Epic's Tim Sweeney on Mobile Gaming - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/04/05/epic <comment><USER2> Can we please stop posting every snarky comment Gruber has to make about Apple's competitors. The comments made by Sweeney are certainly interesting so why not link directly to the article? Gruber's a good writer and I read most of what he writes on Daring Fireball but he often goes into modes like he's in now, which means we're going to see a constant stream of links to articles saying bad things about Android with a single line at the end from Gruber referencing Fred Wilson or whoever was the latest vocal person to support Apple's competitors.

<comment><USER3> Direct link article here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2413254>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> FTA: "If you took the underlying NGP hardware and shipped Android on it, you'd find far far less performance on Android. Let's say you took an NGP phone and made four versions of it. Each one would give you a different amount of memory and performance based on the crap [the carriers] put on their phone."

He lost me there, is he saying that custom carrier launchers, etc. impede access to the hardware? Even with the NDK?

<comment><USER5> I don't think he means they're impeding access to hardware. I think he's talking about resources used up by bloatware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> So Epic doesn't make PC games anymore either?

<comment><USER5> They make the Unreal game engine. It's been powering dozens of console and PC games for years.

<comment><USER6> but... when a consumer gets the PC and they wanna play a game that uses Epic technology, it's got to be a consistent experience, and Epic can't guarantee that.</comment></comment></comment>


Lessons Learned from 30 Years of MINIX - <AUTHOR> http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2016/3/198874-lessons-learned-from-30-years-of-minix/fulltext <comment><USER2> It was unfortunate how Minix was distributed as a $69 book. It was very expensive for a student. Inflation corrected it would be about $120 now. However being in the UK meant the usual 1 USD = 1 GBP conversion (making it cost about 50% more), not to mention VAT at another 15% on top - a total of about $210 in today's money. I am pointing this out not because the pricing was unreasonable, but because it was a big barrier to use. (At the same time a full version of Windows 3.0 retailed for $149 or $79 (upgrade) - 1990 dollars. You also required a copy of DOS.)

The article also mentions 32 bit support, but there was a lot of tension going on. It was possible to make Minix perform a lot better by deeper platform support and multi-threading components (especially the filesystem), but this made the code more complex, longer and harder to understand. Consequently there were two versions of Minix in use - the base true to the mission, and big patch sets on top that made it more usable/performant. The latter were distributed over the Internet.

This shows why Linux took off so quickly. There was no barrier to participation like paying for the book. While functionality was a lot less, there was no gatekeeper keeping it small, simple and educational. And Minix had shown how to collaborate with patches to an operating system over the Internet. It didn't take long for Linux to overtake Minix onto the path we see today.

<comment><USER3> > It was unfortunate how Minix was distributed as a $69 book. It was very > expensive for a student. Inflation corrected it would be about $120 now.

And in a good example of how textbook prices inflate at well above the general rate of inflation, the current Minix 3 version retails for $176.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Down on the very bottom of the page is a seemingly mistyped link to the video where Andy Tanenbaum discusses the lessons learned.

[http://cacm.acm.org/videos/lessons-learned-from-30-years- of-...](http://cacm.acm.org/videos/lessons-learned-from-30-years-of-minix)

The above just redirects to vimeo:

[https://vimeo.com/154212224](https://vimeo.com/154212224)

</comment><comment><USER5> Working archive: [https://archive.is/lc5vT](https://archive.is/lc5vT)

</comment><comment><USER6> I could listen to Andy talks for hours. He has the greatest stories, so much experience and wisdom. I wonder if he and Linus get along in person, I had a 100% different impression of this guy solely based on his flamewars with Linus (who's probably the 'bad one')

<comment><USER7> I met Tanenbaum a couple of times when Minix was still very young, he's an extremely nice and knowledgeable person.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> In a parallel universe: ten years ago Andy gets his grad students to port MINIX 3 to ARM and turns it into the educational OS of choice for the Raspberry pi.

</comment><comment><USER9> Honest question: Is somebody using MINIX as a production system? I suppose it is not very popular as a server system, but since its current target is embedded use, are there any products built on/around MINIX?

<comment> david-given Don't know, would be interested to find out.

FWIW: Minix 2 will _still_ get you a fully functional Unixoid on a PC XT with 8086 processor and 640kB RAM. (It'll run in less, but I assume you want to run some processes in addition to the shell.)

And Minix 3 is a complete ground up rewrite, substantially more sophisticated, with a ludicrously small footprint and NetBSD compatibility (I believe it comes with NetBSD Ports).

<comment><USER10> MINIX3 is not a ground up rewrite. It started off with the MINIX2 sources. A lot has been added and changed. Mainly to provide complete fault isolation for device drivers. (Aside from adding missing functionality)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> off topic but I think interesting: Andy Tanenbaum is also the creator and maintainer of [http://www.electoral-vote.com/](http://www.electoral- vote.com/), which I find to be one of best resources on american elections.

<comment><USER12> Thx for the reference. I had no idea. I presume it reflects Andy's biases (which is, of course, up to Andy)

      WRT Gov. Susana Martinez ....

      A good-looking Latina governor from a Western
      swing state  with a fiery conservative speaking
      style would be a good addition to any ticket.

      Comparisons will undoubtedly be  made to Sarah Palin,
      but Martinez is completely sane and is fluent in
      two languages that Palin has little command of:
      Spanish and English.

<comment><USER13> > good-looking Latina

Someone is playing with fire...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is it just me thought it's hard to read a page w/o padding? Here is the rescue: $('body').css('padding', '0 15px')

</comment><comment><USER13> TIL that Ts'o has been with Linux since the early days.

</comment><comment><USER15> ObOriginalTanenbaumTorvaldsConflictLink: <[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.os.minix/wlhw16...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.os.minix/wlhw16QWltI%5B1-25%5D>)

Linus' personality is remarkably intact, 24 years later.

More background: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanenbaum%E2%80%93Torvalds_deb...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanenbaum%E2%80%93Torvalds_debate)

<comment><USER16> Relevant to their debate with modern elements:

[http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/reliable-os/](http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/reliable-os/)

[http://www.coyotos.org/docs/misc/linus- rebuttal.html](http://www.coyotos.org/docs/misc/linus-rebuttal.html)

<comment><USER5> Also: [http://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2016/01/01/0/](http://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2016/01/01/0/)

<comment><USER16> Didn't know about that one. Had a few links and data new to me. Thanks for the link!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _Lesson. If marketing the product according to plan A does not work, invent plan B._

If you can make Minix run on a MacBook Air, _AND_ get wifi working without me having to do anything, I'm willing to try it. Neither Linux nor FreeBSD have been able to do this.

<comment><USER18> linux mint seems to get drivers right. have you tried it? almost 4 years now on mint. very stable to do dev work and web browsing without having to worry about malware. it's not perfect but so far it's the one OS that gave me less reasons to hate

having micro kernel and well architectured OS is great. but without equally good gui, usability suffers</comment></comment>


Show HN: PagerDuty alerted you. Now what? Stress-free incident response - <AUTHOR> http://warroomops.com <comment><USER2> This is a really cool idea, especially for startups who do not have any formal incident response protocol.</comment>


Who Owns What: Columbia Journalism Review's guide to what media companies own - <AUTHOR> https://www.cjr.org/resources <comment><USER2> It's great that somebody is looking into this and goes through the trouble of aggregating the data, but the presentation is lacking severely (unless I'm completely blind and am missing the real thing).</comment>


Gibson Brands Announces the Closure of Cakewalk - <AUTHOR> https://reverb.com/news/gibson-brands-announces-the-closure-of-cakewalk <comment><USER2> It saddens me to see this happen, as it is not just Sonar, but also Rapture Pro (Dimension Pro) and Z3ta+ that will cease development. I do not think anyone at Cakewalk saw this coming, as they were still celebrating their 30th anniversary and were really improving in the last 2 years and especially last few months. I hope another party steps in and acquires them, as nothing good can come from staying at Gibson... they have called Opcode before and Deckadance (under the Stanton brand).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> SONAR was my first DAW when I was like 15. I eventually "graduated" to Pro Tools when I was running real recording sessions later in my 20s, but Cakewalk absolutely opened the door for me. Sad to see them go, especially since I have a few friends in Boston who work there.

