry:

        [19]  J. Khachan and S. Collis, Phys. Plasmas8, 1299 (2001).
        [20]  J. Khachan, D. Moore, and S. Bosi, Phys. Plasmas10, 596 (2003).
        [21]  O.  Shrier,  J.  Khachan,  S.  Bosi,  M.  Fitzgerald,  and  N.Evans, Phys. Plasmas13, 012703 (2006)

In particular all three citations refer to Joseph Khachan's work:

[https://sydney.edu.au/science/about/our-people/academic- staf...](https://sydney.edu.au/science/about/our-people/academic-staff/joe- khachan.html)

And Bosi seems to have been at Sydney at the time as well:

[https://www.une.edu.au/staff-profiles/science-and- technology...](https://www.une.edu.au/staff-profiles/science-and- technology/sbosi)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was under the impression that bremsstrahlung losses were the main barrier to breakeven in fusor-like devices. Is this not susceptible to that?

<comment><USER9> Answering my own question: apparently not per section E.

<comment><USER10> They're making the assumption that the ions and electrons can be held outside of thermal equilibirium (and provide no evidence for this). In reality thermalisation is likely to occur rapidly due to frequent collisions, once thermalised a normal Maxwell distribution will apply and Bremsstrahlung losses will return with a vengeance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "... in a mysterious and highly fluid vacuum, the force is not very small; it only moves at the speed and frequency of the plasma from two to three orders of magnitude faster than the plasma of other electrons to three orders of magnitudes..."

This makes me wonder what would happen to this device? Is it a device like the SG?

</comment><comment><USER12> Something has to hold the magnets and physical supports will cool the plasma. Also there is a non trivial amount of magnetic force to contend with.

<comment><USER13> So don't bring your credit cards in to work!

<comment><USER14> Don't bring your dental fillings either.

<comment><USER15> You are probably joking, but just in case not: dental fillings are not magnetic. They are amalgams of mercury and silver.

<comment><USER12> Try dropping a neodymium magnet down a length of copper pipe sometime. I would think that sensation would be quite disturbing from something hugging a tooth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've been wanting to research magnetically shielded grids since 2007, but I'm not formally trained in physics [0] and don't know where to begin. Can anyone make any recommendations for well-documented MHD simulator libraries?

[0] Informally I watch PBS Space Time and similar channels, but good though that content is, it's not the same as a real qualification.

<comment><USER12> someone did make a charged particle simulator for polywell. You might find it by searching talk-polywell.org

[http://www.talk-polywell.org/bb/index.php](http://www.talk- polywell.org/bb/index.php)

<comment><USER16> Thanks :)</comment></comment></comment>


Ahead-of-Time Compilation - <AUTHOR> https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8166089 <comment><USER2> This is great news, though it initially only supports Linux x86-64 and is decades late for Java desktop apps (and not having non-blocking I/O until Java 1.4 was shameful for a language explicitly targeted and a pervasively networked ecosystem.)

In their "tiered mode", they put sampling instrumentation into the native code, and if they detect a hotspot, regenerate fully instrumented native code from bytecode using the C1 (fast) JIT, which then allows the C2 JIT to do its full optimizations on the code as if AoT were not involved.

Since the invention of tracing JITs, I've often wondered why languages don't package together a compact serialized SSA form such as LLVM bitcode or SafeTSA along with storing functions as lists of pointers to space-optimized compilations of extended basic blocks (strait-line code), similar to how some Forth compilers generate threaded code. A threaded code dispatcher over these strait-line segments of native code would have minimal overhead, and when a simple SIGPROF lightweight sampler detected a hotspot, a tracing version of the dispatcher could collect a trace, and then generate native code from the visited traces using the stored SSA for the basic blocks.

In this way, they'd have a light-weight tracing JIT for re-optimizing native code.

<comment><USER3> > decades late for Java desktop apps

Commercial JDKs always offered AOT compilation, the problem is that people nowadays apparently don't buy compilers anymore unless forced to do so (e.g. embedded, consoles...).

<comment><USER4> Those are priced for people who already made a big investment in writing their application in Java and now realise they need features not present in javac. If you're just starting out, it can very well make more sense to use Microsoft Visual C++, which costs less than a commercial Java compiler and comes with an IDE that's light years ahead of anything available to Java developers.

Desktop Java also had many other problems, which can be summarised as "the JVM is its own OS". You can't write an application in Java that has a native look and feel. Or at least you couldn't for the first several significant years of its life and even now I don't think there's a good story for writing a simple native application. Meanwhile you could grab wxWidgets or Qt (and there goes your budget for a java compiler) and have a native-looking cross-platform application. Which very few did, because back then Mac OSX didn't exist, Apple were on their death bed and "Linux Desktop Environment" was even more of a joke than it is today.

So yeah, it didn't make any bit of sense to develop Java desktop apps given that you already had a large pool of proficient C++ developers, the only platform you cared about was Windows and Java GUI libraries insisted on reinventing their own look and feel. Oh and you could always just buy Delphi if you didn't want to suffer C++ (again, for a fraction of the price of a commercial Java compiler).

Nowadays people wrap a bunch of javascript in an electron instance, but this only happened after the web took off and nobody really looks at native desktop apps much. If this AOT work can give us fully contained native executables that we can distribute without having the user install Java and with significantly better performance than nodejs, maybe Java on the desktop can still happen.

<comment><USER5> That's not correct. The first UI toolkit Java had was AWT and it mapped through to native widgets. AWT was not very successful because it tried to be cross platform rather than a direct mapping of the Windows UI toolkit, which was significantly more advanced in that era than its competitors MacOS Classic and - most problematically - UNIX workstations, which had truly miserable UI toolkits. So AWT was limited to the lowest common denominator and trying to abstract UI libraries didn't work very well, the abstraction was leaky.

So for the first few years of Java's existence developers were given native UI, and said no, actually, we don't care if we have a native look and feel or not - for the kinds of line-of-business apps they were writing a powerful and consistent toolkit was more important than one that looked the right shade of grey. Hence, Swing.

Nowadays if you want to write a small, pure native Java app with native widgets you can do it with SWT and Avian. There's an example here:

      https://readytalk.github.io/avian/

It demos all the features available in SWT with a 1mb download that's fully self contained. You still have the problem of leaky abstractions and SWT apps don't look entirely normal, as some more complex widgets still need to be custom, but it's another attempt at AWT that works significantly better as MacOS and Linux closed the gap with what Windows could do, so you can have a richer abstraction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can't see anywhere in the linked issue that indicates AOT compilation is coming to Java 9, or even coming at all. The issue demonstrates nothing more than an intent to bring it to OpenJDK, and the issue seems to be very nascent? It was only created a fortnight ago.

Lest the title is changed:

        AOT compilation is coming to Java 9 (java.net)
        18 points by hittaruki 37 minutes ago

<comment><USER7> The person who created this ticket is an Oracle employee, not some random Joe, so it seems like a reasonable guess that it's something Oracle is planning.

<comment><USER3> They are planning it, and there were already several talks, but the roadmap was Java 10 or later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Slightly off topic but if you are interested in how HotSpot compiles to native code I gave a presentation at JavaOne:

[http://alblue.bandlem.com/2016/09/javaone- hotspot.html](http://alblue.bandlem.com/2016/09/javaone-hotspot.html)

The presentation wasn't recorded but there is a video recorded from a DocklandsLJC event which is on InfoQ:

[https://www.infoq.com/presentations/hotspot-memory-data- stru...](https://www.infoq.com/presentations/hotspot-memory-data-structures)

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm not familiar enough with compilers, but why would an ahead of time compiler perform worse than a just in time compiler in a static language? I think I'd understand if it was a dynamic language, because you can't know the types for sure until you start running the program, but are similar issues present for Java?

<comment><USER10> Most of the JIT optimizations amount to "it's been called like this in the past; assume it'll always be & depotimize (at a penalty) if it isn't."

