BMW unveils car sprayed with Vantablack - <AUTHOR> https://www.dezeen.com/2019/08/27/bmw-vbx6-vantablack-car-design/ <comment><USER2> Note to the comments: this is a one-off show piece, not something that anyone intends to use on the road. The VBx 2 coating is not fully waterproof, has extremely poor abrasion resistance and rapidly loses its light-absorbing properties if exposed to contamination.

[https://www.surreynanosystems.com/super-black- coatings/vbx-c...](https://www.surreynanosystems.com/super-black-coatings/vbx- coatings/vantablack-vbx-2)

<comment><USER3> And I think cancerous if inhaled.

<comment><USER4> Everything is cancerous if inhaled. Even inert substances like talcum powder, dust from cutting stone or wood etc.

<comment><USER5> Talc is probably one of the more dangerous substances to inhale. Not only is it often contaminated with Asbestos, it might have some asbestos like properties of its own.

<comment><USER6> It's not just inhaling - perineal exposure seems to be bad too and had been associated with increased endometrial cancer risk in some groups. Perineal BMW exposure seems less likely.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2866017/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2866017/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think the most interesting thing I learned out of that was from the link posted at the end about the feud between Kapoor and Semple about Kapoor's exclusive rights to vanta black in artwork and semple's creation of a competing almost absolute black colour usable by anyone but Kapoor.

>British artist Anish Kapoor acquired exclusive rights for the Vantablack pigment in 2016, making him the only person in the world who can paint using this colour.

>It led to a long-running feud with Stuart Semple who created his own version of blackest-black, available to anyone but Kapoor.

[https://www.dezeen.com/2019/02/05/black-3-0-stuart-semple- an...](https://www.dezeen.com/2019/02/05/black-3-0-stuart-semple-anish-kapoor- vantablack/)

That was an odd read. I didn't know exclusively licensing a colour was even possible.

<comment><USER8> > I didn't know exclusively licensing a colour was even possible.

Yahoo! did the same with a specific Pantone shade of purple.

<comment><USER9> This is a color _trademark_.

<comment><USER8> Nope, they specifically got an exclusive license from Pantone for the color in question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's a cool stunt. I would love to see more objects painted with Vantablack, purely for fun.

Driving a car painted in Vantablack at night sounds pretty dangerous.

> When light strikes the surface, it is almost completely absorbed rather than > reflected

Sounds hot like it would end up getting quite hot.

<comment><USER11> unless you plan to use your car a solar concentrator

<comment><USER12> London already has a tower for that: [https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england- london-23930675](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-23930675)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The timing of this marketing stunt was funny to me. I work on the development of Need for Speed Heat and a few days ago we had a discussion about which types of materials we can technically support in our player facing visual customization. We discussed materials that exist but we currently can't represent as well as materials we could make but which don't look real. I joked about adding Vantablack to the game, seeing as it would probably be entirely impractical in reality and look very surreal in the game.

Later that day, this was first published. What struck me was that the end result didn't look as bizarre as I had expected.

<comment><USER14> Now that there's an implementation in the wild, add it. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Note: it's coated in VBx2 which absorbs 99% of light, not in Vantablack that absorbs 99.96%. Apparently it's also not nanotubes (which is the "nt" in "Vanta").

<comment><USER16> Probably something to do with this [https://www.dezeen.com/2016/03/02/anish- kapoor-exclusive-rig...](https://www.dezeen.com/2016/03/02/anish-kapoor- exclusive-rights-vantablack-blackest-black-pigment/)

<comment><USER17> Naw, it's that the traditional VB has to be "grown" and can't be spray applied, which is what this version is for. Growing the nanotubes makes them perfectly perpendicular. Spraying them... does not, but still achieves much of the same effect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Good for avoiding LIDAR speeding tickets. Bad for avoiding self-driving cars.

<comment><USER19> > Good for avoiding LIDAR speeding tickets.

no subject knowledge, but

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

lists US detectors as operating outside of the visible spectrum - does this actually block those frequencies?

<comment><USER4> Lidar on self driving cars have a hard time seeing black cars. Vanta Black is probably even harder to see.

Cops tend to shoot at the front license plate or the head lights so i doubt it would actually help.

<comment><USER20> >Cops tend to shoot at the front license plate or the head lights

That sounds pretty ambitious. It's difficult enough to hold a laser pointer on a stationary license plate size target 20m away.

<comment><USER18> The beam spreads a bit and they don't need it all to be reflected back, nor for very long.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> That seems really irresponsible, the car would be very hard to see if you approach it from the rear at night, especially if the driver installs covers over the brake lights to make them darker. A few years ago where I live in the USA there was a news story being run about a controversial decision to not charge a driver who hit and killed somebody at night because the person they hit was black, wearing all black clothes, and walking in the street. I don't imagine a car painted with a material known to make the car close to invisible against a dark back drop would do any better in court if it was rear-ended.

<comment><USER22> Cars driven at night should have lights. It's very dangerous to drive a car of any colour at night without lights.

<comment><USER23> "Should" is a word that ought to be banned from this sort of discussion.

It's illegal in this country—the UK—to drive at night without lights. Doesn't stop it happening, though. Either someone forgets to turn the lights on, if they're manually controlled, or they actively turn them _off_ because the UI is ambiguous (this happened to me, once), or the filament bulb burns out (again: filament bulbs are/were mandatory in the UK, originally to rule out carbide lamps without actually banning them), or there's a wiring/software fault.

The point is, vehicle safety measures should be fail-safe, and driving an invisible vehicle at night and relying on lights to make yourself seen is kind of the opposite of that.

<comment><USER22> Following that, it's hard to argue that cars shouldn't come with mandatory reflective strips. (Which, of the top of my head, actually doesn't seem like a bad idea.)

<comment><USER24> Most do. Every car and motorcycle I own has reflectors on all sides.

<comment><USER22> Do they? Every so often I come up on a vehicle at night with no lights on, and I've never noticed any notable reflectors, like say, runners wear at night for visibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This will make the marketing CGI much cheaper to render. Zero reflection means no bounces needed for the bulk of the car.

<comment><USER26> Regular car paint is also notoriously hard to render correctly because of the light bouncing inside the coating, and the paint having varying thickness in different parts of the car. Rendering Vantablack on the other hand is trivial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I see Mr. Desiato is back from his year dead for tax reasons.

</comment><comment><USER28> When can I get it in the pinkest pink? [https://www.culturehustleusa.com/products/pink-50g-powdered-...](https://www.culturehustleusa.com/products/pink-50g-powdered- paint-by-stuart-semple)

<comment><USER29> > _By adding this product to your cart you confirm that you are not Anish > Kapoor, you are in no way affiliated to Anish Kapoor, you are not purchasing > this item on behalf of Anish Kapoor or an associate of Anish Kapoor. To the > best of your knowledge, information and belief this paint will not make its > way into that hands of Anish Kapoor._

[https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2016/12/anish-kapoor- stuar...](https://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2016/12/anish-kapoor-stuart- semple-pinkest-pink-blackest-black-colour_dezeen_sq.jpg)

<comment><USER30> Maybe this condition is included in every EULA and this is just the first time we've noticed it.

<comment><USER31> Shadowbanned from life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I keep wondering, does vantablack have a maximum rate/cm^2 at which it releases heat; does light exposure beyond some intensity cause it to burst into flames?

<comment><USER33> All matter has a rate at which it emits radiation that depends on its temperature ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black- body_radiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-body_radiation)). Ordinary black pigment which might absorb 95% of light will only heat up slightly faster than vantablack which absorbs 99.9%.

<comment><USER33> Sorry, typo. I meant to say vantablack will heat up slightly faster, not the other way around.

<comment><USER32> So at some constant rate proportional to the delta between the material and the environment?

Essentially I'm wondering at what point that isn't fast enough to avoid combustion.

Since it consists of densely packed nanotubes, I'm guessing that oxygen will be in short supply deep down where the light is converted, so it might need to be close to the point where the heat is high enough to disintegrate a nanotube.

I'd imagine that's be a rather high temperature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is a cool color. I bet just about everybody working on self-driving cars though is terrified of this, as it's almost invisible to lidar. It will also be very difficult to see with cameras at night (not to mention the human eye).

<comment><USER35> It can't be driven on the road. The paint isn't durable enough. This is just a cool stunt.

<comment><USER36> Non-durable paint prevents a car from being driven?

<comment><USER35> Well it can be but from what I understand the finish would wear off almost immediately and the cool black effect would vanish.

<comment><USER36> I agree. It'd probably be akin to gluing talcum powder on the car.

<comment><USER37> Look what happened to all the matte black factory paint jobs that were popular a few years ago.

<comment><USER36> Mercedes Magno Alanite matte finishes and BMW Frozen matte finishes look great even though they are several years old. They are incredibly tough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Cars are a really weird choice of consumer products to paint in vantablack. All the aesthetics of rigid car body shapes are obscured and you can't really appreciate it. Not to mention how impractical such a car would be.

I totally understand that this is an artistic concept and nobody is planning to mass-produce or sell those, but still.

What I really wanna see in vantablack is clothing. I think it'd look really interesting and eye-catching.

<comment><USER39> It's a BMW X6 so I don't think aesthetics or practicality will be of any concern.

<comment><USER38> I don't share the resentment towards BMW X6. I actually think it's the best looking BMW SUV. To each their own I guess.

