Goldman Sans - <AUTHOR> https://design.gs.com/d/story/goldman-sans/ <comment><USER3> The license was written by idiots. E.g.:

b. The User may not use the Licensed Font Software in any "open source" or other code that would create any obligation for Goldman Sachs to: (i) grant to any third party any intellectual property or other proprietary rights; (ii) disclose or make any source code or any part or derivative work thereof available to third parties under any circumstances; or (iii) otherwise subject Goldman Sachs to any obligations not expressly set forth in this License.

Ambiguous legal language grounded in a likely misunderstanding of what "open source" means. And of course, you have to flip through a dozen screens to make it to the download page to find the license.

This is a project to make a positive impression which fails to do that. So close -- we need more good open types -- and yet clueless.

<comment><USER4> What's idiotic about it?

It's to protect against copy left obligations.

<comment><USER5> > What's idiotic about it?

It imagines a model of open source wherein I can take some Goldman Sachs code (the font), use it in my project, then start making legal demands of Goldman Sachs because I used their code. I would be quite surprised if such a license existed, because it would be a legal absurdity.

<comment><USER3> Absolutely correct.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg...

"grant to any third party any intellectual property or other proprietary rights;"

If I've used this on a web page, a third-party has the rights to view and make local cached copies of the web page.

"disclose or make any source code or any part or derivative work thereof available to third parties under any circumstances;"

If I put this into a document, printed it, and handed it to my mom, I've just made a derivative work available to third-parties (and yes, the compiled font is a derivative of the source code, if you parse the 'therefore' that way).

... and so on.

I'm giving intentionally absurd examples, but legal language like this is just absurdly poorly-written and stupid. Whatever you want legal language to say, you want it to be clear and unambiguous. That protects everyone involved; there are clear limits, and nothing for courts to argue about. In this case, even the basic grammar is ambiguous (pronouns pointing into voids, chains of ambiguous and/or clauses, etc.)

Here's another gem:

"each copy shall bear an appropriate copyright notice in substantially the form of '© 2020 Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC. All rights reserved.' and a copy of this License" \-- well which is it: Are all rights reserved, or do I have additional rights as defined by this license?

Virtually /any/ use of this font falls into a legal gray zone, and so creates a massive liability for everyone involved in using this, ironically including Goldman Sachs itself. Many clauses are bad enough a judge would just toss them out, and that leaves a legal document that looks a lot like Swiss cheese.

Most first-year law students would be embarrassed to draft legal text like this, and most lawyers would be concerned about legal malpractice if they let a document like this slip out.

That's just in the legal language is written. One level up, we run into fundamental misconceptions of how open source works, of how copyright works, as well as a slew of missing standard license boilerplate.

And on top of that, we have the basic strategic issue: Except for exceptional cases, it makes sense to use an existing, vetted license; it's usually stupid to draft your own unless there's a darned good reason (and in that case, you'd better find a qualified lawyer). Even if you do draft your own, you should start with an existing, vetted license, and modify the parts which don't fit, and find a competent lawyer to do it.

I've met elementary school students who wrote better legal language than this. This makes Goldman look incompetent. It's not a good look for an investment bank.

<comment><USER6> Are you a lawyer or legally trained? Honestly interested to know because you're expounding on this with some degree of forcefulness, but you also seem to have some unusual understandings of legal terms as I would understand them.

e.g.

\- viewing or caching a web page doesn't require the grant of intellectual property or proprietary right - that would be me assigning you the copyright or allowing you to sell it or something;

\- a printed document that uses a font is not a derivative work of the font because the typeface (vs. the code of the font itself) is not copyrightable;

\- "all rights reserved" refers to all rights of intellectual property ownership under the copyright, which absolutely are retained when licensing as opposed to assigning.

<comment><USER6> Just on that last thing in particular: another example of a software license that has an 'all rights reserved' copyright statement and requires distribution of both the copyright statement and the license would be the BSD license.

An example of another software license that explicitly separates copyright and licensing when describing itself would be the GPL, in either v2 or v3 form.

<comment><USER3> The BSD license does NOT contain "All Rights Reserved." See:

[https://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause](https://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-3-Clause)

[https://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-2-Clause](https://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-2-Clause)

That would contradict the license text.

<comment><USER6> The original 4-clause license does.

<comment><USER3> Fair enough. The original 4-clause license is also in the hall-of-fame of bad licenses. I believe you can also find bad legal code in a lot of the NC licenses, WTFPL, and the Hypocratic/ethical licenses in the same hall-of-fame. I wouldn't use any of those as examplars.

If it makes you feel better, I found a link written by an actual JD:

[https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/the-term-all-rights- reser...](https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/the-term-all-rights-reserved- explained)

Remind me of why we're still having this discussion. Unless you can post a link supporting your assertion, I think I've provided ample evidence at this point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why anyone who isn't employed at Goldman Sachs would ever use this is beyond me, and yet they offer it up for public download. The license forbids creating or even modifying derivative works with it, or bundling/embedding it.

There are so many good, free typefaces out there. I really can't be bothered with yet another license-crippled vanity project from another huge corporation that had a marketing budget left to spend. IBM did the same thing with "Plex", which is arguably even worse quality-wise, but at least has an open license (SIL).

<comment><USER8> My best guess is that this is a recruitment tool. GS has historically relied on a roster of digital agencies to do any sort of consumer-facing design. They've been trying to grow their in-house practice with mixed results. It's the same trend as the last recession. They can lure talent by offering a lot of money, but no with a creative itch is going to spend their career at a bank.

<comment><USER9> Yup, they're basically screaming to UX and visual designers "Hey, we're not your stale old bank! We have a design system and a Sketch library, come work for us!" You can also tell that this is career focused as the third link in the header is "Careers". Interestingly enough, I knew someone who worked in their design team. Lasted 2 years I think before heading back to the West Coast.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm interested in the Typeface itself. \- The diagonal/emphasis on "5" is a great improvement to differentiate it from "S". Roboto tried something similar, but execution is better here imo.

\- Reducing the standard width deviation between letters will also be of great help for mobile, number driven usage - without going full monospace.

\- The "u" simply being an inverted "n", the "m" using the same shoulders and stems as the "n are things that go against the premise of a fully legible font. I would revise this.

What do you think?

<comment><USER11> Meh.

<comment><USER12> Agreed. _Yet Another Sans Face_. Like the world needs, or even _could conceivably benefit from_ , another one.

Goldman Sachs is trying to distract us from something. I wonder what... Something else they are doing, right now? or something they just did?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ugh, all that clicking for the next page. Why not put it all on one page or a pdf for that matter? Reminds me of click bait factory design: Take up the whole page, each nugget of meaning is a separate page, draw it out as long as possible for the clicks.

<comment><USER14> On my pretty standard-resolution 1920x1080 screen, the "next" arrow requires scrolling to see. ...So they made it so you can't scroll through, but have to scroll a bit on each panel to get to the next one. It's inherently horrifying that this site exists.

I get why companies want in-house fonts that define their brand and avoid licensing fees, but I always find designers' blog posts about how they designed a font to be insanely and incredibly self-congratulatory while focusing on things that almost no human on earth will ever notice.

<comment><USER15> Same here.

Also I got an extra horizontal scroll bar that had no room left to scroll (...if that makes sense the the scrollbar was visible but you could not scroll left or right) on Firefox.

Kinda disappointing for a "design-ery" focused thing to have some really bad design requiring scrolling, as well as screwed up sizing that triggers pointless scrollbars.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Companies do a font fork to stop paying for the royalties for the most famous ones. Millions of pages for an unlimited amount of time adds up to more than the cost to create a shiny new font i.e. $50k. This is probably one of the first cost hacks technology companies figured out before big finance.

Who wants to bet Barclay, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank do not have their own font by 2030?

<comment><USER17> Don't Barclays have their own already, called "Expert Sans"? Looks like it was designed in 2004 by Monotype.[1]

1: [https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20040803005135/en/Agf...](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20040803005135/en/Agfa- Monotype-Designs-New-Barclays-Fonts-Brand)

<comment><USER18> Yep, CS also already has their own font.

<comment><USER19> And Deutsche bank too :) DeuBa Univers

Even Insurance company's have there own

<comment><USER16> Thanks guys I just named a few and figured out you were hanging out here so I gave you something to do.

<comment><USER19> Ahh..nice to meet you Google-Bot, now i know how they do it ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Weird that they highlight its numerical use but there's no effort to disambiguate 0 from O.

<comment><USER21> I read the comments here first and expected the O and 0 to be indistinguishable, but for me it's prety easy to tell.

See for yourself - I flipped a 0 and an O on this image, can you tell where? [https://imgur.com/a/3hcg3zH](https://imgur.com/a/3hcg3zH)

<comment><USER22> I see the O flipped to 0, but the 0 flipped to O doesn't look out of place to me.

<comment><USER21> >I see the O flipped to 0, but the 0 flipped to O doesn't look out of place to me.

real question - so how did you know there was an 0 flipped to O as well?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> What is the reason for extremely large font size trends, especially ticking up after 2015?

Huge typography is obnoxious, from marketing philosophy standpoint - <USER2> screams insecurity. From a technical standpoint, it is inappropriate for the screen size. Yet designers today love choosing HUGE typography to be bold and daring. From Dropbox to IBM, from GS to Apple - this whole trendy huge font thing bothers me.

I understand that they're using huge font sizes to show off to the world their new typeface. Make no mistake, it will be used in huge sizes as it is the current trend - a cool thing to do as a designer is to employ massive bold typography today.

<comment><USER24> Font licenses are expensive. It's far cheaper to take something like Helvetica, and make slight changes to each of the glyphs, and rebrand it.

