Public Policy That Makes Test Subjects of Us All - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/science/07tier.html

<comment><USER2> _The city's health commissioner, Thomas R. Frieden, has enumerated the results. If the food industry follows the city's wishes, the health department's Web site announces, "that action will lower health care costs..._

Hidden in all of the nonsense is the scary grain of truth. As healthcare becomes more socialized and less free market oriented, the government will have ever greater incentives to _force_ whatever they think is healthy (at the time) on you in order to save a buck.

Its one thing for the government to warn you that transfats are unhealthy (even by forcing manufacturers to label products as such). Its quite another thing to decide that since they are paying for all or part of your healthcare, you no longer have the right to eat transfats and increase their costs.

<comment><USER3> "the government will have ever greater incentives to force whatever they think is healthy (at the time) on you in order to save a buck"

You mean, as opposed to the way the health insurance companies reduce coverage and claim pre-existing conditions and in general do everything they can to make you pay more, and get less, in order to save a buck?

I'm sorry, buddy. The free market has failed. I'll take government-style health care like they have in Canada over what we have here. At least then we can vote the sons of bitches out if they pull shenanigans.

<comment><USER2> I agree that the current system is broken. I actually think that "health insurance" tied to employment as it currently stands is the opposite of free market but I can still switch health insurance providers much more easily than I can politicians.

I know 2 different Canadians who have flown to the US to get MRI's instead of waiting the months required to get them in Canada. I'm not convinced "Canadian style" is the best way either.

What I'm most afraid of though, isn't another failed healthcare system, _Ayn Rand_ style, or _People's Republic_ style. Its when a politician decides that my body in some way belongs to him and he can decide what I can eat. That's what I'm gettin at here; I'm certainly open to debate the merits of different healthcare systems. I just wanted to point out that particular unintended consequence/perverse incentive.

<comment><USER4> That perverse incentive has concerned me for a while, but I'm less worried about it now that I'm living in Argentina. Argentina has a sort of hybrid public/private healthcare system with universal coverage paid by the government, so the perverse incentive in question does exist here. And the government isn't extremely accountable, doesn't work very well, and in some ways is much more intrusive than the US government. Nevertheless, they seem to handle this problem pretty well. If it's not a big problem here, I think it isn't likely to be a big problem in general.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Remember when eggs were bad?

Does anyone think that an "egg tax" would have been eliminated when we found out that eggs weren't as bad as previously assumed?

</comment><comment><USER6> Moral of the story: keep most of the country as a control group for a while. It's the scientific way.

Seriously, this article wouldn't apply if only the government meddling was on a smaller, more controlled scale.

</comment><comment><USER7> This strikes me as relatively good journalism.</comment>


Haxe 3 Released - <AUTHOR> http://haxe.org/download <comment><USER2> I've been haxing for some time now, and I know of at least one startup that uses/used it (Profitably).

In short, Haxe can produce swf and neko binaries and C++, C#, JS, Java and PHP source.

Language itself is, for my humble old school OOP taste, really well done and compiler is _blazing fast_. So fast that people now implement real-time error checking by simply compiling project (with few additional flags).

Real perk here for me (a game dev) is not so much Haxe as libraries for cross- platform development, namely NME, which appears to have some restructuring going on right about now [1]. It is SDL-based haxe library that's really the one powering cross-platform game deployment. And it's pretty great at that, but a bit unstable. The goals outlined in the video linked should get that on the right track.

Of other interesting things, 2d physics engine named nape [2] comes to mind. It blows Box2d out of the water in oh-so-many aspects, particular ones being memory and framerate stability.

[1] <http://vimeo.com/66996045>

[2] <http://napephys.com>

Edit: ...and it has absolutely amazing community of doers!

<comment><USER3> > In short, Haxe can produce swf and neko binaries and C++, C#, JS, Java and > PHP source. [..] Of other interesting things, 2d physics engine named nape

If Haxe can compile into JS, it would be cool to have online demos of things like nape (their site requires flash when you click play, not sure if that is to run flash or show a video).

Are there are online demos showing an interesting Haxe project compiled into JS?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Haxe is pretty cool from a language standpoint. It's certainly an improvement in some areas on its closest relative, ActionScript 3. Particularly "enums"[1] (ADTs) are excellent to have, as I've been spoiled by them in Haskell, as well as proper generics, "switch" as an expression, and other such goodies. Bit of a shame that they kept the fat old "function" keyword, though. The type inference system is also a bit lacking—I don't like how it can depend on control-flow order whether you get a type error or not[2].

I recall that the compiler would often produce different behaviour on different backends, including crashes. Presumably this has been addressed in recent versions? It's one of the reasons we chose AS3 when developing Spaceport[3] and stuck to matching Flash behaviour as closely as possible.

[1]: <http://haxe.org/ref/enums>

[2]: <http://haxe.org/ref/type_infer>

[3]: <http://spaceport.io/>

<comment><USER5> I don't see how type inference in Haxe is worst than AS3 type inference. Think it stands on its own on that particular point.

I also never had a crash with something out of the running service compiler, even earlier since I started using it at 2.x, you probably evaluated it in a 1.x version ? You talk of enums but that was at the top of the "pros" around 4/5 years ago.

Leaving AS3 and being able to target all the systems I want to target, was the reason Haxe became valuable to me. So that "reasons we chose AS when developing Spaceport" is sort of telling about Spaceport and nothing else. It isn't an option for everybody, really. You can build all sorts of projects on it, from a server daemon, to a casual game on mobile through the usage of Haxe NME / openFL. Things have moved on, so to say.

<comment><USER6> It's rather bad compared to Haskell or (Oca)ml, in fact it's bad even compared to Scala.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This was once on my list of things to learn, because every time I looked at Flash, I saw that Adobe wanted a three-or four-figure sum for the proprietary toolchain, and the open-source toolchain was very poorly documented (and what little documentation existed seemed to expect you to know the terminology and workflow of the proprietary toolchain).

Imagine a world where gcc is the only open-source C compiler, and gcc required you to run preprocessor, compiler, assembler and linker directly, manually, and you had never used any compiled language before, and the gcc docs assumed you know which of these programs you needed to run, and in what order, to compile your programs, and these components were each separate downloads written by different people and offered for download alongside all the individual tools in the binutils suite. So you have no clue which of the dozens of tools you actually need, in what order you need to run them, you've also never written in any language but Python and Javascript before, and the things you need to do to get programs to run in those languages is nothing like what C wants, and none of the information you lack appears to be written down anywhere that your very best Google efforts can find.

In this world, of course you can pay Microsoft $300 for a C compiler with an IDE which takes care of everything for you, and a lot of people swear by C and do amazing things with it, but really you don't want to spend that kind of money for a tool you know nothing about, and so you just sort-of limp along with Python and Coffeescript, and miss out on the C world entirely.

That's the situation Flash development was in before Haxe came along.

Of course, now you can use HTML 5 canvas for stuff that previously required Flash, so Flash is kind of obsolete.

<comment><USER8> FlashDevelop is (and has been for 3 years at least) a very solid and easy-to- pick-up way to develop Flash/AIR applications without having to touch anything proprietary AFAIK, except the runtime of course. The SDK might technically be proprietary in some sense, but is open source and managed by Apache (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Flex>). Overall, you don't need to purchase anything, and the free workflow is IMO even better than those you have to purchase, including FlashBuilder and FlashCSx.

FlashDevelop is also a great IDE for Haxe development, so overall, I'd say put these back on your list to learn. :-)

I think Flash still has some life left in its newer form of AIR for mobile. Having done a lot of HTML5 stuff the past year, I do miss the relative simplicity of it, not having too many cross-browser headaches. Going to try the Haxe->HTML5 workflow soon and see how that works out.

<comment><USER7> > for 3 years at least

I think I researched the state of Flash for developers about 2000, and again about 2005, and last looked at it around 2008 or 2009. Haxe was just getting started the last time I looked at it, and I've heard it mentioned a couple places since then. Anything that's happened in Flash development-land in the last three years isn't on my radar.

Really, my early ventures into Flash-land were so discouraging, and in more recent years the advent of HTML5 was so encouraging, that Flash may end up permanently relegated to my low-priority pile of things like Lisp, Prolog, Haskell and Unity, things I want to look into again when I have mountains of free time and/or money to spend on extremely unfamiliar things, which might possibly give me interesting new capabilities, but for which an initial cost- benefit analysis has ended in pointed, skeptical questions that I can't answer very well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> New features: <http://haxe.org/manual/haxe3/features>

</comment><comment><USER10> I've heard great things about Haxe for game development. Apparently it beats the crap out of Flash for portability when target desktop and mobile.

</comment><comment><USER11> Is something like Haxe really that in demand?

I haven't heard of Haxe much (the last time was probably on here) but in theory it seems like a great idea.

I wonder why it's not more popular?

<comment><USER9> I personally wouldn't do any medium-to-large JavaScript project in anything but Haxe at this point.

> I wonder why it's not more popular?

It's a relatively young language (8 years old, but it's only been mature for a fraction of that). I think it just hasn't reached critical mass yet.

<comment><USER11> Very interesting.. I hadn't thought of this particular use-case (targeting Javascript)...

You've had good success with cross-browser issues?

<comment><USER12> HaxeJS comes with a built in JQuery extern, so you can basically make a page the same way you would with a JS/JQuery frontend, but you get the language feature and type checking benefits of Haxe.