</comment><comment><USER3> Please open source this? If possible, that is.</comment>


Michigan: The dark ages - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15271063

<comment><USER2> The government here has focused on raising taxes, putting off fixes on the budget until tomorrow which never comes.

The infrastructure is allowed to erode and this last year $175 per pupil was cut from education. They won't even plow the snow on weekends due to budget problems.

Jobs are to be created not by private industry, but by the State. Sound familiar?

In Michigan we know that goverment creation of jobs doesn't work. The nation as a whole has yet to learn that valuable lesson.

</comment><comment><USER3> It makes me wonder if this will be Silicon Valley in 50-70 years.

<comment><USER4> I think it'll be harder to kill of what Silicon Valley has become than what Michigan was:

Michigan was for at least a couple of periods (e.g. before the Great Depression and after WWII when every industrialized consumer economy's factories were largely destroyed, aside from Great Britain) a or the best place in the world to build cars. It stopped being so due to bad management at three companies and bad government at the national level (Wagner Act, CAFE). It was (and maybe still is) a good place to design them, but that requires good management (e.g. look at Toyota's sharp (for them) decline in quality, mostly due to design errors).

California has worse government, which has killed the manufacturing part of Silicon Valley (e.g. are there _any_ production fab lines still operating there?), but I'm not sure its government can kill off the design part of things. To do that it would have to make a middle class existence impossible. And the very nature of SV companies makes it impossible for bad management to kill the local part of its "industry".

<comment><USER3> But Detroit was much more than that in its heyday: it was a symbol of American industrial might. The birthplace of the assembly line. The place where other industries looked for process innovations. The biggest growth industry in America. (If you look at which professions did well during the Depression, "gas station attendant" and "automobile mechanic" were at the top of the list.)

Much like how Silicon Valley is currently the symbol of American innovation. The birthplace of the microprocessor. The place where other industries looked for process innovations. The biggest growth industry in America. (If you look at which professions did well during this recession, "Web Developer" and "Software Engineer" are near the top of the list.)

Detroit didn't start out as 3 gigantic car companies with bad management. Before WW2, there were literally _hundreds_ of automobile startups. Everybody had an idea for how to build a better car. There's a nice long list of them on Wikipedia:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_United_States_a...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_United_States_automobile_manufacturers)

But eventually, most of them went bankrupt or were absorbed by the Big-3. And that let the Big-3 get complacent, which let foreign competition kill them (undoubtedly helped along by government). The same thing could easily happen to SV's tech industry, given a period of consolidation.

A lot can happen in 50 years.

<comment><USER4> Three words: "Barriers to entry."

Competitively manufacturing a car became a more and more expensive thing as volume sales allowed steadily more serious tools and tooling to be applied to the problem. Per unit design also became cheaper as volume rose.

As far as I can tell the barriers to entry in much/most/all but x86 processors??? of what Silicon Valley does are steadily dropping and look to continue. The process of design also looks like it's getting better/faster/cheaper for a whole bunch of reasons, and I doubt that happened in a big way in the auto industry until CAD was adopted, by which point Chrysler had probably bought AMC, finishing US car industry consolidation.

Consolidation is fine for an industry as long as it doesn't stop new companies from forming and becoming successful.

And, hmmm, a note on the Big-3: how many of their competitors failed to exit the singularity of WWII? All got converted to wartime production, did some not bother to go back to cars and/or civilian trucks?

<comment><USER3> It depends a lot on what the dominant technologies are in 50 years.

It's non-trivial to become a big search engine like Google. It's non-trivial to develop an image-editing program like PhotoShop. It's non-trivial to build a language runtime and ecosystem like Java, or to set up a content network like Yahoo, or to make scalable databases that run on all sorts of platforms like Oracle.

Right now, there're lots of new markets being formed, which opens up room for lots of new startups. But will those markets get consolidated into features of big tech companies? Or will they continue to nurture small independent players?

<comment><USER4> Can you point to anything that indicates a consistent trend towards "big tech companies", especially ones that stay successful for a long time? Relational databases are the only one I can think of at the moment (Oracle, DB2 and SQL Server being the Big-3 here). And note how people are using non-SQL databases to get a lot of things done that were once the domain of relational databases.

(In the data warehouse/OLAP field, don't there continue to be a lot of small and medium players?)

One thing I noted about Microsoft before the Ballmer era was that the secret of Microsoft's success was consistently writing software that basically works. Microsoft in large part "won" by default, too many of its competitors lost that ability (and many would say Microsoft started losing it with Longhorn).

Let me explore this a bit more: I say that there's something fundamentally different between the middle two companies/areas you cite and Oracle's with databases. Oracle has a _large_ core of code _it_ has to keep working. If Sun went poof, the Java ecosystem would continue without much pause. If/when Yahoo goes poof, will anyone significantly outside of it _really_ care?

(I don't know enough about PhotoShop to comment on it, and while it's non- trivial to become a big search engine, enough companies continue to try at something like Google's scale (e.g. Yahoo, Microsoft ... and look at Wowd for a disruptive attack on the problem) that I'm not too worried as of yet. Ah: PhotoShop is a sticky application, switching to another vendor is expensive, search is not. Advertising is in between.)

I think it's more than new markets. E.g. Java was aimed at one new market (appliances), released for another (web browsers), but ended up being wildly successful in the second oldest (data processing; only number crunching is older ... and Sun is addressing that with Fortress in the Java ecosystem).

Search was not a new market when Google appeared on the scene, e.g. it replaced AltaVista for me. This is a field where creative destruction can renew a sector instead of just replacing it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you name your devices? - <AUTHOR>

Be it desktops, laptops, mobile phones or tablets (maybe even embedded gadgets?) I've seen people giving them a nickname.
I've noticed users of Apple products tend to do this more even if their machines aren't beefy monsters full of CPU and RAM (unlike PC users who do this usually only if they build their own as afore mentioned beefy monsters). Home servers also get this honor and I've called mine Seat ... Because that's where Pudding sits : http://eksith.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/20130210_092538.jpg
Well, any namers out there? <comment><USER2> Yes : gotham (gaming desktop), krypton(macbook air) and apothecary (thinkpad x201s with fedora) are my current machines.

My current ipod is called odin, the earlier one was igor, and there was a shuffle called skippy which I lost.

Also my debian VPS is called arachnid, because it runs a crawler.

</comment><comment><USER3> I used to do it more than I do now, but I still have a "DarkStorm" (server) and had a "LightStorm" too (yup another server). My laptop had two names "Lappy" and "Ghost" (Lappy atm) my desktop now is named "LightStorm" since I killed the the server with the same name, not much more naming than that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I named my old Inspiron 8200 "Ghost"! There's a story behind that: Once upon a time, I ran a community called Ghostnetworks and I actually hosted the first node on my laptop (don't laugh).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Always! Every machine I've ever owned and every workstation I've used gets a name.

I've never named my phones, though; you'd think they would be more personal, but somehow they feel less personal, like they don't really belong to me in the same way that a proper computer does.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have the same opionion on phones actually. That may have something to do with the fact that they're not really independent and their very use is limited by connectivity to a wireless provider. That makes them feel... chained?

Do you build your machines? Care to list a few names?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> All celestial bodies in our solar system, usually the most fitting (e.g. Io for a file server). This includes looking at the meaning of greek mythological figures from time to time.

</comment><comment><USER6> My machines are named after Firefly/Serenity people/places.

NAS: Skyplex

Laptop: Inara

Media Server: Serenity

Router: Persephone

</comment><comment><USER7> Mine name themselves:

ifconfig eth0 | awk '/HWaddr/ { gsub(/:/,""); print "LTS-"$5}'

<comment><AUTHOR> That's actually clever. There should be a similar method for babies. Alas, I fear too many parents flock to People Magazine than gsub.

<comment><USER7> Well it would have saved us from that tsunami of Jennifers the 70's laid on us. Not sure what Tommy Tutone would have done though....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Generally some version of "The hack-pad"</comment>


Inventor of Etch A Sketch dies in France at 86 - <AUTHOR> http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ohio-art-says-etch-sketch-creator-dies-france <comment><USER2> I don't understand the part of how he came to his invention. Can someone explain please?

