As Economy Grows, North Korea's Grip on Society Weakens - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/30/world/asia/north-korea-economy-marketplace.html <comment><USER2> We've heard this story before. In the West, the line (for years!) was that China's economic growth and foreign trade would _inevitably_ lead to democratization and widespread human rights improvements. That didn't happen -- the Communist party adapted quickly. They learned how to use economic growth as the base of their continued legitimacy, and as a fig leaf for continued political oppression (Internet censorship, jailing human rights activists, intimidating journalists, etc). With China as their mentor, I don't have high hopes for a different scenario unfolding in North Korea.

<comment><USER3> But this isn't about freedom or democracy. This is about foreign investment. The wealthy New Yorkers who subscribe to the times care about foreign investment, not freedom or democracy.

<comment><USER4> While I have never been to the US and the UK, the NYT and the Guardian are two places I occasionally stumble to, to find out what's going on in the world. Well, you don't have to be a New Yorker to read the NYT, and neither is its focus.

<comment><USER5> No, you just have to be left leaning for those news outlets to grab your attention. I also read them occasionally but pretty much avoid the NYT now or just read through the lines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is my favorite argument against economic sanctions. Ruining the economy of a country only pushes society into dependence of the political clique that controls the state. On the other hand, economic growth and an abundance of goods breeds individualism and that is one of the incubators of democracy.

<comment><USER7> I see your point, but in the case of North Korea exactly the opposite is happening. For decades the political elite had an iron grip on the country. But then sanctions help push the country into more of a free enterprise system, and that is weakening the government's power.

<comment><USER8> It seems speculative. How do you know that, should there have been no sanctions, these free enterprise systems would not have been introduced anyway? Or even know that would not have been developed more than they are now?

With so many huge changes both inside and outside DPRK during the past decades, to credit the gradual introduction free market systems to sanctions seems tendentious.

<comment><USER5> Sanctions are always better than war. People adapt. Or negotiate their way out. Just look at Iran.

Free market in NK? Maybe free as in the state is too busy caring right now and market as in flea market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There are lots of mistaken beliefs around democracy.

US foreign policy seems to at least pay lip service to the idea that democracy is inherently good. But efforts to impose democracy on nations that have only ever been autocratic seems to have a poor history.

Likewise others have mentioned that China is "proof" that economic growth doesn't lead to democracy.

China I think is a really interesting case. When I compare China and India, which are both developing nations of massive size (over a billion people each), it seems to be as an outsider looking in that the Chinese are way better off than the Indians despite China being ostensibly communist and India ostensibly democratic.

This is likely to be a controversial statement.

This doesn't excuse the bad on either side. China has the annexation of China, lack of a free press, labour camps, the almost industrial scale genocide of baby girls and poor labour conditions to name a few. India has a huge problem with poverty, a population growth rate that's really concerning, a real problem with rape (at least in parts) and a ridiculous territorial ego fest with Pakistan over Kashmir.

But what the Chinese have, which I think ultimately benefits citizens, is political stability. While China is still called a Communist country it's unlike any other Communist country I've ever seen in that there are markets, a form of capitalism and the accumulation of private wealth.

What I also see is the topping of totalitarian regimes in places like Iraq and Libya. This is part of the reason fro the current refugee crisis in Europe. And as awful as I'm sure the al-Asaad regime is in Syria, has anyone really benefitted from the prolonged civil war in Syria?

So anyway, North Korea. It's certainly another interesting case and it has managed to survive when other such regimes have fallen by the wayside. This is in large part to China. Powerful countries like buffers between other powerful countries. Russia certainly wanted and wants one with the EU and NATO.

North Korea also survives by a strict and brutal control on information so I'm happy to see efforts people make to smuggle even things like TV shows into North Korea. These I do think ultimately help to weaken the regime but the process is not quick.

I don't think that North Korea--or anywhere else--is ultimately bound for democracy however.

</comment><comment><USER10> What is interesting is that by population, 90% of the functioning democracies in the world were at one time ruled by the United Kingdom or one of its former colonies. The list includes India, Canada, USA, Australia, Ireland, Pakistan, Philippines, South Africa, Japan, and Germany.

The fact that so many democracies derive from the UK means that democracy is not a default state and to be successful needs centuries of tradition and institutions to make it work well.