JQuery should handle all your front-end cross-browser issues.

Also, you can do your backend in Haxe, and target the NekoVM (via mod_neko (single thread per request) or mod_tora (multi-threaded) for Apache) or NodeJS. Haxe could do this long before Dart showed up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> to make desktop/www apps in one go. However, I have not found one single complete UI solution that is completely cross platform for Haxe. It seems to me that it's a write-once runs everywhere BUT has librairies which are target specific (for GUI at least).

Correct me if I'm wrong because I would love to start developing on Haxe ... until I have a proper GUI lib\framework.

<comment><USER13> Let me correct my last post: I recently installed this in order to make desktop/www apps in one go (Haxe=>Desktopa and WWW). But I have not found any GUI Libs that are multitarget (CPP, www, IOS) etc.. Please correct me if I'm wrong I'd love to use this otherwise

<comment><USER2> This works rather well <https://github.com/RealyUniqueName/StablexUI>

But we're all pretty much _roll your own_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Slightly off topic. Not sure your affiliation or if someone from the project will read comments.

On the front page, if the designer could line the letters up with the bezels, I think it would look a little better. Only have Paint on this machine but: <http://imgur.com/uYYV8Qt>

<comment><USER15> I believe that 'misalignment' was intentional to preserve the illusion of depth between the placement of the devices. And while I agree that it's a tiny bit harder to read, lining the text up would just ruin the image for me; in fact, I think the text is too aligned _as it is_ to make it work in that context. If readability for that headline is a prime concern, I would just go with another image/presentation entirely.

Pedantic, I know... lol

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> As a front end developer doing a lot of UI work in AngularJS, where does Haxe fit for me?

<comment><USER17> Haxe "compiles" to JavaScript. So I imagine it may be suitable as a replacement for JavaScript if you wanted such a thing.

<comment><USER18> Using a program to convert from one language to another is "compiling". The recent backlash against the notion that Haxe, CoffeeScript, etc compile to JavaScript is annoying. The act of compiling does not require going to an object code based language.

<comment><USER19> Agreed, plus we also have a better word than compile for source-to-source compilation at the same conceptual level of abstraction above the machine: transpile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> one humble question: why is not popular?

</comment><comment><USER21> I must say that the site is pretty misleading with having a MacBook Air and iPhone in the mix there, since it cannot compile to Objective C...

<comment><USER22> Is that so? <http://www.nme.io/>

Aside from that, is Objective-C even a requirement for OSX/iOS development? Vanilla C should work too, as Objective-C is a superset of C89.</comment></comment>


How Late Zhou China Reverse-Engineered a Civilization - <AUTHOR> https://palladiummag.com/2020/07/10/how-late-zhou-china-reverse-engineered-a-civilization/ <comment><USER2> That the mohists became so irrelevant in later dynasties was in my opinion a great loss.

They were among the earliest universal consequentialists and great siege engineers.

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

<comment><USER3> My understanding is that to make an effective movement based on benevolence you need to be able to draw a line and say, "OK, if you do this much you're a good enough person and while more would be better we're not going to give you flak for not doing more." And the Mohists failed to succeed at doing this and had a purity spiral that wiped them out. Something we Effective Altruists have to bear in mind.

<comment><USER4> I see a similar problem in the vegan movement, with people going vegan only to be told that they're not doing enough due to owning a car with a leather steering wheel, or buying coconut oil that contributes to destruction of orangutan habitats.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 托古 or "attributing to the ancients" was a standard technique used by Chinese writers arguing for their positions, likely appealing to the tradition of ancestry worship. So we really can't take the claim of reverse engineering from the Zhou at its face value. It's more likely that the many schools of thoughts were original to the time, stimulated by the intense competition among the multitude of states.

<comment><USER3> The European Renaissance was very similar with lots of actual innovations being ascribed to the wisdom of the ancient Romans or Greeks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I recommend Han Feizi for anyone interested.

>Confucius died thinking himself a failure. He didn't manage to get a ruler to adopt his solution long enough for a full-scale test. Though he was able to gain the ears of a few statesmen, he lost political fights to other advisers and so fell from favor.

No he didn't. He, Buddha and Socrates were around the same era. I believe it's called the axial age. Socrates and him both were not well regarded in their times and knew that they both would be more well liked after their deaths. I've read that they both thought their time would come later. I don't understand why they said he thought himself a failure. Nobody who travels around believing these philosophical ideas can feel themselves a failure and continue to hold these philosophical ideas.

</comment><comment><USER7> Could one not argue that the Renaissance was Europe reverse-engineering the Roman and Greek civilisations? As per this article's main conceit.

<comment><USER8> As has been argued many times. There have been several important revivals of classical mediterranean patterns. A relatively recent one which stands out is the "Third Reich". US federal style is another example.

<comment><USER7> Well quite. My point was that this article presents the Chinese experience as unique, which it is not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ancient China has a very fascinating history. I think the world would be very different if the voyages started under the Prince of Yan would have been allowed to continue. China would have discovered the new world before Europe, and history would be drastically different. They really had impressive boats very early on.

</comment><comment><USER10> Chinese Thought: Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Science - Part 1 [https://courses.edx.org/courses/course-v1:UBCx+China300.1x+3...](https://courses.edx.org/courses/course-v1:UBCx+China300.1x+3T2018/course/)

Chinese Thought: Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Science - Part 2 [https://courses.edx.org/courses/course-v1:UBCx+China300.2x+3...](https://courses.edx.org/courses/course-v1:UBCx+China300.2x+3T2018/course/)

Excellent course.

</comment><comment><USER11> Interesting. One of the things that ancient China had that other comparable civilizations didn't was an intellectual culture that transcended the political divisions of the time. Which allowed for a lot of innovation, and spreading of knowledge. Closest thing in Europe before the modern time is maybe late Rome, but it was fairly centralized, which made it harder for innovations to spread and take hold. Whereas ancient China had power spread out much more, even when it was notionally ruled by a single dynasty

<comment><USER12> Wasn't the church pretty much independent of the individual European kingdoms and empires? Also starting with the renaissance, but probably even before that, scientists and philosophers could move between courts.

<comment><USER13> The Church had its own religious purview but it took a while for it to become its own political force. In that respect it rose at the same time as the improvements in government, land management, international travel, trade etc. that occurred in the later half of the Middle Ages.

The first comprehensive system of intellectual dissemination came through universities, starting in the 11th/12th c. Those who wanted to study law went to Bologna, theology to Paris, medicine to Montpellier etc. Universities were international places where people used Latin as a vehicular language. Broke student spending their time drinking and living in hovels were legion and became a hotbed of radicalism [1].

By the time the Renaissance came around, there was an entire industry of private education with lay academies everywhere and teachers travelling all over the continent.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Paris_strike,_12...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Paris_strike,_1229)</comment></comment></comment>


Ebikes: I Sing the Ride Electric - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-teicholz/ebikes-i-sing-the-ride-el_b_13860700.html <comment><USER2> I have been experimenting with e-bikes over the past few months and converted a standard BMX to an e-bike over the last weekend. They are unbelievably good. You have to try one to understand how much fun they are.

E-bikes have the potential to revolutionize urban transportation, particularly in European cities but we are being stopped here by heavy regulation.

To be road legal in most European cities an e-bike needs to 1\. Be less than 250 watts, and: 2\. Only work when you are actively pedaling, otherwise it should come to a halt and, 3\. Stop powering the user once it reaches 25kmph.

If you break any of those rules you need to have a motorbike license and have the e-bike licensed (which is practically impossible). These restrictions are unnecessary and heavy handed. There should be some flexibility in the law allowing someone to use a low to medium power e-bike without being forced to pedal and being let drive at a reasonable speed. Every bike used is a car off the road. I've written to my local transportation minister who replied to say that they have no intention of changing the law anytime soon which is a real shame.

<comment><USER3> As a regular rider of a non-ebike, I like the restrictions. It's unnerving to be passed by a silent 25mph (40kph) unlit e-bike on a trail at night. 25kph sounds more reasonable, about the same speed a typical human can bike on a flat road.

Easing the restrictions too much results in near-motorbike performance in trails and bike lanes shared with human powered riders.

<comment><USER4> > unlit e-bike

Well there we got a easy-to-fix problem. I never turn of the light, and its not like a led bike light is going to A), decrease travel time, B) ruin the environment.

Is there a good reason why the light isn't always on when the ignition (ie key) is turned?

<comment><USER5> IMO this is evidence of the problem with bikes and ebikes in general. They're not an integrated, complete solution where (like cars) you just turn them on and go. At the moment ebikes are preassembled kits with a standard bike, electric battery and motor, and (if you're lucky) lights added, but most people will have to add their own lights powered by separate batteries, locks, and other accessories.

For the market to really take off there should be a maintenance free, complete solution. One of the many things would be that the lights are integrated to the rest of the electrics.

Also one could imagine removing most of the moving parts of a bike: No chain or gears (use a dynamo and a motor). Steering wheel is probably not needed if you have some kind of electronic self-balancing mechanism (like the Segway). You could arrange the wheels side by side instead of front and back to make the whole machine much smaller. Integrate the bike lock into the bike so you don't have to carry a separate lock, with lock/unlock controlled by your cellphone. Integrate the lights into the chassis and make them work automatically. Fewer moving parts => less maintenance => cheaper to buy and operate.