<comment><USER40> I remember, being 6.4", having to have my head tilted in the back seat as the roof slopes severely to the trunk. Just thought it was so silly, and felt that this, this has to be one of the most pointless vehicles made in the most recent times. It's just a SUV for the people in front. Such a weird life-style mobile, but as you say - to each their own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> "It's the wild colour scheme that freaks me out," said Zaphod, whose love affair with the ship had lasted almost three minutes into the flight. "Every time you try and operate these weird black controls that are labeled in black on a black background, a little black light lights up in black to let you know you've done it."

<comment><USER42> "It's so ... black!" said Ford Prefect, "you can hardly make out its shape ... light just seems to fall into it!"

<comment><USER43> or just play along with Red Dwarf [https://youtu.be/SqI41N4WGPM](https://youtu.be/SqI41N4WGPM)

that out of the way, even the pictures of this BMW don't look real. It would be something I would want to see in full sun as well as in the shade. i can see all sorts of non automotive uses for it. probably would be played out too much

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Looks like a repost of:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20820000](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20820000)

</comment><comment><USER45> The images are interesting --- I assume they are photographs, but the blackness makes them look like CGI.

</comment><comment><USER46> "Those pedestrians ain't gonna kill themselves" [https://mobile.twitter.com/mattmanning/status/11670737616837...](https://mobile.twitter.com/mattmanning/status/1167073761683787776)

</comment><comment><USER47> I'm seeing more and more vehicles with this flat, black paint. They look like crap, as if someone took a spray can of primer over the entire vehicle.

</comment><comment><USER48> For people that like to use a very black paint and aren't Anish Kapoor Stuart Semple's Black seems like an option to paint stuff. [https://culturehustle.com/products/black-v1-0-beta-the- world...](https://culturehustle.com/products/black-v1-0-beta-the-world-s- mattest-flattest-blackest-art-material)

</comment><comment><USER49> Kind of looks cool, but the effect will be lost almost as soon as it hits the road. High-tech paint is no match for plain old dirt.

</comment><comment><USER50> [deleted]

<comment><USER51> I really dislike this type of comment. I'm sure the people buying the X6 like it. You aren't the only one buying BMWs, and it's ok that not every model appeals to your needs. Buy whatever you like, but don't assume that there's anything shameful about a company making products that you wouldn't buy.

<comment><USER52> The Golden Rule and the NAP stand for instructive, good principles, here. Treat others the way you want to be treated, and don't do things which harm others.

It could be argued the BMW X6 is gluttonous. It gets horrible fuel economy, and it's characteristics of size + performance lend credibility to the idea of it being a burden on the road for others.

Finally, I disagree with your general sentiment against criticism. Criticism makes us better.

<comment><USER53> If there's one thing people hate more than BMWs and SUVs in general, it's the X6. But people _also_ hate hybrids (granted, usually not the same people). So guess what? BMW made a (somewhat obscure) _hybrid X6 with 480 HP and 18 mpg_. I've been tempted to find one just because it's the confluence of so many types of petty hatred.

One thing to think about is that the effect of a vehicle on the environment depends not just on the mpg, but on how far you drive it, and how many people you transport on average.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> "We realised that it wouldn't have worked if we'd put on the original Vantablack material, as the viewer would have lost all sense of three- dimensionality"

Isn't that the point?

It's a bit like saying an Escher drawing "doesn't work" because the viewer can't tell where the stairs start or end.

</comment><comment><USER55> Not great for lidar on autonomous cars. Wonder what it's radar properties are like too.

</comment><comment><USER56> How safe is it esp. in low light/nights? Unless other vehicles have Radar/LiDAR sensors, it's not so easy to detect.camera sensors might face challenges to detect this car. Other vehicles might hit this vanta black parked car.

</comment><comment><USER57> I'm pretty sure soon enough some people will buy things to just mess with self driving cars. Some just hate them, some do it for fun, some don't want the technology to be on the streets.

</comment><comment><USER58> Reminds me of Tumbler's stealth mode.

[https://youtu.be/gYHKHDuXYWw?t=30](https://youtu.be/gYHKHDuXYWw?t=30)

</comment><comment><USER59> I wonder how they will manage the heat when parked in the sun. Being an ideal absorber does not seem like a good quality for a car to have.

<comment><USER18> I doubt it'd be too much worse than a regular black car parked in the sun.

<comment><USER60> I'm pretty sure regular black paint has aluminum to reflect a lot of energy back out.

<comment><USER61> Actually, no. Our perception of light is logarithmic, so what we perceive as "middle gray" only reflects 18% of the light, with darker shades reflecting exponentially less. Our perception of sound is also logarithmic BTW, so a 100W speaker is nowhere near 10x as loud as a 10W one, nor 100x as loud as 1W.

<comment><USER62> All else being equal, and ignoring the question of perceived loudness, (massive hand-waving ahead), shouldn't a power of 10 increase in speaker wattage result in, at best, a sqrt(10) increase in loudness since that power is used to drive something with area to actually move the air?

<comment><USER63> No. Ten times the power gives you ten times the power/m^2 at the same distance.

The distance at which you can hear the sound (in first order approximation) _does_ scale by a factor of √N if you increase power by a factor N, but that's not normally how one defines loudness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Self driving car's LIDAR will _love_ this

<comment><USER65> Will not have any lidar returns, though if it's not in front of a vantablack backdrop then it will cast a pretty sharp silhouette. What would a deep net do?

<comment><USER64> Use backup sensors?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Really wish they had blacked the chrome grill too.

But practically it's a non-starter. You want your car to be visible in dusk conditions

</comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if there's any potential for liability because it may be harder to see the car under some conditions.

</comment><comment><USER67> Must be a hell to drive in the Cyprus sun!

</comment><comment><USER68> vantablack has an interesting history - especially the feud between Anish Kapoor and Sturat semple.

</comment><comment><USER61> It'll be this black for like 15 minutes until it gets a little dirt on it. Then it will be permanently dirty looking. The easiest car color to keep clean is white. At least you don't see every tiny speck of dust on it until it gets really dirty. Source: had black and blue cars. Never again.

<comment><USER15> >The easiest car color to keep clean is white.

Have you ever owned a white shirt in your life?

Also, every white car here looks like this during the winter: [https://www.germanboost.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=6058...](https://www.germanboost.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=6058&d=1301175385)

<comment><USER61> Cars of any other color look even worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> How wear resistant is it? Presumably any coating would add reflectivity?

<comment><USER15> Pretty much fuck all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Very cool, but it would be coated in road salt for half the year here.

</comment><comment><USER70> Life once again imitates Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

</comment><comment><USER71> Mary Kay should make a "pinkest pink" Cadillac.

</comment><comment><USER72> Would this be applicable for better stealth tech?

<comment><USER73> stealth is mostly about radar reflection rather than visible spectrum. Stealth tech already uses various RAM (radar-absorbent materials) that operate on similar principles and have varying degrees of durability. But if you want to mess with people's perception this is great (maybe an urban combat or navy seal type work?)

<comment><USER47> Probably better off painting it with zebra stripes like they did in WWI to throw off torpedo targeting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> How hot does that thing get out in the sun?

</comment><comment><USER28> "Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is Vantablack." \--Henry Ford or something

</comment><comment><USER75> Looks pretty slick but I wonder about the visibility from other drivers points of view in certain conditions.

</comment><comment><USER76> almost, but not quite, entirely black

hotblack desiato would be proud

</comment><comment><USER77> Car crashes are a major cause of death. Actively making cars _harder to see_ should be a crime instead of a stupid marketing gimmick.

<comment><USER53> The hardest color to see is probably silver, second-hardest grey. These seem to be a lot more popular than super-black.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> What exactly is newsworthy here?

Some guys painted a car with a low-reflective black paint?

It's not like it's going into production or has any innovation behind it.</comment>


Valve Says "Yes" To Steam Linux This Year - <AUTHOR> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTExMzA <comment><USER2> There are 3 important inflection points here.

One is Steam on linux period. Even if it were its own little universe, having the support of Valve and the steam platform opens up a lot of opportunities for gaming on linux.

Another is Valve's core games on linux, which would definitely give a big kickstart to linux as a gaming platform.

Perhaps the most important could be when the top tier multi-platform game engines begin including linux as a targeted platform as a matter of routine.

<comment><USER3> I am still wondering, however, whether we will really see Steam on "Linux" or Steam on "A Single Distro", which would probably happen to be Ubuntu. If that does happen, that would further consolidate the domination of Ubuntu in the Linux World (at least in numbers) as an unintended consequence.

I do not see Valve releasing clients for every distro out there.

For Linux/Ubuntu to be really strong in gaming, Steam is a big plus, however we also need strong driver support from nVidia and ATI. As far as I know, the best drivers on Linux are still not on par with their equivalent on Windows in terms of performance. If playing the same game on Linux means losing 10 fps on your favorite game, this may not be a very enticing alternative if you have both systems installed.

<comment><USER4> > As far as I know, the best drivers on Linux are still not on par with their > equivalent on Windows in terms of performance.

Forget performance, ATI drivers are so unstable it's barely usable (eg. Gnome 3 restarting regularly, like once per hour), and that's just plain desktop apps (Vim/browser), trying to run some version of VLC from default repo instantly crashed the PC (needed to restart), when I tried to play games random graphics bugs were everywhere (texture artifacts, framebuffer not clearing properly, etc.) All distros I've tried so far have problems with closed source drivers, and the OSS ones don't have HW 3D I think because it's slow as hell. Also - you can't alt-tab from full screen games. I looked it up, found a post that started with "you need to modify your xconfig" closed the tab. I think linux needs a lot more polish to be viable for everyday use as multimedia/gaming desktop OS, I would love to ditch the windows partition and rebooting but I don't think it's going to happen soon.