That potentially includes the fully resolved types of objects (ie devirtualization), branch prediction (stronger than the CPU can do; for instance, if a value is only used inside a branch that's never taken, don't bother mutating it), data sizes (this "array" is only ever size 2, store it in registers), dead code elimination (keeps the compiled code small), and a whole bunch more fun stuff.

<comment><USER11> > assume it'll always be & depotimize (at a penalty) if it isn't

Stuff like this makes me nervous. Performance is already a complex topic, and stuff like this makes it even more complex. Unnecessarily so. If we were talking about a very high-level programming language (say, Prolog), you could argue that the expressiveness benefits outweigh the cost of the runtime system's complexity. But Java isn't even as expressive as C++, let alone Prolog.

> fully resolved types of objects (ie devirtualization)

C++ (and similar languages: D, Rust, etc.) and MLton (a Standard ML implementation) have been using monomorphization for ages, which is a compile- time analogue of devirtualization. Moreover, monomorphization has important advantages over devirtualization:

(0) It's completely predictable. You don't need to guess when it will happen. It happens iff the concrete type (and its relevant vtables, if necessary) can be determined at compile-time: [https://blog.rust- lang.org/2015/05/11/traits.html](https://blog.rust- lang.org/2015/05/11/traits.html)

(1) It's always a sound optimization, so it doesn't have to be undone at runtime under any circumstances.

(2) It's relatively simple to implement. In fact, a compiler front-end can completely monomorphize a program before handing it over to the back-end for target code generation.

> if a value is only used inside a branch that's never taken, don't bother > mutating it)

The best way to handle unreachable branches is to avoid creating them in the first place. With proper use of algebraic data types and pattern matching, unreachable branches can be kept to a minimum, or even outright eliminated in many cases.

> data sizes (this "array" is only ever size 2, store it in registers)

C and similar languages natively handle statically sized arrays, so there's no need for runtime profiling and analysis just to determine that an array will always have size 2.

ML does something even better: you just use tuples (in this case, pairs), which reflect your intent much better than using arrays whose size has to be tested or guessed.

\---

What I take away from this is that the JVM's supposedly "fancy" optimizations exist primarily to work around the Java language's lack of amenability to static analysis.

<comment><USER12> I think you're ignoring the fact that there is lots of extra information available at runtime that isn't available from static analysis of languages even if they're very amenable to that, and that static analysis can actually give you worse information.

For example a call site could be statically analysed to be bimoprhic, but then sometimes when you run it the second type is never actually used and the call site can be made monomorphic.

The same thing applies to branches - they're both possible to use, but often when you run it with real data you only actually use one of them.

So I don't think these optimisations are primarily to work around amenability to static analysis - they achieve somethign different and actually more powerful.

I can even give you a real-world example of where static analysis is actually what causes unpredictable performance. There is an implementation of the Ruby language called Rubinius that statically looks at the instance variables in a class that are visible in the source code, and optimises the objects for that many instance variables. If you start to set extra variables dynamically, and so upset this static analysis, performance drops by a half. In the implementation of Ruby that I work on we can see the static references to instance variables in the source code but don't try to do anything based on this - we purely use a hidden class system and let the true number of instance variables emerge dynamically at runtime, and we don't have the same performance drop when you start to set extra variables dynamically ([http://chrisseaton.com/rubytruffle/pppj14-om/pppj14-om.pdf](http://chrisseaton.com/rubytruffle/pppj14-om/pppj14-om.pdf))

I think it's quite a neat philosophy to apply - don't assume anything statically and let the real characteristics of the program's data and control flow emerge at runtime.

<comment><USER11> > There is an implementation of the Ruby language called Rubinius that > statically looks at the instance variables in a class that are visible in > the source code, and optimises the objects for that many instance variables. > If you start to set extra variables dynamically, and so upset this static > analysis, performance drops by a half.

You can implement an unsound static analysis for any language, and this in fact what Rubinius is doing: it's making potentially wrong conclusions about what instance variables will exist in objects. However, unsound analyses are outright harmful:

(0) Undoing unsound "optimizations" costs even more performance than was supposed to be gained by optimizing your program. (As you found out the hard way yourself.)

(1) They lie to you about what your code means! If this isn't bad enough, I don't know what else could be.

Unfortunately, a _sound_ static analysis of Ruby code wouldn't be able to tell you much, precisely because Ruby allows you to subvert everything at runtime.

<comment><USER12> > As you found out the hard way yourself.

That makes it sound like I implemented it - I didn't - I implemented the alternative mechanism which doesn't have the same problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why was Java ever JIT'd rather than natively compiled anyway? I hate to stick my neck out and even ask this but I never understood why you'd want to JIT or interpret when you can just natively compile to a binary. It seems like Go has gone "back" to the future on this one and in general their toolchain approach to me looked like the way.

I always got the sense the world is waiting for a statically typed Python that compiles to native code with Go's CPU performance. I suppose Nim might fit that bill but a shame it doesn't have compatibility with Python's or even the extent of a language like Go's libraries. And if possible, an imperative language that interfaces with OTP.

And that said, I can see why Erlang/Elixir wouldn't make as much sense or even work with native code AOT compilation due to it's feature set (thinking stuff like hot code reloading). But I've never grasped why Java or Python were better off with JIT or interpreters than AOT comp. Seems like a type system such as Go's is simple enough and allows for good gains in both CPU performance and memory usage. Add in the fact you don't need to install anything and less to think about in deploying and it seems to be a no brainer. Please feel free to fill me in on this or where I went wrong..

<comment> j-g-faustus Because Java was originally designed for set-top TV boxes and appliances, where it's kind of a big deal that you don't need to know or care what OS or processor each appliance is using internally.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20050420081440/http://java.sun.c...](https://web.archive.org/web/20050420081440/http://java.sun.com/features/1998/05/birthday.html)

When the appliance market didn't pan out, they went for web browsers and Java applets. Bytecodes were a feature because browsers didn't exectute native code, and because it allowed for sandboxing to limit the attack surface.

Even when Java became more popular on the server than in the browser, the "write once, run everywhere" was considered a major feature: The same bytecode could be distributed everywhere; no need to maintain a heap of different build environments for different CPU architecture and OS combinations.

<comment><USER3> Plenty of other platforms do support bytecodes, JIT and AOT on the same toolchain.

So they could keep the WORA story and still offer AOT as an option, which actually most commercial JDKs do.

Just Sun was against providing it at all on Java SE, but they actually supported it on Java Embedded.

<comment> j-g-faustus I was commenting on "why did they design Java that way in the first place", as opposed to (say) Go.

I agree that once the primary use of Java moved outside the browser, there was no particular reason to not give the option of AOT too. I'm not sure why Sun was so adamantly opposed to the idea.

If I recall correctly, Sun really wanted to stick with JIT on Java Embedded too, they just couldn't get it to run fast enough on embedded hardware. For desktop and servers, they considered bytecode interpretation and JIT "fast enough".

<comment><USER3> Sure and actually that is where mobile OSes are moving.

We now have bitcode on iDevices, DEX on Android and MSIL/MDIL on WinRT.

Still, both iDevices and Windows Store take, what I consider the best approach, to do AOT on the store for each supported target.

As Google found out, using AOT on the device doesn't scale. I just don't get why they went back to an overly complicated architecture of Interpreter/JIT/PGO → AOT, instead of following the same path as the competition and serve freshly baked AOT binaries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Assuming this comes in Java 9, and compilation of code other `java.base` is possible, will this make Java a more solid competitor to Go? I guess it partly depends on how much they optimize the compiled binary size. Go does a really good job at static compilation, so it will be tough to compete.

<comment><USER15> Java AOT is compile JVM bytecode to native code during startup of JVM, which is different from Go's compile source to native and distribute platform specific binaries. So in this case, Java binary size remain same as before, which is .jar or .war binaries.

For Go, .go -> native

For Java, .java -> .class -> package .jar -> AOT native

For Go part I might be wrong, not working on Go professionally.