<comment><USER3> If you still want it to be reasonably human powered, replacing the chain with a generator+motor is a bad idea. A chain has less than 2% loss, while a motor- generator set will have 10 times or greater losses. Even a few watts of loss from a generator hub is noticable... losing 10 - 20% of power would make the bike nearly unrideable for any significant distance.

I'm not sure how you'd remove the handlebars and still allow steering, one key piece of bicycle steering is counter steering -- you actually steer left to tilt the bike over so you can go to the right. (for gentler turns you can shift your body weight, but if you need to make a sudden turn to avoid an obstacle, you use countersteering)

Likewise, I don't see how you'd have 2 side by side wheels on a "bike" that's designed to go 30mph+, how would you stop quickly without cartwheeling?

<comment><USER5> I should say I'm envisaging an electric-assist bike so (some) losses would be fine since they are made up by the battery. Of course if it's 10x the loss of a regular bike that could be a problem - I've no idea if your figures are correct or represent the state of the art.

> Likewise, I don't see how you'd have 2 side by side wheels on a "bike" > that's designed to go 30mph+, how would you stop quickly without > cartwheeling?

I guess you'd stop the motor and the electronic self-balancing would do the rest (in a very hand-waving way, but Segways are an existence proof that something like this is possible, although perhaps not at 30mph).

<comment><USER3> Here's a chart of a typical electric bike motor efficiency -- peak efficiency is about 85% at 30mph. At 15mph, efficiency is closer to 50%. (that doesn't mean you get greatest range at 30mph since wind resistance increases with the cube of the rider's speed, so is 8 times greater at 30mph than at 15mph)

[https://endless- sphere.com/w/index.php/EBike_Efficiency#Dete...](https://endless- sphere.com/w/index.php/EBike_Efficiency#Determining_Peak_Motor_Output_- _Simple-Cheap_Method)

And that's just for the motor, ignoring losses in the generator.

Electric bikes don't need perfect efficiency, the Specialized Turbo S has a 700W-hour battery and gives 30 - 60 miles of range (2 - 4 hours at 15mph). A human pedaling at 15mph puts out around 100W, so even if the motor is only 50% efficient, the bike can still travel for 50 miles at that rate on one charge.

With a Segway, you stand well over the wheels and can shift your butt (and center of gravity) as far to the rear as possible to make an emergency stop. I don't see how you'd do that with anything resembling a seated bicycle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I built an e-bike last weekend, I have just 35 miles on it so far and I've convinced 1-2 friends to get one already. I love riding but my enthusiasm in winter is severely diminished; this has rekindled it for me.

Anybody here who is interested in an e-bike should strongly consider building up an existing bike rather than dropping $4k on one of the ones mentioned in this article. All the ones mentioned in the article are underpowered and overpriced.

I built a front-suspension mountain bike with a mid-drive motor called a BBSHD. Setup of the bike with the motor kit took about 3 hours and there were no major issues. Some custom tools might be needed to remove the bottom bracket, a bike shop would likely charge less to do it for you than the tools cost.

Last bit of advice, if you do get a DIY kit, make sure to get a high-quality 18650 battery pack. Don't go LiPo and certainly don't go lead-acid. Your battery pack will last longer if you don't always charge it to 100%, but you should charge it to 100% the first half dozen cycles to balance the batteries.

<comment><USER7> How much range do you get on yours? I am interested in this one because it has 30 mile range and replaceable battery. Price is pretty decent at less than 1500. Link: [http://www.genze.com/e-bikes/](http://www.genze.com/e-bikes/)

<comment><USER6> That bike has a 36v, 8.7ah battery. I have a 52v, 13.5ah battery. Watt-hours is volts times amp-hours, so you're looking at 313wh and I've got 702wh, so more than twice.

That bike has 1.75" tires and I've got big 3" wide tires, and I'm only running about 10-12psi, with front suspension sucking up what feels like half of my pedal power, so rolling resistance is much higher and efficiency is much lower for me.

The "efficiency" is calculated as watt-hours per mile. You'll see different numbers depending on all sorts of factors (pedaling, speed, terrain, tires), but we can just hand-wave it all away (science!) and say 20wh/mile. That gives you about 15 miles and me about 35.

I've only run the battery down once so far, and that was only from a 90% charge, with a lot of mud, snow, and general screwing around. The battery cut out at just over 25 miles.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for detailing it out. Really appreciate that. I will mostly be using the e-bike for daily commute. I was looking for something that is good battery life, cheap, comfortable, long life. Your analysis helps a lot in figuring out the a big part of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Ebikes are particularly interesting: there have been a rash of ebike Kickstarters (see e.g. [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hongquan/karmic- kyoto](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hongquan/karmic-kyoto)) and startups recently, and if the bikes get cheap enough they could really change a lot of people's attitudes towards biking and bike infrastructure. They might also make bike shares more attractive; Seattle is very hilly and its bike share may go electric: [http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle- news/politics/leading-bi...](http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle- news/politics/leading-bike-share-bidder-proposes-all-electric-fleet-for- seattle)

My girlfriend bought an electric bike four years ago, but that was a little too early, and when we moved to a place with stairs the electric bike had to go. But the person who bought it on Craigslist loves it and rides it to drop her kid off at daycare, then to work.

If you haven't ridden a pedal-assist electric bike, you should stop by your local bike shop and try one out. They're quite remarkable, but in a way that is difficult to appreciate over text. I personally don't need one and ride a Novarra Gotham ([https://www.rei.com/product/888337/novara-gotham- bike-2016](https://www.rei.com/product/888337/novara-gotham-bike-2016)), but I see the appeal and think that these will eventually take off, maybe sooner than is widely expected.

There are various problems or trade-offs, which I'm sure people will point out in this thread, but the cost-benefit is there or getting there.

<comment><USER8> I wish items like this got more attention. It's my opinion that all the hoopla over self driving cars is masking other really important modes of transportation. If the cost was low enough, it would be far more efficient to ride an E-Bike to your destination if it was in close proximity, especially for community to work. Of course there are trade-offs, but I can't help but think about how much this would alleviate traffic congestion, how this could contribute to someone living a more healthy lifestyle, and the impact on someone's happiness of riding a bike instead of being in a car.

<comment><USER9> I think e-bikes are going to have the same issue that scooters and mopeds have (and even bikes too) - safety. If you live in a city, you are going to have to be riding near cars, and it is simply a fact that a collision is much worse when you are on a bike or scooter than when you are in a car. A minor fender bender in a car could be serious injury on a bike or scooter.

Everyone I know who commutes to work on a bike has been in an injury accident, ranging from bad cuts and bruises to broken bones and brain injuries. When you combine the basic lack of courtesy from car drivers, the inability to see bikes compared to cars, and the exposed nature of a bike rider compared to a car, the danger is simply too great for many people (myself included) to take.

Unless we get lots of dedicated bike roads where you never have to interact with cars, I don't see how this problem is solvable. As ebikes get faster and more powerful, the danger is going to increase rather than decrease. This is the same reason I don't ride a motorcycle; while it would be efficient and quicker to commute on one, they are simply too dangerous.

<comment><USER10> I commute to work 15km each way on an e-bike and I do almost all of it on bike paths away from cars. It's a very pleasant way to commute. I don't need to use any special "bike roads" \- the existing bike path infrastructure in Melbourne (Australia) works for me.

<comment><USER9> Yes, there are cities where the existing structure works for bikes safely. In my city (Los Angeles), there is simply no way to get anywhere without going on streets with cars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I truly hope to see many, many more of these on bike paths and roads in the near future. They bring the joy of bikes and motorcycles (two things I love dearly) to a whole new audience, are ecologically sound, and extremely efficient.

However, as an avid mountain biker I hope we can keep them as far from our local trail systems as possible. They're destructive to the trails, and allow people to end up on trails far ahead of their skill level. Running out of battery 3 miles from home on a city street where you hop on a bus is one thing, running out 3 miles down a steep hill away from civilization with the sun going down is how inexperienced people get killed.

Ebikes are mopeds by another name, have been around for decades, and have never been allowed on trails. Lets keep it that way.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's worth mentioning that used electric cars offer a lot of these benefits too, for folks who live in more affordable regions and/or otherwise can't bicycle for whatever reason.

For about the price of two e-bikes, you can pick up a used Nissan Leaf or Mitsubishi i-MiEV that will do 50+ miles, seat 4+ people, is comfy and safe in any weather, and is clean / silent / zero emissions.

And for folks who want something more transit-friendly than a bike, you can buy electric scooters for jumping between bus stops and home and save a little bit of cash. Products like [https://ecorecoscooter.com/why/](https://ecorecoscooter.com/why/)

Electric motors are great, and offer up lots of different affordable middle grounds between "pure bicycling" and "burning lots of gas".

</comment><comment><USER13> My dad owns a small chain of bike shops in Texas. I've posted about him before and some of you may remember the stories. He's been in business since 1971 and has seen it all. I was back home for the holidays last week and stopped by dad's store to see what's new. He had a bunch of e-bikes on the floor. I chuckled when I saw them--they're so antithetical to the sport of cycling--but my old, crusty former-bike-racer dad loved them and raved about their benefits. He's been selling a ton of them! The ones he sells have German- designed (maybe German-made?) Bosch motors and batteries. They're well-built and perfect for a quick run to the grocery store. I can't say I'd ever buy them but after seeing how many they're selling, I'm confident that they're here to stay and will be a mainstream product for most bike shops next year.