<comment><USER5> Interesting - I haven't had problems with any closed source drivers for years, gaming works fine. I am using a ATI card right now, and it works completely fine. Maybe there's some other problem?

<comment><USER3> What are you playing with exactly ? Any 3d games?

<comment><USER6> I can vouch for this too... I play World Of Warcraft (aging.. but still 3D) using the ATI drivers and it actually runs better than it does on Windows. The only thing I have issues with when using the closed source drivers is standby (it never comes back ._.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For anyone looking to get some excellent games on their Linux box, don't miss out on the current Humble Indie Bundle. Amnesia, Psychonauts, LIMBO, Sword & Sworcery, and Bastion. Pay more than $1: get codes to unlock on Steam.

<http://www.humblebundle.com/>

Credit to Humble Bundle for showing that DRM-free can be profitable, and Linux can make up a substantial slice of the revenue pie.

<comment><USER8> To be clear you have to pay over the average (which at the moment is $7.86) to get Bastion. Still, this is probably the best Humble Bundle since the first one. Every game here is great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So, no more install.sh scripts that you have to chmod +x, no more "undefined symbol" errors from games expecting old library files, no dependency hell (though, admittedly, I don't encounter those as much anymore).

That I can _definitely_ get behind!

<comment><USER10> But you get all the DRM junk. Better to deal with chmod +x than with DRM restrictions.

<comment><USER11> Contrary to popular belief, game companies have salaries to pay and are interested in protecting their IP so they can continue to pay those salaries.

<comment><USER10> Contrary to popular belief, not using DRM really shows respect by game creators for their users. I simply won't buy any DRMed game. Luckily some publishers like GOG emerged, who promote DRM free games, and have such major contributors like CD Projekt Red who aren't scared to show respect for their users by selling DRM free games. They (CD Projekt Red) managed not only to pay salaries and improve their products, but also attracted a lot of potential customers for their future titles. GOG is behind in providing Linux versions yet, but I'd rather get DRM free game to run under Wine, than DRMed native one.

<comment><USER12> Hold the phone everybody -- shmerl won't pay for DRM'd games. Better pack it up folks, we're done here.

In all seriousness though (and this is a question that everyone should ask themselves semi-regularly in a product-consumer situation): why do you matter? If you don't have a compelling answer to this question, it may be that you don't.

<comment><USER10> Your choice matters. In this case I'd call it "vote with your wallet". Preferring non DRMed games shows support for their developers, as simple as that.

<comment><USER12> No. For Valve _many peoples'_ choice matters. My individual choice to purchase or not purchase TF2 is of negligible concern. Now, if my individual choice is indicative of a wider trend of people purchasing TF2, then maybe my choice would matter.

The problem with people arguing about DRM is that fundamentally _most people don't seem to care_. Video games are a billion dollar industry, but non-DRM'd games are not.

You can vote with your wallet, but the data seems to indicate that your wallet is too small to matter.

<comment><USER10> The argument "since most don't care - you shouldn't either" is flawed. If you are sure something is right - it doesn't matter how many care to do what's right.

> Video games are a billion dollar industry, but non-DRM'd games are not.

It only should increase the incentive to avoid buying DRMed games, and specifically support those who aren't scared to release theirs DRM free.

For example look at the latest Humble Indie Bundle. Linux users pay highest average for the set. It shows that they encourage developers to produce Linux games more than users of other OSes (obviously since Linux games scene is lacking). You can argue, that Linux games market is miniscule, and if so, why even bother to send your message in such form? But you still see people showing appreciation, and developers can take note of this.

<comment><USER3> Usually for every Humble Bundle, the Linux share of the total is not so minuscule, something like 15-20% if I remember correctly.

If we assume every bundle gets a total of a million dollars, shared between 5 games or so, that makes 200 000 per game, minus the donations to charity and the fees to the Humble Bundle organization. Let's say 150 000 dollars per game in the end. 15%-20% is 23 000 to 30 000 dollars, just for the Linux Port. If you are an small team of indie developpers, I'd say that is not negligible at the end of the day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Remember how Phoronix insinuated it was just around the corner two years ago: [http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=valve...](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=valve_steam_announcement&num=1)

I doubt Valve need two years to port it to Linux. With Gabe's track record of taking his time developing software, I don't think we should get our hopes up too soon.

<comment><USER14> That was an unsourced claim which Valve denied ("There's no Linux version that we're working on right now. ", Aug 2010).

[http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2010-08-12-valve-on- st...](http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2010-08-12-valve-on-steam-part- two-interview?page=2)

<comment><USER15> Has Valve actually confirmed the rumour this time around?

<comment><USER16> Gabe's email doesn't count?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Another thing to think about here:

It very interesting to me to think about Valve's motivations for doing this. One theory is that they want to develop a console (which I have heard denounced as a far fetches rumour on here).

So if we assume that this is not the case, and that you have a smart and well established company like Valve porting their flagship products to the Linux platform; what does that say about how they see the future for Linux in the consumer space?

In other threads we have people worried that the coming UEFIgate will leave the majority of devices locked out of running a Linux OS. If this is the case then why would Valve _now_ be deciding to take on the task of porting everything over to a platform that was as good as dead to the consumer?

<comment><USER18> Maybe they're preparing in case Windows 8 doesn't do so well?

<comment><USER17> In which case are they predicting a mass exodus of PC users from Windows to desktop Linux? Or are they more interested in creating a Linux port as a step towards porting it to future Linux based platforms (ChromeBook/Box?)?

If the future is ARM based devices and UEFI then people won't be able to install Linux even Windows 8 sucks to an obscene degree.

<comment><USER19> Think about what happens to PC hardware vendors if windows8 tanks. Windows8 could destroy the PC and PC gaming by forcing everyone to consoles, mobiles or Macs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is fantastic news! All the games I want to play are available on Linux, but, due the lack of the convenience that Steam offers has been off-putting. I can finally enjoy most of my favorite games right in my favorite environment...

</comment><comment><USER21> Well, since android is basically a posix compliant linux system with a ui layer on top, this seems like an obvious step in the direction of having a full android steam client, which will be a massive win for them, especially since I imagine much of osx code base ports across relatively easily.

(Yes, I know there are differences, but the point is that the _same base code_ can be ported easy if they do it right)

</comment><comment><USER22> Can't wait to do a

steam install halflife2episode2

that is, if they provide a command line interface :-)

<comment><USER23> not sure about episode2, but Half Life 2 works perfectly with Steam, through Wine (if you are using ubuntu, install wine, then download Steam and run it... it should work just out of the box)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Desktop and console gaming are shrinking. [1] Mobile and browser games are growing absurdly fast. The industry is shifting to mobile. [2] Steam is about 1 decade too late.

[1] <http://www.theesa.com/facts/pdfs/ESA_EF_2011.pdf>

[2] [http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/video-game- industry-...](http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/video-game-industry- shifting-focus-to-mobile-devices-nasdaq-atvi-1641243.htm)

<comment><USER25> Well, this seems wrong on a couple of counts. For one thing, Steam has iOS and Android clients as of January of this year. For another, Steam was released a decade ago in 2002 - and if that's "1 decade too late," I'd like to see a prototype for a game distribution client that would work on the 1992 internet with 1992 hardware. (Seriously, that would be kind of neat. Very different, I suspect, but interesting nonetheless.)

<comment><USER26> > For one thing, Steam has iOS and Android clients[…]

Are you referring to the Steam Mobile app? (<http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/steam-mobile/id495369748?mt=8>)

That's a pretty far cry from being a real client. Granted, I'm sure it's been hell trying to figure out how to play in Apple's garden - not to mention porting their engine to iOS/Android. But still, they've got a ways to go before I think we can call them a real player in the mobile gaming market.

EDIT:

> For another, Steam was released a decade ago in 2002 - and if that's "1 > decade too late," […]

Good point. Steam was a huge game changer and still continues to impress me. But I think the parent was referring to being a decade too late in the sense that the industry is shifting to mobile (though I'm not sure I completely agree - not for the AAA titles on Steam, anyway).

<comment><USER25> These are fair points. To address the parent I was commenting on a bit better, I agree with your last point about the industry not necessarily shifting to mobile. There's not actually a lot of data here; the stuff I've seen (and the stuff parent cites) suggests that the shift started in 2008, at the beginning of a recession we're just now seeing the end of. Will the end of the recession mean that people start buying consoles and console games again? It might. I'm interested to see the 2012 numbers. My general sense, though, is that the 'hardcore gamer' industry is a different beast; it may be that the recession trimmed off a lot of casual gamers who bought a Wii a few years ago because it was the thing to do or something like that, but I have a very hard time imagining my own gamer friends wholly abandoning dedicated gaming hardware and immersive games that last forty and fifty hours at the least for even the most advanced iOS games - which as an iPhone and iPad owner I can say are better than I could have imagined, yet still not really the equal of console and computer games.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wonder if this will stop at games?

If Valve manage to deliver a platform with an easy-install that works cross distro it would seem a very good place for developers who want to port to Linux but are scared of distro fragmentation issues.

I hope that I will be able to run games under Linux that I have already bought for windows without having to re-buy them.