>he peeled a translucent decal from a light switch plate and found pencil mark images transferred to the opposite face

So he had a sticker you can see through, used pencil to draw on it and you could see those left on the surface under it. But how does that link with the way an Etch-a-sketch works?

<comment><USER3> The Etch a Sketch works by scraping aluminum off of glass, so the implementation is kind of the inverse of the inspiration; but they both revolve around taking a pointer and running it across something adhering to the surface.

</comment></comment><comment> daniel-cussen "Ohio Art saw his idea at the Nuremberg Toy Fair in 1959. The toy, with its gray screen, red frame and two white knobs that are twisted back and forth to create drawings, was launched in 1960 and became the top seller that holiday season. More than 100 million have been sold worldwide since."

Wow, that must have grossed over a billion in today's dollars. There's a billion-dollar idea for you.

<comment><USER4> Indeed. Reading the Wikipedia entry on Cassagnes I wonder: 'idea' or 'discovery'?

"Cassagnes, an electrician at the Lincrusta Company, was performing a routine installation of a factory light switch plate wrapped in a translucent decal covering. During the installation, he removed the decal and wrote on it with a pencil, noticing that image transferred to the opposite face. Cassagnes tinkered with his discovery, which led to the world's first prototype of the Etch A Sketch."

I love these stories of something chanced upon by accident being turned into a product. It wouldn't surprise me if most successful ideas come about this way, rather than from a 'visionary' entrepreneur brainstorming the 'next big thing'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The true inventor of the iPad :-)

I was one of those kids that eventually couldn't take it any more and I took my Etch-a-Sketch apart to figure out how the heck it worked. Just a warning, that stuff gets on _everything_. :-) There are only a handful of toys that left a big impression on me as a young man, this one was right up there with the Slinky.

</comment><comment><USER6> 100M of these have been sold. Most popular tablet yet!

<comment><USER7> The iPad has already sold 100m.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPad>

I would expect Android tablets to be accelerating through that number in the next year or two. The world is going to change quickly.

<comment><USER8> 100m before there was TV in every home, and before Kotler had written the bible on marketing, is way different than 100m of Ipad.

<comment><USER7> I'm not putting down the Etch-a-Sketch. We had one in our house when I was a kid. Just putting the tablet numbers into perspective because the person to which I replied didn't seem to understand how quickly tablets are selling. The iPad is only 3 years old. Android tablets are just starting to take off.

<comment><USER6> "... didn't seem to understand how quickly tablets are selling..." what part of my statement makes you think that? Shake your screen and try again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Stunning what some people are able to create with this stuff: <http://www.gvetchedintime.com/gvetchedintime/gallery.php>

<comment><USER10> It's amazing how simple the etch-a-sketch is, but most people find it difficult to draw basic shapes. Side-note: I'm not very good with an etch-a- sketch but I found a hidden ability of mine and drew this [1], which got thrown in "Weird NJ" magazine.

[1]: <http://i3.minus.com/jbuePHaiXbDPXg.JPG>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The relevant xkcd: <http://xkcd.com/551/>

<comment><USER12> The relevant Dilbert: <http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-04-03/>

(Brief aside: is XKCD the modern Dilbert?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Beautiful, simple, entertaining.

<comment><USER14> And an enormous mess if you get curious and take it apart to see how it works. They're hard to take apart for a reason. Fortunately, I did it on a keychain- sized one, and not a full sized one.</comment></comment>


K-Cup creator John Sylvan regrets inventing Keurig coffee pod system - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/k-cup-creator-john-sylvan-regrets-inventing-keurig-coffee-pod-system-1.2982660 <comment><USER3> The K-cup should get an award for worst invention of the last few decades. They turned making coffee from a process with easily compostable output into a massive trash production.

Business-wise they are genius though. Take something and make it ten times as expensive.

<comment><USER4> From the article: "According to a wildly popular ad campaign against the product earlier this year, there are so many discarded K-Cups that if you lined them up it would be enough to circle the earth more than 10 times — and that's just from one year's worth of coffee pods."

Yes. I think the incentives to have a sustainable/ethical design in the context of reducing waste or recycling waste would be a good incentive for products/service/companies like this. Could there be a subsidy for companies that take the time to manage their products/design/supply-chain to combat wastefulness/negative externalities of using the product/service?

For example, Apple appears to be taking the environmental impact of their business seriously:

> [https://www.apple.com/environment/](https://www.apple.com/environment/)

<comment><USER5> Honestly the only effective potential remedy I see is to probably tax producers for their wasteful byproducts. Tax Keurig the corporation a dime for every one of those cups, and I don't buy the things but figure a box comes in increments of a half dozen, so we're talking between 60¢ to an additional $2.40 a box. Now theoretically the cup and the seal are separate components as far as a recycler is concerned, so maybe they should be charged separately for both the lid and the cup, but at least the coffee itself is compostable so there is no need to also charge for that, but you can go ahead and throw an additional dime on for the box itself and any other cardboard components that act as a spacer inside the box, and maybe a dime on for the tape. Charge a quarter for any non-recycleable components.

Then: nix the tax for any corporation willing to take back their own wasteful byproducts at their own cost _and_ recycle them.

Extreme? Oh yes, but also a great way to align a corporations incentives, and anything else is most likely a half measure that makes the problem worse by preventing an effective measure from being put in place.

<comment><USER6> The turtle choking to a Keurig cup in the Pacific doesn't really care that the cup had an additional tax on it.

In general, we should stop making waste just for the sake of appearing more sophisticated. Keurig has very successfully targeted the same people who insist on bottled water, even though tap water is higher quality and cheaper.

I don't know what's wrong with the basic human wiring, but we really seem to have a glitch that makes us equate excessive consumption with higher socioeconomic class. See also: giant SUVs, etc, etc.

<comment><USER7> The turtle cares because a pigouvian tax is the most effective means of keeping that cup out of the ocean in the first place.

You can't ban stuff because bans would be full of loopholes for "necessary" usage.

You can't just appeal to people's better nature because humans are humans.

<comment><USER8> > You can't just appeal to people's better nature because humans are humans.

You must live in the alternate universe where everyone litters.

No, some people just don't litter. Whole cities where people don't litter! Sometimes, there is a clear protagonist and antagonist.

As an aside: an* effective means of keeping that cup out of the ocean is also to buy all the cups and not use them. Pretty much the exact OPPOSITE of a "pigouvian tax." Isn't that crazy?

What if we bought all the oil and didn't burn it? What if we buy all the land it's under? Or more realistically, what if I bought carbon credits in cap and trade and didn't use them?

Greg Mankiw has doomed a generation to inside-the-box policy with his inane textbook.

<comment><USER9> Bans can work and Pigouvian taxation can work. Horses for courses.

In Seattle we've banned the cheap plastic bags that blow around and get stuck in trees. There are many, many fewer tree-stuck-plastic-bag-ghosts to be seen around now. We've also put a mandatory 5c fee (not a tax, sadly) on paper bags; there are many, many more people bringing reusable bags to the supermarket.

(Ignores, of course, whether these reusable bags are better for the environment holistically -- having lots of yuppies buying synthetic shopping bags made in China and shipped to Amazon DCs, then having them individually shipped out in Prime boxes, etc. before being used is probably worse than just having pulp grown in America made into bags trucked en masse to the grocery and generally recycled or composted.)

Regarding carbon credits -- soon that will be not only feasible but tokenized and sub-divisible. See [http://sparkchange.io/](http://sparkchange.io/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It should be noted that John quit the company in 1997 and sold his idea for $50,000; so him speaking quite openly about his thoughts make sense.

Off topic: I think we've tipped over to the other side of the "convenience/humanity" pyramid. We climbed to the top some years ago where the lack of excess convenience gave us the opportunity to make things our selves and interact with other people face to face (which I think are very important human qualities) while being comfortable. Now we are sliding down the convenience side of the pyramid, unable to grasp what is important and fundamental. We are literally snowballing (ie obesity epidemic).