<comment><USER14> There is an explosion in evoke sales right now. Almost every bike shop in California now carries them. The ones I've been to anyway. The Bosch motors are very popular.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> In the Bay Area, with traffic, an e-bike can be just as fast as driving.

I used a Specialized for about a week, the level of effort was the same as walking, and almost as fast as driving (rush hour). Due to the rate limiter, it was <10% faster than I could achieve myself on a bike.

I would wholeheartedly recommend it to _anyone_ currently driving to work, it's a LOT cheaper than a car.

Personally, I went back to a regular bike, I wanted the exercise and found the rate limiter (19mph without a motorcycle license) to be too frustrating.

<comment><USER16> It's interesting that ebikes are rate limited to 19mph but electric skateboards are sold which exceed this and I haven't heard of people having issues regarding traveling too fast on a skateboard.

<comment><USER3> It's not something the police are going to typically enforce, but it's something that will increase your liability in an accident (not to mention that the faster you go the more serious your injuries are likely to be).

If you're riding a 30mph eBike on a bike trail that doesn't permit it and you have an accident with someone, you can expect to shoulder most of the liability, even if the other person did something like step in front of you. The same holds true with a skateboard, if you run your 20mph skateboard into the side of a car, you can expect to pay for the damages to the car (after you get out of the hospital) -- even if the car driver pulled out in front of you because he wasn't expecting a 20mph skateboard on the sidewalk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Loved my e-bike. Hated the constant maintenance required. Is there a relatively maintenance free bike (electric or otherwise)? I don't spend my weekends tinkering with my car, so I don't see why I should have to with my bike either.

Some things which went wrong with the bike before I abandoned it: punctures, chain falling off (3 times), rear derailleur completely destroyed itself, loose joints (everywhere and needed tightening almost every journey), left crank fell off (apparently very common on all bikes). I ended up riding with a complete toolkit.

<comment><USER17> This question could probably be better answered on, say, an appropriate subreddit.

There is a serious difference between the sort of bike you get at a department store and the sort of bike you can get at a bike ship in terms of component quality. Good components can last a ridiculous length of time. You can get puncture resistant tires if you are willing to pay the price.

Chains are still a maintenance weak spot for bikes (they shouldn't fall off). There are belt driven bikes that are supposed to be more reliable than chain driven bikes.

<comment><USER5> Point taken, although in this case I didn't buy a "bike-shaped object", but something that cost about US$1200 (apparently that's not enough to spend for a decent e-bike).

<comment><USER18> That's dirt cheap for an electric bike. I don't think you get good quality parts for that price.

My human powered bike is in similar price range (should be a bit cheaper in the US) and I've had to do some maintenance on it. It has quality parts but chains and sprockets get wear and tear and needs to be compensated by small adjustments (derailleurs, chain tensioner, etc) and the occasional spare part.

I get my bike maintained at a bike shop about twice a year and regularly oil it. But I get 2000+ miles a year.

I could do it myself for less but I don't have a space to work and store tools in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I am an ebike freak. It's so nice to finally see some ebike enthusiasm on hn! If you have any questions about ebikes just ask me. If I can't answer I can at the very least put you on the right path. If you want to get into ebikes, check out the endless sphere forums. It's the defacto online headquarters for everything ebike. Doctor bass and live-for-physics-luke are two of the most formidable experts on there. Luke used to be in IT and now designs the battery systems for zero motorcycle. Great guy. If you don't understand why electric bikes or transportation is cool then Google "lightning electric motorcycle" and become converted. Cheers.

<comment><USER19> Great! Price is still restrictive for many. What are your recommendations on how to get a cheap starter eBike while steering clear of common pitfalls (and what are they)?

<comment><USER14> The highest power to dollar ratio is got by building a bike. Pre-made bikes as very expensive right now as you point out. If you just want to try one out, go to a bike shop and test drive one. If you want one for yourself and you want it to be fast or go long then I would suggest building a battery pack with headway lithium iron phosphate cells, a lyen high power controller and a solid hub motor, maybe a crystalite. Endless sphere has endless documentation on how to do it. I don't know what your background is so there may be a learning curve, but I can say that you should learn that stuff if you want to get into ebikes anyway. Unless you want to wait 5 years for prices to fall.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Somewhat related, the California Bicycle Coalition has started a petition to encourage CARB to offer bike and e-bike incentives as they do for electric automobiles:

[http://www.calbike.org/bike_purchase_incentive_petition](http://www.calbike.org/bike_purchase_incentive_petition)

[http://www.fixcaliforniaroads.org/arbletter](http://www.fixcaliforniaroads.org/arbletter)

</comment><comment><USER20> I'd love to buy a tricycle version for a relative who would like a kind of motability aid but wouldn't like to have one of the typical electric scooters. Anyone have any experience with them? The ones I've seen seem to require manual gear shifting and it would be best if it's as simple as possible.

<comment><USER14> Checkout electric recumbant bikes. I believe a company called outsiders makes exactly what you are talking about for disabled vets. Name might be wrong but they are out there

<comment><USER14> I meant to type "outriders." Damn phone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What drives costs up with e-bikes? A decent moped appears to be $1000, goes faster, has suspension, and is overall more complex.

<comment><USER22> Batteries. Same as electric cars.

<comment><USER19> Also, many eBikes bodies I've seen are made from aluminum or even carbon fiber rather than steel, to account for the weight added by the battery I'm guessing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> As a bicyclist who can sustain >20mph for minutes at a time, I find the 20mph cutoff as implemented quite frustrating. It feels terrible to easily accelerate to 20mph, and then struggle mightily past the cliff of assisted pedaling. The assistance curve needs to (at least optionally) taper off as the rider approaches 20mph, so that the cutoff doesn't feel like a cliff.

<comment><USER5> It's 15 mph in the EU, which is even more annoying.

<comment><USER24> Technically the EU[0] limit is 25kmh+10%, so you can e.g. implement a progressive cutoff from 25kmh to 27.5kmh to allow a comfortable ride at a constant 25.

[0] and norwegian, but not english

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> To anyone trying to work around motorcycle licensing in the US: don't. The Motorcycle Safety Foundation class is one of the most fun things you can do in a couple of weekends, and I highly recommend it. After that, getting the M1 is purely clerical (in California anyway) and reasonably fast.

</comment><comment><USER26> I wonder how much of the popularity of bikes is connected with this horrible drought we've been going through in California.

For my uses, my non-electric bike plus BART is usually sufficient, so I've been looking around for what would be nice for rain or for trips outside the city. And I've found a bunch of promises and no available products. Most famous may be the Lit Motors C-1, always 5 years away from availability.

My brother just came back from Beijing, and he commented on how they have a lot more transportation options over there.

</comment><comment><USER27> I love my ebikes, but I wouldn't recommend making purchasing decisions based on this article.

His complaint with the Trek bike is that it hurt his ass to ride on it compared to the one he preferred. This probably mostly comes down to the saddle, which is something you just change out if you don't like it. It's silly to purchase a whole bike just because you like a particular kind of saddle (though it's a common beginner cyclist mistake).

Also: > BMW (yes that BMW) makes an Ebike ($3,430) featuring Bosch motors with a 400 watt battery

I mean, I realise that many people don't understand the difference between Watts and Watt-Hours, but it again underscores that the writer doesn't really understand the things he's reviewing and comparing, so how can his other information be reliable?

<comment><USER28> >Also: > BMW (yes that BMW) makes an Ebike ($3,430) featuring Bosch motors with a 400 watt battery

[https://shop.bmw.com/en_US/p/-/bmw-cruise-e- bike./2412319/](https://shop.bmw.com/en_US/p/-/bmw-cruise-e-bike./2412319/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm a regular bike commuter, and I want to love eBikes. I like the idea that they enable longer commutes, and get people commuting who would otherwise be intimidated by the fitness requirements or afraid of arriving at work sweaty.

BUT...they're so expensive! A good scooter (eg a Honda Metropolitan) is like $2000. The cheap Chinese scooters I see all around town are probably about half that. I love electric and hate gasoline, but I don't really want to pay twice as much for less utility. I realize a comparable electric motorcycle is like $10k, but ugh.

<comment><USER30> Look at riide ( [http://www.riide.com](http://www.riide.com)). You can rent one. I just got on the list

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Those prices are absolutely insane. I bought a $100 craigslist bike, added a kit like this [http://amzn.to/2i8xhts](http://amzn.to/2i8xhts) for $250 and another $100 for some cheap lead acid batteries. (Similar lithium batteries would have been about $400). So I paid $450 total and it got me back and forth from work 7 miles away ever day for 2 years before I moved and sold it.

<comment><USER5> Amazon link without the hidden affiliate code: [https://www.amazon.com/Aosom- Electric-Battery-Powered-Conver...](https://www.amazon.com/Aosom-Electric- Battery-Powered-Conversion/dp/B00GIXZKP8/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Related discussion nearly two years ago on "The Tesla of Scooters": [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9431394](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9431394)

</comment><comment><USER33> ebikes are ubiquitous in NYC amongst delivery drivers. I haven't really seen any other users using one.</comment>


Silicon Valley job growth roars back - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2012/07/21/silicon-valley-job-growth-roars-back/

<comment><USER2> I'd love to see how immigration has fluctuated since the recession. I have the impression that illegal Mexicans and H1Bs are a good bellwether of the economy.</comment>


If Silicon Valley Moved to New York - <AUTHOR> http://bhargreaves.com/2010/04/silicon-valley-moves-york/

<comment><USER2> The dicey assumption made in this piece is that most of the people who work in major Silicon Valley companies actually live in San Francisco.