<comment><USER5> No, not during startup, AOT can happen at any time chosen by the developer or user: there's a command line tool that triggers it and I believe the plan is to integrate it with the "jlink" tool that produces standalone, app specific JRE images. So you can produce a native installer for each platform.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > Infrequently-used Java methods might never be compiled at all, potentially > incurring a performance penalty due to repeated interpreted invocations.

That sort of makes no sense. How can you incur a real performance hit if the uncompiled method is rarely called?

<comment><USER17> I would assume if the method is rarely called, but very complex or time- consuming when it is called.

Of course, I'm not an expert on JVMs, so I wouldn't know whether their analysis is synchronous or asynchronous or a mix of both.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> That's great! Won't it make the compiled executable platform specific?

<comment><USER5> You're intended to use it like this: either you distribute JARs and the recipient triggers the AOT compilation if they want it, or you distribute a "jlinked" JRE image that's inherently OS specific because it includes a bundled JVM. It's also possible that a future Java module format will allow the AOT compiled code images to come along for the ride next to the classfiles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> IKVM, the Java VM for .NET converted Java bytecode to .NET since a while, and crossgen/ngen can be used for .NET AOT(Mono also has AOT)

</comment><comment><USER20> How does this interact with classloading?

My general impression is that the design of classloaders is pretty actively hostile to making JVM startup fast.

<comment><USER21> AOT only applies to clases that have been AOT-compiled and are not transformed at runtime. Everything else will either still be need JITing or could potentially throw errors if pure AOT is desired.

AOT and JIT are not mutually exclusive. From the proposal itself:

> AOT libraries can be compiled in two modes:

> Non-tiered AOT compiled code behaves similarly to statically compiled C++ > code in that no profiling information is collected and no JIT recompilations > will happen.

> Tiered AOT compiled code does collect profiling information. The profiling > done is the same as the simple profiling done by C1 methods compiled at Tier > 2. If AOT methods hit the AOT invocation thresholds these methods are being > recompiled by C1 at Tier 3 first in order to gather full profiling > information. This is required for C2 JIT recompilations to be able to > produce optimal code and reach peak application performance.

</comment></comment><comment> premium-concern Is there anything this adds over Scala-native, which seems to be much further ahead already?

<comment><USER22> I think this could be a great complement to Scala-native. Right now, the project contributors have to spend effort translating the essential Java libraries that would allow Scala-native to be successful. This could really ease that job for them. It could potentially make all the Java code ever written available to Scala-native.

The other thing it adds is the backing of a giant, like Oracle, which can bring stability and peace of mind to some people, when deciding whether to adopt the technology or not.

<comment> premium-concern I think this assumes that Oracle

\- can ship something in time

\- and that it will be generally available for developers (looking at how hard Oracle pushes their Java department to invent commercial features they can sell, I'm not sure about that)

Looking at it, I assume that this will go the way of GWT ... not starting from "how can we make Java a good citizen in this new ecosystem?", but "here we have 100% of Java, the JDK and the JVM ... how can we compile this with full fidelity into X?".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> not sure why this isn't a transparent feature implemented via caching.

<comment><USER24> Hotspot's JIT compiled code tends to be pretty specialized based on runtime profiling information, which may not necessarily be similar between different runs even the class itself hasn't changed, or (in an extreme case) even if none of the code has.

Some other JVMs (at least Azul's Zing) try to solve this by cache profiling information to speed up code generation.

<comment><USER8> I believe the ReadyNow technology used by Zing records what methods are compiled at which level, then trigger a compilation of those methods at start up. So you effectively use profiling information from the previous run to inform the next run of what the final target state is, allowing the warm up times to be dramatically reduced.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> it's a gcj comeback?

</comment><comment><USER26> resurrect me when it's there [https://github.com/search?p=3&q=jaotc&type=Code](https://github.com/search?p=3&q=jaotc&type=Code)</comment>


Is the Dark Mail Technical Alliance Dead? - <AUTHOR>

Dark Mail[1] isn't the only attempt to secure email exchanges, but it's certainly received some attention, and I and others were curious what it would lead to and how it might help improve email security.
But the website is dead[2] with no DNS, despite the WHOIS[3] showing it was recently updated and won't expire until 2018.
The Kickstarter was updated[4] on August 28, 2014, which was just 2 months ago, despite some backers saying they haven't gotten their code[5].
- Is Dark Mail still a thing, or is it now a dead project?
- If it's still alive, where is a good place to follow the project?
- If it's dead, have any other email encryption efforts absorbed/incorporated its work?
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Mail_Alliance
[2]: https://www.darkmail.info/
[3]: https://who.is/whois/darkmail.info
[4]: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ladar/lavabits-dark-mail-initiative/posts
[5]: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ladar/lavabits-dark-mail-initiative/comments?cursor=7705576#comment-7705575 <comment><USER2> They may just be AFK. Apparently some of the people behind it are on the road at a conference. [https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=darkmail&src=sprv](https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=darkmail&src=sprv)

<comment><USER2> update: Callas says control was transferred to @kingladar in mid-October, so it's meant to come back, but it's a work in progress.</comment></comment>


A new end-the-world scenario: Photosynthetic Mirror Cells - <AUTHOR> http://www.overcomingbias.com/2010/12/ban-mirror-cells.html

<comment><AUTHOR> The end-the-world scenario is this: A droplet of photosynthetic cyanobacteria escapes into the wild. Since they are immune to natural predators, they take over the niches of oceanic photosynthetic organisms, converting more and more of the planet's photosynthetic biomass to inedible mirror-life. Since ocean photosynthesizes are at the foundation of so many food webs, many ecosystems crash, civilization falls, homo sapiens goes extinct.

Eventually, something will evolve to eat the mirror-life, but by then we'll all be dead.

<comment><USER2> I'm not buying the idea that simply having mirrored proteins is enough of an advantage for an organism that it would be able to completely out-compete the majority of already existing natural organisms.

<comment><USER3> I agree. It would seem to me that if such organisms had such a big advantage in the wild they should have already evolved independently.

<comment><USER4> Evolution doesn't seek out advantages, it just happens statistically that changes which carry advantages have more probability of rising to fixation within a species. Plus as ptpu touched on (and I'd wager he's more knowledgeable than I am) it's probably hard to even get the necessary mutations let alone having them stick around, or the species lasting long enough, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Even if predators can't metabolize the mirror molecules, they can still eat them (possibly dying afterwards). So you'd need to release the mirror algae( ?) in very large quantities for them to overcome the predatory pressures in their environment.

It also means that by killing predators (zoo-plankton), mirror algae are creating a niche for standard algae too. So you could end up with a soup of R and L life, but diminished predatory activity.

<comment><AUTHOR> There would be evolutionary pressure for the predators to be able to distinguish the mirror algae and not eat them. Such predators would undoubtedly arise, which would give mirror-algae an evolutionary advantage.

Mirror-algae would only have to be released in large enough quantities to gain a toehold.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's not like viruses and antibiotics are the only thing keeping OTHER cells from taking over the planet - which seems to be the crux of the conjecture.

I call shenanigans.

</comment><comment><USER7> Sweet Jesus! Scientists have discovered gravity! In addition, to add insult to injury, as things get closer they only increase the gravity between them. Soon, the world will collapse into a swirling singularity if we don't take swift, immediate action. Refrain from forming crowds. Be cautious not to marry your dinner service. Only you can prevent black holes.

/sarcasm

The reasoning of this article is incredibly specious. There is no adequate evidence or inference that mirror cells _would_ have any advantages over standard life forms. Isomers aren't incredibly divergent structures that nature fails to handle on a massive scale. Isometric molecules are a basic part of molecular life. Mirror cells would have the same biotic survivorship of the rest of the cells on the planet.

By synthesizing cells that use a proportion of molecules that have an inverse chirality to the majority of biotic life we're not exactly making cancer airborne and contagious.