For context, I used to work on Google Fonts.

<comment><USER23> What's that have to do with Font licenses? I am talking about the size of the font taking up almost half of my screen.

> It's far cheaper to take something like Helvetica

Helvetica costs $$$ if you want to use it for commercial use. No more than any other font. Also, you _cannot_ modify Helvetica, especially if you get it from Monotype (previously Linotype): [https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/linotype/helvetica/](https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/linotype/helvetica/)

<comment><USER25> Nobody's suggesting modifying. It's accomplished through R&D... ripoff and duplicate.

<comment><USER23> Even ripping off requires time/money. Font design isn't a trivial activity that most people deem it to be.

I suggest downloading FontForge and try to make your own ripoff. You'll be amazed at the complexity and the skill required to design a typeface. Adjusting kerning pairs alone will take weeks of meticulous work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > You're using an incompatible browser.

> We've engineered Marquee to leverage the latest technologies. Please upgrade > to one of the following browsers:

Reading through the other comments, I'm shocked that this is simply a page describing a font, and yet it somehow needs "the latest technologies".

(I'm currently using Firefox on iOS)

<comment><USER27> Firefox on iOS is just Safari with different chrome (oh how ironic a word, but I mean the browser UI) since Apple doesn't allow third parties to JIT (which is essentially required for JS, so everyone uses iOS' builtin webview)

<comment><USER28> I don't think JIT is _required_ for JS, that's just how people choose to implement it.

<comment><USER27> Conceptually, yeah, it's not required. But in practice there are a whole lot of websites that make heavy (HEAVY) use of JS, and performance would not be acceptable for a lot of users.

I'm not saying those websites are correct in doing that, but in effect browsers are expected to have JIT to maintain any userbase at all, because such websites are so numerous that it would make it seem it is an actual browser "issue" in the eyes of laypeople.

<comment><USER29> Depends. Hermes[1] JS engine from Facebook do not have JIT and provide better perf for React Native.

Modern V8 have both interpreter Ignition[2] and TurboFan[3] JITed compiler. My understanding is that on most websites Ignition will be sufficient but when using omething like SPA application TurboFan will gradually speedup bytecode generated by Ignition using JIT like technology.

I am not sure if JIT is required. There are even ideas to compile Typescript to WebAssembly[4]. You could create a compiler that compile strict subset of JS to more performant Webassembly and it would outperform modern JS engines.

      [1] https://github.com/facebook/hermes
      [2] https://v8.dev/docs/ignition
      [3] https://v8.dev/docs/turbofan
      [4] https://www.assemblyscript.org/

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Nice.

Let's see Paul Allen's card.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cISYzA36-ZY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cISYzA36-ZY)

<comment><USER31> haha, I just realized that Gavin Belson is Luis!

<comment><USER30> he is!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> My first reaction: looks like a Dalton Maag font. At the end: Creative Direction + Design: Dalton Maag

<comment><USER33> Interesting. They've done the same for a number of companies including Nokia, Ducati, Lush, Intel, etc... [https://www.daltonmaag.com/work](https://www.daltonmaag.com/work)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> "You're using an incompatible browser."

Don't put this on users. I'm using latest iOS Firefox, not Netscape 4.0

<comment><USER35> > iOS Firefox

Short of using Opera this might be the worst browser to use, so they're not wrong.

<comment><USER36> Night mode, in-built tracking prevention, Firefox sync - which makes it my go- to to transfer links from my linux desktop to iphone

Why do you say it's the worst browser after Opera?

<comment><USER37> Does it have all that? I thought iOS Chrome and iOS Firefox is just the Safari engine with a different app UI thanks to Apple's horribleness.

Apple could theoretically violate your privacy all they want through their rendering engine.

<comment><USER38> Those features exist outside of the rendering engine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Ugh, the font itself seems okay I guess, but I don't understand why, in a font ostensibly designed for legibility, you would choose an open zero in lieu of a slashed or dotted zero.

<comment><USER40> My first thought after reading through to the end was also "After making such a deal about number legibility, that O looks a lot like that 0."

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> As someone who used to make pitch books in investment banking (not GS), I'll tell you some of the awesome things I saw from a user perspective.

\-- Funny when they mentioned fitting in a lot of text in a small space. I've never used so much 8-pt font in my life before or since. A lot of the time you are very space constrained in things like detailed footnotes, so you are almost tweet speaking to fit it all in there

\-- The number section blew me away, the fact that you are getting fixed width number performance (and capital letter tickers too) in a "normal" font is incredible. There is a lot of focus on perfect number alignment (the dreaded #,##0_);(#,##0) number format in Excel).

Also to address some of the comments why they didn't put a slash through the 0. The audience is financial professionals and the slashed 0 is not used, and would be very distracting and especially so for large round numbers ie

       1,000,000

</comment><comment><USER42> That's quite a high priced dad joke.

</comment><comment><USER43> Ah The Goldman Sack. Reminded me of this for whatever reason:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTUY16CkS-k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTUY16CkS-k)

</comment><comment><USER44> I think they probably get this font in addition to all of the rebranding. Assuming that they could license Helvetica and that they have one app (Marcus) and putting in 33 thousand users (employee count) you can get to around ~$50k.

Used the calculator here: [https://www.myfonts.com/licenses?type=sku&id=631501&cl=false](https://www.myfonts.com/licenses?type=sku&id=631501&cl=false)

</comment><comment><USER45> Why do big companies insist on making their own font and then putting on a parade to celebrate its debut? Arial, Helvetica, and countless other fonts are a better option since I already have them installed, don't need a special license, and are battle tested and highly refined. If they felt strongly in paying a typographer, they should have contracted one to fix the hinting in macos so type wasn't a blurry mess.

<comment><USER46> Why they put on the parade and release them publicly I do not know. But having "your own font" (that is of course part of the company wise OS image) has advantages. The main one, you can instantly recognize a company internal document. The second one: it sets a baseline. All internal documents will be in that font. Otherwise one department will use Arial, the other one Times etc.

<comment><USER38> I can barely tell the difference between Arial and Helvetica how is anyone gonna tell their derivatives apart.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> It looks really good, but also reminds me a lot of IBM's similar new typeface Plex [1, 2] from a year and a half ago.

They have their differences of course, but they're both very modern sans- serifs with a tall x-height and a slight bit of squarishness to their round parts.

Seeing as they're both trying to project the image "we have history and trustworthiness, but we're also modern and hip", it makes sense they'd end up with such similar results. (I'm not saying those descriptions are _true_ , just that they want to _project_ that!)

[1] [https://www.ibm.com/plex/](https://www.ibm.com/plex/)

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

</comment><comment><USER48> Kinda ironic that they talk about the legibility of the numbers but the page they are presented in is quite hard to read: [https://i.imgur.com/DItuHiL.png](https://i.imgur.com/DItuHiL.png)

<comment><USER49> Likely a bug (that they may have already fixed). Here's what I get in MacOS Firefox: [https://i.imgur.com/3SFp2KU.png](https://i.imgur.com/3SFp2KU.png)

<comment><USER23> May be they should just stick a static HTML page? No javascript should be necessary for displaying type, am I wrong? Why do we need animations? Why do we need this presentation hoohaa?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Interesting font. The presentation of this page looks pretty bad on a window that is ~1000px wide. Not sure why it was designed in a way that forced a single ratio.

</comment><comment><USER51> I mean, I'm not sure the world needs more font faces when the existing set of many many options seems to do a pretty good job for all purposes (who ever thinks, "boy this job would be much easier with a font more appropriately suited to the task, but alas, no such font exists"?)

However, I did really enjoy the introduction slides, some great design work there for sure.

<comment><USER52> This comment didn't make sense to me, it seems like this is like saying there are enough paintings or sculptures in the world for people to see whatever kind of art they want and have whatever emotional reactions they're going to get from the existing art.

This isn't like open source license proliferation or something, having more fonts is just more room for experimentation and creativity, more choice for designers, etc. you don't have to keep up with every single one, and it doesn't make things harder like eg. open source license proliferation where the more of them you have the more you need a lawyer to review every dependency.

But maybe I'm misunderstanding and there's some harm here?

<comment><USER51> Ah, yeah I do see where you're coming from. I guess I just haven't been looking at font faces so much as "art" (mostly because it seems like there isn't a lot of room for variation or creativity; most of these "new" font faces look more or less the same to me, but that could also just be my untrained eye).

You're totally right that there's no harm, and I also wasn't trying to belittle the effort of making new fonts! I was more wondering why a _company_ would want to expend the probably quite significant resources to create a whole new font (as opposed to a solo artist doing it for fun, which I'd understand) -- but the other response to my top-level comment gives some good reasoning to that question :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> st-isidore Thanks to Mr. Tonsky's post mandating me to upgrade to a 4K monitor for sharply rendered fonts, this is awesome. The text is bleeding-edge sharp.

I got the least expensive 27" 4K@60Hz monitor I could (Sceptre U279W-4000R, $200), and it arrived with no dead pixels. I had to find a color calibration profile, but now it's a beaut. Thanks to Mr. Tonsky.

</comment><comment><USER53> I like it, but I can't find a license anywhere. What am I allowed to use it for? Am I allowed to redistribute it?

<comment><USER54> The license is here [1]. It looks like you can redistribute with attribution and alike license.

[1] [https://design.gs.com/d/legal/goldman-sans- license/](https://design.gs.com/d/legal/goldman-sans-license/)

<comment><USER53> Thank you (and the others who answered). This answers my question.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> You could be forgiven for mistaking this for just about anything Erik Spiekermann has designed. I find this style of squashed humanist sans-serif to be so uninteresting. You'd think there would be more variation in character to be found in that space, but something about making a condensed sans-serif in this style makes everything look... cautious and indistinguishable.