I wouldn't know any statistics but, in general, Silicon Valley is much more centered in the South Bay and than it is in San Francisco and those who work at Adobe, Sun, Apple, Oracle, etc. would normally live either on the Peninsula or in the San Jose area.

Just to take Apple as an example, in general, it is pretty crazy for the thousands of people who work in Cupertino (which is immediately adjacent to San Jose and is some 50 miles from most points in San Francisco) to live somewhere other than the South Bay or at least the Peninsula - from which locations the commutes would be pretty modest (still likely 20 minutes or more for most people but not the hour-plus it would be from the City).

Some people undoubtedly live in San Francisco while working at Apple simply because they like the City so much and prefer to live there in spite of the long commute. But these would likely be unusual exceptions and not the rule.

<comment><USER3> I think you'd be wise to talk to a lot of people that work at these companies. A _huge_ portion of Apple/Yahoo/Google employees live in the city or some equally far-away place in the East Bay. Each of these companies (and others) send in free buses with Wi-Fi to various parts of the city several times a day.

So sure, they're "commuting" — but really they just walk a couple of blocks, hop on board a free bus and start working during their commute.

<comment><USER4> Among my team within Google, the people with kids live in the South or East Bay. Those without live in San Francisco. The only ones I know living on the peninsula just moved to the area and haven't migrated to the extremes, yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great post. I'm reprinting this from my comment on the blog because I hope more HN peeps who are making the NYC/SV choice read this:

Having recently moved from SV to NYC, I love how much more quickly I can get to startup offices and events. Even better, when I do travel, I do it by train. This means I don't need to pay for a car or car insurance, and it means that I can read my book while on the subway. In Silicon Valley, I couldn't afford a car and had to bike everywhere or be at the mercy of the Caltrain... a _very_ bad thing at 2:30am in San Francisco, I can tell you.

Also, Manhattan rent can be expensive (although the LES is not much worse than Palo Alto btw), but living in Harlem, Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, or even NJ and Connecticut is much cheaper and, as the map above shows, adds only minutes to your commute time.

Also, after working hard on a startup, sometimes it's nice to play hard too. Bars and clubs that close at 4am, and being able to get home by cab, can make that part of your lifestyle a lot easier.

<comment><USER6> There are definitely a lot of upsides to NYC living, especially if nightlife is your favorite thing (and you have the cash for it).

I personally have spent a lot of time in NY (my gf lives there), but I definitely prefer SF (or anywhere in the bay area):

-NYC rents are pricier. SF is at least $300/month cheaper for a similar distance from downtown, which easily covers the price of a car (I'm one of those who really values the convenience one gives)

-SF has much better weather. I find NYC way too cold in the winter and way too hot in the summer

-SF wins on the outdoors - hiking and mountain biking are <15 minute drive away, but very hard to access in NYC (esp. without a car).

-NYC wins on mass transit, though often, I found it difficult to say, work on a laptop there due to overcrowding - BART/Caltrain typically have more seats available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> In Austin, I can affordably live in the middle of the city and bike to work, and the specter of having to move to the suburbs to afford hypothetical children isn't there since the public schools are decent. The far fewer walkable neighborhoods make me sad and the summers are probably trying for non-native Texans, but considering the things most people optimize for when choosing a city, it isn't surprising that so many people are moving here.

</comment><comment><USER8> That's why I've never understood the whole Silicon Valley thing. Who wants to go to the suburbs!?

<comment><USER4> > Who wants to go to the suburbs!?

People who like space between them and their sociopathic neighbors?

I had a passive-aggressive downstairs neighbor who would never tell me if I was disturbing her; she went straight to the apartment office every time. When I tried to ask what was disturbing her, she wouldn't answer the door. For the life of me, I never figured out what she was complaining about. I played my guitar amp with headphones and never turned the TV beyond a reasonable volume, but nobody ever listens to the person who is accused of being loud, especially when the person complaining is a single mom with baby in tow. After suffering the tyranny of my downstairs neighbor and threats of fines or eviction for noise violations, I decided to move into a house in west San Jose.

I've lived in large cities and generally enjoyed the convenience, but that apartment was my last. Here, I don't need to wear headphones to play my guitar. I can actually use my stereo speakers when watching movies. When friends come over to play board games on a Saturday afternoon, I don't have to quiet them down when something exciting happens. I can barbecue in my back yard during the summer, and if I feel like hanging picture frames at 2:30 AM, nobody else cares.

The suburbs obviously aren't for everybody, but they work for me.

<comment><USER8> Insulation has dramatically improved since you lived in the city. I live in a building with ~300 units, and when I am in my unit I am under the impression that I have the building to myself. I have never heard anything.

Glad to know I'm not the only one who wants to hang pictures at 2:30. I just do it, and if someone asks me to stop, I will. But nobody has ever asked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> New York is great, and the high density is very invigorating, but there are problems. Number one among them is that NY is just too expensive. It is impossible to bootstrap anything there. There are just too many greedy landlords.

Even when the banking industry collapsed rents did not go down significantly.

<comment><USER10> The kinds of people who work in startups are probably living in cheaper neighborhoods and finding creative ways to make their dollars go further. As pg has commented, nerds tend to be rather frugal. Also, salaries are high equivalent to the higher rents, so it all evens out in the end. Calling NY expensive is misleading. It _can_ be expensive. But it can also be inexpensive if that's your goal.

<comment><USER11> Are salaries actually commensurately higher? As far as I can tell, typical engineering pay in NYC is about the same as typical engineering pay in California.

<comment><USER12> Depends on what you do. Finance jobs (they hire people with engineering degrees) will typically pay better than an engineering job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One thing to keep in mind when doing these sorts of comparisons as well are the small lifestyle changes that kick in when you live in a really urban place. Before, I usually bought about a weeks worth of groceries - go to the market, load up the trunk. Now, I only buy for dinner or maybe the next couple of meals.

The whole infrastructure of CA still seems suburban, more driven by mindset and culture.

Comparing the convenience of the day-to-day things would be very interesting, but I'm not entirely sure how one would do this outside of just "cost analysis", which seems pretty shallow.

</comment><comment><USER14> Nice post! But if you want to play the startup city commute game, Cambridge, MA wins. I'm working on-site with two clients right now, both in my neighborhood (I walk).

(Note: Boston, MA loses, though. Commuting from the 'burbs sucks.)

</comment><comment> PG-13 This reads like yet another post demonstrating the NYC tech crowd's massive inferiority complex.

<comment><USER15> Or alternatively, the reflexive need of some to transpose everything into NY terms to "understand" it.

[http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2007/02/07/72-the-world- as-...](http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2007/02/07/72-the-world-as-seen-from- new-yorks-9th-avenue/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Now that New Yorkers have fucked themselves with their bread and butter (i.e. finance), they are looking at the next best thing: technology startups. I can't say I blame them, but I find it quite annoying.</comment>


What do prison consultants do? - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2226288 <comment><USER2> _On Friday, November 28, 2008, Burress suffered an accidental self-inflicted gunshot wound to the right thigh in the New York City nightclub LQ when his Glock pistol, tucked in the waistband of his black jeans, began sliding down his leg; apparently in reaching for the gun he inadvertently depressed the trigger, causing the gun to fire._

Hey, Plaxico, let me be your retail consultant,

[http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss?url=search- alias%3Daps&...](http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss?url=search- alias%3Daps&field-keywords=gun+holster&x=0&y=0)

<comment><USER3> He shot himself and then they put him in jail? Ouch.

<comment><USER4> Presumably him shooting himself is incidental? I'd guess he was charged with discharging a firearm without lawful purpose (or something along those lines), endangerment, carrying a concealed weapon without a license, being a moron ... oh scratch that last one, that's not illegal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _"Going to prison is a little bit like heading off to college. The first step is finding an institution that's right for you. Then there's a lot of anxiety: Who will be your roommate? Where is the library? What time does the dining hall close? How do you make a good impression with the people in charge? Will you make friends? A prison consultant addresses these concerns."_

PG said school was like prison (<http://paulgraham.com/nerds.html>). Now we see that prison is like school.

</comment><comment><USER6> Good money for consulting - always an indication for a potential webapp.</comment>


Ask HN: Why does `news.` resolve to `donuts.domains`? - <AUTHOR> Sometimes, when I go to visit HN, I type `news.` in my address bar and before auto-complete finishes, I hit return.
Somehow, this resolves to `donuts.domains`. But I can't see how this should work.
Performing a DIG on `news.` returns;

    news.   10768 IN SOA demand.alpha.aridns.net.au.hostmaster.donuts.co. 1578924501 1800 900 604800 86400

 But how is this permitted? Is `news.` a valid FQDN, even without a TLD? <comment><USER2> "news" _is_ the TLD. donuts.domains runs the technical operations for it.