<comment><USER27> It would be cool, but one thing about games that makes this much less painful- they usually don't depend on twenty system libraries.

In other words, I doubt Valve is going to create a hyper-robust platform that can intelligently install any package; that's completely unnecessary for their purposes.

<comment><USER17> I wouldn't be surprised if Steam for Linux just created it's own chrooted environment and user account and then simply installed it's own set of libraries which would then be shared amongst steam programs but not with the system in general. X11 might be complicated of course (because Steam would have to run in the same X11 session as other software), but perhaps Valve are planning this around Wayland?

What this would provide is a "distro within a distro" where only things like the kernel version would vary. This would potentially allow anything within steam to sidestep a load of the distro compatibility issues. Instead of creating a .deb and a .rpm you just package for Steam.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I hope they have a CLI only version available for simpler server management on both local and remote systems. Having it as a desktop UI for gaming would be absolutely fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER29> Hopefully they don't bite off more than they can chew and try to run on more than one flavor of linux. Ubuntu AMD64 LTS ought to be enough for anyone.

</comment><comment><USER30> Ok Valve is starting to rock. If it works they will start receiving my money again. Time to upgrade my hardware - when it happens!

</comment><comment><USER31> Linux has finally grown up. It's getting DRM!

<comment><USER27> When has it not had DRM? There is boatloads of corporate software that runs on Linux that interfaces with a license manager, for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I guess this means I should start looking at BSD as my primary desktop OS :)

</comment><comment><USER33> It'll finally a be a three horse race on the desktop.

<comment><USER34> Six. You forgot about the other three horses ("Sony", "Microsoft" and "Nintendo") because they're so far ahead. And there are two little horses coming up fast from behind.

Honestly, gaming "on the desktop" is a shrinking market. I'm sure I'll enjoy a few Steam games on my Linux box (which I use basically 100% of the time), but this is hardly a paradigm shift. Consoles and mobile (maybe "web" will persist as a separate sub-market, but I'm not sure about that) are the future of gaming platforms.

<comment><USER35> > Honestly, gaming "on the desktop" is a shrinking market.

Let's throw bullshit in the air, it's not like anybody has numbers or give a flying shit about them anyway.

> Consoles [...] are the future of gaming platforms.

Consoles have been the future of gaming platforms for 25 years now. And oddly, computers are still there as gaming platforms with developers and distributors making significant amounts of money from them. Hell, computer-based gaming has never been better as far as I'm concerned, the big shitty franchise-based publishers are getting the fuck away from it and indies are coming back to the front of the scene.

Consoles are not the future of anything, they're a gaming media amongst others. And mobile is nice, I play a lot on my phone, but let's not kid ourselves: it's the future of killing handled consoles and that's about it.

<comment><USER36> PC gaming is still growing, but the rate it's growing at is marginal compared to the growth of gaming in general.

Console growth is considerable. Hand-held, including phones and phone-like devices, is growing even faster.

What's prevented consoles from fully conquering the desktop is a few key applications for which the PC is still a superior platform. One is ultra-high- performance graphics, especially when directed at enthusiasts, and the other is anything that requires a keyboard to be reasonably useful, e.g. strategy games and MMORPGs.

If the next generation consoles include a mouse and a wireless keyboard, the PC gaming market would implode in a matter of years.

Kids that have grown up with an XBox of PS3 aren't going to want to fiddle with drivers or find out how to patch their game using the "Downloader App" or endlessly wrestle with DRM. They won't bother to switch unless there's a very good reason, and every day there's fewer reasons.

<comment><USER37> > Kids that have grown up with an XBox of PS3 aren't going to want to fiddle > with drivers or find out how to patch their game using the "Downloader App" > or endlessly wrestle with DRM.

Have you used Steam? It patches games automatically and you don't have to fiddle with DRM. My Steam client keeps dozens of games perfectly current without asking me. This is part of why everyone loves it: specifically because it makes it as close to painless as you're going to get.

Also, I'm guessing that a good number of current PC devs/gamers grew up playing a Nintendo console, and they still migrated over, somehow.

<comment><USER36> Steam is a great delivery platform which handles _most_ but not all DRM issues. I've bought several Steam distributed titles that were very strict about re-installs, something only apparent after I'd bought them. Thanks Ubisoft!

Even as painless as Steam is, there's still the driver wrestling, yak-shaving that is maintaining a properly working Gaming PC. Some people enjoy the challenge. This is not going to fly with those used to the "put in disc, play game" crowd.

In time the "PC" will slowly fade away to be replaced by other things just as the precursor to the PC, like the "Minicomputer" and the "Mainframe", will become an anachronism. I'm not saying this will happen tomorrow, but you'll see a shift over the next ten years.

There comes a point where the performance advantage offered by the PC, which is considerable, is negated by the fact that developers can't make use of it. What good would a graphics card with 3,000,000 shaders be today? Why should you need a 256-core CPU to play games? If your equivalent console had only 1,000,000 shaders and 64-cores, which would surely attract scorn and derision, would you really be missing out on much in the scheme of things?

<comment><USER19> The advantage of the PC is the ease of writing and publishing a game for the PC. With the exception of screen resolution graphics haven't really mattered for the last five years. It's creativity, good writing, and good gameplay. It's cheaper to take risks and innovate on the PC since it requires so little capital to make a game vs consoles. Only mobile is competitive on this front.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Cat Went Over Radioactive Mountain - <AUTHOR> http://www.methodquarterly.com/2014/11/the-cat-went-over-radioactive-mountain/ <comment><USER2> A far more important issue that the article doesn't explain is why the Yucca Mountain repository was shut down. It had nothing to do with technology or safety, or even money.

It was the NIMBY-mentality -- Not In My BackYard -- of a population that can't assess or compare risks[1]. I wonder which the average Joe in Nevada thinks is worse: nuclear weapons (of which Nevada has plenty and a history of unreported accidents) or Yucca?

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_re...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository#Opposition)

<comment><USER3> It wasn't just Nevada -- it was any major city which would have the waste material transport through or near it. Some cities would have a couple shipments a day for months or years on end, or at least that's what the news media was reporting at the time.

<comment><USER2> That brings up another thing that the average Joe doesn't think about: that nuclear weapons are transported on unmarked trucks right along major highway routes. For all we know, a couple shipments might pass certain cities every day for months or years on end. Nuclear weapons have to be initially deployed, moved for repositioning, maintained, repaired, upgraded, and retired. All this is done in secret.

If only nuclear waste had also been handled in secret, the masses would have turned their attention to protesting chemtrails or something, rather than derailing the well-thought-out Yucca plan.

<comment><USER4> Yes, demokracy is a mess. Better not tell the the stupid populace about important decisions, they'll just interfere. /s

<comment><USER5> You say that sarcastically, but isn't that the very basis of using a republican system rather than a direct democracy, and a well known problem with direct, majority-wins democracy?

<comment><USER4> No, secrecy isn't the basis. The basis of representative democracy is transparency so the citizens can judge how well their elected do their jobs. If the elected do what ever they do in secrecy there can't be any fair elections.

<comment><USER5> Part of the basis is that most citizens simply don't have the time to have informed opinions on topics such as this, and hence we'd end up with a lot of ignorant opinions voted in, because the majority don't even really understand what the issues is.

In theory, a republican form of government can help with this because the representatives job is to learn about such issues and vote intelligently.

Some of the issue with the current US politics is that ignorant people insist that their ignorance is as good as a reasoned opinion, and demand that elected officials vote that way rather than from a reasoned position.

I'm not saying the secrecy part is the core, but rather, that officials should make choices that seem counter to the opinions of most voters, because most voters' opinions aren't actually aligned with their interests, purely because not everyone has time to know about every topic and have a reasonable opinion on it.

In a republican government, you should vote on your representative based on the method he takes to voting (eg, how well he's doing at becoming educated and translating that in to votes) rather than how well he matches your uninformed opinions.

So in cases like a nuclear facility, a republican form of government should probably just ignore the uninformed objections and do it anyway, which is the sentiment that your paraphrasing was based on.

<comment><USER4> The main issue with American politics is that _some representatives_ think that their ignorance is as good as reasoned opinion.

I'm in no way championing direct democracy - I think we agree pretty much about how representative democracy is supposed to work and how voters are supposed to vote. Where we differ is that I think transparency is essential to any functioning democracy. As you say, voters don't have the time or inclination to inform themselves properly about the issues at hand. But instead America has a system where most politicians don't bother to actually form well thought through opinions either, but rather rely on the opinions of the people that fills their campaign coffins. Allowing them to do that in complete secrecy would be the same as giving the power directly to the oil companies and military industrial complex.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The thing that sticks out in my mind is that no "warning" is going to allay curiosity.

If technological progress continues unabated, we won't have to keep nuclear waste on the planet for 10,000 years because we'll have safe, economical ways to dispose of it in interstellar space before then. We need the 10k-year warnings to account for the situation in which our civilization declines, is forgotten, and later humans come upon it.

So, let's say that it's 6500 AD and what we are now is an ancient civilization. If you come upon a sign that says something like this (from the article):

        This place is a message…and part of a system of messages…pay attention to it!
        Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.
        This place is not a place of honor…no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here…nothing valued is here.
        What is here is dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.

What are you going to do? Some of us would avoid it, but there are others whose curiosity would lead them to explore. Think about it: a warning from a _4500-year-old advanced civilization_. How does that mystery box not get opened?