<comment><USER5> They wouldn't have an inherently higher survivorship, but it would be toxic to predators, wiping them out (either directly by toxicity, or indirectly by starvation), at the same time as growing and spreading further. Natural evolution itself is unlikely to develop an organism capable of metabolizing mirror sugars, fats, proteins.

So this means people have to take an active role in eradicating this life form, if it ever comes to be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maybe someone with industrial chemistry experience can explain this to me- if an organism contains both normal and "mirror" ribosomes, it should produce both isomers of a given protein. How do you separate the mirror versions from the normal versions on a large scale?

<comment><USER7> Isomers do tend to act differently in certain situations. You can't shake someone's left hand easily with your right. Although I'm not certain on the exact mechanisms I believe it is possible to screen molecules of different chiralitites by using chemicals that only attach to a right hand or a left hand partner. They might also pass through mazes and filters in different directions.

It's a good question, and I'd love to hear a detailed answer.

<comment><USER9> Yes, there are many ways to make isomers--it is done commonly in the pharmaceutical industry. Can be done directly via synthesis, or a racemic mix can be separated by physical processes such as crystalization or enzymatically. Most enzymes have a chirality (like the glove analogy), so they tend to create produces with a single isomer.

This said, making an organism with mixed chirality would likely not be effective because, likely, many reactions would not proceed or would proceed with poor efficiency. All D- or all L- would work fine, but any evolved organism would suffer/die with a mix of D- and L-.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Relevant resource on the topic: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chirality_(chemistry)>

</comment><comment><USER10> What is a mirror cell?

<comment><USER8> A cell constructed entirely from molecules with complementary chirality[1] to that of the molecules in normal life on earth. Alternately, read the article:

      A life-form … based on mirror-image versions of earthly
      proteins and DNA.

[1]<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chirality_(chemistry)>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If this comes to fruition, we can at least console ourselves that Global Warming would be stopped (by killing out ocean-borne oxygen breathers).

</comment><comment><USER11> But really, just how much of organisms constitutes molecules that can be mirrored? And whether or not a lion's stomach can actually extract nutrients from a dead mirror gazelle, the mirror gazelle is still very dead. Even if it wasn't ripped apart, stomach acid is unconcerned with what 'handed-ness' a molecule is.

<comment><USER5> Recently it was proven possible to construct an organism through synthetic processes. This is still limited to very close copies of the real things, but could be adapted to produce reverse chiral molecules.

[http://www.jcvi.org/cms/press/press-releases/full- text/artic...](http://www.jcvi.org/cms/press/press-releases/full- text/article/first-self-replicating-synthetic-bacterial-cell-constructed-by-j- craig-venter-institute-researcher/)

Edit: Although, the added difficulty would be the need to reconstruct a cell completely out of mirror molecules for it to work. In the case above, the genome was injected into an existing cell and left to replicate. So it's not quite a trivial thing to do.</comment></comment>


YouTube TV - <AUTHOR> https://tv.youtube.com/welcome/ <comment><USER2> Former Aereo engineer here.

First off, there are really two main reasons for someone not to have a cable subscription:

1\. They don't care about the content

2\. Price sensitivity

At Aereo, we saw these sort of mix together to create hugely elastic demand.

For a while, we offered a $1 "day pass" that would give you access to live TV for 24 hours at a time.

During the Super Bowl and various award shows, we had _crazy_ numbers of people sign up for these day passes. We actually had to stop offering them, because we literally couldn't build out the extra capacity in a cost-effective way (remember, we needed distinct physical antennas and transcoders for every user we served).

It was tough enough to get people to pay $8/month for access to live broadcast TV and a cloud-based DVR. I have no idea how YouTube will convince anyone to pay $35.

If they can work out the licenses, I'd imagine something like a day pass would work well with consumers – but it's probably hard to get the economics of that to work out.

<comment><USER2> Just to clarify a bit:

I do think OTT is going to win out in the long run. But that's really just the underlying technology.

The tough part is getting rid of the bundle. I'm not so sure that'll happen, although I really hope it does.

All of these giant media companies would much rather sell you 10 channels for $20 than a single channel for $5.

If a la carte starts happening in a serious way, it's going to be a huge win for consumers. But almost nobody on the other side really wants it. They're going to fight tooth and nail to keep the bundles.

<comment><USER3> Bundling is actually win-win in practice. The economics work pretty well, which is why it's so persistent. It's a bit complex, take a look: [http://cdixon.org/2012/07/08/how-bundling-benefits- sellers-a...](http://cdixon.org/2012/07/08/how-bundling-benefits-sellers-and- buyers/)

<comment><USER4> It's only a win for the consumer if the shows they're interested in are subsidized enough by others being forced to pay for them that it offsets the amount that the consumer is forced to pay for the shows they're not interested in.

Basically it's a zero-sum game for the consumers amongst themselves while being a win for the seller.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a cool idea but it still falls very short by not serving users outside of the US. To the point where the welcome page doesn't even acknowledge that there may be global interest: [https://tv.youtube.com/welcome/](https://tv.youtube.com/welcome/) (enter your ZIP code, no country picker ... YouTube, you do realize you're on the internet, right?)

Does YouTube care about getting content to the world? Or just getting as many of their fingers in the pie as possible and abusing the current geo-restricted licensing model while they can?

<comment><USER6> As someone who has lived in many different countries, I find this stuff so frustrating. When I was living in England, my wife and I wanted to watch Japanese anime (in Japanese). Luckily Crunchyroll exists and it has quite a large amount of content for a very low price (I think we were paying 4 pounds per month). But now that I'm back in Japan, we want to watch shows from BBC... basically not possible legally. I really enjoyed watching cycling on Eurosport. Good luck.

I really wonder who is going to pay $35 a month for US shows, while you are already in the US. There are just so many other ways to get that content.

I hope one day before I die the media companies will realise that their old idea of breaking up the world into pieces and sublicensing is a stupid one.

<comment><USER7> You can watch iPlayer via a VPN or DNS service like unblock.us (do not know if they have service in Japan).

Note to the BBC - I would be to pay 3x the license fee to be able to watch on the internet with a subscription from outside the U.K. I bet if you opened it up world wide you would make more money then you do on the all the U.K license fees.

<comment><USER6> Even the BBC isn't powerful enough to do this. I can't remember who it was but one of the heads of the BBC said for a long time that content on BBC should be available for free everywhere. He reasoned that it was already paid for. It's one of the reason that they do so much free software development.

One of the shows that I want to watch is Match of the Day. Not sure what the situation is like now, but when I was in the UK the BBC was having a huge problem trying to negotiate the rights to put it on the iPlayer (strangely MOTD2 was OK ???). It would be impossible if they needed international distribution :-(

<comment><USER8> For freeview UK channels, you can watch some of them on FilmOn[1]

I'm a rugby fan and it's possible to watch high quality, BBC or ITV coverage of the Six Nations from abroad (BBC Scotland on Wales/Scotland has the higher quality for free). I'm pretty sure that Americans can't watch it though judging by comments on Reddit.

[1] [https://www.filmon.com/tv/bbc-news](https://www.filmon.com/tv/bbc-news)

<comment><USER9> I moved from Scotland to Finland, and one of the things I really missed was UK TV. I'd love to have paid for it, but there aren't any really great options.

Initially I bought a NowTV subscription, with a home-made proxy setup. That worked for a long time, but then they caught on, and most of the VPN-providers became blacklisted too.

Nowadays I'm using FilmOn with a Roku box. I've slowly weaned myself off UK TV, but there are afternoons where I just want to sit on a sofa and watch two hours of "Come Dine With Me" for the snarking. I wish I could pay for it ..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Being asked for a zip code shows that not even youtube is able to change the old broadcasting business model.

The day will come when TV streaming businesses takes over and removes the virtual location barriers set by the industry.

<comment><USER11> No kidding. The moment I saw the zip code requirement I knew it was going to be pointless.