</comment><comment><USER3> For anyone looking to reproduce this in a browser with an omnibar (eg Chrome/FF), append a / to force treating it like a URL instead of a search term.</comment>


Facebook Brings Facial Recognition to Photo Tagging - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2010/12/15/facebook-photo-tag-suggestions/

<comment><USER2> Same story, different source:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2011002> \- cnet.com - no comments</comment>


Ask HN: Best GPU (scientific) programming tutorials? - <AUTHOR>

Interested to see what the real hive mind (at least its temporal lobe) would look for a GPU programming tutorial for a (relatively) amateur programmer. <comment><USER2> Here's what I used while doing an undergrad independent study a couple years ago (except for the books; at the time, books on the subject didn't exist yet):

 _Online Tutorials_ :

Dr. Dobbs - CUDA, Supercomputing For the Masses: <http://www.drdobbs.com/high- performance-computing/207200659>

GTC Video Tutorials / Presentations: <http://www.nvidia.com/object/gpu_technology_conference.html>

_University Courses_ :

GaTech ECE4893 - Multicore and GPU Programming for Video Games (not CUDA specific, but covered): <http://users.ece.gatech.edu/lanterma/mpg/>

UIUC ECE498AL - Applied Parallel Programming: <http://courses.engr.illinois.edu/ece498/al/>

_Books_ :

Programming Massively Parallel Processors: [http://www.amazon.com/Programming- Massively-Parallel-Process...](http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Massively- Parallel-Processors- Hands-/dp/0123814723/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1296443374&sr=8-1)

CUDA By Example: [http://www.amazon.com/CUDA-Example-Introduction-General- Purp...](http://www.amazon.com/CUDA-Example-Introduction-General-Purpose- Programming/dp/0131387685/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1296443374&sr=8-2)

If you decide to go the CUDA route, as opposed to OpenCL, then NVIDIA has a lot of solid documentation that will help you get to a "Hello, World" level pretty quickly. This StackOverflow thread should help if you choose to go with an AMD OpenCL solution: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/780978/opencl- books-tutor...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/780978/opencl-books- tutorials). Personally, I would stick with NVIDIA; they seem much more dedicated to advancing the cause and you have support for both API's.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you use Mac or Windows search iTunes for CUDA programming, or search Google for "Programming Massiveley Parallel Processors with CUDA" you should find videos and slides for this Stanford course.

A good book about CUDA is:"CUDA by Example"

<comment><USER3> If you want to program for general GPU devices, you could search for OpenCL (my first comment is valid only for NVIDIA GPU's).

However you should bare in mind that coding for OpenCL is, at least now, an order of magnitude more complicated (personal opinion) than CUDA programming.

With CUDA if you already know C is straightforward to get started.

<comment><AUTHOR> Will look into it. I have experience with python, matlab/octave, R, and an itsy bitsy amount of C#/SQL/Java from another life (figuratively).

<comment><USER3> I think you could use Python for CUDA programming (I didn't tried that), see PyCUDA at:

<http://mathema.tician.de/software/pycuda>

even Matlab has some bindings for CUDA:

<http://developer.nvidia.com/object/matlab_cuda.html>

Bare in mind however that the original CUDA implementation uses C, so if you want the last drop of performance you will use C.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can OpenCL be implemented on systems which do not support CUDA? I have a relatively inexpensive HP bought about 3 years ago that, well, just won't run CUDA even with an nvidia card :-)

<comment><USER2> If you're still talking about about NVIDIA cards, then no; their OpenCL implementation is based upon the CUDA architecture (technically, CUDA is the device architecture that supports GPGPU programming, not the language itself). That said, videocards are cheap these days, as long as you don't need the high-end: you can snag an entry-level Fermi card (GTS450) for right around $100 these days, or less if you go with something GT200-based.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As you mentioned scientific, and a lot of scientists use numpy/scipy these days, these links might be interesting to you:

Open source Python library that automatically generates linear algebra code for the GPU, pretty awesome, seems to be a bit slanted toward machine learning but is not specific to it: <http://deeplearning.net/software/theano/>

Simpler GPU programming with Python (somewhat more low-level, but more friendly than using the plain C API): <http://mathema.tician.de/software/pycuda></comment>


Obama Dogs vs McCain dogs - <AUTHOR> http://thedogvote.com/

<comment><USER2> What does this have to do with technology???

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, Okeumeni, I thought this was a place where one could post things of interest to techies. My bad. I will remove, if it is wasteful, etc.

<comment><USER3> I think his question is how this might be interesting to the technical crowd versus the general population of the internet.</comment></comment>


Old New Jersey Factory to House Earth's Largest Vertical Farm - <AUTHOR> http://weburbanist.com/2015/04/21/old-new-jersey-factory-to-house-earths-largest-vertical-farm/ <comment><USER2> "The people who designed these places, maybe eighty, a hundred years ago, they had the idea they'd make 'em as self-sufficient as possible. Make 'em grow food. Make 'em heat themselves, generate power, whatever. Now this one, you drill far enough down, is sitting on top of a lot of geothermal water. It's real hot down there, but not hot enough to run an engine, so it wasn't gonna give em any power. They made a stab at power, up on the roof, with about a hundred Darrieus rotors, what they call eggbeaters. Had themselves a wind farm, see? Today they get most of their watts off the Fission Authority, like anybody else. But that geothermal water, they pump that up to a heat exchanger. It's too salty to drink, so in the exchanger it just heats up your standard Jersey tap water, which a lot of people figure isn't worth drinking anyway."

Finally, they were approaching a wall of some kind. Bobby looked back. Shallow pools on the muddy concrete floor caught and reflected the limbs of the dwarf trees, the bare pale roots straggling down into makeshift tanks of hydroponic fluid.

"Then they pump that into shrimp tanks, and grow a lot of shrimp. Shrimp grow real fast in warm water. Then they pump it through pipes in the concrete, up here, to keep this place warm. That's what this level was for, to grow 'ponic amaranth, lettuce, things like that. Then they pump it out into the catfish tanks, and algae eat the shrimp shit. Catfish eat the algae, and it all goes around again. Or anyway, that was the idea. Chances are they didn't figure anybody'd go up on the roof and kick those Darrieus rotors over to make room for a mosque, and they didn't figure a lot of other changes either So we wound up with this space. But you can still get you some damned good shrimp in the Projects ... Catfish, too."

\-- _Count Zero_ , William Gibson

</comment><comment><USER3> There's a well-known vertical farm in Japan which produces 10,000 heads of lettuce a day. But even with LED lighting, they need subsidies on power costs.

There are some special situations where this is a big win. Places with poor growing climates and difficult shipping, such as Alaska, where a big indoor farm is starting up. Indoor farms have been big in Saudi Arabia for decades. But for places within trucking range of good farming land, this probably will be limited to a few high-value crops.

Amusingly, vegetables grown under totally artificial conditions can be labeled as "organic", because they don't need pesticides. Probably "kosher" too.[1] The lettuce plant in Japan runs their employees through a shower and has them wear clean-room bunny suits, so as not to transmit some disease into their high-density farming operation.

[1] [http://www.kashrut.com/articles/Bugs_in_Lettuce/](http://www.kashrut.com/articles/Bugs_in_Lettuce/)

<comment><USER4> There was an article I read a little while ago about urban/vertical farming in Detroit. It was saying that traditionally, like you say the economics of cost of transport vs cost of land has meant that farms are placed further out where land is cheaper. In Detroit, apparently the land in inexpensive enough in the inner city that the economics dont work out that way. I think its interesting to think in a macro scale what a might higher prices of oil will do to those economies.

<comment><USER5> I wonder how much marijuana is grown indoors in the US? Perhaps there are some parallels not so much with cost of land but cost of transport with that one.

<comment><USER6> The cost of discovery is what drives marijuana plantations indoors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I just finished the book "abundance" by Stephen H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler. They discuss Vertical Farms at length, and many other future technologies that show immense promise at revolutionizing the world. Great Read. Highly Recommend.

<comment><USER8> Agreed, it was a really motivating read. I enjoyed the optimistic (and not too preachy) outlook he has regarding technology just on the horizon, especially in medicine/biotech.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is the best thing to come out of New Jersey since Jon Stewart</comment>


Kite Responds to the Minimap and Autocomplete Issues - <AUTHOR> https://kite.com/blog/responding-to-minimap-autocomplete-issues <comment><USER2> An apology that starts with 4 paragraphs of self-congratulation is not a real apology at all. Nothing of the article reads as being genuinely regretful of the strategies taken - it's just sorry for being caught.

>Unfortunately, while trying to make programmers' lives a little less complicated, we instead made them more complicated.

Barely an admission of guilt, and even that can't get past without patting themselves on the back for the noble cause they 're profitably working towards. Yes, Kite, your pay-for service clearly has my best interests in mind. I forgive you for being too stupid to grasp your superior approach. How about actually finding fault with hijacking projects for advertising in the first place?

<comment><USER3> Buying a popular addon with the express purpose of subverting its original intent for commercial monetization seems like it should be against Atom's TOS

This instance is razor thin close to being malware

What's to stop the next enterprising company from intentionally uploading all your code to their servers? Modifying your code? Or holding your code hostage? Atom has git support backed in, so how likely is it an addon could inject code and commit it without you ever seeing that it happened.

Atom's automagic update approach to addons can't survive this kind of exploitation. If I have to re-vet every addon every time there's an update, their entire ecosystem just turned to shit.