Fitting for an organization like Goldman Sachs, I suppose.

</comment><comment><USER56> Most detailed font description I've ever seen

<comment><USER57> In that case, you may enjoy: [https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/mono/](https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/mono/)

<comment><USER58> JetBrains makes an IDE and that is the default font in the IDE. So to be fair to them, at least theirs is a case where investing in a font has a direct effect on the product and business.

<comment><USER57> I don't think we meant it as a criticism of either Goldman Sachs or JetBrains...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Does the S feel like it's going to fall over to anyone else?

<comment><USER60> Perhaps the font designer took inspiration from the state of the economy?

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I don't really understand this trend. They're not the only firm I'm aware of that's invented their own font and/or standardized on some obscure one.

I'm sure there's an already popular font that has these attributes.

<comment><USER62> It's a prestige project architected to give someone in the Technology Division the feels of working for a big tech company. It's the same reason they have "Fellow" positions.

This culture drove me up the wall when I worked there. "How does this make money?" was sure to get dirty looks from these types of people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Sans Goldman would've been more apt!

</comment><comment><USER64> Ugly as hell. (Just my opinion :)

</comment><comment><USER65> didn't slash/dot the zero???</comment>


Snapchat Groups will let you chat with 16 friends at once - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2016/12/13/snapchat-groups-will-let-you-chat-with-16-friends-at-once/ <comment><USER2> Holy shit!!!</comment>


Ask HN: Is there property mgmt. software for the commercial real estate space? - <AUTHOR>

The idea is software that helps property owners and management companies oversee and easily track commercial real estate assets. If you are interested, would love to talk. <comment><USER2> If you google "property management software" you'll get tons of hits. Not surprising, since commercial real estate is a huge industry (probably trillions of dollars worldwide).</comment>


Just How Risky Is Entrepreneurship, Really? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/01/just_how_risky_is_entrepreneur.html

<comment><USER2> Very risky: For the average founder, the expected utility of starting a VC funded company is around -$200k.

<http://www.nber.org/papers/w14219>

<comment><USER3> Founders aren't necessarily the ones putting up the cash. I haven't seen any statistics on the percentage of "startups" that are founder-funded, but in my personal experience the majority are not - even if the money is borrowed from family. Not considering opportunity cost, the founder isn't out $200k, _the investors are._ IMHO founders usually have the best position in a startup. They get paid to possibly reap the benefits of ownership, but if it fails they are out of a job like any other employee. They assume similar costs as their employees, but stand to gain much more.

<comment><USER4> The point isn't that the founder loses 200k out of his pocket, it's that the founder loses out on a potential of 200k by taking a lower salary working on the startup instead of working at a company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "In addition to the psychic merits of working on the personally meaningful, in an economy where low-wage, high-skill overseas workers and no-wage machines encroach ever more rapidly, it is essential to compete both in input and output."

I think the importance of these points completely dwarfs the rest of the argument.

Set aside the fact that the psychic value of working on your own project can, for many people, offset much of the higher expected monetary value of a steadier job. Crucially, starting and running your own company rapidly develops your executive, decision-making and management skills, largely independent of financial success. These are skills that aren't going to machines or offshore, at least in the near term. Entrepreneurship IS long-term risk mitigation.

</comment><comment><USER6> > "First, entrepreneurship is not riskier than working at a big bank or law > firm, a fact vividly underscored by the de facto nationalization of the > banking sector..."

We might have to rewind the tape here - I think I must have slept through this part.

<comment><USER7> Yeah.

I'd say working for a big bank or law firm is much more stable (less risky in terms of job security/steady career trajectory), although less stable than other sectors.

On the other hand, it's also arguable that it's harder to go big if you're working at a bank or law firm (more risky in that you're less likely to be able to retire young, and not just because of your extravagant fatcat mcbankster lifestyle).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is a flaw in this argument.

First they say that 56% of companies started in 2004 were still in business in 2010. Then they reference the VC rule of thumb that 4 of 5 companies will flounder and dismiss VC companies as being "riskier". But then for their argument on making "real money" as an entrepreneur they reference the same VC companies that they already dismissed as being riskier and having a failure rate far higher than the 44% the article led off with.

<comment><USER9> > _First they say that 56% of companies started in 2004 were still in business > in 2010. Then they reference the VC rule of thumb that 4 of 5 companies will > flounder and dismiss VC companies as being "riskier"._

The fact that having VCs lowers your chance of success seems lost on them.

It is perhaps due to a conflict of interest: Harvard is invested in several VC funds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> While it _is_ risky, I think that the average person overestimates the risk of entrepreneurship and underestimates the risk of being an employee. There's a cultural inertia that still hasn't caught on to the fact that the equation has shifted.

Entrepreneurship is still risky, but it is much less risky today than ever before because the costs (of coordinating people, promoting an idea, distributing information and products, even manufacturing, etc) are lower than ever.

Meanwhile the risks of being an employee are higher than ever. Job security is steadily eroding for many people because of rapidly evolving technology and globally integrated markets.

I'm not saying everyone should be an entrepreneur, but I do think everyone needs to learn to _think_ like an entrepreneur. Even an employee is a business of one, and they'll sink or swim based on how well they choose their market (employer), tailor their product (skills) to that market, and promote their brand (reputation).

(Also keep in mind that "entrepreneurship" is a much bigger category than the typical hacker-news-worthy startup. There is a wide continuum of risk and reward.)

</comment><comment><USER11> Interesting article but it really only addreses part of the risk function. The part that's missing is what, as an entrepreneur, are you putting on the line.

As a long time entrepreneur, I can tell you I was putting a lot less on the line 15 years ago when I was right out of college. And I suspect it will be different 15 years from now.

Are you putting your mortgage at risk? How many dependents do you have? What's your tolerance for risk?

If I hadn't enjoyed being an entrepreneur so much, perhaps I would be married with kids living in a house with a white picket fence in the burbs. But then again, perhaps my wife would be sleeping with a retired hockey player and my kids would be jerks. Who knows?

My advice is to do it if you love it. If you're not enjoying the ride, get off.

</comment><comment><USER12> If entrepreneurship is such a force for good in our society, why doesn't the government promote the small business interests more? What I am speaking of is the truly overwhelming amount of paperwork and taxes that must be satisfied from day 1. Just to beat a dead horse, the requirement for the 1090 forms for all, including corporate payees, would have absolutely choked most small businesses. And woe be unto those who through ignorance or arrogance didn't file. My plea is to all readers, think before you vote this year. See who is really promoting a better environment for small business, and vote for them. Let us reduce the risk for entrepreneurs and build a better society!

<comment><USER13> It is in the best interest of corporations (which are made of people like you and me) to relentlessly lobby the government to continue to make laws favorable to their existence at the expense of others including SMBs which could eventually threaten their business.

If I run a large bank it might be in my best interest to push for laws that mirror my company's current practices to make competitors play catch-up and to shut out upstarts.</comment></comment>


Softbank is buying robotics firm Boston Dynamics and Schaft from Alphabet - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/08/softbank-is-buying-robotics-firm-boston-dynamics-and-schaft-from-alphabet/ <comment><USER2> So disappointing that Google (disclosure: my employer) couldn't figure out what to do with these incredible companies. Let's hope Softbank can put them to better use.</comment>


Seattle's Super Secret White Nationalist Convention - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestranger.com/news/2017/10/04/25451102/we-snuck-into-seattles-super-secret-white-nationalist-convention <comment><AUTHOR> > According to my observations, the standard Seattle Nazi is a white male > under 30 who either works in the tech industry or is going to school to work > in the tech industry. "You're also a coder? Do you mind if I send you > something I've been working on?" I heard that more than once.

Are we into a new McCarthy like era, but replace Russian sympathizers, with White Nationals?

<comment><USER2> What's a "white national"

<comment><AUTHOR> Typo. White Nationalists.</comment></comment></comment>


New Deal Allows Indie Publishers and Songwriters to Profit from DJs' Work - <AUTHOR> http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/7377398/new-deal-allows-indie-publishers-and-songwriters-to-profit-from-djs-work <comment><AUTHOR> Disclaimer: I've actually jumped on Dubset as an Indie but yet to take part in the process - haven't had a lot of time to do any covers/remixes of late. Hoping to see how it works first hand rather soon. Pretty cool approach to "rights management" and compensation in my opinion. YMMV.</comment>


Changing social norms, competition, and technology shake up the funeral business - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21740406-changing-social-norms-competition-and-technology-are-shaking-up-stodgy-and-exploitative <comment><USER2> For example, it's a little-known fact that Costco (in the US) sells caskets at pretty decent prices.

See: [https://www.costco.com/funeral.html](https://www.costco.com/funeral.html)

Overnight delivery, shipping included.</comment>


Who cares what Apple's stock price is? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-04-25/who-cares-what-apple-s-stock-price-is

<comment><USER2> "If you can afford to invest $80 in Apple stock, but you cannot afford to invest $565 in Apple stock, you should not be investing $80 in Apple stock. I can point you to some very nice index funds, or just, like, I mean, open a checking account."

Back when I was a kid, learning about financial literacy, the stock market, etc. my parents encouraged me to buy shares in a company I liked, whose products I used, etc. It wasn't a shrewd investment strategy, or a balanced portfolio (those would come later), but an introduction to the market, brokerages, etc.

I put in as much as I could, being, you know, 12 or so. It was less than $565.

Post-split, my cost basis on those shares will be a hair under a dollar. I've very glad, at the time, that a share of Apple stock was accessible to people like me.