Not only that but $35? Come on. There's not $35 worth of programming there. It's just the same old dumbed down broadcast TV that has been in decline for over a decade.

Compared to Netflix, Amazon, and even YouTube shows ABC, NBC, Fox et al just plain suck. As proof, after watching an awesome trailer for some new sci-fi show you may be totally pumped up to watch it until at the end when they announce, "only on ABC!"

"Well shit. So much potential, ruined."

<comment><USER12> At $35 per month, and since I can skip all ads... That might be something. (The Verge confirms you can skip ads [1].)

And the DVR forever thing... That might be very nice, especially if they put up tons of old stuff...

Plus, NOT paying my cable provider is worth a lot.

...and if this offers a way to Download content to my phone, to watch offline...?

[1] [http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/28/14750894/youtube- streaming...](http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/28/14750894/youtube-streaming-tv- service-announced-hd-live-cable-channels)

<comment><USER13> I kind of assumed that at $35/month, there were no ads. You have to skip them? Seems to me that YouTube wants to have its cake and eat it too.

<comment><USER14> It's basic cable with unlimited DVR, but bring-your-own data pipe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm just not seeing 35$ a month worth of value. Sit coms? Get a grip, man. I feel like they should pay me to watch them. TV is a wasteland. Some cable channels are pretty good. SciFi, Comdey Central, sometimes FX. (I don't like giving money to Fox, but Always Sunny is the funniest thing ever made.)

If they had a way to pick channels and only pay for those, that would be worth looking at.

EDIT: Do you still have to watch commercials? I don't see anything about commercials. If there are commercials then not just "no", but "hell, f*ck you for asking, no".

<comment><USER16> You can't bash on sitcoms and call SyFy "pretty good." In my opinion, half the stuff in SyFy is worse than sitcoms.

<comment><USER17> SyFy has really upped their game in the past year or so. The Expanse, Killjoys, and The Magicians are good TV.

<comment><USER18> I'm actually really enjoying The Expanse and The Magicians (to the point where I bought one on Google Play and the other on iTunes). What's really cool is that I bought the current season up front and then get to watch the new episodes the day (or maybe day after?) they're released. I'm not sure if Syfy is the only channel doing that, but before these shows I was used to only being able to buy the season after it was released (e.g. Game of Thrones box set).

I'll have to check out Killjoys, given that you've put it between the two other shows that I enjoy. Thanks for the rec.

<comment><USER19> All networks are releasing shows the next day (except HBO has same day).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Um, no thanks.

Most of that content is uninteresting, free with an antenna, and loaded with commercial breaks. I would rather spend that money for a season pass on Amazon, or to go out and see a movie once a month. If money weren't an issue, my time is still better spent on Netflix or watching lectures by smart people on YouTube. I guess its fine if they want to attract the geriatric crowd, but I cant imagine people in my generation paying that much for a vastly inferior experience. As others have said, a cheaper day pass would be better, as there still is a place for live content. Whether or not that should be a form of life support for the old guard corporate media empire, that's up to you.

</comment><comment><USER21> "Unlimited cloud DVR" seems really pointless. Why not just save everything, as it airs, in a central archive that the users can browse at their leisure instead? It also seems to mean that you can't rewind channels you weren't watching, that you manually have to record stuff yourself. Really backwards of Google if my assumptions are correct.

It seems weird that Google aren't able to create/negotiate something relevant for today. All the things I talked about are becoming common for normal TV providers in Norway.

<comment><USER22> Because the TV networks don't want that, see: many of them opting out of the 3-day replay functionality on Sling. I'm sure Google does keep one copy of every show users have chosen to "record" instead of duplicating it, but networks don't want people just being able to access an entire series without effort (I'm guessing just because they are money-loving jackasses).

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> People commenting that $35 is too much for the content included - if you want an equivalent set of channels from Comcast/XFINITY, it will cost you almost 3x more. So it's a non brainer for me, and the fact I don't have to deal with Comcast is worth even more than saving ~60% of my monthly cable bill.

<comment><USER7> This of course is only true if you pay for cable TV.

I have Netflix and Amazon and the reset of the internet. I had a HDHomeRun hooked to an over the air but since I moved I have not hooked that up again yet as I need a huge mast to get reception.

You can use a VPN like service to get world wide streams also.

I do pay Comcast for a business internet connection to keep away from the data caps however.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is this similar to Direct TV Now[1]?

Both of these services seem like an interesting step forward, but then, who really wants to watch live TV anymore, besides sports fans? The whole idea of watching something at a specific time that it's aired just seems unimaginable to me after years of on demand streaming. Not to mention commercial breaks.

1\. [https://directvnow.com/](https://directvnow.com/)

<comment><USER25> Completely agree. Maybe 10 times a year I watch live TV, otherwise I want to choose a show and binge on episodes on demand. Unfortunately, the legal situation around licensing I think allows for "unlimited DVR" but not actually just an on-demand episode list. You have to setup your "own" recording of the episode, and your bits can be stored in the cloud for you. I'm not sure even if de-duplicating the bits runs into trouble.

<comment><USER26> last time I've had this conversation with cable execs, it was explained to me that even just de-duping the bits does in fact run into trouble. They have to store a complete copy for you, for your personal use.

<comment><USER27> Capitol v. MP3Tunes suggests deduplication is a-okay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > Stream ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC & more.

What's included in "& more"? I can get the listed channels from an antenna.

<comment><USER29> This really needs to beat PS Vue's selection to be competitive. SlingTV looks good but the lack of a DVR function is a non-starter. I'm not even sure why they bothered to even launch without that. Who watches live tv?

<comment><USER30> Sling's does have a DVR function, just not with most of the 'mainstream' channels, for whatever annoying business reasons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Wonder how many commercial breaks you'll get the privilege of watching for your 35 bucks

<comment><USER32> I wonder if they'll insert their own commercials instead, maybe you'll get some lower price at the end of the month.

<comment><USER33> This would actually be one of the absolutely immense capabilities Google (the advertising company) could bring.

I almost never watch cable/broadcast TV (don't have it at home, and haven't for 12+ years) so one of the things I notice when I do watch it is there are some commercials that are genuinely entertaining (well produced, funny, etc).

The issue is, after watching TV for an hour, when I see that 'entertaining' commercial for the 3rd time it is no longer entertaining.

Google can actually track what they are showing, and have an idea of who's watching. Don't show me the same commercial more than once per day (or every few hours), and definitely don't repeat the same one in a single show. Don't show me ads that are completely irrelevant. Track metrics on ads, and eliminate genuinely bad ads.

I'm not sure I'd ever come to a service where I both paid and watched ads, but this is basically the minimum necessary for me personally to watch content with ads at all.

Of the companies that would be able to pull this off, Google is definitely at the top of a very short list.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> In light grey on the bottom of the page, for me: "SHOWTIME® available for extra monthly charge"

Yup, this is going to be _exactly_ like Cable television, and it's no cheaper. No thank you, I cut that cord for a reason.

Maybe if it had no ads? But I'm sure it'll be live television with the ads. There's no point.

<comment><USER35> >it's no cheaper.

It's $25/mo cheaper than a plan from xfinity that includes all those channels (probably around $35-40 cheaper after the 12 month "trial" period, but they don't list those prices on the landing page).

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> When am I going to be able to choose my channels on an individual, channel by channel basis, and then receive a total cost based on those channels?

If I want ONLY the Science channel, then I should be able to purchase JUST the science channel for like, $5/mo.

<comment><USER37> The science channel will be a lot more than $5/mo if all the sports fans aren't forced to subscribe to it just to get their ESPN.

It sounds reasonable that ala carte pricing should be cheaper because you shouldn't have to subsidize channels you don't watch, but people forget that others are also subsidizing the channels they watch. The reality is that channels are already roughly priced according to their popularity and most people won't save much, if any, money with ala carte pricing.

<comment><USER38> Except the relative viewer numbers will be taken into account in their contracts with the cable companies.