Someone made a comment a few weeks ago from the Ansel Adams LA photos HN post, in regards to how thin people were back then, that really stuck out to me: there have been hundreds of small improvements that probably all add up together in terms of calories saved. e.g. power steering, escalators, elevators, transportation replacing walking or biking, etc.

Back to the coffee pods: I don't get why people like to spend money on inferior experiences. My philosophy is if you're spending money on something you wont enjoy, you're wasting your money and your time. I'd rather spend more on something that provides some form of fulfillment. I cant blame those who don't have the opportunity to have something better.

<comment><USER11> It's absolutely 100% about speed for me. There is no faster way for me to get my coffee fix any way you cut it, and when I'm under major time pressure I appreciate it a great deal. With some of them the taste is a bit better than others, but there's really no getting around the fact that it's significantly worse than with other brewing methods (on top of being expensive and wasteful). Swiftness is the whole deal.

On a more leisurely day, I will break out the good beans, the grinder and the french press. But all that takes noticeably more time and energy, and when those are in short supply I tremendously value a lightning-quick alternative.

<comment><USER12> How often are you under major time pressure? If it's more than a handful of times a year I would focus on fixing that rather than patching over it with bullshit machines that produce inferior product and a mountain of pollution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Surprised there's no mention of Nespresso's system, which uses aluminum pods that are recyclable. The 'pod per cup' system is very convenient, but I cringe at all the waste of the Keurig k-cups. Nespresso sold me though on their recycling program (fill a bag with the used pods and mail it to them for free).

<comment><USER14> > Nespresso sold me though on their recycling program

I don't get this. If this is important to you, why not use a system that didn't _require_ recycling in the first place?

<comment><USER13> I started with a 'real' espresso machine and bean grinder. The process for making a cappuccino in the morning was as follows:

1\. Turn on the espresso boiler and allow it to warm up for 20-30 minutes. 2\. Grind beans at the correct setting, then tamp them into the wand with just the right amount of pressure 3\. Insert wand into machine, turn it on, and perfectly time the pour 4\. Dispose of hot coffee grinds, rinse, brush and clean the wand. 5\. Pour milk into frothing cup and steam for 60+ seconds or until optimal temperature is reached while ensuring that the steam properly turns the milk to achieve desired froth. 6\. Combine milk and espresso in cup 7\. Clean espresso shot cup, clean milk frothing cup, clean up errant coffee grounds, remember to turn off machines.

The process for making a cappuccino with the Nespresso machine:

1\. Pour milk into frother, press button. 2\. Insert pod, press button. It will finish within about 20 seconds, and a few seconds after that the milk will also be done. 3\. Pour frothed milk into the cup that the espresso was dispensed into. 4\. Rinse milk frother.

I had time for the full machine routine on a Saturday morning, but not before work.

<comment><USER15> As long as you get your cappuccino in 30 seconds every morning, what's a little ecological damage?

<comment><USER16> This comes of pretty judge-y. Take a moment to consider all the waste you also produce each day.

Not to mention you're making the problem worse by making people defensive about their decisions, which just makes them go deeper and be unwilling to compromise. Try to solve the problem instead grand-standing.

<comment><USER17> I hope that no one identifies with those machines so much that they can't take valid criticism of what that thing leads to. Sure incorporating of objects into ones self image is common, but I do not think we can solve it by tip toeing around the issue. Yes you are affecting the climate and your local environment by all your actions, quite a lot and this particular thing is horrible.

<comment><USER18> There's a difference between acknowledging the problem and tackling it, versus cynically shaming the person. ("well if you get your cup in 30 seconds, I guess destroying the planet is fine") That just makes it into a personal attack, regardless of being a casual user or a Nespresso devotee.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Physical waste is not a real issue. A landfill 10 miles square and 250 ft deep could hold all of the US's waste for the next hundred years. Twenty of these (Which could fit without people taking notice in any rural area) can hold the whole world's garbage for next 100 years.

<comment><USER20> If physical waste is not a real issue, why do I see garbage on the ground? Why is there tons of plastic in our oceans? I think there's more to the issue of physical waste than whether or not we can dig a hole big enough for it all.

<comment><USER19> Litter is a whole other issue, which kpods also do not really contribute to.

<comment><USER21> "We totally have the space to bury this plastic in the ground. Killing wildlife and destroying habitats is a whole other issue. The carbon and ecological cost of producing massive amounts of single-use petrochemical products is a whole other issue. Chemicals leaking into the water supply is a whole other issue. Microplastics found in humans, animals and processed foods is a whole other issue."

We're not concerned about whether we can bury it in the ground.

<comment><USER22> > The carbon and ecological cost of producing massive amounts of single-use > petrochemical products is a whole other issue.

You should take a calm look into the carbon and ecological cost of producing and reusing the reusable equivalents of those single-use products.

Besides... If you have any idea on how to make it possible that people not dig every gram of fossil fuels available and use it for something (that something being a piece of plastic buried somewhere being way better than carbon dioxide at the atmosphere), please say so, because natural gas based plastics aren't a world-ending problem, but the coal mining endgame is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why is this so much of an issue? I agree that is it a more wasteful way to do coffee than other machines, but not significantly so. Why is everyone so up- in-arms about this vs any other single serve item, like water bottles, soda, and tea/coffee cans? The shipping costs alone for moving what amounts to mostly water and all the packaging make pods look innocent or better.

<comment><USER24> Those things are all dumb, too. Coffee pods are just so easy to replace. Just make coffee like normal.

<comment><USER25> It's a little more nuanced compared to water bottles. Coffee powder needs to be kept in a sealed container to be 'fresh' (apart from expiry). So if you don't drink coffee often, pads could be a more sensible choice.

<comment><USER26> > Coffee powder needs to be kept in a sealed container to be 'fresh'

There's no shortage of those sealed containers. If someone has a Keurig machine, and is using those pods, then they also have a refrigerator and are able to obtain containers, which are inexpensive.

There is no real argument for keurig cups other than convenience.

Is that convenience worth all of the waste? Should people be able to choose to generate such waste for something so trivial? Should be firms be allowed to sell waste-generators like Keurig? If Keurig is not responsible for the mountains of damage done, and the consumers are not responsible, then where does the buck stop?

This area is ripe for regulation and well overdue.

<comment><USER23> >There is no real argument for keurig cups other than convenience.

This is true at anything that one purchases - you outsource the effort for a fee. All single serve items are the same or worse as the keurig in terms of waste that makes things easy.

> Should people be able to choose to generate such waste for something so > trivial?

Yes.

>If Keurig is not responsible for the mountains of damage done, and the consumers are not responsible, then where does the buck stop?

Customers vote with their dollars. They are not to blame for the waste - <USER2> not free of responsibility. Want to make change? Stand up for what you believe and get others to join you. Don't _make_ anyone do anything by force (regulation).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It is possible to use the Keurig system with your own coffee grounds and a non-disposable cup:

E.g., [https://amzn.to/2LraTIB](https://amzn.to/2LraTIB) or [https://amzn.to/2RcREHQ](https://amzn.to/2RcREHQ)

That gives you _most_ of the convenience of a Keurig without the environmental impact.

<comment><USER28> I usually use a compostable single-use kcup: [http://a.co/d/4eWshVr](http://a.co/d/4eWshVr)

Can usually find them for about $10 for that size box at my local grocery store.

<comment><USER29> I used to use these, but they're no longer available in my region. They were on heavy discount for a few days everywhere so I scooped them up, assuming they were being discontinued.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The k-cup is genius. There are 5 people over your house. They can all make a cup of coffee whenever they want. They want more? Just make another cup. They can do it themselves!

<comment><USER31> This is so lazy -- coffee is so easy to make, why add the trash?

<comment><USER32> Espresso is IMHO not so convenient to make. You need to prepare every portion separately, filling the filter holder correctly each time etc. This is why I personally switched from a traditional espresso machine to capsules. I still make basic filtered coffee with a normal coffee maker though.

<comment><USER33> Yes but Keurig isn't really espresso, it is similar to traditional brewed coffee just with some alternative flavor choices.