<comment><USER3> I think that statement was more targeted at people who would be at financial risk if that money were lost. Presumably even if you, as a kid, lost that money in the market, you'd still have the support of your parents.

However, for a low-income family with barely any money, it would be unwise to put your only savings in a single company instead of something more diversified like an index or mutual fund.

<comment><USER2> I agree, as a general statement, and as a principle of investing. I just find the "accessibility doesn't matter" argument...irksome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "If you can afford to invest $80 in Apple stock, but you cannot afford to invest $565 in Apple stock, you should not be investing $80 in Apple stock. I can point you to some very nice index funds, or just, like, I mean, open a checking account."

Index funds and checking accounts have not given nearly as much return as Apple over the last several years. Why shouldn't people who can afford to risk $100 but not $500 have access to these returns?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think his point is that if one share costs too much, you generally shouldn't be so all-in to one stock.

By and large, the people with $100 to spend aren't beating the index on average. Transaction costs eat up too much of it. Yes there are outliers, but companies don't split to enable low income buyers the opportunity to buy single shares.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I still am not clear on why this is a problem Apple should spend money to solve. (Since a stock split is certainly not free of administrative costs.)

<comment><USER6> The stock split has the potential to reduce trading costs (stuff to do with tick size, and odd lots) etc...

[http://www.kelley.iu.edu/cholden/Stock%20Splits%202006-05-03...](http://www.kelley.iu.edu/cholden/Stock%20Splits%202006-05-03.pdf)

<comment><USER5> Right, but what is the benefit to Apple of reducing those costs? Maybe they save money when they are doing stock buybacks?

<comment><USER6> The stock become more attractive to hold</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What We Know About Art and the Mind - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/what-we-know-about-art-and-the-mind <comment><USER2> There is a great startup waiting to be founded that does interactive art therapy online for mood and behavioral augmentation ;)

Summary of Twenty-First Century Great Conversations in Art, Neuroscience and Related Therapeutics

[https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.0142...](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01428/full)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's curious in the extreme to me that a few lines on a bit of paper can look like what it is, a few flat lines on a flat bit of paper.

But add a few extra lines, and maybe a bit of shading and suddenly all I can see is a 3D image... I cant "see" the 2D lines anymore...</comment>


How Duolingo achieved a 50:50 gender ratio for new software engineer hires - <AUTHOR> http://making.duolingo.com/how-duolingo-achieved-a-5050-gender-ratio-for-new-software-engineer-hires <comment><USER2> This strategy implicitly assumes that reverse discrimination is an effective policy, i.e. that achieving 50:50 in your own organisation will somehow push the population-wide 18:82 ratio in a different direction.

This isn't justified anywhere, it's just taken as an assumption. It would be good if these implicit positions were justified rather than imposed. The Ys getting discriminated against, will understandly be angry about it, especially since only a small percentage of the Ys actually benefitted from historical discrimination against Xs, yet all of them are now eligible to be reverse- discriminated against.

<comment><USER3> It doesn't assume that at all. Any company can choose to implement a hiring goal for (almost) any reason they choose. Maybe they wanted a broader set of perspectives on their team? The idea that Duolingo would have to justify their hiring decisions in terms of changing the demographics of the whole industry is absurd.

Also Duolingo has ~100 employees total. There's no way that the industry's demographics are somehow limiting their available talent pool. Having a policy like this sounds like a great way for a small company to attract highly talented women.

<comment><USER2> You are right, it doesn't assume that.

However if they don't assume that, then they are effectively _worsening_ the 18:82 ratio for _other organisations_ who will be logically and mathematically unable to reach a 50:50 ratio without leaving (82-18)/82 of Y unemployed, so they would be virtue signalling.

So either they assume that, or they are virtue signalling, or they are trying to make (82-18)/82 of Y unemployed. Q.E.D.

I was trying to Assume Good Faith in my first comment but sure, call me out for not including the "asshole options".

edit: yeah sure, downvote me for pointing out that badly-thought out ideological policies _don 't work mathematically_

<comment><USER3> Even your moved goal posts still try to connect one small company's policies to the industry as a whole. Maybe it's worth emphasizing _your_ unstated assumption that the only reason a company would want 50:50 is to satisfy some external ideological motive rather than careful analysis of what makes for a good team.

<comment><USER2> I don't give a shit about what the "motivations" of the company are. I said:

> This strategy implicitly assumes

That is the real objective assumption that any implementation of this strategy makes (or the other "asshole" choices).

Good intentions are worthless if they can't work mathematically.

<comment><USER3> Why did you feel the need to even comment if you don't care about Duolingo's motivations for hiring people? Of course not every company could have 50:50 with the current pool of software engineers but that's a trivial point. It's true by definition.

EDIT: it's clear that you believe ideology is what's motivating this, despite your claim that you don't care about motivation.

<comment><USER2> If it's a "trivial point" why is this article hitting the front page? Why do you feel the need to turn a "trivial point" into a discussion about motivations and my supposed mis-assumptions of those motivations?

This article is hitting the front page because some people think it's impressive. I don't think it's impressive nor do I think it's solving any real issues. I pointed out in very neutral terms why it's not solving any real issues, but some people some to feel offended by my pointing out a "trivial point".

<comment><USER3> It's solving a real issue at Duolingo and it's their policy.

<comment><USER2> By making it harder to solve the issue everywhere else, yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A thought experiment I'll quote:

"Suppose there was overwhelming evidence that 95% of women were terrible at technology and 5% of women were awesome at technology. There are roughly 7 billion people on the planet, roughly 3.5 billion women, roughly 1.5 billion women who work outside the house for a wage. In this scenario, where only 5% of women love technology, there are 75 million working women who are awesome at technology. According to the Bureau Of Labor Statics, the USA had 1,256,200 software developers in 2016. The BLS also tracks some other minor categories, such as Web Developer, which have about 150,000 jobs. Lump all the sub- categories together, and let's say there are 2 million such jobs in the USA. Let's be wildly generous and double the number for the EU, and triple it for Asia. That gives 12 million software developer jobs in all of the advanced and developing economies. So even with exaggerated assumptions about women's inherent weakness in technology, we still end up with a scenario where every single programming job in the world can be filled by a woman who will be awesome at the job. There is no need for men, at all, in the tech industry."

[http://www.smashcompany.com/business/why-are-women-being- pus...](http://www.smashcompany.com/business/why-are-women-being-pushed-away- from-the-tech-industry)

More to point, women are being pushed out of tech. Women constituted 35% of all software engineers in 1990, but only 26% in 2015 (see above url). Given the rough figure of about 2 million jobs, that 9% difference suggests there are 180,000 missing women from engineering jobs right now. Initiatives like Duolingo help reverse the trend, and therefore should be praised.

<comment><USER5> "Pushed out" is an odd narrative for an industry that is bending over backwards to try and draw more women in. Is it even _possible_ that women (on average) are less interested in tech work and thus have chosen (on aggregate) to pursue other careers instead? It seems like even asking that question is forbidden.

Why is the same level of angst not applied to education, where <20% of primary school teachers are male? Have the public schools been pushing men out, or are men just not interested? Or maybe it's some of both? Do we even know?

<comment><USER6> If primary school teacher was a valued (well-paid) position, I think we'd be having that very discussion. Historically in the US, teachers were men, and computer programmers were women. As teachers shifted more toward women, and as computer programmers shifted more toward men, the compensation for teachers dropped, while the compensation for computer programmers skyrocketed. The correlation is strong, although causation is debatable.

It's no surprise that the efforts to achieve gender balance in a highly-paid industry gets a lot more attention than any gender-imbalance in a lowly-paid industry.

Put another way: men weren't too upset about being pushed out of teaching positions because they were able to make better money elsewhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can understand why women wouldn't want to be engineers because I can understand why most men also don't want to be engineers. Engineers are a small subset of the total population and it's difficulty to say whether we have optimized for either sex but trying to make a one-size-fits all environment seems sub optimal if the goal is to increase total numbers of CS professionals. CS programs should be as popular as ever for males, but it does seem like they could be more popular for females if there were environmental adjustments. Rather than trying to adjust the entire environment (which may discourage men from entering) to one-size-fits-all, I think it makes more sense for some schools to specialize in attracting and training women and in turn those companies that provide meaningful opportunities and environment that are important to women can also more easily find a larger pool of talent.

</comment><comment><USER8> The comments here are viscerally disturbing, and not for reasons that might jump to mind, meaning I don't really mind the merit-driven mindset when it's aptly applied. It's not in this case.

It's one thing to value merit over politics -- I'd expect nothing less from my peers in the bay. However, it's an entirely different matter to value merit over long term strategic objectives, and from what I can tell, an alarming number of commenters here are bereft of any understanding of the long term implications of not striving to increase the potential engineering talent pool.

We in the US are in a situation where:

1) talent is scarce

2) companies, startups more specifically, are now less willing to hire international talent for fear of visa/etc. risks in the current age,

3) politics are disincentivizing efforts to broaden the talent pool via obvious means -- such as by reintroducing and motivating women to participate.

The end result of this isn't going to be job security for existing participants in the tech industry here in the US. It's going to be the flight of entrepreneurs to talent centers where talent can be acquired more reasonably, and right now, that's starting to look less and less like the United States given the above.

Shoot, even YC is broadening beyond these geographical and political boundaries through tools like Startup School.

If your goal's to keep our tech industry in the US from becoming a laggard, it's in your interest to encourage the system to _strategically_ start motivating and representing the population space more accurately. Otherwise, the talent drought will just drive ideas overseas.

(I apologize to any overseas readers reading my comment. I hope you understand.)

TL;DR: very few people here are thinking about this from a long term strategic angle; it seems like everyone's just concerned about their own jobs.