<comment><USER11> In what way does the German democracy derive from the UK? You are oversimplifying. I get what you are trying to say, but it's not just tradition and institutions. There is a lot more to it.

<comment><USER12> Western Germany was ruled for a short period by both the UK and the United States after World War II, where they spent a great deal of effort to setup a functional and self sufficient government. Prior to that they did have a short lived democratic government but Hitler saw to its demise rather quickly.

<comment><USER6> Even before the Weimar Republic Germany already had many democratic elements. There were political parties, a constitution, checks and balances for governing officers and a somewhat free press. The Kaiser could not rule despotically and had to take public opinion into account.

<comment><USER5> Democratic elements does not equate to true democracy. There weren't enough safeguards. It took a motivated Austrian less than ten years to undo them and turn Germany into a totalitarian state.

<comment><USER13> Ten years is actually a pretty long time for it to take a popular leader to destroy a functioning democracy.

There are numerous examples of democracies collapsing from what seemed a stable state much quicker than that.

The collapse of the French Fourth Republic in 1958 is a good example[1]. In that case it led to another democracy, but that is only because the army wanted de Gaulle, and de Gaulle was happy to be president in a parliamentary system.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Fourth_Republic#Algeria...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Fourth_Republic#Algeria_and_collapse)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> How is this different than China, where the party has retained an iron grip despite a multi-decade boom?

<comment><USER15> Perhaps they are able to retain an iron grip because of the boom, it will be interesting to see what happens when the inevitable bust arrives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Are we so arrogant that we should feel legitimate to tell people what they should aspire to and what model they should adopt ? People tend to confuse economic growth, prosperity, well being and democracy as if none of that existed before, as if before our holy democracy people didn't prosper. Economic growth and technological progress are a function of political stability, which can come in many forms including (but not exclusive to) democracy. Western Countries have the largest number of depressed people and the highest suicide rates in the world. I'm sure it sucks to be living in NK right now, but if the regime opens up and retains their grip on the nation, well ... who cares if people are thriving. </rant>

</comment><comment><USER17> Ever since I've read the Foundation science fiction novels I wonder if there are really political powers so cunning, that they increase the economy of an enemy just to keep the government there struggling with their citizen. E.g. does the UK support Hongkong to make trouble for the Mainland? Does Russia sell stuff unhealthily cheap to the EU to keep everybody there fed and arrogant? Why does the US not throw loads of satelite internet phones over North Korea so that its citizen get access to western propaganda?

</comment><comment><USER18> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Bank_of_the_Democratic...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Bank_of_the_Democratic_People%27s_Republic_of_Korea)

As I understand it, the only countries left on the planet in control of their own money supply are North Korea, Cuba & Iran.

</comment><comment><USER19> Before Kim Jong Un took power, people were protesting the government. These days they fear him, while proclaiming "'What has he done for us?". According to Tao Te Ching, verse 17, Kim Jong Un is more capable than his father:

With the greatest leader above them,

people barely know one exists.

Next comes one whom they love and praise.

Next comes one whom they fear. <\-- Kim Jong Un

Next comes one whom they despise and defy. <\-- His father

When a leader trusts no one,

no one trusts him.

The great leader speaks little.

He never speaks carelessly.

He works without self-interest

and leaves no trace.

When all is finished, the people say

"We did it ourselves." <\-- North Korean people

<comment><USER20> Works without self interest?

<comment><USER19> He's not at that level yet!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> did I hear regime change?

</comment><comment><USER22> NK should merge with China;</comment>


Today's Smooth-Running Horses May Owe Their Genetics to the Vikings - <AUTHOR> http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/todays-smooth-running-horses-may-owe-their-genetics-vikings-180960055/?no-ist <comment><USER2> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQOQVrIchN4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQOQVrIchN4)

Useful for a non-rider like me to understand what the heck ambling is.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does any of this apply to the way humans run ? The 400m winners seem to keep their core at the same height between steps whereas I needlessly jump up and down at each step, probably wasting a lot of energy while doing this. Maybe I can blame it on the genes.

<comment><USER4> As a runner this is something you can approve over time. My watch even plots it as I run under the name vertical oscillation.

Aka we don't need a gene to run smooth.