<comment><USER32> I guess Keurig is different from the espresso capsule machines. My machine is a locally licensed K-Fee compatible device and there are both brewed coffee and espresso capsules available. The brewed coffee capsules have some kind of mechanism that prevents the usual espresso crema from forming (I suppose by depressurising the water flow).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I used to make coffee with Aeropress every time, but finally got a cheap espresso machine (Breville Cafe Roma) and a coffee bean grinder (De'Longhi Dedica). Got a deal on both.

OK, so it's a bit more work than just slapping in a [pod] and pressing a button, but it's totally worth it and the only "waste" is the bit of coffee grinds. No plastic, no metal. Probably the total cost of ownership over the ~6mo since I bought the espresso machine is likely actually less than if I had bought a Keurig or Nespresso machine and been paying for the pods this whole time. Plus you can't really beat legit espresso and steamed milk. :)

That said, the Aeropress is always on hand for visiting elsewhere, road trips etc. Definitely the best alternative to a full-on espresso machine IMO.

<comment><USER35> Try a mokapot. Much lower capital cost and just as resource light. Not so much _crema_ though I have to admit.

<comment><USER36> I use an Aeropress daily and have a Moka. The biggest downsides to the Moka are time to heat up (on my gas stove), and pretty much needing to wait for it to cool down before cleaning it.

It might be a little faster with an electric stove, but the cleaning would still be a big hassle. I prefer to clean up my coffee making stuff in the morning after making coffee, before heading out the door for work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I remembered this headline from years ago. The article is from 2015, does that warrant you adding a year to the title?

<comment><USER38> this

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> K-cups are recyclable, it's just that no one does it because it's a pain in the ass to do at scale. You have to awkwardly peel back the top foil, dump the grounds, and then recycle the cup. Who at the office wants to sit there and do that for 20 cups in a row whenever the cup catcher fills up?

What we need is some sort of cup recycler hardware that takes the work out of the annoying part. Put the used cup upside down, and a device scrapes the lid off and vaccuums the grounds into a compost holder, then you chuck the plastic into the recycle bin. That would instantly resolve the k-cup waste situation at my office.

<comment><USER40> > K-cups are recyclable, it's just that no one does it because it's a pain in > the ass to do at scale. You have to awkwardly peel back the top foil, dump > the grounds, and then recycle the cup. Who at the office wants to sit there > and do that for 20 cups in a row whenever the cup catcher fills up?

I do believe this is a myth.

K-Cups plastic falls into plastic-resin code #7: "Other plastic". Which means its the hardest kind of plastic to recycle.

IIRC, #1 Plastic (PETE) is easiest to recycle, but sucks at high temperatures. #5 Plastic (PP aka Polypropylene) is also easy to recycle, but I'm not sure if it'd stand boiling-point of water.

Most recycling plants IIRC will throw away Resin code #6 or #7, due to their difficulty to recycle. Some plants can recycle #6 or #7, but its not something you can count on.

<comment><USER41> OK, but the other parts in the K-cup also need to be thrown away too because of this part?

<comment><USER40> Depends on the plant. I'm no recycling expert, but you have to remember that recycling plants are a combination of computer and human labor.

Computers handle a lot of stuff easily: metals can be easily separated with magnets. Light plastics are separated with blowers, and some plastics can be detected with high-tech infrared / UV scanners.

So when I say "easy to recycle", I'm talking about Aluminum (non-magnetic but metal, so easy to sort automatically) or plastic bags (air-blowers catch these).

Everything else is dug around by hand by humans. If the humans can't figure it out, they throw it away immediately. Depending on the location, sometimes even Pizza boxes are thrown into the landfill by humans.

Pizza Box is one of those things that's highly localized. You can't put a Pizza Box into a paper-recycling plant: the oils contaminate the mix. But you can shred a Pizza Box into a compost bin.

IIRC, some areas only have paper-plants (so Pizza Boxes are thrown away there). So you gotta check with your local laws, regulations, and local plants to know for sure.

EDIT: It seems like some areas can't handle plastic bags. It really depends.

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

For something like a K-Cup: it contains so little coffee that I find it unlikely that its worth the human's time to scoop out the coffee grounds. Its probably easier for the humans to throw a K-Cup away rather than manually labor in the recycling mix.

<comment><USER42> If you have a Walmart nearby, there's a good chance you've got a place to recycle plastic bags. They generate a ton of them and as part of their greenwashing they usually have recycling stations available for the plastic bags.

[https://www.news- leader.com/story/news/local/ozarks/2018/05/...](https://www.news- leader.com/story/news/local/ozarks/2018/05/06/how-can-walmart-accept-plastic- bags-recycling-when-recycling-centers-wont/573097002/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> My wife insisted we buy one of those dreadful machines for our kitchen. I relented only when I found little metal reusable k cups on Amazon. Now we grind a few beans and they go in the pod. It's ok, better in a cafetiere though. Never bought a single actual keurig pod and she's happy.

<comment><USER24> I don't get it. Why not just brew some coffee with any other machine then? What's the Keurig bring to the table?

<comment><USER43> She thinks it's easier than dealing with a cafetiere or a percolator for a single cup. It kind of is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> While instant coffee has a negative stigma I'm happy to see the speciality community stepping into this space as a way to possibly move people away from these machines. While the cost value is still not great (~$4 a cup) it's far less waste and the coffee (to me) is much better. There's currently three companies leading on this: Sudden, Swift Cup, and Voila. James Hoffman did a video on the three and discussed their pros/cons ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuLWwZiIcl0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuLWwZiIcl0)).

I've tried all three at various points in their tenure and agree with Jim's points in the video.

* Sudden was the first to make the splash and for a while I was subscribed to them, but I never felt like the coffee tasted right.

* Voila is my preferred option right now because they offer a good variety of roasters as well as feel the most consistent in taste.

* Swift has had some of the best tasting ones, but it's slightly less consistent than Voila for me. Their best one I've had is the partnership offering they have with ReAnimator.

<comment><USER45> K-cup provides people with the illusion that they are getting "real" coffee. Instant provides no such illusion, hence its stigma. K-cup coffee is awful, but people happily drink it. Instant coffee can actually be much better, yet people go "BLECH!" if you even mention it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Every company wants in on this business model. Even tech companies. Adobe has already moved to the "you need to buy an adobe pod once per month in order to keep using Photoshop"

</comment><comment><USER47> I don't understand why people have them in their homes (just make a pot of coffee, folks!), but I do understand why they have been so incredibly successful in offices: they are clean & convenient, and don't require everyone to agree on the same coffee at the same time. Each person can brew a cup as he wants one, there are no grounds to clean up, and a cup of fresh-brewed Keurig coffee — while _nowhere_ near as good as good coffee — is _far_ better than urn coffee which has been simmering for three hours.

For offices, Keurig machines are a Godsend. For homes, though, I just don't get it.

</comment><comment><USER48> I don't even think K-Cup coffee is any good but I suppose that's a personal preference statement. Still, I prefer the paper filter ones. And even so, is it not more feasible to just brew a big pot of coffee that's "actually" good for the whole office?

At home I either do a French press or pour over with a reusable stainless steel filter then make a coffee scrub with the used grounds.

</comment><comment><USER49> I've re-purposed my Keurig into a hot-water dispenser (and occasional refillable-k-cup coffee dispenser). It works well for me for that purpose.

Buying the actual K-Cups is very expensive and wasteful. Though in a pinch or in certain circumstances (workplace, etc) I'll keep a few handy that I got on sale or cheaper in bulk.

</comment><comment><USER50> Are these really simpler than an electric kettle and a Hario v60?

</comment><comment><USER51> On a weird side note, used coffee grounds are sometimes used to bleach buffalo skulls white. So the art folks have been collecting k-cups to get the grounds which has greater participation than the old style coffee pots. I guess its convenient on both ends of the product cycle.

</comment><comment><USER52> I've learned that Keurig is really trying to get more municipalities to even recycle at all, because so few can accept recyclable resources, even the #5 polypropylene that they make their recyclable cups out of. Compostable cups are not really realistic as well, since so few municipalities offer pickup, there's basically no consumer interest.

It's the sort of thing that made me sit up and realize what a bubble most of the tech world sits in. Composting and recycling is very much a "liberal urban thing" in the US. It seems like the culture is against cutting down on waste in any significant way.