<comment><USER9> > 1) talent is scarce

Can I get a source for this?

<comment><USER8> [https://hackernoon.com/2018s-software-engineering-talent- sho...](https://hackernoon.com/2018s-software-engineering-talent-shortage-its- quality-not-just-quantity-6bdfa366b899)

[https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/02/19/the-war- for-...](https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/02/19/the-war-for-tech- talent-escalates/ejUSbuPCjPLCMRYlRZIKoJ/story.html)

[https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/3900575](https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/3900575)

And a seemingly contrarian source which actually supports the argument I made:

[https://techcrunch.com/2015/11/12/the-tech-talent- shortage-i...](https://techcrunch.com/2015/11/12/the-tech-talent-shortage-is- a-lie/)

> Racial And Gender Inequality

> Opportunity inequality has become so pervasive that minority tech employees > are banding together with the explicit purpose of increasing their numbers > in the space. If you're a tech leader, you must fight against this > inequality to benefit from talented people of all stripes.

> Racial minorities are woefully underrepresented in the tech industry. And > it's not just a matter of race, either. Many don't remember it, but women > were once much more prevalent in tech. However, the proportion of female > computer science students has halved since its heyday in the mid-1980s. And > the women who do enter engineering are leaving at an astonishing rate.

> These problems aren't self-correcting; their resolution requires dedication > from leadership. We're all obligated to take the first step to reverse this > worrisome, decades-long minority flight by acknowledging the issue and > magnifying diverse voices.

> If our industry has any hope of becoming more inclusive — which is a key > step to solving our so-called "talent shortage" — we must be understanding, > empathetic and open to others' viewpoints.

Would you like me to go on? I thought the talent scarcity problem was obvious, but I've got no qualms with more sourcing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> That's nice. Now that we have successfully defeated gender discrimination in tech, can we proceed to defeat age discrimination?

</comment><comment><USER11> This approach is not a solution to anything. The 18:82 ratio needs to be addressed, which basically means starting to build interest in high school. Duolingo (etc.) would be better served by sponsoring interest groups and clubs in high schools, offering scholarships to graduating high school seniors, offering internships to high school students, etc. They need to market high tech careers to those high school girls who have the interest and proclivity for tech, but not the exposure that helps them realize it.

<comment><USER12> What better way to market to high school girls than to send a team of women engineers to show them there is a spot for them in the workplace ?

You can do all the clubs and scholarships you want, but the proof is in the hiring

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> why would anyone want to achieve a 50:50 gender ratio for new software engineer hires? you should simply aim for hiring the best software engineer despite their gender/age/color. The only ratio you could try to achieve would be to have 50:50 applicants for the roles and the select the best candidates.

Or will you hire a female even if she sucks at the job because your team is only made of males? Are you filling a sticker collection or building a team?

</comment><comment><USER14> I like the approach here. Follow the data. It keeps everyone honest.

All companies cherry pick from the best Universities. The fact they've had to look elsewhere means they're not getting the best from the best Universities (based on rankings). They're getting the best female graduates possible. I assume these are good enough but not the best.

Male hires are probably still from the best universities. This creates an imbalance in competence. The female hires are good enough, the male hires are exceptional. Male hires move up the ranks on virtue of their competence. Other male hires leave after a couple promotion cycles expire.

Now we have situation where male hires are predominantly in coveted positions in the company and female hires are mostly junior mid hires.

The equality problem has now shifted up. What do you do then? How far is a company willing to go with an equality experiment before shareholders start noticing the erosion of the companies competitive advantage and start protesting.

I appluad Duolingo for it's boldness. Am doubtful on its sustainability without either the rest of the industries following suit while pre university educational centres attempt to rebalance.

<comment><USER15> > Male hires are probably still from the best universities. This creates an > imbalance in competence.

Is there any objective evidence that people who graduate from the "best universities" become the most competent engineers?

<comment><USER14> Depends by which metric you use to evaluate the hires. The University where the candidate graduated is certainly used as a metric for predicting competency.

Regardless whether this is the right thing to do companies fall back to this approach time and time again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Unfortunately, due to the lack of female engineers, this will be impossible to implement everywhere. Also, it's kind of counterintuitive to equality, as you basically just guarantee women get a job in Tech. Regardless of skill set. Which in itself is kind of sexist. In my opinion anyways, based on my anecdotal experience holding the door for feminists.

I don't know why people think turning women into "butts in seats", as opposed to genuine respect and admiration of skills and abilities is going to make this problem better.

<comment><USER17> > you basically just guarantee women get a job in Tech. Regardless of skill > set

But how do you know they weren't hired for their skill set? Like, if you have two equally good apples in flavor, but you want to balance the profile of varieties, choose the one you're most lacking?

<comment><USER18> It's literally just has to do with numbers. If men and women are equally good at the job and there are less total women, forcing a 50% split at all jobs means that eventually places need to take on lower skilled workers from the smaller group.

<comment><USER6> These numbers only makes sense if there are literally zero skilled women. Otherwise, you're not dealing with the whole of the industry, you are dealing only with your own team, the one or two positions you are currently trying to fill. The question isn't therefore, "What systemic biases in the pipeline can we have addressed in the past to ensure that I have a reasonably set from which to draw today?" It's simply, "Today, right now, is there one qualified woman that I'm likely to overlook if I don't make an effort to remind myself that being surrounded by nothing but men isn't ideal?"

There are an exhaustingly large set of companies that hire exclusively from the set of men, leaving competition for the smaller set of women much easier.

<comment><USER19> RE > There are an exhaustingly large set of companies that hire exclusively from the set of men, leaving competition for the smaller set of women much easier.

I don't know of any large companies that only hire from candidate pools of men. Does anyone know of an example?

<comment><USER6> You moved the goalposts with your question. I said that the set of companies which hires only men is large. You asked specifically about the hiring practices of large companies, which is a different question.

Recently, 88.6% of developers surveyed identified themselves as men[0]. That ratio alone suggests that the vast majority of teams and companies have zero female developers. In my experience, women developers often cluster at companies (usually large companies) so that they are not isolated, which might make the numbers even more extreme.

[0] [https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2017#demographics](https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2017#demographics)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Sidebar: Do any software co's complaining about a lack of quality female engineering talent have real apprenticeship programs like Parker Hannifin or Chevron?

</comment><comment><USER21> Why not hire remotely, if you care about diversity soo much?

</comment><comment><USER22> Fewer women go into STEM because women have more and better options in life.

STEM is hard and it sucks.

Same reason women don't have to mine coal. They have the luxury of being able to choose not to.

Men don't have that luxury. We either earn or we live under a bridge eating food out of cans. Society puts an enormous pressure on men with the threat of homelessness and isolation, which doesn't exist to anywhere near the same degree for women, because women have inherent value.

Men have no inherent value to society, their only value to society is realized through their work.

The result is men work harder and endure harder shittier jobs, including STEM.

If you want more women in STEM, then just eliminate all of their societal privileges, consider them inherently valueless like men, and put them under the same level of threat men are under of being isolated and going homeless.

<comment><USER23> Women disliking STEM doesn't explain stuff like this:

 _In a randomized double-blind study (n = 127), science faculty from research- intensive universities rated the application materials of a student—who was randomly assigned either a male or female name—for a laboratory manager position. Faculty participants rated the male applicant as significantly more competent and hireable than the (identical) female applicant._

[http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full](http://www.pnas.org/content/109/41/16474.full)

<comment><USER24> cherry-picking studies is easy

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning- mix/wp/2015/04/1...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning- mix/wp/2015/04/14/study-finds-surprisingly-that-women-are-favored-for-jobs-in- stem/)

> And according to their latest study, published Monday in the Proceedings of > the National Academy of Sciences, women are no longer at a disadvantage when > applying for tenure-track positions in university science departments. In > fact, the bias has now flipped: Female candidates are now twice as likely to > be chosen as equally qualified men.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wonder how it feels like to be a female engineer, trying to figure out whether your skills were indeed above the bar, or you got hired only to fill the gaps in some diversity officer's spreadsheets. Sounds like a recipe for impostor syndrome to me.

<comment><USER5> One of the very best programmers I've ever worked with is female. She said almost this exact thing to me, basically: "On the one hand it's awesome that I can have my pick of any job in the business, on the other hand it sucks that I don't know if I'm just a statistic for them."

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> > _We started our hiring reboot by analyzing where we were spending our hiring > time and effort. Perhaps not surprisingly, we were spending time at colleges > and universities based on past experience, rather than their percentage of > female computer science undergraduate majors. The national average of female > computer science degree graduates is 18%.2 We made a decision to revisit our > typical list of schools and only visit the universities that had more than > 18% of female undergraduate computer science majors._

More or less "We realized we were looking solely at candidate performance when we were selecting a candidate pool. That wasn't producing the warm fuzzies, so we ignored our best indications of candidate performance, and instead hired from a pool that made us feel good about our arbitrary political goal while hopefully just stopping short of illegal discrimination.".

<comment><USER27> > They also came up with other great ideas, including adding a tool that > automates the first coding task and removes a candidate's identifying > information.

This doesn't really fit that narrative.

<comment><USER24> Hm... I wonder what the influence of that process was. I.e. how does the outgoing percentages (50:50) compare with the incoming percentages? The article doesn't say, but unless it's also 50:50, their process is still biased / sexist, possibly even more than at companies that don't achieve a 50:50 outcome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> How is this not illegal?

<comment><USER8> Because they're not declining candidates because of their gender. They're hiring from talent pools where both genders are more properly represented.

None of this stops a candidate from applying to duolingo directly. There's no discrimination going on against humans, and discriminating against a school is totally fine so long as there's no suspect reason to do so (e.g. discriminating against Howard because they've got primarily African-descended students).