<comment><USER7> The ray cats might be bad as well, in the Goiânia accident, many people were exposed to the radioactive material because it's "deep blue light" glowing was curious [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident)

<comment><USER4> Yes, if I were a teenager and there were rumors that if you brought a black cat to the mountain it would change color, I know where I would spend my weekend. Combined with legends about horrible deaths to anyone who tried, it would be completely irresistible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A good page with discussion of how to built a 10,000 year warning monument is at [http://www.wipp.energy.gov/picsprog/articles/wipp%20exhibit%...](http://www.wipp.energy.gov/picsprog/articles/wipp%20exhibit%20message%20to%2012,000%20a_d.htm) \- I remember seeing this link a while ago and it's creepily interesting, it's a collection of ideas on how to mark Yucca Mountain for the long haul.

<comment><USER9> I always found that paper fascinating. Unfortunately, perhaps, the solution may be to do nothing with markers or semiotics and rely on future societies learning about he danger by attrition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> An episode of the podcast 99 Percent Invisible is about this. They talk more about how you would communicate what this place is 10,000 years in the future, however. [http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/ten-thousand- years/](http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/ten-thousand-years/)

really good, nonetheless.

<comment><USER11> The disagreement about universal iconography in that episode is great. I think Carl Sagan's idea was immediately shot down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The idea that we would need to warn a civilization 10,000 years in the future to stay away seems quite fatalistic to me... what about the alternative of assuming that we do survive climate change/global thermonuclear war/comet strike/overpopulation; and the regular mechanics of bureaucracy ensure that all documentation relating to such a site is transferred onto the latest media/storage formats over the ages... so that future humanity is accessing the files off crystal holographic storage via neural links, stored in Microsoft Word 12000.

<comment><USER13> I suppose if the second scenario is correct and the bureaucracy lasts 10,000 years into the future there's not really any harm in having developed the signage anyway. But on the other hand, if we just assume that the knowledge will be passed on via bureaucracy or some other means and don't develop the signage and then those methods of transmitting the knowledge fails, it could be bad for people in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Or, you know, we could reprocess (recycle?) the waste into much shorter lived compounds and fuel for 2nd generation breeder reactors. Then there wouldn't be a problem in the first place.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, I have a certain sadness regarding nuclear waste. It's dangerous, yes, but it's also one of the rarest things in the world. Trying to throw it away seems so wasteful.

<comment><USER14> Yeah it's basically an assortment of radiation sources, e.g. the things we routinely use in medicine and obscure industrial cases.

The short-lived stuff could see immediate use in various contexts that need access to radioactive sources, or in RTG batteries.

The long-lived stuff (plutonium, mostly) can be used as fuel in reactors that currently exist mostly on paper, but would work if there was money to build them.

There isn't a radioactive waste problem. There's an anti-nuclear political problem :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Side note: I found out a while back that 47,500 55 gallon barrels were dumped off the California coast near the Farallon Islands.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farallon_Islands#Nuclear_waste_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farallon_Islands#Nuclear_waste_dump)

</comment><comment><USER17> Sounds like Riddley Walker.

</comment><comment><USER18> just dump the nuclear waste into the Sun (Sun's gravitation will even do the most part of the job once the cargo is out of Earth's gravitational well). If in the next couple hundred years we wouldn't come up with easy means of interplanetary travel inside Solar system this civilization will be facing much more serious issues than how to communicate into 10000 years future about that nuclear waste.

They gathered $30B dollars into the fund - would be enough to build an electrically driven cargo catapult/gun to throw cargo from Earth's surface into the orbit.

<comment><USER19> Because launches have a probability of exploding, which would dust/litter the planet with pretty nasty debris.

Getting to the Sun isn't actually that easy. You also need to counter Earth's orbital velocity. That's takes a lot of energy - a lot more than leaving the solar system. It would be easier to fling it into interstellar space than to get to the Sun.

<comment><USER18> >Because launches have a probability of exploding, which would dust/litter the planet with pretty nasty debris.

it is chemical rockets what explode. The rail/gun systems my potentially have crashes, and the cargo shells designed to sustain 5000g acceleration should go through crashes just fine. Anyway, it willn't be like an atomic explosion, and we did have a share of it :)

>It would be easier to fling it into interstellar space than to get to the Sun.

nope. The Sun's escape velocity from Earth's orbit is 42km/s. While Earth's orbital speed is 30km/s, and you actually don't need the full 30km/s - Earth's gravitation escape is 11km/s, so those 11km/s pointed opposite Earth's speed will result in cargo getting "free" from Earth and having 19km/s on the Earth's orbit - that's would result in the cargo going down toward the Sun at it is obviously less than required orbital speed at the Earth's orbit of 30km/s.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_velocity#List_of_escape_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_velocity#List_of_escape_velocities)

<comment><USER20> You've got some confusion there. The 11km/s escape velocity from Earth is how much the Earth's gravity slows you down as you leave it. When you reach escape velocity, it doesn't mean you leave the Earth's influence with 11km/s. It means that if you're going 11km/s near the Earth, you'll leave the Earth's influence before you fall back down. If you just barely escape, your velocity relative to the Earth will be small.

What does matter is Earth's orbital speed, though. That counts towards the 42km/s you need to escape from the Sun, assuming you're smart enough to launch in the direction of the Earth's motion. That means you only need 12km/s additional velocity, whereas you need to cancel out virtually all of that 30km/s velocity to fall into the Sun.

<comment><USER18> >That means you only need 12km/s additional velocity, whereas you need to cancel out virtually all of that 30km/s velocity to fall into the Sun.

no. Anything less than 30km/s will cause you to lose the orbit and start falling down toward Sun.

>If you just barely escape, your velocity relative to the Earth will be small.

and if it is in the opposite direction, you'd start falling. You're right though that it willn't be 19km/s - my mistake here.

Edit: to jwilliams below - what do you think happens when your speed is lower than the orbital speed?

<comment><USER3> ::what do you think happens when your speed is lower than the orbital speed?

Answer: you move to a lower orbit, then stay there.

When you try to reduce orbital velocity (say by firing thrusters in the opposite direction), you change to a lower orbit -- you don't just start free falling to the object you are orbiting. In fact, the net effect is that your actual velocity will increase. For example Mercury's velocity is 170,503 km/h, while Earth's is 107,218 km/h, and Mars is 86,677 km/h.

Here's another counter-intuitive thing about orbital mechanics. Say you want to catch up to something in front of you -- you fire reverse thrusters, which causes you to fall into a lower (and faster) orbit, then you can fire forward thrusters to raise your orbit once you catch up to the other object (i.e., you do a move that you would normally do to "slow down" in order to "speed up").

<comment><USER21> > _When you try to reduce orbital velocity (say by firing thrusters in the > opposite direction), you change to a lower orbit -- you don 't just start > free falling to the object you are orbiting._

Well, technically you _do_ just start free falling - you have been the entire time you've been orbiting.

<comment><USER3> Yes, poor choice of words -- I think I meant to say "into the object", would have made more sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This was covered on 99pi and discussed here earlier this year.</comment>


Kubectl – Configuration Guide - <AUTHOR> https://knowledgepill.it/posts/kubernetes-kubectl-client-config/ <comment><USER3> I find the kubectx and kubens tools invaluable for switching contexts and namespaces quickly: [https://github.com/ahmetb/kubectx](https://github.com/ahmetb/kubectx)

<comment><USER4> I've just been using this function in my bashrc:

        kubea(){
            if [ "$#" = 1 ]; then
                KUBECONFIG=~/.kube/configs/"$1"
            else
                ls -1 ~/.kube/configs/
            fi
        }

That way I can "activate" a specific config the same way I activate my Python virtualenv, for a specific terminal. I also add the basename of the config to my prompt.

        kubea myproject-PROD

<comment><USER5> Or, to avoid the persistent state..

        function dkube
          env KUBECONFIG=$HOME/.kube/config-dev $argv
        end

        function dkctl
          dkube kubectl $argv
        end

<comment><USER4> It's funny, I used to have something exactly like this, but found that too many other tools and scripts also needed to access the right cluster. Persistent state works better for me in practice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My strong advice is do not ever rely on use-context or any similar abilities to change implicit state.

You should absolutely always be typing out huge, verbose commands like kubectl —context my-context -n my-namespace <some commands> ...

The opportunity for tragic error when you have implicit context or namespace settings applied is just too great.

<comment><USER7> Or you can signify the context using shell prompt and use kube rbac to give read only permissions instead of letting people mess with your prod cluster.

<comment><USER6> Managing shell tooling to edit ps1 for this is a bad idea, because there are already many other much longer established mutations people use that for (like git branch or activated Python environment), kubernetes can't come along decades later and suggest to use the tool effectively one has to break those long standing workflows.

It's always an available option for people who want it, but many many use cases are poorly served by it.

The RBAC thing is different. I am 100% for those RBAC limitation as long as I have total authority to make a devops admin do what I need them to do right when I need them to do it.

If my team is going to get alerted on build failures or service errors that require kubernetes mutation actions or exec to debug or resolve (99% of the time they do), then my team needs full admin access.

If rbac prevents access, then you better route the alerts to someone else or give us authority to compel instant triage responses.

In the 3 different companies I've worked in that use large kubernetes clusters, rbac has been a miserable problem across the board, because SREs don't want to be responsible for triaging or resolving application team issues, and application teams will not honor alerts that are not actionable because of poorly conceived permissions issues where people mistakenly think they are setting useful access control policy but really they aren't.