If a channel attracts fewer customers to the package, it will get less money in return for its inclusion, so nothing is really being "subsidised".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> > $35/month

That's a series chunk of coin for something that you can get for free with an antennae.

I wonder how much of that is licensing. It's got to be a huge chunk of it.

Also, who watches any of those crap channels anyway?!

<comment><USER40> "free with an antennae" ... You can get ESPN, ShowTime, FXX via antennae?

<comment><USER41> ShowTime is _extra_ on top of the $35, and I don't see any other channels on the page that aren't OTA in my area (where'd you see ESPN?).

<comment><USER42> [https://youtube.googleblog.com/2017/02/finally-live-tv- made-...](https://youtube.googleblog.com/2017/02/finally-live-tv-made-for- you.html)

Includes a bunch of ESPN, Fox Sports channels

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Networks available:

[https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/wZJuVdp0HaH4GQiB- XNVz76qkd...](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/wZJuVdp0HaH4GQiB- XNVz76qkd1MShms8X0Vj9MYsGBA7MZ5q_oADJjGFjalgzWwhKW9BtpKRu9RDjA8KihyEaVwPkufGhNwhU4qwFwQccYh4hHTlNYdiVbsGepAnYcFzETGv4RA)

<comment><USER44> Just eye-balling but it looks pretty close to the PS Vue Access Slim package which is $29.99/mo:

[https://www.playstation.com/en- us/network/vue/channels/](https://www.playstation.com/en- us/network/vue/channels/)

<comment><USER43> YouTube Live does have an unlimited DVR and works on 6 accounts. I wonder if the service can be shared?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> > Coming soon. Get on the list to find out when YouTube TV launches where you > live.

Why the f __* internet content still depends on where I live in 2017.

<comment><USER46> Probably due to live sports blackout policies and such.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I'd just like to see when they start doing personalized ads for every different person. I know TV companies have started to do more targeted ads [1] but if there's a company that can do it, it's gotta be google. If there's enough ad revenue to go around, it could be a tipping point where the local channel rules cease to matter.

[1] [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-29/tv-ads- ar...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-29/tv-ads-are-about-to- get-personal-with-new-targeting-tools)

<comment><USER48> That's the last thing I'd like to see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I just think it's wonderful that this launched within hours of someone recommending twitter be turned around by being the go-to solution for interacting with and watching live tv.

</comment><comment><USER50> I don't really understand what's the point of this. YouTube is already my TV. With a little streamlining and a little bit more intelligence, I wouldn't have to even click the links and just switch on autoplay to stream all the interesting content I want to see for the day. That vision is not far away.

Is Google purposefully sabotaging their subscription integration in order to leave space for paid services?

</comment><comment><USER51> $35? What is this 1990?

The fundamental problem I think is that this is yet another offering of packaged channels, 90% of which I don't want. Okay, maybe not 90%, but in their initial channel offering I count at least 25 of the 46 channels I'm not even remotely interested in.

Once you drop sports, Spanish language content, kids content and some of the more useless news channels I'd be paying effectively paying $35/mo for local TV I can already get for free, USA, FX, Bravo, FX, Syfy and I guess...Youtube Red?

If I were to pay $1/mo for each channel I might watch, I might pay $4 or $5/mo for this.

Dump the live TV entirely, just put the shows up so I can binge watch the ones I want. The "cloud DVR" is a dumb gimmick, all the content is already sliced and diced and uploaded to some server somewhere anyway.

Ugh..this offering is probably only really of interest to sportsball enthusiasts who are desperate to cut the cord but can't.

<comment><USER46> You omitted AMC from your list, or are you not a fan of The Walking Dead and Into The Badlands?

Regardless, yeah, my wife likes Nebraska Football and I like Purdue Basketball so a service without BTN would be a deal breaker. And If I dropped my 200+ channel cable package (smallest I could get and get all of the things we both watch) and picked up either this or the $35 tier of Playstation Vue I'd save about $100 a month. We already have Netflix and Amazon Prime and I'd probably have to subscribe to HBO now for GoT and Westworld. I'd still save close to $100 a month AND get my sportsball!

<comment><USER51> Was AMC on the list? I must have lost it in the disinterest cloud that surrounded the four ESPNs.

In all seriousness, I believe that we may be approaching a tipping point where sports franchises are going to have to come to terms about offering other ways to watch their games. Lots of people I know who _do_ watch sports grumble about having to pay for 400 other channels they don't watch. So I know the feeling is mutual in some ways.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> They ask for zip code but don't ask for country, should I assume (again) that they mean the default (USA) country?

<comment><USER14> You should probably assume that if they ask for only a ZIP code (not a generic postal code) and don't ask for anything else that, yes, they are talking about the one country which uses ZIP codes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Is this the same as Aereo, the service that was shutdown by the supreme court, only with a valid rebroadcast license?

<comment><USER2> From a consumer standpoint, yes – except 4x more expensive. From a technology standpoint, definitely not.

Disclosure: I'm a former Aereo engineer

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> "NBA Basketball on Fox Sports Regional Networks" \- Would this would be a bit of a coup for YouTube? My regional sports network doesn't have any streaming options; not sure if other markets are more liberal with this.

Also, that wording...are they getting the whole regional network or just the NBA basketball?

<comment><USER55> If this gets around the blackouts, sign me up. Something legal and convenient... This is the way to gain back lost ground on the cord-cutters, and the reason we left Dish/Comcast/etc in droves in the first place. It is simply too complicated or inconvenient to legally get to the different types of entertainment I am interested in viewing.

On the contrary, I can see this going down the path where I am back up to $100/month for entertainment between Netflix, Hulu, YouTube TV, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Seems like a pretty steep price to watch network television. As a cord-cutter, I think its a great idea because you can't get the networks with SlingTV, and TV antennas suck. But yeah, I'm not going to pay $35 for network television. I'll just keep using my shitty antenna.

<comment><USER57> SlingTV has some local networks in some areas. And it costs at least $10 less than youtube and has more channels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Context: [http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/28/14750894/youtube- streaming...](http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/28/14750894/youtube-streaming-tv- service-announced-hd-live-cable-channels)

</comment><comment><USER59> I asked my questions in a "dupe" thread so reposting here.

From TV to internet to TV on internet to internet TV on any devices. One thing I wonder about is how people who purchase "bundles" traditionally will react. I'd imagine they are the biggest consumer of TV programs. (TV + INTERNET or TV + Phone + Internet style bundles). Will it end up costing the same when you break you bundle to only get internet from a provider and get "TV" from Youtube?

Another question I have is about the "cloud DVR". How does it work? Is the content already in a server somewhere so when I hit the "DVR" it just tags that? It makes no sense saving the same content multiple time because multiple people tried to DVR the same episode right?

Is lot of the modern TV already through internet? If not, won't this cause an increase in internet bandwidth used? Maybe it's no significant but i'm curious about it none the less.

There was a talk on HN about cell phones and FM being enabled on it. Will a similar thing happen on TV, i.e my TV won't work without internet in the future?

Does privacy concerns increase with this? Is it easier to track users view patterns and what not with this as opposed to traditional tv? Will it be more likely that people will post the episodes or clips they watch to youtube or will it be less common as it will be even easier for youtube to recognize and flag stuff? (I wonder if youtube will provide a tool to post tiny clips directly from TV so people can have discussions and what not as well). Thanks in advance if anyone takes time to answer any of my question!

Edit: [https://youtube.googleblog.com/2017/02/finally-live-tv- made-...](https://youtube.googleblog.com/2017/02/finally-live-tv-made-for- you.html)

It's unlimited but for 9 months. So you'll have to Re-DVR it when/if air's again i guess?

Makes more sense for people already paying for youtube red I guess? Creators on youtube red might get more traffic too possibly.

<comment><USER19> _Will it end up costing the same when you break you bundle to only get internet from a provider and get "TV" from Youtube?_

Yes, resistance is futile. ESPN won't accept less money per viewer "because Internet".