<comment><USER5> or rather we already have the gene(s) that enable smooth running.

<comment><USER4> I think smooth running is easier on 2 legs vs 4. 2 legged animals don't have a gait per say. Gait is the way 4 legged animals coordinate their steps.... we just evenly alternate.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Properly configure Google Apps' Gmail and get rid of "via" - <AUTHOR> http://www.stavros.io/posts/how-properly-configure-google-apps-email/

<comment><USER2> This is tangental, but while we're talking about SPF...

I've noticed lately that it's getting trickier for businesses to stay within the 10 DNS lookups per SPF record limit. For example, Google's official SPF record is _spf.google.com which in turn includes _netblocks.google.com, _netblocks2.google.com and _netblocks3.google.com. That's 4 DNS lookups. Use Salesforce? They include Google's SPF record in theirs. Use Zendesk? Their previously published SPF records are support.zendesk.com and smtp.zendesk.com. Both those record include mail.zendesk.com which includes _spf.zdsys.com which includes _netblocks.zdsys.com. The number of includes/DNS lookups is a growing problem as these businesses continue adding more IPs.

If you're allowing several external services to send email on your behalf, you might want to double check your SPF record to see how many DNS requests you're making.

</comment><comment><USER3> Properly configure your email and get rid of 'GMail' :-)

</comment><comment><USER4> I got rid of the 'via' just using a free Gmail account.

(Google Apps used to have a nice wizard that walked you thru it, but they have recently stopped giving away Apps for free.)

My website was registered thru Godaddy for $3.17 (I had a coupon) and is hosted on an Amazon EC2 micro instance (free for a year), so the cost is hard to beat.

I could share the details if anyone was interested.

The settings on all three (Godaddy, Gmail, Amazon) have to be tweaked.

</comment><comment><USER5> Anyone have an idea for how to do this with regular gmail? I have a domain that I manage via outlook.com (it's free and Google Apps isn't anymore), and I managed to fabricate my own SPF record that authorizes both gmail and outlook senders, but I'm a bit stumped for the DKIM. Do I need to "generate" it from gmail or outlook, or both? And if so, where? Can't find the option anywhere. Maybe it's something exclusive for Google Apps?

<comment><AUTHOR> The sending server (Gmail) needs to DKIM-sign your email, and plain Gmail doesn't have the capability to do that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you use Mandrill to send your emails you'll want to do this too.

[http://help.mandrill.com/entries/21751322-What-are-SPF- and-D...](http://help.mandrill.com/entries/21751322-What-are-SPF-and-DKIM-and- do-I-need-to-set-them-up-)

<comment><AUTHOR> You pretty much have to set the SPF field regardless of where you host your email. I don't know if Mandrill signs DKIM and give you a key to add.

<comment><USER7> > I don't know if Mandrill signs DKIM and give you a key to add.

They do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> one of the most annoying things in history kinda sorta relieved

<comment><AUTHOR> Ugh, I know, it bugged me for ages as well. Setting those two headers resolved it, and now I no longer need to maintain my own server.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> 503 Over Quota. Does anyone have a link to a cache of this?

<comment><USER10> [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A//www.stavros.io/posts/how- properly-configure-google-apps-email/&safe=active&as_qdr=all)

<comment><AUTHOR> Works again, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is there any evidence the "via" affects SPAM flagging?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not the "via" that affects it, it's not having DKIM and SPF. Those definitely do affect it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I started using gmail to send through my personal domain and had been kind of perplexed by this myself. Nice to know it's possible to fix it (even if it's really convoluted just how many steps you have to take to configure everything correctly). You have to send through SMTP instead of through Gmail's servers (Though oddly enough, the SMTP server _belongs to Google_...), set up SPF and DKIM manually, etc etc.

EDIT: Just found this, great way to create SPF DNS strings:

[http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/safety/content/technologies/...](http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/safety/content/technologies/senderid/wizard/)

It actually explains all the syntax and lets you edit it easily. Much less confusing than trying to figure out what the hell the elements of the SPF string do by yourself and then waiting hours to see how verifiers parse it.

<comment><AUTHOR> You _don 't_ have to send through alternate SMTP servers (even if they're Google's). Let me know if that's unclear in the post and I'll edit it.