<comment><USER53> McDonalds sells KCUPs that are compostable. Meaning you just put it in with your compost.

They also happen to be some of the best coffee you can get in a KCUP. It's my daily cup of joe.

Anyway if your city does not have compost you have bigger problems than KCUPs. If you do have compost, just get KCUPS that are biodegradable. It's way better than a system where KCUPs have to be recycled in a special way (like Nespresso does).

<comment><USER52> Yeah, I'm just pointing out the underlying problem is cultural - if Keurig didn't exist, we'd have something else filling up the trash bin.

Given that 91% of plastic made hasn't been recycled, it does seem like "just make it all compostable, who cares where it goes" is a better approach. ([https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/07/plastic- produced...](https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/07/plastic-produced- recycling-waste-ocean-trash-debris-environment/))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> A little bit of a tangent, but man do Investors/Wall-Street love the Razor/Razor-Blade business models. Sell the hardware (i.e. the machine) at ~10-20% Gross Margin then sell the consumables at like 60-80% Gross Margin. See it a a lot with Healthcare companies. Doesn't always work, but when it does... Obviously, there are other business models that Investors/Wall Street likes better (i.e. SAAS).

</comment><comment><USER55> Just want to point out that Keurig did make recyclable pods called K-Cup Vue, but the price per cup was noticeably more so people continued to go with the regular k-cup option. On top of that, it wasn't available at many brick and mortar stores. On top of that, the size differed causing everyone to buy a different, more expensive machine.

</comment><comment><USER56> My take away from this is that he sold out for $50,000. Not the best investment "screw up story" but it made my day.

<comment><USER57> I wonder if he would be singing a different tune if he was now worth $500 million or something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Buddy, we regret it too.

</comment><comment><USER59> Over the last year or so there's been a big push from companies to sell biodegradable k-cups. In our office we're fully switched to Onecoffee, which are Keurig-compatible compostable pods: [https://onecoffee.com/](https://onecoffee.com/)

</comment><comment><USER40> Personally speaking, cold brew is far more convenient than even K-Cups.

Throw coffee + water into a big jar (~2 quarts), leave in the fridge for 12-hours. Filter, and you have ~1.7ish quarts of cold-brew coffee.

2-quart mason jars are like, $10 for a 6-pack.

[https://www.walmart.com/ip/JARDEN-HOME- BRANDS-68100-Ball-6Pa...](https://www.walmart.com/ip/JARDEN-HOME- BRANDS-68100-Ball-6Pack-1-2Gallon-Wide-Mouth-Jar/16661826)

Cold-brew in one Mason Jar, pour / filter into a 2nd jar. Heck, do 2 or 3 different flavors at once.

Get a pour-over filter holder (ceramic or glass works well in my experience):

[https://www.target.com/p/melitta-sr-pour-over-cone- coffeemak...](https://www.target.com/p/melitta-sr-pour-over-cone- coffeemaker/-/A-53951777?preselect=53669500#lnk=sametab)

And then get a bunch of Coffee Filters, usually $2 for ~100 of them. Bam. Cold Brew and its cheap as all heck too. Works on all kinds of coffee and tea in my experience.

Just batch it all up in one go, and you have enough coffee for the whole week. If you like it warm, put it in the microwave. The cold-brew process reduces the bitterness overall, so you get a different taste. But I prefer higher flavor and less bitterness that comes from the cold-brew process.

Nothing beats the convenience of cold brew. And you can use high-quality coffee with this method (K-Cups don't necessarily taste as good IMO. Less time for the coffee to infuse the flavor compared to traditional coffee making).

\</comment><comment>-

Other tips:

1\. Use a scale to measure coffee. Put the mason jar on the scale, and dump coffee into it until you reach your appropriate amount for your recipe. Somewhere in the order of 1-to-15 coffee-to-water ratio. (1750g of water to 120g of coffee. Varies per coffee you use however, so do it to taste). Water is 1-gram to 1-milliliter, 1kg to 1-liter. The Metric System is defined by the weight / volume of water, so its easy if you use Metric measurements. Scales are easier to use than measuring cups IMO. Scales mean fewer things to clean, while delivering more precision in measurements.

2\. Mason Jars are standardized. Buy 3rd party caps, such as "Recap" (from [https://www.recapmasonjars.com/](https://www.recapmasonjars.com/) ) to make Mason Jars more usable. Both Wide-mouth and Standard-mouth jars are too wide in my experience, so "narrowing" the mouth with a Recap plastic top makes the pouring experience far better. The reason why I like Recap is because they use Rubber Gaskets to ensure a strong seal (a lot of random Amazon crap doesn't have a Gasket, and you get leaky coffee all over your pants if you use them).

3\. Use high-quality filters to make the purest water possible. Coffee reacts to a lot of things in water, so its exceptionally important to filter as well as possible.

<comment><USER34> What, I had no clue it was so easy... OK, I might have to try this! I thought it involved some french press type of process. Seems perfect for summer months especially! Thanks haha :)

<comment><USER40> The only problem is that it takes ~10 minutes to filter that much coffee. You may have to change out the filters 2 or 3 times during the process.

Coffee Grounds clog up those filters and really slow down the process. But once its done, you've got so much coffee that you can use conveniently. Just gotta find the ~15 minutes to work the filters.

See my comment here for an example schedule: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18718842](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18718842)

My personal preference is to cold-brew Tea however. I'm more of a tea person than a coffee person. But I switch it up every now and then to change the flavors.

<comment><USER60> I use a filter bag to hold the grounds when brewing cold brew so when I filter there's far less matter to clog up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> type-2 I would assume the margins are crazy on this. I guess this is how you do profitable hardware

<comment><USER61> Relevant: [https://blog.bolt.io/keurig-accidentally-created-the- perfect...](https://blog.bolt.io/keurig-accidentally-created-the-perfect- business-model-for-hardware-startups-18e9c3b4e796)

Keurig created a hardware sales model orthogonal to printers. That is, people are excited to buy the recurring element (pods) and accept that the several- hundred-dollar device is just a means to an end. They don't feel ripped off, compared to buying printer ink that costs nearly as much as a new printer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Invent a better one again then. Biodegradable filter plus reusable cup.

<comment><USER63> I've seen compostable brands of cup.

<comment><USER28> [http://a.co/d/4eWshVr](http://a.co/d/4eWshVr) is the one we usually get

<comment><USER64> [http://a.co/d/8VwxwnW](http://a.co/d/8VwxwnW) Best in town

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Why do they have to be cups, instead of little coffee-filled teabags you pop in the machine instead?

</comment><comment><USER66> If you dry out the used pods and their contents, couldn't they be burned for energy?

</comment><comment><USER67> These things are terrible. Could they at least make the pods out of cardboard ?

</comment><comment><USER68> _' I don't know why people have them in their house,' K-Cup inventor says of his device_

Unless he donated half (or majority) of his profits to try to correct this mistake expressing _' regret'_ is kind of meaningless.

 _update_ i stand corrected, my bad for not reading full post before commenting

<comment><USER69> From above:

> It should be noted that John quit the company in 1997 and sold his idea for > $50,000

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> I wonder if he regrets selling the idea for peanuts more?

</comment><comment><USER71> biodegradable cups? Is that possible?

<comment><USER72> San Francisco Bay Coffee makes some: [https://www.sanfranciscobaycoffee.com/index.php/onecup- for-k...](https://www.sanfranciscobaycoffee.com/index.php/onecup-for-keurig- coffee-machines/)

<comment><USER73> Available in bulk from Costco. We use these for this reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Good to see that he's putting his money where his mouth is and giving away the money he earned from his invention to a good cause.

Oh wait...

<comment><USER75> I think we've probably all regretted doing things we've done to "pay the mortgage" at various times in our past — that doesn't necessitate that we donate that money to charity.

<comment><USER74> Most of us don't invent world-changing products to "pay the mortgage" and our regret over our work isn't featured in articles on major news websites.

We're talking apples and oranges here.

<comment><USER75> If your argument is that scale or extent of publicity is the differentiator, then we're not talking apples and oranges: we're talking apples and bigger apples.

The decision to be philanthropic is personal. Both in the sense that it's up to the individual to choose based on their own feelings and in the sense that it's, frankly, no one else's business.