 _It makes no sense saving the same content multiple time because multiple people tried to DVR the same episode right?_

There are some convoluted and non-intuitive legal precedents about this topic, but yeah, Google is probably only keeping one copy.

 _won 't this cause an increase in internet bandwidth used?_

Yes, bandwidth usage has increased significantly in recent years, probably faster than Moore's Law.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Sports!!! All I need and care about for my $160 a month Xfinity cable bill is Sports. Unfortunately sports takes places on various channels (ESPN, ESPN2, FOX, CBS, CBS Sports, TNT, TBS, TruTV).

</comment><comment><USER61> All this so that I can not have one of those unsightly antennas near my tv? Sign me up! /s

No, really, this is too much money. And with data caps, I don't really think I'd get my $35 out of it.

Besides, who know what Ajit Pai is going to let Comcast do? Won't be long and I'll have choices like:

Basic internet - for reading email.

Basic Plus Internet - Basic internet + Amazon shopping (but no streaming)

Internet + streaming - Basic Plus Internet + Comcasts own streaming service.

Internet Premium - Internet + streaming + Netflix, Amazon and YouTube streaming.

etc...

</comment><comment><USER62> OK, one question I have is how am I supposed to view this content on the various TVs throughout my house? Will this be a new Roku app? Will I just use the old Roku YouTube app? Will I have to stream it from my laptop/phone? I think the answer to this question will determine how much traction they get. My parents, my wife, nor any other non technical folks are going to stream anything from their phone. I can't see how this will win.

</comment><comment><USER63> I really don't understand--those channels are free with an HD antenna. I don't know if this is possible anymore, but those channels used to be free through your cable cord, even without a cable box. ABC, fox, nbc, and cbs are free. Why pay $35 just to remove adds.

Are they including, AMC, MTV, etc? I don't think so or they would say so.

Ps. This is a serious question. Please someone help me understand how they are charging for free channels just to drop their ads (presumably)?

<comment><USER46> Yes, they are including AMC, BTN, SYFY, ESPN etc.

[https://youtube.googleblog.com/2017/02/finally-live-tv- made-...](https://youtube.googleblog.com/2017/02/finally-live-tv-made-for- you.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Just as a personal anechdote: I have cable for one reason -- my local cable provider has a monopoly on the A's. I cannot watch the A's play babeball without a $75 per month Comcast subscription. It is not included with the $30 shit tier cable they offer.

This fucking sucks, especially because baseball is as American as you can get. But then, charging people for stuff that used to be free is also as American as you can get.

</comment><comment><USER65> I don't think I'd personally use it as I have tv. However I can see it being useful for cord cutters. It would be nice to see some sort of bundling. Pay x amount, get youtube premium stuff, with movie rentals, and streaming tv with other google features etc such as google play/music. However have it broken up is a good option too. I think both options could be useful.

</comment><comment><USER66> This is cool, though part of the reason I like things like Hulu Plus is that I don't have to worry about commercials, and it's literally a third of the price.

I do find it interesting though; Youtube/Google is taking all the steps to be the next Time Warner or Comcast it seems. I wonder if this proves that that industry isn't impossible to break into.

<comment><USER67> The biggest problem with Google is their branding. They launched so many services - Google Music, Youtube Red, Youtube TV, Youtube Live, Hangouts Live, etc., it's just impossible to keep up on what they are actually trying to do. I am sure they have far less number of customers on any of these individual services than if they would have had if these were independent companies. They do everything and nothing they do recently is up to the mark.

<comment><USER68> (am googler, but don't work with any of the mentioned products)

Keep in mind that all of these products in many cases compete with other companies (music -> spotify, apple, ytr -> netflix/hulu originals, kinda, YTL -> twitch, YTTV -> cable providers). I, as a consumer, wouldn't want these things to all be bundled. I use spotify for my music, and I don't want to have to pay for Play Music or youtube red unless I use those services.

I can't even imagine how some kind of "unified google media" thing would work.

<comment><USER69> > I can't even imagine how some kind of "unified google media" thing would > work.

It's quite simple. Pay more than a few services (but not as much as all of them together) and get access to all of them. The concept isn't really hard at all. You can go a step further and give increasing discounts the more services you add if you don't want one package deal.

You guys already do it for Youtube Red/Google Play Music. It's not mindblowing to imagine it being expanded from there. There's a common account for all the services anyway, so from a technical perspective you'd have a common place to store subscription information if that's not already done.

<comment><USER68> Right, but from my perspective as a consumer, at least right now, the only service I'm even remotely interested in is YTTV, and the reverse would be even worse. If I didn't want the YTTV package, there's no way I'd pay $40/mo for play music or whatever. A la carte models are a lot more efficient, the reason I don't like cable (and comcast) is because of bundled services, why on earth would I want to move to another, even more bundled, service?

Plus you've only handled the subscription portion, even if somehow we fix that. Where do I view this content? Is there a unified media dashboard that connects to 3 parts of youtube, play, and such?

I guess my basic point is that these services seem useful for entirely different groups of people. Why would consumers want them bundled, either technically or economically, and similarly, why would Google?

<comment><USER70> Think about it this way. Netflix wanted to separate their DVD and streaming into separate companies, so there would be different websites for each. Consumers complained about that so much that they changed their mind and stayed with one. If Google/YouTube started with a single product and broken it out like it is now, people I think would rightly complain.

I think the most egregious thing is music, rather than YouTube Red or this service itself. There's Google Play where you can buy music, Google Play Music where you can subscribe like Spotify, and YouTube Red also includes unlimited music on top of the shows on Red but is somehow different than Google Play Music. I guess what I would suggest if I had any say in things is just killing the Google Play Music and Google Play Movie/TV brands, and moving the content to YouTube and maybe integrating YouTube into the Google Play app on phones. YouTube already has movies, so it would just be a matter of making the music and live streaming part of it more visible on the home page. I don't see any links to them on my front page.

<comment><USER67> I would say - just brand them as completely different services unless they are totally dependent. Just because movies are served on top of YouTube doesn't necessarily mean that they literally have to be part of YouTube website. Why not a website like "MovieTube" with its own website and brand? It makes YouTube a single focused website intended to find any/all random videos on internet and people understand when they hear "MovieTube". With YouTube Red, YouTube TV, YouTube Live, YouTube Movies, etc., it is hard to remember which is what.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> I don't see the value proposition here. Can anyone explain what I'm getting for $35 (over cheap or free alternatives)?

<comment><USER43> 1\. Cable only channels in addition to OTA channels

2\. Unlimited DVR

3\. 6 accounts to possibly share.

<comment><USER71> Thanks. I missed point 1 and 3. Point 2 has almost no value these days unless you don't have Hulu/Amazon/Netflix, which I guess some people don't.

I watched commercial TV for the first time in a few years the other day and lost interest in what I was watching because of it. I don't think I can go back now.

<comment><USER14> > Point 2 has almost no value these days unless you don't have > Hulu/Amazon/Netflix, which I guess some people don't.

A lot of their content is from sources that aren't on Hulu, Amazon, or Netflix (or which are on one or more of those with a significant delay), so DVR is still valuable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> The page is extremely void of any details, reminds me of Cable companies landing pages. This is odd because I noticed there has been a recent explosion of third party live CNN, FOX News, ... channels, not sure if this is because YT made their copyright detection algorithms more lenient as a segue to YT TV.

</comment><comment><USER73> Meanwhile, I am very happy with youtube.com/tv on my TV. No worldwide availability is ridiculous these days.

</comment><comment><USER74> Initial reactions:

1) Will it have ESPN? I only really care about ESPN on a daily basis for TV.

2) _" Never run out of DVR storage"_ -> Will I be able to easily save recordings of any show on Youtube TV? I value this a lot for particular sporting events and have years' worth of footage backed up.