Not a lawyer. Would welcome a legal opinion.

<comment><USER29> This seems to be some double speak.

<comment><USER8> Interesting. What didn't you understand?

<comment><USER29> You misunderstand. I'm saying you just restated something illegal in a way that might make it seem less illegal when it fact it's not.

<comment><USER30> Does title IX dictate where a company is required to focus its talent recruiting process?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The duolingo CEO must be so bad in statisics..

<comment><USER32> I've downvoted your comment because it's only an insult (to a person who doesn't even seem to have been directly involved in this work), rather than an argument that you put forth and which others can attempt to either support or refute.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Unless their applicant pool is exactly 50/50 with no influence, this is even worse because they are actively and purposely discriminating against people. This is not a company that puts it's employees and customers at the top of it's priority list.</comment>


World's first liquid cooled 5G base station deployed in Finland - <AUTHOR> https://metropolitan.fi/entry/world-s-first-liquid-cooled-5g-base-station-deployed-in-finland <comment><USER2> Here's a 2016 Nokia blog article about it: [https://www.nokia.com/blog/water- cool-new-way-take-heat-base...](https://www.nokia.com/blog/water-cool-new-way- take-heat-base-station-site-energy-costs/)

Besides the video being totally cute I remember Ben Krasnow (Applied Science) mentioning in his video about making liquid air that this was frequently used in mobile base stations. I thought it would perhaps be used for super conductivity, but pretty definitely for cooling (dude in the video says other stations are air cooled). Am I thinking of something else?

<comment><USER3> You are correct. 3G BTS systems used Stirling Cryocoolers[0] to cool superconducting microwave filters[1].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applications_of_the_Stirling_e...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applications_of_the_Stirling_engine#Stirling_cryocoolers)

[1] [http://home.eps.hw.ac.uk/~ceejh3/Journals/An%20HTS%20transce...](http://home.eps.hw.ac.uk/~ceejh3/Journals/An%20HTS%20transceiver%20for%20third%20generation%20mobile%20communications.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How much power does a 5G base station consume compared to a 4G? From what I understand, more stations will be needed for this technology.

The European Union has been talking about digitisation and green new deal for economic recovery, but investing in 5G means spending a lot of materials on both stations and mobile phones. It can also mean an increase in energy consumption for both stations and mobile phones.

It seems to me that the two objectives may conflict with each other.

<comment><USER5> It looks like a site may consume about 20kW. This sounds like a good bit, and is more than an LTE mast, but you have to keep in mind that it's much less than a car and about equivalent to two electric showers. From a societal energy usage point of view it's irrelevant.

<comment><USER6> 20 kW in what period of time? 20 kW in a year is nothing. 20 kW in a second is quite a lot.

Edit: Facepalm!

<comment><USER7> I think you're thinking of kWh, which are kilowatt hours. In which case, the answer is 20 kWh per hour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sorry to hijack, but is anyone else getting a Netscape Navigator favicon when visiting the site? Nice throwback.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's sad to see initiatives like this come and go but never filed ready or viable to be deployed realtime

</comment><comment><USER10> It seems it's only worth it if you can plumb the waste heat into a nearby building.

<comment><USER11> Because of the short range 5G has, it seems like they would only put towers on or very near to buildings.

<comment><USER12> This is misunderstanding.

5G spectrum cover spectrum including low band and mid band spectrum of the 1G through 4G LTE frequencies. Then there is the new high-band. First 5G installations are deployed into new high-band.

5G installations in countryside will be low band that is more efficient than 4G/LTE.</comment></comment></comment>


Twitter and Emptiness - <AUTHOR> http://tommaxwell.co/post/39371499182/twitter-and-emptiness

<comment><USER2> Every time I read something like this, one particular article from Pointless Waste of Time (now Cracked) comes to my mind [1]. In his very cynical and somewhat angry way, David Wong describes why current iteration of social media interactions model doesn't work too well.

I am very much advising to read the whole article, but his main points are:

1\. Text is not a good medium

2\. Internet relationships are too sterile (this works both ways, your 'friends' are more sterile and your annoyances are filtered too easily)

3\. In the end we feel worth less

[1] [http://www.cracked.com/article_15231_7-reasons-21st- century-...](http://www.cracked.com/article_15231_7-reasons-21st-century- making-you-miserable.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> I noticed this a lot last night at a nightclub. It was 11:30pm and people were on their smart phones smiling, it was for extended periods of time and they werent typing so almost definitely wasnt SMS messages. Even in a packed pub/club people find solitude.

<comment><USER4> Indeed. Well put.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A few months ago I quit Twitter after being a fairly heavy user (24k tweets in ~4yrs). I found one of my now-best IRL friends on Twitter, and a lot of other people I care/d about.

But more and more, it seemed to create an emptiness in me. Or more to the point, it brought the existing emptiness to the surface. There's a kind of desperation there, with everyone clamouring to be less lonely.

It also occupied too much of my thought process. I'd find myself subconsciously rephrasing thoughts into 140 character chunks. It was weird.

I'm still half tempted to go back, and try and to see if I can maintain the relationships without the downsides. I'm not too confident though.

</comment><comment><USER6> The article makes me wonder what _would_ make someone want to be around a social group "all the time, or even on a frequent basis".

When I was a child of course I wanted to hang around with my friends as much as possible: there were activities which necessitated being in the same place and they were so fun that there never seemed enough time for them. e.g. trading Star Wars cards and playing videogames (no XboxLive in those days, we had to use a 'multi-tap' and splitscreen!). We were all about the "all the time" and "frequent basis".

In adult life the equivalent seems to be those people who are always getting me out to play soccer or jam with them. Still activities that necessitate being in the same place and, for some, still activities that they love so much that there's virtually no such thing as spending 'too much time' on them.

But I don't think that's it. I think that when you meet up with the same people a lot, doing things the group broadly enjoys, whether you really like ALL of them as individuals or not, you build a camaraderie and that's what makes you come back and hang out "all the time" and "on a frequent basis".

</comment><comment><USER7> It also applies to reddit.

</comment><comment><USER8> Thanks, Doogie Howser.

</comment><comment><USER4> "More than ever, I just wanted to be alone. Alone with my thoughts, alone with my computer, alone with my hobbies."

That sounds neither sad nor crazy or anything else people might tell you. It's quite normal. You maybe an introvert. Which is not what most people think it is.

This maybe the best article on the subject and most popular Atlantic Monthly article ever in terms of reader response: [http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/03/caring-f...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/03/caring- for-your-introvert/302696/)

If that rings true, Welcome! You are far from alone. But we'll leave you alone, because we're the same way most of the time.

<comment><USER9> The way I define it these days: there are two types of people, those that "recharge" when they're with others for when they're alone (extroverts), and those that recharge when they're alone for when they're with others (introverts).

Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

<comment><USER4> And some do both. To limited extents. As in, I can take this much recharge from people and this much from my alone time. It's really a matter of numbers, although the numbers are variable over time.

<comment><USER10> It varies person to person, but I find that some people are more "extroverted" in certain contexts and subjects which interest them, while others are more "introverted" in topics which don't hold their interests as much.

<comment><USER4> That is, IMO, the nature of introversion. It is a myth than introverts cannot or hate social situations. While everyone is different, I can speak only for myself. Small talk is the bane of existence. If one has nothing of essence to say, one should shut up. Otherwise, I will find a way to politely (or not) move away to something of interest.

I can hold a conversation about software development topic X for probably hours with plenty of energy, yet another conversation about the weather for two minutes drains me more than the former.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


You don't create a culture - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1022-you-dont-create-a-culture

<comment><USER2> What the hell!? 37 signals are SO full of themselves. They are a small business, yet they keep posting articles like they have discovered the secret to changing the world. The restaurant round the corner to my house make more income than them, but I do not see the owner standing outside telling others how to run a restaurant instead of inside cooking.

37 Signals is one of the more annoying Web 2.0 companies. Yes, I know you're trying to drum up interest so people invite you to hold talks, but why do all articles always seem to be about how wonderful you are, how great your company is, and you reinvented something or the other.

Get over it, you guys are not in possesion of the fountain of wisdom.

<comment><USER3> It's just part of their business model, that's how they stand out from the crowd. Otherwise how do you think yet another to-do list would be a viable business app. Same thing holds for Joel Spolsky and Fog Creek. Yet another bug tracker. It wouldn't go anywhere without Joel's writings on how to do software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think a better question would be

"How do I improve the culture?" or "How do I maintain this culture, now that we have it?"

</comment><comment><USER5> You don't create it, but I think it can be artfully guided. By being cognizant of the incentives and disincentives you create every day, you can exert a good deal of control over it.

</comment><comment><USER6> So obvious, and yet so difficult for bigger companies to get right.

<comment><USER7> Mostly because for monolithic companies process and procedure are more important than culture for keeping the wheels greased.

In the same vein, you'd have to be pretty naive to think that culture at places like Google, Apple and Microsoft (to an extent) can remain how they are without some steering and work by higher-ups to foster said culture. Maybe it wasn't forced to begin with, but there is certainly an upkeep cost as employee numbers rise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> An artificial culture is obviously phony and worse than no culture at all.

I once worked at a company that "claimed" a culture with emphasis in employee training (which was obviously false).

The employees referred to the corporate culture as:

 _B_ ig _U_ ltimate _L_ arge _L_ ame _S_ pecial _H_ igh _I_ ntensity _T_ raining</comment>


Nomic: "...a game in which changing the rules is a move." - <AUTHOR> http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/nomic.htm

<comment><USER2> Ah, I remember playing Nomic obsessively online back when I was in high- school. I was the webmaster (or "Secretary of Truth") who inflicted the painful red color scheme on MacroNomic: <http://www.nomic.net/deadgames/macronomic/>

<comment><USER2> Hey, I just took a look at the longest-running Nomic, Agora, and it appears to still be at least somewhat active: <http://www.agoranomic.org/> It was started in 1993; that's an impressive run.