Do we need virus scanners for Atom packages now? An addon that scans repos to see if the primary contributor suddenly changed?

<comment><USER4> Picking nits I think you mean adware not malware. I think it's worth making the distinction.

<comment><USER5> Giving ad networks tracking information of your editor usage and possibly access to the code you're working (which they didn't do, but the original statement was 'close to being malware') on is beyond mere adware.

<comment><USER4> Adware always had telemetry. But I get your point. Let's call it spyware then if we think companies might use our source as a consequence. I find it highly unlikely but admit it is possible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The clear dark pattern here should also have been addressed: Kite is listed with all its shiny features, whereas the alternative simply gets called inaccurate and incomplete. Local analysis does have some clear advantages over Kite, even excluding important privacy concerns. What if you're offline or are in an area with poor network coverage?

[https://kite.com/static/media/autocomplete-python- flow.690d3...](https://kite.com/static/media/autocomplete-python- flow.690d3185.png)

The use of dark patterns is more of a policy/"culture" thing that people won't exactly "knock" (although there was a comment on the HN thread last week about this) or demand the removal of, but it does speak to how Kite is willing to operate, not just pre-minimap fiasco, but going forward too.

Edit:

The link to the PR in the post isn't the point here, it's the propensity to write misleading copy targeted at thousands of devs who had never heard of Kite that went unaddressed. Open source is extremely trust-based (how hard was it to believe that a text editor plugin of all things was doing funny things?), and Kite needs to talk about whether it will continue to behave as a potential bad actor.

Right now, all the post contains is an apology for a PR fiasco that occurred due to something akin to a miscalculation, not a deliberate onboarding strategy.

<comment><USER7> [https://github.com/kiteco/kite- installer/pull/50](https://github.com/kiteco/kite-installer/pull/50) was linked from the post, but it's not merged

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Let's be clear: the absolute last thing we wanted was for someone's code to > get synced to our servers without their knowledge.

I don't buy it. The UX was dark-patterned to enable this very thing, and this reads like damage control when it's clear it wouldn't fly under the radar.

If it were the last thing Kite wanted, there would be a big warning that this option uploads your code to their servers. Or some mention of the upload at all. Or it wouldn't be the foundation of Kite's business.

<comment><USER9> > Or some mention of the upload at all

The image they show in the post shows that they were fairly clearly saying "Where enabled, your code is sent to our cloud":

[https://kite.com/static/media/autocomplete-python- flow.690d3...](https://kite.com/static/media/autocomplete-python- flow.690d3185.png)

Sure, it is not exactly hilighted there, but I wouldn't say that they were trying to hide that either.

<comment><USER10> As a third party to this debacle, all I have to go on is the comments people have made, but a few of them have asserted that that language was added later on and some initial versions of this change either outright lacked that warning, or else used styling tricks to make it difficult to notice. I lack the time and/or motivation to go digging through the commit history for that plugin, but maybe someone more enterprising could do so and verify if that warning was always present and presented in such a visible fashion.

<comment><USER11> It's been in there for quite some time, and there have been a variety of commits that carried some variation of the same "we analyze your code in the cloud" message:

[https://github.com/kiteco/kite- installer/commit/c52c5daa672c...](https://github.com/kiteco/kite- installer/commit/c52c5daa672c5887b312e99c7d8cdd390174c9f8)

Taking over the minmap autocompletion projects and adding these features still feels a bit sleazy, but the installer was honest about how it worked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Staying Open: Kite Responds To The Minimap and Autocomplete Issues

I have two problems with that title:

1) Implies that you were open in the past, which Kite really wasn't, and 2) "Issues" is an understatement and borderline misleading. A more accurate term might be "debacle".

> Kite has been knocked around in social media (and the actual media)

"Knocked around" \- sounds like victim language to me. You weren't knocked around - you were:

1) Caught red-handed, 2) Called on the carpet for your deceptive and bad business practices, and 3) Lost reputation and standing because of the choices _you_ made.

If anything, it was you, Kite, who "knocked around" millions of minimap users by your irresponsible and unethical actions. In fact, reading the Github issue thread, it looks like your actions may have cost Atom some users.

Shame on you guys. The backlash wasn't anything that Kite's actions didn't warrant.

> How did we get ourselves here? We started Kite with the idea that machine > learning....

Please don't attempt to turn your apology into an advertisement for your business. Maybe that's not what you intended, but that's how it reads to me. I'd feel better about this blog post if it talked less about how awesome Kite is and more about how awesome the open source community that held you accountable is.

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

While I appreciate that Kite is (somewhat) owning up to its mistakes, I'm concerned that, had there not been such a vocal community backlash, Kite would never have self-corrected this move.

I think hiring a Community Manager is a step in the right direction for Kite. Hopefully, he/she will work with the open source community to tell anyone else who tries to pull these types of shenanigans to, "Go fly a kite." [1]

[1] [http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/Go+fly+a+kite](http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/Go+fly+a+kite)!

</comment><comment><USER13> > As we considered our options, we had a novel idea: buy an open source > plugin, reward the author for their work, and expose new users to Kite.

That's the root of the issue. Someone built a well, and offered its water for free to the community. Theirs was a good-faith effort that you subverted when then you paid the maintainer to help you turn people who came to the well into customers.

I don't understand how you didn't see that as problematic from the outset – at the very least, you could have first created an open API (akin to LSP) where others could add their own Kite-like service. That would have respected the spirit of open sourcing.

</comment><comment><USER14> At companies like my former employer, developers were given the power and responsibility to vet their own tools. Despite somewhat strict compliance needs we were able to allow junior developers to customize their own IDEs and plugins, since personalization is crucial for productivity. One of those compliance needs was, crucially, that _source code in its full form must not leave the developer's machine except en route to the git repo._

We were comfortable with this posture because the Atom/Sublime/VSCode plugin ecosystem has largely been dominated by honest OSS projects, especially the most popular ones. Thanks, Kite, for ruining that for everyone. I will now personally vet every plugin that my junior devs install from here out thanks to your example.

<comment><USER15> We've seen it happen before though: [http://www.infoworld.com/article/2929732/open-source- softwar...](http://www.infoworld.com/article/2929732/open-source- software/sourceforge-commits-reputational-suicide.html)

This problem applies not only to editor plugins but all sorts of things nowadays: npm packages for Node.js devs in particular seem like a great way to get viruses, given how hundreds of dependencies get pulled in, sometimes to save 2 or 3 lines of code. Here is an example in the Node package for Postmark (an email service provider) which had a dependency for literally 4 lines of code: [https://github.com/wildbit/postmark.js/pull/14/files](https://github.com/wildbit/postmark.js/pull/14/files)

As developers, we need to be willing to reinvent the wheel when needed, instead of blindly installing dozens of 3rd party packages. And we should vet things we install no matter what.

<comment><USER16> to be fair with that specific example, they changed from a purpose-built function, to a shell call including (albeit extremely simple) text parsing.

I'd generally prefer not to have the git(1) incantation hanging around in an unrelated function.

<comment><USER15> The dependency "git-rev" uses a shell-call too, so this PR doesn't change much apart from removing the dependency itself.

Here's the original code from the "git-rev" package: [https://github.com/tblobaum/git- rev/blob/master/index.js](https://github.com/tblobaum/git- rev/blob/master/index.js)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The main problem here is one of trust. If you're going to share your code with a third party like Kite, even without getting into the possible legal issues involved, you have to be damn sure you trust the company. Kite's culture has already shown to be deceptive, and these actions are really not drastic enough to imply they're committed to change.

</comment><comment><USER18> Guys it's not OK to just hijack open source projects. You need to make (or fork) new plugins specifically for kite, not hire a bunch of developers of popular autocomplete plugins and have them shadily change their plugin to use Kite as a completion engine.

<comment><USER19> they didn't. they just had them add _support_ for Kite. It was up to the user to enable it. I'm failing to see the issue here. I mean, yes, their UIs needed work, but they admitted to that mistake and have since fixed it (according to the article).

Your comment makes me think this is more of an open-source lynch mob rather than someone looking at this objectively.

Company needs users. Plugin has users. Plugin does things company's flagship product _could_ do (and it is _free_). Company reaches out to Plugin developer and they come to an agreement to add support for the flagship product into the Plugin, but the new support is _not_ enabled by default.

Wherein lies the problem?

<comment><USER20> "Lynch mob?" Really?

<comment><USER21> There was a guy calling for a communist-style "purging" of anyone involved with this company in the last thread. I think you're underestimating how mad people get about free plugins for their (incredibly bloated and inefficient) code editor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > We're on the HN homepage, with 900 upvotes, and passionate comments. All > great, except for one thing: we are the scourge of the internet. How did we > get ourselves here?

Well it's not surprising, is it?

From the outline article:

>> Then he blew this reporter off. "I apologize in advance that I can't answer any further questions," he wrote. "I need to focus on other parts of the business, including continuing to improve the product for our users, and conflict like this is always doubly distracting."

</comment><comment><USER23> Fuck Kite. This is obvious damage control after the backlash of their severe betrayal of the open source community. They're not sorry they did what they did; they're sorry they got caught.

The title "Staying Open" is so full of BS it hurts.

<comment><USER24> Retroactive 'Openness' is not open. Openness is when you let us know before you do shit like this, not after you're caught.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> As others have pointed out, the key issue is that Kite thought it was a good business practice to ask a hired open-source developer to integrate Kite ads into their heavily used projects. They wanted a shortcut to users at the expense of open-source ethics.