<comment><USER75> Yep, it has ESPN, ESPN2 and 3 too. Some posters referred to the channel list:

[https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/wZJuVdp0HaH4GQiB- XNVz76qkd...](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/wZJuVdp0HaH4GQiB- XNVz76qkd1MShms8X0Vj9MYsGBA7MZ5q_oADJjGFjalgzWwhKW9BtpKRu9RDjA8KihyEaVwPkufGhNwhU4qwFwQccYh4hHTlNYdiVbsGepAnYcFzETGv4RA)

and the blog post

[https://youtube.googleblog.com/2017/02/finally-live-tv- made-...](https://youtube.googleblog.com/2017/02/finally-live-tv-made-for- you.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> > $35/month.

With Ads? Ouch, NO.

</comment><comment><USER77> $35/month ouch.

<comment><USER78> This is priced about the same as Playstation Vue, DirecTV Now, and Sling for the channels offered. Looks like they're trying to win people over with features (DVR, 6 account profiles, etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> I'd be cooler if I didn't have this shiny new 1tb data cap on my internet now.

<comment><USER80> Assuming a bitrate of 10Mbps and a solid 7 hours of sleep per night, you'd have to spend 43% of your waking hours watching TV to hit the cap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> So $35 to stream what is already available free over the air in HD, with a $20 antenna?

<comment><USER82> For what it's worth, not everyone can pick up all of those channels with a $20 antenna. I can pick up NBC, PBS, and a few odd local channels with no national affiliation. I'd imagine those in cities and metro areas would probably have more luck. But anyway, the blog post [1] has a full(er) list of channels. But even then it doesn't look price-competitive with Sling for some reason.

[1] - [https://youtube.googleblog.com/2017/02/finally-live-tv- made-...](https://youtube.googleblog.com/2017/02/finally-live-tv-made-for- you.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> With $35/mo, it looks like another half-ass effort like Google phone hardware business. For 10 dollars extra over internet charges per month I get all the channels that this post explicitly mentions + some more I never watched.

</comment><comment><USER84> You announce this on February 28 without TBS, TNT, or truTV? I get that Turner had you, but come on. Wait until April to announce if you're not gonna have them. Or even until June, when the NBA conference finals are over.

<comment><USER69> Have you found a source for the "& more" to definitively say that those are not included? Because as far as I could see, all we know is that the big ones are included and that there's _others_ but what those are isn't very clear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> Very interesting. It's a shame Apple shied away from providing TV streaming.

<comment><USER86> I don't think Apple shied away from it so much as they assumed their weight in the consumer space would be important and acted like dicks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> Nice... Only took them 11 years ([http://red66.com/2006/04/google- media/](http://red66.com/2006/04/google-media/))

</comment><comment><USER88> I have cable TV even tough I pretty much never watch it. I don't want it, but to remove it is more expensive than to keep it. I don't have a good incentive to pay more to have more TV.

</comment><comment><USER89> Why would anyone want to pay $35 per month to access tired old ad supported programming when they can get subscriptions from 3 streaming services for that price.

<comment><USER17> I would - just for sports. My family subscribes to Netflix, HBO, Hulu (with Showtime), and YouTube Red and I still don't get live sports. I'd drop Hulu+Showtime (~$17) and YouTube Red (~$10). I'll be paying more, but then I'll get all NBCSN and Fox Sports which covers most of the motorsports I'm interested in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> Wow - good job. Literally people (myself included) were commenting this morning in the saving twitter thread about how something like this is really needed.

</comment><comment><USER91> What about [http://youtube.com/tv/](http://youtube.com/tv/) ? Is this a different thing?

</comment><comment><USER92> Why would I do this when a dtv antenna is a one-time charge of $35? Kodi + prime + dtv = never paying for TV again. Ever.

<comment><USER93> because many if not most people live in an area without good OTA coverage

<comment><USER92> I didn't think of this. Wouldn't that be a matter of purchasing a better, stronger antenna?

<comment><USER93> Always an option but you are still limited by what's available to you. - [http://www.tvfool.com](http://www.tvfool.com)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER94> What does "6 accounts, 1 price" mean?

<comment><USER78> From the blog post (for what it's worth, I think it's a good idea):

>Six accounts, one price. Every YouTube TV membership comes with six accounts, each with its own unique recommendations and personal DVR with no storage limits. You can watch up to three concurrent streams at a time.

[https://youtube.googleblog.com/2017/02/finally-live-tv- made-...](https://youtube.googleblog.com/2017/02/finally-live-tv-made-for- you.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER95> Sorry, this is TheirTube, not YouTube. The whole point of YouTube is democratization and sharing of personal videos.

</comment><comment><USER96> It's quite tragic to see cable reinvented piece by piece. Piracy still remains the only unifying force.

</comment><comment><USER39> I'm guessing there's no way to sign up for this and not have Google keep track of my TV habits.

</comment><comment><USER97> Who gonna pay $35/month? It does not make sense when you can get TV subscription for $10/month

</comment><comment><USER98> $35/month. Even from the perspective of living in ripoff Australia, that seems expensive.

</comment><comment><USER99> Any thoughts on why they've chosen tv.youtube.com over youtube.tv?

(youtube.tv redirects to .com)

</comment><comment><USER57> So just like Sling except fewer channels and more expensive?

</comment><comment><USER100> um, sorry youtube, that already exists and cheaper: [https://www.playon.tv/cloud](https://www.playon.tv/cloud)

¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

</comment><comment><USER101> Is Google launching something that Apple passed on a while ago?

</comment><comment><USER102> They would have to strip advertising for this to be worth it

</comment><comment><USER103> Is it DRM-free HTML5, or it's using DRM blobs and EME?

</comment><comment><USER104> Cant you get all those channels with a digital antenna?

</comment><comment><USER105> Zip code.

As usual only for Americans.

This time they didn't even pretend otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER106> I don't have any hopes of it coming India.

</comment><comment><USER107> $420 a year to watch broadcast TV?

</comment><comment><USER108> Why would anybody pay 35$ for crappy TV if Netflix is only 10$?

</comment><comment><USER109> $35 to get the channels you get OTA...

</comment><comment><USER110> Wow, so is this the official beginning of the age of decentralized cable- companies?

As a cable cutter, one thing I am really looking forward to is the day that I can flip channels again very easily, without having to think about what I am doing.

<comment><USER82> This doesn't seem like anything more than what Sling has been offering for years....Am I missing something?

<comment><USER110> I never used Sling and I practically forgot about it since I learned of it long time ago. I think it one point I heard some rumors that it was dead.

Anyway, can you just flip channels with it, like cable? Perhaps I will check it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER111> April 1st is early this year, isn't it?</comment>


Keyword Analysis Of The McCain And Obama Acceptance Speeches - <AUTHOR> http://www.mediapost.com/blogs/search_insider/index.php?p=871

<comment><AUTHOR> It is behind login but totally worth it.

Some extracts:

\- most used word by Obama - "promise" (31 times) and by McCain - "country" (30 times)

\- Under issues, Obama's top word "economy" and McCain "jobs"

\- Two-word phrase used most by Obama was "John McCain" (15 times

<comment><USER2> Heh. Obama mentions McCain very often and McCain mentions Obama very often. They might as well give speeches for each other!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Also check out these visualizations (StreamGraph, Document Contrast, Document Cloud) of the Obama McCain speeches:

[http://neoformix.com/2008/ObamaMcCainConventionSpeechCompari...](http://neoformix.com/2008/ObamaMcCainConventionSpeechComparison.html)

(stumbled on this site via Summize - if you have not seen this site before - Neoformix is all about 'illustrating patterns in data')

</comment><comment><USER4> Another interesting content analysis: [http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_09...](http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_09/014585.php)

McCain spent half of his acceptance speech talking about himself...

</comment><comment><USER5> For those who don't want to sign up: bugmenot.com

Brilliant article, thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Mediapost has nice surveys, articles all the time. I have subscribed.

And thanks for bugmenot :)</comment></comment>