<comment><USER3> Agora was great---I was involved for about six years in the early days, and it taught me a _lot_ about logic, world modelling, and precision of expression. You know, computer science.

<comment><USER4> I started, but found it frustrating and eventually quit. The rules were the size of a phone book, and there were a lot of meta/social rules in addition to the written ones. At least once I followed the letter of the law, only to be told that "no, that's not how you're supposed to do it."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When I taught high school, nomic was the day-before-vacation time waster in my CS classes. I think we actually had a winner once in the couple of dozen times we played, but the kids had fun. They sat around arguing about logic, which was a very easy sell to my administration.

</comment><comment><USER6> For those with a shorter attention span, there's an addictive card game in which changing the rules is a move: <http://www.wunderland.com/LooneyLabs/Fluxx/>

<comment><USER7> Be forewarned, the game can go quite long as mathematically, there is no guarantee it will halt.

<comment><USER8> It can also be quite frequently won on the first turn.

<comment><USER9> Not at all in any of the variants I know of.

<comment><USER7> By first turn, he means "first play around the table".

If you get a play 3 or play all out in the first turn, and someone else has 2 keepers that match a goal card, someone can then win by playing all three.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This sounds a lot like the semi-popular college game 1000 Blank White Cards (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1000_Blank_White_Cards>)

</comment><comment><USER11> This brought back fond memories of calvinball <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_and_Hobbes#Calvinball>

</comment><comment><USER12> Haven't read about it before but sounds interesting.

<comment><USER4> It is interesting, particularly if you play it with like-minded friends.

Another similar game which is just as good is Bartok (or Bartog or Warthog, depending on who you ask). Similar to Uno, but when you win a round, you get to make a new rule which applies to every future round. Best played with drunken Mathematicians/CS types.

Finally, if you want to be _really_ scared, there's PerlNomic, in which rule changes are actually diffs applied to the voting code: <http://www.nomic.net/~nomicwiki/index.php/PerlNomic>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hofstadter wrote about this in a column for Scientific American. The article appears in his collection, "Metamagical Themas," and Google Books has most of it here: [http://books.google.com/books?id=o8jzWF7rD6oC&dq=metamag...](http://books.google.com/books?id=o8jzWF7rD6oC&dq=metamagical+themas&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=TQ7TS5ryBoKC8gaRx625Dw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CBsQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=nomic&f=false).

<comment><USER14> Partly because Peter Suber worked with Hofstadter during a sabbatical year, and I believe developed Nomic during that time (or at least did some of the preliminary talking about it). It's a very Hofstadterian game.

<comment><USER14> Peter Suber just wrote to me correcting my misapprehension of causality:

 _I published Nomic in 1982, about seven years before my sabbatical in Hofstadter's lab. But I published it in Hofstadter's column in Scientific American. We got to know one another through Nomic, and it led to the sabbatical at his lab, not the other way around.

There's nothing confidential in this; please feel free to post it if you think it would interest others._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nomic is a fascinating game.

For those about to try it in school: You should probably add a fixed rule about not ending class prematurely and going outside to play (my students needed a rather long time to come up with this loop hole). But it was an interesting hour which served as an introduction to the 10 commandments.

</comment><comment><USER16> Fluxx. highly recommend for hackers. same spirit as Nomic but MUCH simpler and easier to learn and play. And fast.

</comment><comment><USER17> Sounds really cool. I wish I could find a group to play this with. Any takers in NYC?

In other news, all these numbered rules made me think of Rule #34. I lost.

<comment><USER8> Sorry, I just changed the rules and now you're not allowed to play.

<comment><USER18> If pw0ncakes were already a player, this would be illegal under rules 104-108, rule 111, possibly rule 201, and indeed might have handed him victory under rule 213.</comment></comment></comment>


Towards Battery-Free HD Video Streaming [video] - <AUTHOR> http://batteryfreevideo.cs.washington.edu/ <comment><USER2> The new batteryless wireless sensors coming out of uw are incredible. Dr. Smith is leading some great work. My interest started when I heard of the WISP [0]. The RF power harvesting design is so simple and elegant. It is amazing what can be done with uW of power!

[0] [https://sensor.cs.washington.edu/WISP.html](https://sensor.cs.washington.edu/WISP.html)

<comment><USER3> Indeed, its _so amazing_ it has potential of replacing $.2 watch battery some day.

<comment><USER4> It is amazing. With this approach, you wouldn't have to change the battery every 10 minutes.

<comment><USER5> Although I don't recognise myself in the style of the comment you're responding to, I would like to point out a (watch) battery will not die in 10 minutes when drawing microwats only. I think we want to separate low energy usage, which is a cool feat by itself, and RF harvesting (which goes well with low energy usage, but so _might_ a small, cheap, battery).

<comment><USER4> I'm not an RF engineer, but the video mentioned that the 'traditional' WiFi component would draw 1W. I assumed that, if you add a battery, it's to power this part.

<comment><USER3> No, backscatter is the only legit part of this writeup, everything else is made up.

"we simulate an ASIC, which achieves 60 fps 720p and 1080p HD video streaming for 321 µW and 806 µW, respectively" simulate, how convenient!

"Our inter and intra-frame compression algorithms reduces total bandwidth requirements by up to two orders of magnitude compared to raw video" so they also invented mpeg4 level of compression 1mW codec.

You might wonder how such an amazing compression codec works? its middle-out. They transmit "fullhd" by transmitting ~100x50 resolution intra frames ":). Everything is Simulated, Estimated, Planned, Theorized, Calculated and Faked. That cool 1080 YT clip of them walking around the corridor just after showing you face mounted camera models? Never happened, prototype is BW 112×112, "simulated" again. Their setup can do 1080@60 of a static picture, there is only enough bandwidth to sustain ~2fps without dropping data. They even conveniently kept all the calculations ignoring color (3x the data).

Reminds me of energy harvesting wristwatch crowdfunding HN was raving about few months back, conveniently ignoring particular design including battery able to power it for couple of years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In the video and paper, they don't actually explain what backscatter is in this context. The wifi signal is what's being "backscattered". Here's some of the leadup papers about it:

[https://passivewifi.cs.washington.edu/files/passive_wifi.pdf](https://passivewifi.cs.washington.edu/files/passive_wifi.pdf) [https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~gshyam/Papers/wifibackscatt...](https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~gshyam/Papers/wifibackscatter.pdf)

<comment><USER7> Here's a video explaining WiFi backscatter. It really is an amazing concept even without doing HD video with it. All kinds of devices - I'm imaging home automation sensors - could become batteryless.

[http://iotwifi.cs.washington.edu/](http://iotwifi.cs.washington.edu/)

<comment><USER8> > All kinds of devices - I'm imaging home automation sensors - could become > batteryless.

That's terrifying.

<comment><USER9> You can still use jammers to prevent backscatter from being readable but your jamming signal will just power the sensor more. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is the kind of submission that usually never gets anywhere on HN but it's very good.

Actually, there is a lot of great stuff that gets submitted that never gets anywhere.

It would be cool if somehow there was a manually edited "great but never got anywhere" stream for HN.

Edit: Now I've gone and said that, watch this get a 1000 points ;)

<comment><USER11> There have been lots of posts about new technologies that have not panned out so HN scepticism is to be expected (remember memristors)

<comment><USER12> I am still hoping for "yet" in the case of memristors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It seems transmitting the raw sensor data would make it tricky to do this securely. Would it be possible to encrypt the signal with some sort of hardware cipher?

<comment><USER14> They address the security possibilities in the paper:

> Our current implementation does not account for security. However, to secure > the wireless link between the camera and reader, we can leverage the fact > that our digital core processes the PWM signal. Each wireless camera can be > assigned a unique pseudo random security key. Based on this key, the > camera's digital core can modulate the width of the PWM-encoded pixel value > using an XOR gate. The reader, which knows the security key, can map the > received data to the desired pixel values by performing the analogous > operation.

<comment><USER15> XOR encryption with a mostly static image doesn't seem very secure to me.

<comment><USER12> If the static image could be somehow "bankswitched", "shifted" or updated... I am thinking a huge one time pad. The problem is doing it power effeciently of course.

<comment><USER15> Thinking about, the main problem will be the penguin problem [1]. Which for a video is even worse as if a shape is moving, from seeing the pixels that are changing you can tell most of what is going on.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_cipher_mode_of_operation...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_cipher_mode_of_operation#Electronic_Codebook_\(ECB\))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Reading that instantly reminded me of the Great Seal bug the Soviets gifted to US Ambassador W. Averell Harriman in 1945 [0]

I'm not an engineer, but as I understand it the principles at work here are very similar?

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_\(listening_device\))

<comment><USER17> Tangentially related to that: a Dutch radar company apparently was responsible for reverse engineering that for the CIA

[https://thecorrespondent.com/3789/operation-easy-chair-or- ho...](https://thecorrespondent.com/3789/operation-easy-chair-or-how-a-little- company-in-holland-helped-the-cia-bug-the-russians/116534484-2a3d7f11)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This reminds me of Theremin's Great Seal bug that was placed in the US embassy in Moscow:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_\(listening_device\))

<comment><USER19> Definitely, this project is basically the Great Seal Bug but for photodiodes. The authors even mention the Great Seal bug in their paper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is truly incredible. I've spent the last 4 years neck deep in live video broadcasting solutions for consumer, commercial, and government use cases, and this just blew my mind.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is moving towards A Deepness in the Sky level surveillance tools.