<comment><USER8> You could have a mechanism to grant yourself temporary write access on an as- needed basis.

At Zalando everyone has read access (except to secrets). You can request write access with a command line tool another employee can then approve it. There is also an option to request access with an incident ticket, in that case you immediately get write access without approval by someone else. Write access expires after 1h.

Access to the underlying AWS account uses the same mechanism.

<comment><USER6> But then when you've unlocked access, you could just make the same fat- fingered mistakes due to implicit use-context settings.

You might use use-context to set yourself to that restricted production context at the start of an incident. 30 minutes later you resolved the incident, but the access is still active and whoops you delete a deployment you thought you were deleting from a stage experiment or something.

All that does is add an extra hoop to jump through. People need to stop believing that adding extra bureaucratic hoops offers any type of safety - <USER2> doesn't.

If you want to restrict access then you need to actually restrict it and convert on-call alert responsibilities to a central devops team that, like it or not, is responsible for solving everyone else's problems.

If you don't want a central devops team that can be paged and on the hook for everyone else's systems, then you cannot have write access controls.

There's just no way out of this dilemma. Temporary access that can be self- granted == no access control. Temporary access that requires admin approval == admin team is on pager duty for every other team.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like to have one config file per cluster and point kubeconfig to all these files. Then I use a bash function to select the cluster by name. My zsh shell previews the cluster name on the right when I start typing k, kubectl, helm and similar... So it is harder for me to make a mistake

<comment><USER10> I think this is the Best method - it is quite safe, I'm doing the same

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What does exactly this post add to what have been already described in the official documentation[1]?

[1] [https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/access-application- cluster/...](https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/access-application- cluster/configure-access-multiple-clusters/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Does anyone else hate that we have to deal with Kubeconfigs at all?

<comment><USER13> I'm a little confused, what would the alternative be?

<comment><USER12> I would love to use environment variables, like this:

KUBE_APISERVER_ADDR=[https://foo.com](https://foo.com) KUBE_CERT_FILE=/tmp/cert KUBE_NAMESPACE=bar kubectl get po

This way, I can export them into my environment with my .bash_profile instead of having to persist state just to perform cluster ops

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Kubie makes it easier (and safer) to manage multiple contexts because it makes each shell independent: [https://github.com/sbstp/kubie](https://github.com/sbstp/kubie)</comment>


China's failed gene-edited baby proves we're not ready for embryo modification - <AUTHOR> https://theconversation.com/chinas-failed-gene-edited-baby-experiment-proves-were-not-ready-for-human-embryo-modification-128454 <comment><USER2> Article is half sentiment. Yes the technology is premature when it comes to Methodology with approximate results but what the article also serves is a form of bioconservatism by way of cautionary bureacracy mentioned towards the end. Its a lesson that transhuman modification still has a ways to go and that finess and experimental design needs to be consistent without jumping the gun. Until you can master it with flat worms, maybe don't jump to animals or self experiments.</comment>


Ask HN: Reading materials for someone looking to get into the startup world - <AUTHOR>

I've been an entrepreneur for many years, with both successes and failures. I love it. Some of my friends who have been 9-5ers for years have asked me for recommendations on articles/blogs/books to read about taking the plunge into the startup world. Embarrassingly, I've come up blank off the top of my head, and I don't have enough time to fully vet all the stuff that pops up in Google to make sure I'm not doing them a disservice.<p>So, HN, I turn to you. Off the top of your head, what reading materials would you suggest for a typically non-tech person that is looking to jump into our world? <comment><USER2> I would actually strongly advise against reading. Vicarious entrepreneurism is a real trap.

It's better to start building or selling something. If your friends have any flair for business at all, tell them to open up a Shopify store and sell something. I actually recommended this to a friend who asked me the same question your friends asked. She's got a growing online jewellery business now. And she's keyed into the startup literature when she needs it.

</comment><comment><USER3> It depends what they're looking for: Facts, insights or opinions and news on startups. Here's a list of items which i've always liked. To be honest you can get so much just from reading Hacker News.

 _Books:_

      Founders at Work
      The Lean Startup
      The Four Hour Work Week
      Hackers & Painters
      Getting Real - 37 Signals/Jason Fried
      F'd Companies (Maybe not crucial but helped me think about startups needing to fulfill a need/fix a problem).

_Articles:_

      http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html
      http://thestartupfoundry.com/
      http://avc.com
      http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/
      http://steveblank.com/
      http://onstartups.com/

Market (Raw startup information/links):

      http://betali.st/
      http://angel.co

Interview Specific:

      http://foundation.bz
      http://mixergy.com
      http://thisweekin.com - TWI Startups or VC are both good shows.
      YC Startup School Videos (Not exactly interviews but great).

_Startup News:_

      http://thenextweb.com
      http://techcrunch.com
      http://readwriteweb.com
      http://venturebeat.com
      http://gigaom.com

_Update:_ YC also has a library of information here too: <http://ycombinator.com/lib.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I should have been more clear: The resources I was hoping to find would be the intro to entrepreneurship - the crazy up and down world of startups - type of literature.

<comment><USER4> :-D bad plug, but <http://bestbooks100.com></comment></comment></comment>


The Neuroscience of Pain - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/02/the-neuroscience-of-pain <comment><USER2> Not sure what this article is trying to say, other than a 7 Tesla MRI is godawful powerful.

Yes, we all experience pain differently. I've had more than a standard share myself (ripped arm from shoulder, in the region of ~20 dislocations followed before it got fixed). And I've never heard of chronic pain (hypersinsitivity to pain). And yes, pleasure is pain's opposite, but an even more evil beast. Because true, unadulterated pleasure is an ephemeral beast - it doesn't come often, and it never stays. Pain can stay. For a long, long time.

And that brings me to what the article doesn't discuss - how we (and how different people) deal with pain. I can take a lot - apparently more than most, because of that shoulder. Had to go under full anaesthetic every time to get it set. And until then I had to just... take the pain.

And after a few dislocations taking the pain got to be surprisingly easy. I somehow disassociated myself from it. I could feel the pain, but somehow it registered a bit like a pilot light, and a lot less that what I feel when I stub my toe or bash my shin. It was as if I was telling myself that hey there's the pain, it hurts, but it's not that agony that it is. Or was. I don't know how to describe it.

So I read that article, and I said all of this stuff, and I'm still not sure what the point of it all was, other than inform me that someone's hoping to provide a definitive measure of the severity of pain using MRI.

<comment><USER3> It is a New Yorker article - it isn't trying to make a singular point and convince you of it... it is storytelling about some interesting work being done.

As far as you not having heard of hypersensitivity, that isn't a shock. I first heard of it as a diagnosis from the Mayo clinic, after my local docs weren't able to find anything wrong with me. And they said that many doctors aren't yet familiar with it yet. It is a fairly new area of research.

But again, that circles back to the article -- it talked of how their findings support the effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy for chronic pain. (Also what the Mayo clinic recommended, BTW.) I found much of the article resonated well with my experiences of chronic pain, and I am hopeful that someday research such as this will be able to find reasonable treatments that dial the sensitivity back down to normal for people with abnormal pain responses.

Another term you can research if you really want to dig into this is "central sensitization".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > One of her most striking experiments tested the common observation that > religious faith helps people cope with pain.

I know there is always the problem that popular reports have to so simplify research results that they veer into misrepresentation. But as described, the stated conclusion is impossible to support. Devout Catholics and atheists, collectively, had similar responses to pain stimuli. But if you shows both a picture of the Virgin Mary before the pain, Catholics reported one point lower pain scores.

How could the conclude that? What if instead they segregated the groups into (US) football fans and non-fans, and showed both pictures of, say, Mike Ditka, a famous tough, non-whiny guy? If the football fans reported lower pain scores, would that mean sports helped them cope? Or are they simply primed to act more manly?

Or rap fans/non-fans were primed with pictures of 50-cent? Or history buffs pictures of Earnest Shackleton?

</comment><comment><USER5> > In 2000, Congress declared the next ten years the "Decade of Pain Control > and Research," after the Supreme Court, rejecting the idea of physician- > assisted suicide as a constitutional right, recommended improvements in > palliative care. Pain was declared "the fifth vital sign" (alongside blood > pressure, pulse rate, respiratory rate, and temperature), and the numerical > scoring of pain became a standard feature of U.S. medical records, billing > codes, and best-practice guides.

This is one of the reasons that I find the push to solely blame physicians and pharma for the opioid epidemic misleading. In the early 2000's treatment of pain was being pushed, and it was deemed the "fifth vital sign", even though it is subjective unlike the other four vital signs. Physicians were being evaluated on how their patients said they treated pain. Given this environment, it is no surprise that pharma developed powerful drugs to target pain, and physicians prescribed these drugs in large amounts. We are today dealing with the fallout of this push.

<comment><USER6> The makers of OxyContin have been losing lawsuits [0, 1] for aggressively and misleadingly marketing (saying that it wasn't addictive) the drug for pain management leading to the levels of opioid addiction that we see in cities around North America. I think pharma, particularly Purdue, deserves the lion's share of the blame in this.