Yes, open-source developers should get paid. But if they take this route, they may lose credibility within the community.

</comment><comment><USER26> I interviewed with Kite a number of years back. From that experience, I am _entirely_ sure that they really had no malicious intent with any of this. That being said, I did tell them that IMHO they were severely underestimating the privacy concerns of developers. Looks about right.

<comment><USER27> They had no malicious intents? Like in they had no intentions of hiring open- source maintainers, taking over their codebases and quietly injecting their product?

Point is, if we don't consider this sort of behaviour malicious then we can expect to see this more and more often.

<comment><USER28> Whether or not we consider this behavior to be malicious has no real bearing on whether they had malicious intent. I'm sure they think that adding Kite support to these plugins is great for everybody. But they have different priorities and opinions. I can easily accept that they had no malicious intent, but simply failed to realize that other people would feel differently about the changes they made. And that's definitely a problem, they should absolutely have realized that they were doing something people would not like. But when you're excited about your own product it can be hard to recognize that other people aren't.

Don't get me wrong, I think they're absolutely in the wrong here. I just also think it's important to understand motivations and reasoning instead of just attributing everything to malice. Otherwise you can't prevent this from happening again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The updated dialog still feels kinda slimy ([https://github.com/kiteco/kite- installer/pull/50](https://github.com/kiteco/kite-installer/pull/50)). It makes no mention that search and usages are paid add ons ([https://kite.com/pro](https://kite.com/pro)).

</comment><comment><USER30> I generally think HN'ers are too quick to boycott, but this seems like a level of malicious action that will be very difficult to recover from, both for Kite and it's principals (including the maintainers who sold out their user base).

Taking over an unrelated open-source project and attempting to monetize it's users (without being _very_ open about what you're doing) is unethical in and of itself.

Using dark-pattern UX to manipulate those users into making poorly-informed decisions is even worse, and doing it in a way that potentially violated privacy and confidentially expectations is even worse than that.

I admire the commenters here who chalk this up to an honest mistake, but my viewpoint is a bit more cynical than that. The most likely truth is that knew what they were doing, knew it was wrong, and did it anyway because it benefited them.

Now they come out with a self-congratulatory crisis management non-apology which seeks to minimize their bad actions at every turn. I'm not buying it.

</comment><comment><USER31> We're sorry? start by changing this

[https://github.com/kiteco/atom- plugin/blob/master/LICENSE](https://github.com/kiteco/atom- plugin/blob/master/LICENSE)

Copyright (c) 2017 Manhattan Engineering, Inc - All Rights Reserved

Reproduction of this material is strictly forbidden unless prior written permission is obtained from Manhattan Engineering, Inc.

<comment><USER32> From "Update LICENSE" (2017-01-13) [https://github.com/kiteco/atom- plugin/commit/fc1b1ab6efafcd4...](https://github.com/kiteco/atom- plugin/commit/fc1b1ab6efafcd426787ac99ebd10407aa9ac071)

> _-The MIT License (MIT)_

> _+Copyright (c) 2017 Manhattan Engineering, Inc - All Rights Reserved_

> _-Copyright (c) 2013-2016 Kite & contributors._

> _-_

> _-Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a > copy_

> [...]

IIRC this is perfectly legal with the MIT license. But legal doesn't mean community friendly or a good idea.

Edit: Ups. I forget:

> _-The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in > all_

> _-copies or substantial portions of the Software._

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Not buying it at all.

How does the announcement of Kite Enterprise (twice!!) fit within the supposed "apology"?? It has absolutely nothing to do with either project.

It's ironic actually. Within their "apology" they are doing the EXACT same thing they are apologizing for: sneaking in some more advertising of their products.

This is one disgusting company.

</comment><comment><USER34> Just in case someone here didn't already say this:

 _Do not use Kite_.

It's software that was made by people who are fine uploading your code to their servers. The kind of people who should be out of business as soon as possible.

</comment><comment><USER35> This comment is very sightly off-topic for this story, but 100% on topic for HN, and so many people might find it useful that I feel compelled to write it.

The first link in this write-up is to this story which gives the background:

      https://theoutline.com/post/1953/how-a-vc-funded-company-is-undermining-the-open-source-community

And I wanted to draw attention to something remarkable from that write-up. Without any irony, completely straight-faced, the writer nonchalantly included the line:

       >Although Kite has no business model yet, it's widely
       >thought in Silicon Valley that having users is the
       >first step toward profitability.

The article had introduced the startup as:

       >a $4 million venture capital-funded startup

That's not a valuation but the size of the round.¹ The title and subtitle of the article are:

       > How a VC-funded company is undermining the open-source community

and:

       >A San Francisco startup called Kite is being accused
       >of underhanded tactics.

Now what I wanted to bring attention to in this comment is the fact that it is possible to nonchalantly mention that a startup has no business model, and is a $4 million VC-backed business, but this tells you nothing about the startup: except that it is based in Silicon Valley/San Francisco.

I really want to emphasize this geography to you, because people here are skeptical.

We had a recent article here on "Ways a VC says no without saying no". One person wrote ², in complete denial:

       >a few years ago when trying to raise a Series A. We
       >were getting the "location" excuse over and over. It
       >usually went something like, "we love what you are
       >doing, and we would probably invest in you, but your
       >location is a non-starter for us." The truth, as was
       >illuminated to me during, is that they just aren't
       >interested. If you were a compelling enough business for
       >the investor, your location would not be a factor. If
       >you can prove that you are succeeding in your location,
       >then the location obviously isn't an issue.

VC after VC after VC mentioned the exact words "your location is a non- starter" but this person is in denial.

I wanted to use this story to illustrate that you do not even need a business model in order to raise money in Silicon Valley/San Francisco. It is there in black and white and without comment, mentioned off-hand in a story about something different. Memorize these fourteen words. Memorize these words now: "A San Francisco startup"; "$4 million venture capital-funded"; "has no business model yet."

Just memorize it. It is the difference between the success and failure of your startup and if you read this comment carefully and take it to heart, this comment can become the most important one you will have read in the past five years.

¹ [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/kite- com](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/kite-com)

² [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14815785](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14815785)

<comment><USER36> VCs really need to look in the mirror. We often say on the internet that Innovation can come from anywhere, but VCs don't believe that at all. VCs are only interested in funding their friends living a few blocks away or some college kids living in NYC or SFO. VCs are the only people who can help in spreading the wealth around. Why not fund a startup in Des Moines or Harrisburg. That would help grow those cities and also reduce the stress on cities like SFO. Also it would save valuable money for the startups as those cities cost far less.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> It is nice to see a more extensive explanation, even as the motive is to save face. But the apology, like the incident itself, feel like symptoms of a flawed strategy.

> _How did we get ourselves here? We started Kite with the idea that machine > learning could help eliminate the repetitive parts of programming. We spent > three years building the initial product - and it works. Our software has > really great completions, conveniently sorted by relevance instead of the > alphabet, among other features that are proving useful to coders._

> _We're proud of the tools we've built - the problem we faced was finding a > way to tell potential users about the thing we created. As we considered our > options, we had a novel idea: buy an open source plugin, reward the author > for their work, and expose new users to Kite._

Many eminently useful plugins and software have been able to endear themselves via word of mouth and user happiness; Homebrew, Bootstrap, and Atom come to mind. And plenty of programmer-optimized software can even charge good money, such as Textmate and PyCharm.

Advertising isn't a bad way to get exposure, but yeah, I do agree that Kite's approach was " _novel_ ". It'd be as if the official CDN version of React wrote console messages about how great Instagram's new Snapchat-like features are. Even if Kite's injection of self-promoting code into a popular plugin was harmless, it felt exactly like the kind of shady tactic that people cynically suspect user-data-in-the-cloud companies to partake.

The critique of Kite was not the only Kite-related article to get a huge number of HN upvotes; Kite's initial announcement and a followup about Python features got 1,138 and 553 upvotes [0] respectively. That (plus the VC funding and connections you already had) is enough to get a critical mass of interest. If Kite hasn't gotten the desired userbase a year later, advertising isn't the solution. In each of those HN discussions, as well as on Reddit, the primary concern was the cloud hosting of code. Maybe it is impossible for Kite to be full-featured as a locally-hosted product, but most users seemed unconvinced because they were apparently unable to see the value of Kite over what offline IDEs are able to do.

Kite's response shouldn't have been "the same concerns were raised for tools like Dropbox and Github [which]are now used without hesitation" [1], but to focus on a minimal viable local product that would become popular enough to have the same kind of trust/popularity that Github and Dropbox earned (hard to imagine either being successful if not for their generous free plans). Undertaking a strategy that re-emphasized people's concerns about the cloud and Kite's unclear privacy policies is just not a good look.

[0] [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=kite&sort=byPopularity&prefix&...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=kite&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/4erjy4/kite_program...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/4erjy4/kite_programming_copilot/)

</comment><comment><USER38> So I guess this is the kind of thing that RMS wanted to prevent when he talked against unofficial packages and repos in Emacs.

</comment><comment><USER39> Hope these guys run out of funding

</comment><comment><USER19> @OP: This will probably get ignored, but on [https://kite.com/languages](https://kite.com/languages)

why u no Elixir support?</comment>