</comment><comment><USER22> My immediate thought is, even easier to install reversing cameras for older cars. Now my second thought is, spying devices, a wholly more troubling prospect.

<comment><USER23> Maybe I'm just too old-fashioned, but I generally dislike the idea of reversing cameras. I only reverse if I'm completely sure of my surroundings, based on turning back and using my eyes as well as the mirrors. Looking anywhere else tends to feel like a distraction.

Most people drive and reverse way too fast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Worth noting that the pretty HD pictures came from a laptop hooked up to a DAC converter to simulate an analog HD video camera. The true analog camera shown on the page had nowhere near HD color resolution (though it could still recognize faces in a parking lot with 95% accuracy--impressive in itself.)

</comment><comment><USER25> I saw the presentation for their paper at NSDI last week. I was (inwardly) giddy the whole time. They had a _live demo_. It doesn't even resemble something that could be turned into a real product in the near term. It is, despite that, comically amazingly cool tech.

</comment><comment><USER19> Very cool project.

I wonder if compressed sensing would be useful here. In the paper they describe this custom (and seemingly ad-hoc) video compression algorithm that is suitable for the low-power device. Basically, the camera averages blocks of pixels into "super pixels" all in the analog domain, sends these super pixels over the wireless link, and then the receiver can request the individual pixels of any super pixel that seems like it might have changed since the last frame. But with compressed sensing, can't all of this be done by sending random linear combinations of all pixel values (like the single pixel camera)? It seems like then you can avoid the bi-directional link and also get rate adaptation for free.

<comment><USER19> Also, in the paper they say they used pulse-width modulation for the backscatter signal instead of just attaching the sensors directly to the antenna like the Great Seal Bug because the dynamic range of the photodiodes is much less than that of a microphone and they wanted to avoid using an amplifier (section 3.1 in the paper). But the PWM requires power as well. Would an amplifier that only has to map the range of a photodiode to the range of a microphone really require that much more power? And if so, are we talking like twice the power, 10x, 100x?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is an incredible outcome and really shows how much work these UW grad students and Dr Smith have been working on low power passive tech. Great stuff, I wish more people in software were versed in physical tech so they could create hardware to enable their ideas.

</comment><comment><USER27> Seems like this could be useful for AR. I'm sure adding two front-facing cameras to the Vive Pro cut into both power and bandwidth budgets. I'd love to hear from an AR expert on this!

<comment><USER28> What is AR?

<comment><USER29> Augmented Reality (e.g., Pokemon Go)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Incredible. Since it is analog and unencrypted, it's wide open to attacks though, isn't it?

<comment><USER2> what is there to attack? if someone is in range to get the backscattered signal they can just see what the camera is looking at...its 16ft LOS, for privacy concerns at such low powers any walls would attenuate the backscatter.

<comment><USER31> What about spoofing or jamming the signal?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm amazed they can get so much bandwidth out of backscatter. Their previous work [1] was more like RFID tag bandwidth.

[1] [http://iotwifi.cs.washington.edu/files/wifiBackscatter.pdf](http://iotwifi.cs.washington.edu/files/wifiBackscatter.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER33> I'm really impressed with the bandwidth. Being analog and only having back- scatter for the modulation, I thought it'd be way worse than current digital or old analog schemes, but from the paper, they're saying 2.8Mhz worst case for 720p@10fps, 0.98Mhz on average.

</comment><comment><USER34> Imagine everyone with google glasses broadcasting what they see unencrypted to people within ~20ft.

Super cool.

<comment><USER35> Surely everyone within 20ft of them can pretty much see what they see anyway?

<comment><USER36> It'd be useful for going around corners, visibility in parking lots, situational awareness for teams of military/SWAT in indoor environments, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> 480p at 10fps at 16ft is really incredible. That's enough distance to put cameras all over cars to sense environments around it. My first immediate thought is to retrofit old cars with lane-changing assist camera with this in traffic.

<comment> crooked-v The power requirements of a camera aren't even a tiny amount of the complication of retrofitting existing cars.

<comment><USER38> Perhaps it is, as cameras require looming and looming requires removing trim and finicking around which is expensive in man hours. Especially if literally every car that comes in is different.

Also fat looms the length of a car can still cost hundreds of dollars said and done.

Cost of installation is greatly reduced if all you need to do is line it up and rivet it on and there is no need to customise the power system to different cars (ie 12V, 24V) and loom layouts (ie old looms are crappy, hard to get apart for splicing, wires are old and might break during retrofit, some cars have +ive chassis)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This is pretty interesting and seems transferable to any application where you have a data source you don't mind pouring energy into as long as that data source doesn't need dedicated power.

You could apply this to other types of sensors, such as perhaps accelerometers or microphones. Device locations could be a smart wearable, a surgical implant, or some kind of hard to reach diagnostic sensor.

I suppose we already use something similar in rfids but I guess the novelty comes from updating sensor data instead of a ROM. Very cool stuff.

</comment><comment><USER40> How does backscattering work in the presence of multiple networks?

</comment><comment><USER41> The recived signal at 16 feet looks suprisingly good, you could probably fix it up with a bit of image processing and neural networks on the receiving end (eg. Smartphones)

</comment><comment><USER42> Could this harvesting technique power battery-free AirPods?

<comment><USER43> For transmission of data yes, but you still need "lots" of energy to drive the loudspeakers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I just spent a lot of time researching energy harvesting (about a two week project) and I'm extremely impressed by this. To just power a simple sensor (temp, pressure) and sending out readings is a non-trivial thing to design in such a way that it works reliably. To do a lot of processing and to power a hungry sensor such a camera is orders of magnitude more complex.

<comment><USER3> They didnt. They simulated powering 112x112 black&white sensor, the rest is just props and 'recreations'.

<comment><USER44> It says:

"Finally, we design a proof-of-concept prototype with off-the-shelf hardware components that successfully backscatter 720p HD video at 10 fps up to 16 feet."

Which to me reads they have it working in principle the other design will be an optimization.

<comment><USER3> So even here it says 720p instead of fullhd :), and when you read the paper you learn they didnt even do that, they used 100x100 BW camera module in prototype. 720 transmission was done with a laptop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Quick, someone put a blockchain on it. Battery-free blockchain Internet-of- Things sounds like a several million dollar ICO to me!

</comment><comment><USER46> This is a very cool first effort. I don't think it's suitable as a security system yet, because it seems like it would be so easy to overwhelm the relevant spectrum. Eventually maybe.

<comment><USER47> Depends on the kind of security system. I manage over 150 IP cameras in our internal facility CCTV system and it is expensive to pull Ethernet cables to 10 different spots near the ceiling in a single production room just 20x30ft. I would buy these for $300/each if it meant I only need a couple of $500 hubs at desk level per room.

I'm not worried about sabotage/jamming etc. We are trying to monitor OSHA- violations, accidents, and quality control. If I didn't have to worry about power, I would put multiple cameras in every warehouse aisle, loading dock, and doorway. Local storage is embarrassingly cheap but dragging CAT5/6 all over, supporting ton of PoE switches, and coordinating with facility staff to maintain cameras 20ft up the wall is very expensive and time consuming.

I would also buy like 20 of these for my house and live-stream my mini zoo of prairie dogs, goats, tortoises, and birds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> This is quite an interesting concept in general, with cool results. Could there be extensions to other real-time imaging modalities (ultrasound for example)? Anyone have a hypothesis?

</comment><comment><USER49> Somewhat related, a few days ago there was (is) a Kickstarter for a wireless 1080p surveillance camera that last a whole year with a single charge. Eufy

Edit: Added name

<comment><USER50> It does so by using (very low power) motion sensors before turning on the camera.

<comment><USER51> combine it with this and you get a 480p 10fps feed while no one's moving, and a 1080p 60fps feed whenever motion is detected – the perfect combination.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."—Arthur C. Clarke

</comment><comment><USER53> It's crazy what you can do with such little power. Basically these cameras need no power at all.

</comment><comment><USER54> This is amazing tech. Kudos for the theoretical foresight and the execution to make it come to life.

</comment><comment><USER55> I like it. Throw a bunch of these around the city and you have some interesting applications.

</comment><comment><USER56> Technically very interesting but also depressing that the panopticon continues to improve unabated.

</comment><comment><USER57> Analog modulation? So interference will easily kill the signal?

</comment><comment><USER58> this would be nice for a safety necklace cam.

</comment><comment><USER59> This is pretty freaking cool.

</comment><comment><USER60> I think your response to this will depend on whether or not you've read Dave Eggers' _The Circle_ , in which battery-free wireless cameras play a central role. (Spoiler: it doesn't go well).

Imagine the current state of blanket surveillance, particularly in dense urban cities like London, but everywhere, invisibly. Cheap, battery-free, weatherproof cameras are a step towards this.

P.S.: The book isn't great, but it's miles better than the film.

<comment><USER61> The response needs to factor in that this is more or less inevitable. The solution to potential power abuse must be Sousveillance.

<comment><USER62> Why wouldn't the average government just outlaw Sousveillance / Inverse surveillance?

<comment><USER63> Rules don't help as much in real life as we think. They are imaginary, and have influence on our behavior only because we let them. If violating a rule has no consequence or little chance of detection, we can expect large-scale violation.

Further, if an action satisfies some person ethic but violates a public rule, many folks will take that action anyway. Violating the speed limit to get a spouse to medical aid. Violating a confidence to stop injury. Things like that.

If a rule is counter to human nature (curiosity, personal safety) then it is likely to be useless.</comment></comment></comment></comment>