[0][https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/oxycontin-class- action-1.4093...](https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/oxycontin-class- action-1.4093781) [1][http://fortune.com/2018/05/16/oxycontin-purdue-pharma- lawsui...](http://fortune.com/2018/05/16/oxycontin-purdue-pharma-lawsuit- tennessee-florida-opioid-epidemic/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> After I read this I went off to learn more about the dorsal posterior insula and pain. It's role in being a necessary but not sufficient or just something correlated is still being debated with many experiments for and against.

[https://www.nature.com/articles/nn.3969](https://www.nature.com/articles/nn.3969) and [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4706052/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4706052/)

then [http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jour...](http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002345)

As far as I can tell on my very quick literature survey lately it's against, and because of invasive studies done with actual electrodes covering the relevant areas of the insula. And the activity there (which would be later picked up as blood flow inferred by MRI) doesn't seem to necessarily "track" pain like the foundation paper(s) on the theory suggested.

</comment><comment><USER8> What are the evolutionary advantages of extreme or chronic pain? Some pain is a message and an incentive to do something about it, but extreme pain and chronic, high levels of pain paralyze people without any apparent benefits.

Perhaps I assume too much, that humans are such evolutionarily fined tuned machines that every 'bug' must be a feature.

<comment><USER4> > What are the evolutionary advantages of extreme or chronic pain?

That is a funny question. It is like asking: what is the evolutionary advantage of a broken leg? Sometimes things go wrong and the result is pain. There is no purpose to it; it just happened. Not everything has an evolutionary purpose.

My wife has Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, resulting in malformed collagen throughout her body. As a result, her tendons are too stretchy and don't work well, and so her bones don't align as they should, leading to wear and tear on joints and now incessant pain.

Also, many kinds of failures show up after the typical reproductive window. There is little evolutionary pressure to prevent such failure mechanisms.

<comment><USER9> > That is a funny question. It is like asking: what is the evolutionary > advantage of a broken leg?

i'm unconvinced... a broken leg isn't a normal biological function, while (afaik) pain is an entirely internal process that is a 'response' mechanism.

> Sometimes things go wrong and the result is pain. There is no purpose to it; > it just happened. Not everything has an evolutionary purpose.

the ostensible purpose of 'some' pain is to cause you to stop or avoid doing something damaging, or being aware of a need to seek remedy. for those few people who don't feel any physical pain (congenital analgesia)... life is actually more dangerous.

when it comes to incapacitating levels of pain, things seem to get murky. there is some arguable benefit to adopting a protective posture (covering a wound, adopting a fetal position, etc) to mitigate further harm... but it seems these same behaviors can also increase risk of harm as well, especially when it comes to pain causing reduced situational awareness and other reasoning impairments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> >For this reason, the International Association for the Study of Pain (I.A.S.P.) has a code of ethics, and its members are pledged not to inflict or increase pain except in an experimental setting.

What would we do without ethical codes?

<comment><USER11> Just like any "obvious" rule, these rules are there because something stupid and terrible happened and people said "we need a rule against this."</comment></comment>


DoS attack on CDN users (with PoC) - <AUTHOR> http://mixedbit.org/blog/2013/04/11/dos_attack_on_cdn_users.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Here are links to harmless PoCs (cookies are configured to expire in 5 minutes):

Amazon CloudFront (already on the Public Suffix List): <https://d18rrft186j3x1.cloudfront.net/bomb_.html>

Google Cloud Storage: [http://fofofoofooo.commondatastorage.googleapis.com/bomb2.ht...](http://fofofoofooo.commondatastorage.googleapis.com/bomb2.html)

GitHub user content: <http://wrr.github.io/cookie-bomb/bomb.html>

Dropbox user content: <https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/63170109/bomb.html>

Google Drive hosted static pages: <https://googledrive.com/host/0B3BESKL7AtJvZDBhSnA1UnpOVW8/>

Tumblr: <http://krol-okrucyusz.tumblr.com/></comment>


Fred Wilson is wrong about "Free" - <AUTHOR> http://daltoncaldwell.com/fred-wilson-is-wrong-about-free <comment><AUTHOR> Fred Wilson replied on Twitter:

      great post dalton. i wish your blog had comments because
      i'd like to publicly agree with much of it and state where
      i don't. [1]

      the one thing i most want to say is i never intended to
      refute your points/positions. i just wanted to state mine. [2]

[1] <https://twitter.com/fredwilson/status/226027510201204736>

[2] <https://twitter.com/fredwilson/status/226028140584128513>

</comment><comment><USER2> Some criticism of the App.net project, which I hope is constructive:

It took a bit of reading between the lines, but from what I understand Dalton is trying to build a paid version of Twitter which is beholden to users and developers rather than advertisers. He refers to it as a "realtime feed platform" and is asking for $50/member/year (or more for the Developer and Pro tiers).

If that's the case, the first big question is: Would I pay $50/year for Twitter? It's hard to say for sure, but I'm not sure I would. This makes committing $50 to something that may not work out difficult – I need to be convinced of the value of this project.

The second big question is: Would everyone else pay $50/year for Twitter? Given that Twitter is only useful because of the network of people on there, if they don't come along then my $50/year is for naught even if this project does get funded. I need to be convinced that the value of the network will be there and I just don't see how that's going to happen.

The last piece of criticism is at the messaging. It's been rubbing me the wrong way and I'm not sure exactly why; I feel like when I read about it I'm being told how much I should care, but I haven't been convinced yet that I should care that much. More specifically:

"audacious proposal" - It won't happen unless the support is there, so what's so crazy about it?

"service we all wish existed" - I hadn't really been wishing for this, even though the steps Twitter has taken recently have been a bit disconcerting.

"I'm putting my money where my mouth is" - _Your_ money? That's _our_ money! Again, it only happens if it gets funded.

The funding doesn't seem to be moving along too quickly, so I can only assume other people have reservations about the idea, or haven't been convinced of the value. I'd be interested in knowing whether other people agree with the reasons I laid out.

<comment><USER3> I think you can re-phrase your question of "Would I pay $50/year for Twitter" as "Would I pay $50/year for something like Twitter, when Twitter is already free".

App.net needs to be considered in the overall market, not as a stand-alone. It's biggest threat (I don't think) is the $50, it's going up agains a free established major brand in a network play. Has this ever been done before?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I didn't see your refutal of why is he wrong. He argues that when scale and network effects matter, free services supported by ad's win.

How's is he wrong about that? Your article seems to focus on service quality (specifically to developers). You keep saying that you could provide a "better" service if you are not ad supported. Perhaps you can and I assume Spotify/Pandora paid service is better than their free service, but they don't have the network effect problem.

What I have not yet seen you explain is: How do you plan to get millions of users putting a big paywall between the user's and the service?

<comment><USER5> Me: "Free Platform services are bad for a bunch of widely-understood reasons. I am going to try something crazy to propose a solution. There are a few examples of healthy platforms and I think we can learn from them. This approach may not work but I want to try."

Fred: "Non-free services, both platform and non-platform don't work. Nothing to see here, please move along."

Me: "Um ok, this may not work, but you didn't address my points about why ad- supported platforms are a fundamental risk to developers and bad for innovation. This is my core argument and you seem to be glossing over it. Are you saying we are stuck with things the way they are?"

Fred: "Good post. I agree with a lot of this, but not all"

<comment><USER6> Your paraphrasing is wrong, because he did not say Non-free services both platform and non-platform do not work. Fred was specifically referring to potential paid competitors to twitter, facebook and similar services.

to illustrate:

Fred: "Free TV does not commoditize paid TV. They co-exist nicely. But we had free TV well before we had paid TV. Free is the foundation that creates a paid tier. "

followed by, Fred: "I would encourage folks to compete with them to keep the web, the mobile web, and the Internet free and open. But I would not encourage those same folks to build paid services."

So Fred was not speaking against all non free services.

Developing for any platform that is not your own presents risks. Just because a developer is paying for app.net does not mean anything goes on app.net. Moreover I would not assume it's bad for innovation. Both Twitter and Facebook know they cannot alienate the majority of their users, they will innovate on their platform as needed. They also know they need to strike a balance when providing services for both their advertisers and users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think comparing Dalton project to twitter is wrong. It's wrong because the whole point of it is that there is huge potential for something else, something more. I think Dalton's vision of what the project could be is blurry and I think thats a good thing.

So does Paul Graham - "The popular image of the visionary is someone with a clear view of the future, but empirically it may be better to have a blurry one."

I donated because I want to see him try and would like to see something new (not twitter) come out of this. I think people lack imagination (myself included) and thats why they keep saying it's a twitter clone that is paid. I'm really glad he has enough courage to try. Thank you, Dalton.

</comment><comment><USER8> It seemed like an aside, but the issue of being at the mercy of the people who provide platforms and other foundational technology really resonates with me.

("Building on top of a platform is a foundational risk, and if your platform decided one day that it doesn't like what you are doing, or likes what you are doing so much they want to compete with you, it's Very Bad. Your platform partner can easily damage your quality of service, or simply shut you down. If that happens, your business is dead.")

Have I missed an explanation from Dalton or the App.net crew about how what they're envisioning will be different? What protects a developer from being at their mercy for uptime, timely bugfixes, continued development, and so on?

Actually, on a more general level... what _can_ platform/tech providers do to provide those reassurances? I can't seem to think of anyone who's done a really stellar job of it.

<comment><USER5> In my announcement of this project, I argued that Github & Dropbox are the best examples I can come up with as examples of healthy, innovating platform companies.

I believe our approach is different in that App.net customers are developers+members paying for a service that is provided. This is different than customers being advertisers, and developers+users being treated as a product, or at worst collateral damage.