<comment><USER74> > The decision to be philanthropic is personal

So is the decision to be regretful but he sure went public about that. It's a little hypocritical to publicly chastise himself, "boy I wish I hadn't done this awful thing that I profited massively from" and then do nothing else.

Also an ocean and a puddle are both bodies of water but I wouldn't say the differentiator is scale.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> We should start having a plastic tax per gram of plastic, and based on the type of plastic (how easy it can be recycled). Maybe if these products became really expensive and people bought less of them, companies will find other methods. I'm very, very sick and tired of the over use of plastic in our society. Plastic does play a useful role in our lives, but I don't think every product we buy needs to be in that thick clear plastic that is very hard to open without cutting the hell out of your hand. Companies claim this is a theft deterrent, and it might be, but I think we can do better than the over use of all of this plastic. It's just everywhere now, including your body.

Or, instead of a tax, a deposit which you get some or all of it back when you recycle it like we do with aluminum cans. Plastic is only about 100 years old, and look what we've done. [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-great-pacific- garbage-patch...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-great-pacific-garbage- patch-cleaning-up-the-plastic-in-the-ocean-60-minutes/)

Edit: removed erroneous editorialized comment

<comment><USER77> > But he left the company in 1997, selling his ownership of the product for > $50,000.

You are spreading misinformation, you should edit or delete your comment.

<comment><USER78> Why do you think that that's not true? Page 4 says so, [http://archive.boston.com/business/articles/2011/08/07/the_i...](http://archive.boston.com/business/articles/2011/08/07/the_inside_story_of_keurigs_rise_to_a_billion_dollar_coffee_empire/?page=4)

<comment><USER77> I was quoting the article to show that the comment wasn't true. So I do think that the quote is true.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Rise of Political Correctness - <AUTHOR> http://www.claremont.org/crb/article/the-rise-of-political-correctness/ <comment><USER2> One has to distinguish political correctness from politeness. It's good to be polite.</comment>


7,686 Miles from Slovakia to Hawaii. How I got an internship and the opportun - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@MarekDlugos/7-686-miles-from-slovakia-to-hawaii-how-i-got-an-internship-and-the-opportunity-of-a-lifetime-4ee63d7c53ac

<comment><USER2> I wonder why I don't see many of such websites.</comment>


Zero-Deploy Python and JavaScript Workflows by Zapier - <AUTHOR> https://zapier.com/blog/zapier-code/ <comment><AUTHOR> Zapier CTO/co-founder here. This is something we've been cooking up for a while and today I spend a ton of time writing one-off code snippets in Zapier instead of deploying it to AWS/Heroku/etc. Some of the things I do:

* Code review for Github PRs to a daily leaderboard Slack bot

* Support ticket statistics ETL to Google Sheets

* Spyfall social game Slack bot/automated game moderator

* Replaced like a dozen random crontabs

Equally cool is every run is logged to our task history just like any other workflow.

Behind the scenes we're using AWS Lambda (which we love) and I'm happy to answer any questions/field complaints/borgify suggestions. :-)

<comment><USER2> This works how I _wish_ lambda did out of the box. You could hook this up to a webhook or email trigger and have yourself a layman's lambda in seconds.

Next we just need to get zapier code to offload long running lambda tasks to aws container service... :D</comment></comment>


Reddit was down for over two hours - <AUTHOR> https://reddit.statuspage.io/incidents/4q8mfp969hky?u=3mcg5t0ys8mn <comment><USER2> Y'know, the toll that all this activity takes on Reddit's servers gave me an idea for a sort of distributed Reddit. News links and stories assorted into topic-based groups, with the option for users to comment or respond to others' comments in a threaded discussion. It would be completely decentralized and belong to the users, not some central media company. We could call it Users' Network, or USENET for short.

We could implement it with blockchain.

<comment><USER3> Except UX is everything. 100s of billions in corporate value are based on nothing more than better UX.

If only everyone who talks about usenet, IRC, and the rest could actually be bothered to update the experience to what modern users demand.

<comment><USER4> Citing UX in a thread about Reddit, the company with an almost universally hated redesign that moved away from a mostly text-based condensed format is... interesting.

<comment><USER3> Every user engagement metric has increased since the redesign. Unfortunate for some of us, and it doesn't preclude the metrics measuring the wrong thing, but that's reality on the ground.

Same reason why Gmail is a bloated mess, because that's what the metrics show is wanted by users.

<comment><USER5> > Every user engagement metric has increased since the redesign.

Doesn't that just mean that users are spending more time on the site because it's so much more of a pain to get what they actually want out of it? Like, you could increase "user engagement" of a shopping mall by turning it into a labyrinth and rearranging the shops every day.

<comment><USER3> Reddit is a corporation with a large amount of VC investment. Profit is a primary goal, and engagement that shows more time and thus more revenue is exactly what they want.

<comment><USER6> It would have been more honest of them to come out and just admit "yea, this new design is terrible but it juices our metrics and makes us more money so deal with it if you want Reddit to survive."

Also, Protip: in case anyone still doesn't know, go to old.reddit.com for the previous, better interface. Who knows how long it will be kept alive though.

<comment><USER7> > Also, Protip: in case anyone still doesn't know, go to old.reddit.com for > the previous, better interface. Who knows how long it will be kept alive > though.

I'm using an extension to automatically redirect to the old one. When the old site is gone, I will probably leave Reddit, the redesign is too unusable for me.

<comment><USER8> Yep.

I like HN but I miss the diversity of conversations. /r/synthesizers /r/starwarssleaks etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I noticed this outage coincided with elevated timeouts in one of our EC2 us- east-1 availability zones.

We had recovery by removing that zone from our Auto Scaling Groups, but I haven't been able to find many others affected online (other than Reddit).

Did anyone else experience something like this?

edit: Our errors started at 13:35 Pacific Time.

</comment><comment><USER10> No problems from Australia in the last 2 hours (including just now.)

For example [https://www.reddit.com/r/menwritingwomen/new/](https://www.reddit.com/r/menwritingwomen/new/) shows a post from just now (verified the timestamp).

<comment><USER11> It's 'up' for me but, I'm regularly having problems opening comments and posts.

<comment><USER12> i miss the fail whale.

IMO, their javascript UX is awful... impossible to see all the comments in a thread! what sort of nonsense is that?

old.reddit.com ftw

<comment><USER10> [https://i.reddit.com/](https://i.reddit.com/) ft-mobile-w

<comment><USER13> Whoa, that is orders of magnitude faster than the default mobile site. Thank you for sharing, I didn't know about it

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> They were doing another test run of their new live-streaming service "RPAN" today, I wouldn't be surprised if that's connected to the downtime.

If you can get the page to load: [https://old.reddit.com/r/pan/comments/d5paue/a_midweek_treat...](https://old.reddit.com/r/pan/comments/d5paue/a_midweek_treat_rpan_will_be_onair_tomorrow/)

</comment><comment><USER15> I wonder what Reddit devops is like, I find it so strange that such a trafficked website can't handle rollouts without what appears (on the outside) to be a full reboot. And also strange that the rollout takes so long. Makes me think they are doing something naive like running on naked vms and having one guy running a script to take them down, update os, redeploy new binary, etc. all at once. Then probably encountering issues and live debugging them until it works again

<comment><USER16> some details at [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7TIzCAEo0M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7TIzCAEo0M)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Does anyone know why they tweeted this???

[https://web.archive.org/web/20190918200317/https://twitter.c...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190918200317/https://twitter.com/reddit/status/821409753)

<comment><USER18> I believe it was on r/worldnews . They just tweeted it

Its still showing up on reddit.

[https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/6l17g/though_bla...](https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/6l17g/though_blacks_are_only_24_percent_of_new_york/?st=k0q71tmt&sh=dbb3f82e)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> They've been having lots of crazy errors all week (like e.g. all comments posting 3-4 times, other downtimes, etc.). Something's broken on their end for sure.

</comment><comment><USER20> And US productivity increased 15% during the outage.

Maybe social media should be turned off on Tuesdays and Thursdays, as suggested in Ready Player One.