I think this all boils down to business model choices and financial incentives: <http://daltoncaldwell.com/an-audacious-proposal>

<comment><USER4> Both Github and Dropbox offer a free plan plus they don't need the network effect. If I were the only user on Dropbox I would still find it valuable. Same on github.

However the service you are proposing does have a huge network effect. Twitter/e-mail without users is not valuable.

So whats your plan to get to a million paid users?

NOTE: Pandora had about 71 Million on October 2010 but only about 700,000 paying users. So not even Pandora has been able to get to 1 million paying customers. Just look at the financials. 14% of revenue came from paid users and 84.6% came from ad's. Which supports Fred Wilson point that the majority prefers ad supported services.

I am going to support App.net. I still want to see you try. But I am afraid you don't really have a good answer on how you plan to build the network and Fred Wilson is trying to warn because you will probably fail. But something tells me you don't care if you fail, thats why I'll support you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wouldn't any investor be inclined to promote the qualities (Freemium, or not, etc) they best know and prefer to invest in?

To me, VC/Accelerators specialize in different things based on their expertise and their goals, and look for a match.

It doesn't make the opposite wrong. Or anyone right. It's just not in their area of investment.

By engaging this debate, are we inadvertently agreeing investors fund base decisions on one formula or model and nothing else?

These types of posts may, or may not try to influence smart startupheads to lean their way. But somehow the door opens for a religious debate - but the only thing black or white from where I can see is each investor's preference, and not spending time on something customers want.

<comment><USER10> exactly <https://twitter.com/fredwilson/status/226047103867170816>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think it's a great idea that will fail in this implementation.

The first barrier in social networks is people - getting enough people on your network to incentivize others to follow. Is the fact that app.net paid enough to draw people away from Twitter & Facebook? As a developer, perhaps, but as a user, I really doubt it.

A much better sales pitch would be just "you own your data". Give users amazing import/export tools from the get go. Allow third parties to fork your system and allow seamless user migration. Build a protocol, not a service.

With a business hat on, I also worry about the single silo of data in app.net. Say it does become successful, then they're a monopoly again. How can we be sure they'll fairly charge for their API usage when they realise how much it costs to hosts that much real time data? Can we be sure they won't change the playing field again?

Besides all that, I don't get why he wants $500,000 up front. If he wants to "align our financial incentives with members & developers", I would have thought he'd charge a set fee to allow revenue to scale with usage.

Also the language on the site is just so damn confusing. They have lots of ideas jammed in together. Most of the discussion about the idea has been people trying to figure out what they're on about. They need to figure out a sales pitch people can understand and stick to it.

Anyway, lots of huge holes in this implementation IMO. I doubt it'll even get funded.

</comment><comment><USER12> "Fred Wilson is one the smartest, most genuine people in the tech business. He has a huge fan club that he has earned by being radically transparent and consistently engaging in public debate. I have emailed with him a few times over the years, and actually met him and shook his hand a few weeks ago. I think Fred Wilson is awesome, and if I saw him on the street today I would walk up and shake his hand again."

Amazing bit of novacaine you applied there. This won't hurt a bit...

</comment><comment><USER13> It's seems like Dalton's proposal would need to be some sort of protocol like Git, SMTP or Usenet. I don't see how a paid Twitter could possibly do what he describes.

</comment><comment><USER14> I still think that there is no incentive for developers to switch. This situation has a parallel to the Windows Phone app development grants.

Microsoft is paying startups to hire someone to develop a Windows Phone app. After speaking to these companies they say they highly doubt they'll get any value from it and don't intend to continue developing for the platform.

You're offering developers an open platform to develop on that at the moment has under 1000 users. I think a developer could still make more money on a huge locked down platform like Twitter than on 'join.app.net'?

Even if a developer eventually gets kicked off, I'm sure they earned a lot more in the time they were live than on a small platform.

I think $50 yearly is too high for early adopters and even higher for the developers you need, I love the Pinboard.in model, they offer a one off price that is set based on the number of users. So the earlier you join the lower the price. Right now it's $9.84.

<comment><USER15> You made some good points, mainly that most developers will/already are taking the risk of being kicked out of the Twitter/Facebook/Etc. platform because that platform already has users.

The way I see it, you as a developer are using what they (Twitter/Facebook/Etc.) built to market your app to their customers that they've spent the time to acquire, it's only fair that they can kick you out of their house whenever they want; that's the way a free market should work, fair or not.

At this point, it sounds like App.net will turn out to be a high-quality network of developers and hackers building interesting stuff, but with no real market or audience. Developers don't build for developers.

Your second point was that $50/year is too much for early adopters:

I agree with you, but to even call anyone who's pledged the $50 'early adopters' is ridiculous at this point. No one even knows what App.net is going to be yet or what it could be, and it's a long ways off being released for early beta testing. What Dalton needs to be doing at this stage is just get people to sign up, for free. From there he can figure out if he'll have enough people to go ahead with it or not.

It's not worth throwing $50 at. Yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> My impression on app.net, which seams to be a payed "twitter" if I understood correctly, is that it should provided an added value worth $50 in the eyes of customers.

Publishers would very likely find this value is such service, but I doubt for readers. Twitter is already a time sink, so adding a cost to it doesn't make it attractive.

Beside, how much different would be paying publishers from advertisers ? They will/should make sure they get their $50 back someway.

Regarding the funding process, it shouldn't be considered as an idea validation process. Outcome depends on how well the idea or project was presented AND people's preconception on what has been presented.

</comment><comment><USER17> Pocket hasn't revealed their plans for monetization moving forward, but this post does a great job of explaining free vs paid, and why free is sometimes necessary: [http://blog.ideashower.com/post/21276590202/why-pocket- went-...](http://blog.ideashower.com/post/21276590202/why-pocket-went-free)

</comment><comment><USER18> I have been following this on and off. Is there anywhere where it's been mentioned what the underlying network will look like? Is it actually a Twitter-like social site?

<comment><USER5> We are posting API docs to github later today, tmrw am at the latest. I'm too busy trying to wrap that up to keep engaging in hn threads, so if I don't reply to other questions thats why :)

<comment><USER19> Ok, but I just have one three-part question...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > On "being a bitch"

> I tweeted:

> I wanted to remind people that Fred Wilson made the following statements:

> He also said:

> At any rate, Fred replied to my tweet:

Yep, that's how you do it alright.

</comment><comment><USER21> Dalton is obviously just using Fred Wilson's name to market his app.net bullshit.

Protip to Dalton: Nobody cares about twitter ads as you do, it will never take off. After you fail for the 1383th time, please quit.

<comment><USER12> "Dalton is obviously just using Fred Wilson's name to market his app.net bullshit."

I think Dalton has valid points.

That of course is totally separate from whether he gets benefit from mentioning FW.

He does. A smart move. Got me to read the post.

That said I'm not entirely sure after watching the video (btw Dalton it bothered me that you didn't look at the camera..) and scanning the site what is going on here. Maybe it's just that time of day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> HN Feature Request: Filter out Dalton Caldwell/app.net posts.

Upvote if in favor.

<comment><USER23> Install this: <http://www.hackerne.ws/item?id=4197062></comment></comment>


The 10 big energy myths - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/nov/27/renewableenergy-energy <comment><USER2> _Myth 1: solar power is too expensive to be of much use_

I think that if there's one technology that's going to go crazy this century, it'll be solar power. We're _so_ close to being able to harness the sun's energy efficiently (of which several hundred watts-worth can be hitting a square meter per hour), and when it becomes possible, it'll be more game changing than the proliferation of the telephone or the Internet.

Imagine.. next-to-free power almost anywhere on the planet at almost any time (assuming battery technology keeps up too). All sorts of crazy de- salinization, carbon extraction, and similar plans would become possible.</comment>


Let's talk about copyright, licensing, and who owns the code - <AUTHOR> http://blog.samuellevy.com/post/48-lets-talk-about-copyright-licencing-and-who-owns-the-code.html

<comment><USER2> If you're sharing code among different clients, couldn't the exclusive license be a problem?</comment>


The Peak Oil Myth and the Rise of the Electric Car [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2016-02-24/the-peak-oil-myth-and-the-rise-of-the-electric-car <comment><USER2> Every time someone is extrapolating linearly into the future I ask them if they have considered what happens if their extrapolated function is actually an s-curve. It makes for interesting conversation.

</comment><comment><USER3> Also at [https://vimeo.com/156585403](https://vimeo.com/156585403)</comment>


Royalty, Espionage, and Erotica: Secrets of the World's Tiniest Photographs - <AUTHOR> http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/secrets-of-the-worlds-tiniest-photographs/ <comment><USER2> If screen technology could go far beyond _retina_ scale DPI, yet is constrained by the limits of what the human eye can discern, this concept would be great for discrete read-only user interfaces. e.g. put it on a mechanical watch to retain style and tradition, whilst also delivering feeds, alerts à la smart-watch.

</comment><comment><USER3> That is neat. I had no idea that microdots had a history before they were used by spies. I thought that grainless film, where the photosensitive component is at the molecular level, wasn't developed until 1930. But the old collodion process used was grainless, although really slow, as in light-insensitive. As a process for making original photographs it was barely usable, but this is using it to make prints, for which light sensitivity is no problem.

This has steampunk potential.

</comment><comment><USER4> What a great article and a fascinating site, you totally ruined my workday :P

Thanks for sharing!</comment>