<comment><USER21> I'd like to see how that would go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Number of new posts every 15 minutes in the past 24 hours:

[https://imgur.com/a/HqUsYGn](https://imgur.com/a/HqUsYGn)

It's interesting to see how it fails. Clearly some users can still post. I'm sure there are things that still work (maybe the phone apps .. got me), but also very clearly, there's a sharp dip in new posts.

</comment><comment><USER23> I dont know how, but reddit's tech actually feels WORSE now. The old site was simple, but it was fast, clean, and it worked for the one thing it needed to do: upvote downvote content.

Now the newer version is always trying to kick me into either Chrome or the App. I don't want the f'ing App. And the mobile experience is supppper slow. Its literally just a text webpage it should load near instantly, if they didnt have to redesign the whole thing in some new web framework.

</comment><comment><USER24> At first I thought it was of me refreshing /r/soccer so many times this evening because of CL matches.

</comment><comment><USER25> Stuff like this is great, you can always point to it when management demands an explanation why the company email server was unavailable for 5 minutes.

</comment><comment><USER26> That explains the strange uptick in my productivity chart during that time.

</comment><comment><USER27> reddit is going back to the reliability that they had a few years ago

</comment><comment><USER28> Webroots website started acting up a couple his ago

</comment><comment><USER29> The productivity of IT teams skyrocketed world wide.

<comment><USER30> I remember reading that when a judge ordered Whatsapp to be taken down in Brazil for a few hours, the GDP through that small period went up by 2%.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> And nothing of value was lost.

</comment><comment><USER32> Reddit is the only major social media/aggregator I can think of that actually has to go offline for scheduled maintenance still. I can't imagine the kind of shitshow it must be internally.

Imagine if Facebook or Twitter had to go down regularly for "maintenance". Heads would roll.

<comment><USER33> "We are a startup that inherited a 15 year old website" was one of the things that resonated when I worked there.

Facebook is Alexa #5 in the US and has ~40,000 employees. Reddit is #6 and has ~500 employees. Twitter is #17 and has ~4,000 employees. (Numbers taken from quick Google searches)

They have some super talented engineers that work miracles with band aids and bubble gum.

Edit: Yes I understand not all employees work on everything. I was trying to give a sense of scale. Reddit is a tiny company with a massive website and no way to make money. If you have ideas - they are hiring.

<comment><USER34> Meh... they could have rewritten the site from the ground up, including any sort of data migration, multiple times over by now. I have never worked there, but outside looking in, it seems like there is a significant lack of technical vision from them.

Other big players like Facebook, Twitter, etc, are literally inventing pivotal parts of the modern web technical stack. What has come out of reddit?

<comment> joatmon-snoo > including any sort of data migration, multiple times over by now

Someone's never done a data migration while serving 1M+ qps!

<comment><USER35> I've come close to that many, many times with zero downtime. It does take planning, more than many folks would think. But it can be done as long as you think it through.

<comment><USER36> I've never done anything close to that scale of migration, but I also can't really imagine taking an approach that _feels_ like a huge migration.

I feel like I would try to strangle the old app (putting proxies in front and redirecting endpoints as they're rewritten) rather than swapping it out wholesale.

At that point I don't know if it really counts as a migration as much as just development.

Any thoughts on that approach? Is that what you have done, or was it a more holistic swap over?

<comment> joatmon-snoo That isn't a data migration, that's a release.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> a-wu Marked as resolved now, mods should probably update the title.</comment>


Coronavirus: Industrial animal farming has caused most new infectious diseases - <AUTHOR> https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/coronavirus-meat-animal-farming-pandemic-disease-wet-markets-a9505626.html <comment><USER2> >Peter Stevenson, chief policy adviser at Compassion in World Farming

This article is a press release for an animal rights NGO.

>animals are susceptible to disease because the stress [...] policymakers "must resist arguments that wet markets should be replaced

Chinese wet markets keep producing these coronaviruses because they combine live wild animals from all over the world in extremely unsanitary conditions. Viruses recombine and evolve in new hosts and produce things that never would have existed in nature. Factory farms do not have this problem. Wet markets are specialty shops for rich Asians wanting exotic food. They should be banned, and the Chinese Government appears to be cracking down on it.

>Food should be regarded as a public good, not as a tradeable commodity

This sounds like actual communism.</comment>


Getting real with immersive sword fights - <AUTHOR> https://www.bath.ac.uk/announcements/getting-real-with-immersive-sword-fights/ <comment><USER2> Someone give this link to Neal Stephenson pronto :) I've vaguely remember him trying to kick start a sword game several years ago.</comment>


Ask HN: Is Google abusing its monopoly by advertising in Chrome? - dan-silver

Google is advertising it's own services on Chrome's default new tab page.  Today, they're promoting Google Play Music for example.  Is google pushing the legal limits of their empire? <comment><AUTHOR> It is "unlikely" Chrome would be considered a monopoly by legal standards as in the US it requires more than 75% of the market. According to W3Counter they have only 46%, SitePoint lists them at 49%, W3Schools lists them at 65%, Wikimedia lists them at 47%, and so on.

I even suspect the W3Schools % is over-estimated, as the types of users visiting the sites are typically web-developers who prefer Chrome for the superior development tooling. When you start to look at business users and non-technical users IE/Safari (on respective platforms) do much better.

If Chrome was a monopoly then doing what you're talking about MIGHT be an anti-trust violation, but that is a complex legal question (for example, everyone remembers IE as an anti-trust violation for Microsoft in the 1990s, but what about all of the other things they pushed which weren't e.g. MSN, Hotmail, Office, etc). Google Music might NOT be because the court has to determine if Google is leveraging their position to give their other products an "unfair" advantage. If Chrome started blocking other music services (or redirecting from them to Google Music) then that would 100% be an anti-trust violation if Google were a monopoly, but an advert? That's for a court to decide, shades of grey...

</comment><comment><USER2> Chrome does not have a monopoly. If they were pushing Chrome within the search, depending on the local market they would abuse their search quasi- monopoly but the other way around seems to be perfectly legal.</comment>


Salespeople and Programmers - <AUTHOR> http://baselinescenario.com/2009/12/24/salespeople-and-programmers/

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure a team of say 10 devs would come up with a unanimous stack rank of their co-worker's productivity.

From my own experience, everyone would probably agree on #1, #2, and #10, but most people put themselves at #3 and the person they work with most closely at either #4 or #9.

</comment><comment><USER3> It always bothers me when someone attributes things to "luck". I'm not bothered on the basis of whether or not its true, we'll never know anyway, you can't test luck can you? I'm bothered because it's such a cop out. "Great sales people are just the luckiest salespeople." How much credit should we really give that?

Also, attributing things to luck is an excuse to not be proactive. Whether or not things are 100% about luck, should still entail that we be proactive about increasing our opportunities for such magical devices as luck to occur.

Other than that, I like the author's social reasoning behind his post, it is good to think about when managing your own team.

</comment><comment><USER4> Performance-based pay for creative work reduces productivity.</comment>


Feedback is Not a Gift - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/matter-app/feedback-is-not-a-gift-5028e718583b <comment><USER2> I had a boss one that over used that cliche more than one. I now cringe when I hear it but in all fairness, people say this cliche to break the ice around the uncomfortableness of hearing feedback. And it works.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you get developers to review pull requests more frequently? - <AUTHOR> One problem that I have encountered frequently as a developer is people being reluctant to review pull requests with any regularity, often leaving pull requests to hang until their work is done, then dumping a lot of changes requested.<p>Has anyone else encountered this problem, and how did they solve it? Currently I devote a lot of time reviewing pull requests to keep development moving faster through shorter feedback cycles, but as a lead developer, I wonder if this is an effective use of my time. I feel like I am depriving opportunities for my team to learn & grow through greater code exposure, but at the same time, I also understand that most developers are not great at context switching & reviewing code changes ends up being a context switch away from regular product development. <comment><USER2> The CTO at my company recently decreed PR reviews to be the number one priority during the day. Seems to have helped make clear the importance of reviewing things. I think when it's explicitly and clearly mandated from a superior, it makes it easier to justify the cost of the context switch and I also think it's a good idea at an organizational level to prioritize this.</comment>