<comment><USER12> No, you actually do according to some other sources I looked up. If you don't set up your gmail to use alternate SMTP, the headers end up slightly different and your actual gmail account shows up in the headers.

By switching it to send via SMTP and then plugging in the SMTP details for my apps account, the gmail account was replaced in the headers by the apps account.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know, I tested both ways myself and the headers were the same both times. To clarify, my account is an _apps_ account, there's no plain-gmail account in my setup. I only have one account, the other domain is just an alias to it (so my SMTP settings of the account just pointed to itself).

<comment><USER12> OK, that is the confusing thing. I thought you were making your personal gmail account send through your apps account (since it owns the domain). I guess it was unclear because when you said 'Gmail' I thought you meant gmail.com gmail, not apps mail.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm yeah, it is confusing. I will clarify, thanks.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How similar is 'too similar' in corporate entity naming law? - <AUTHOR> Hypothetical scenario: My startup called SnapSms got traction and I am about to c-corp it. Is Snapchat going to have a problem with this name?<p>Other examples: Kidsbook, AirLyft, KidsTube, VideoHunt, MegaSoft, FunStation, etc. <comment><USER2> It helps to be right to win a lawsuit but before that you need enough money to defend yourself. I once had pfizer go after one of my domains and all it took was an inch thick cease and desist notice to convince me to hand it over. Surely their lawyers were better than anything I could afford and I think Snapchat fits into that category as well.</comment>


Groupon's IPO Valuation Could End Up Being Less Than $6 Billion - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/03/groupon-ipo-less-than-6-billion/ <comment><USER2> Does Groupon have any sort of lock in agreement with its merchants? I've always wondered how these businesses are defensible; apart from negotiated deals, the services are more or less interchangeable.

Groupon's success in San Francisco, for example, doesn't necessarily make it more valuable in New York. Aside from few economies of scale in sales, development and support.

</comment><comment><USER3> I originally read this as "Less than $6 million" and thought to myself "yeah, that sounds about right"</comment>


ASP.NET Core vs. Golang data ingestion benchmark - <AUTHOR> https://stefanprodan.com/2016/aspnetcore-vs-golang-data-ingestion-benchmark/ <comment><USER2> Because benchmarking against lines of code, .NET is at 20 (not counting blank lines) and Go is at 35, I'm wondering how programmer happiness plays out for each platform.</comment>


Congrats to YC's Sam Altman + the YC Founders Named in Forbes' 30 Under 30 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ycombinator.com/congrats-to-ycs-sam-altman-plus-the-yc-founders-named-in-forbes-30-under-30

<comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8839755](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8839755).</comment>


Dr Jekyll's Themes – A New Static Site Generator (Free) Theme Directory - <AUTHOR> http://drjekyllthemes.github.io/

<comment><AUTHOR> FYI: May I highlight my favorite theme - the World Classics Book Theme @ [https://github.com/drjekyllthemes/jekyll-book- theme](https://github.com/drjekyllthemes/jekyll-book-theme) \- see a live example (demo) e.g The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson @ [http://drjekyllthemes.github.io/jekyll-book- theme](http://drjekyllthemes.github.io/jekyll-book-theme) Cheers.</comment>


Google Maps never supported IE on Windows Phone 8, and likely never will - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/01/05/the-windows-phone-8-google-maps-kerfuffle-is-contrived-google-maps-never-supported-ie-on-wp8/

<comment><AUTHOR> UPDATE: A Microsoft spokesperson has responded to Google saying that:

"Internet Explorer in Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 use the same rendering engine."

It appears that <http://maps.google.com> worked fine on Windows Phone until Google started blocking it. In fact it is still working on the Lumia 920 if I go to <http://maps.google.co.uk> as it looks like they forgot to redirect that one. Are there differences between how it works on Windows Phone and on webkit based mobile browsers? To say that "Since Internet Explorer is not a WebKit browser, Windows Phone devices are not able to access Google Maps for the mobile web" is simply not true. Internet Explorer on the desktop is not a WebKit browser and it works fine with Google maps.

It seems as though the reason that Windows Phone can't access Google Maps is that Google decided (for reasons they would need to explain) to start blocking Windows Phone users.

</comment><comment><USER2> Google is taking the bizarre position that only iOS and Android exist on mobile (and only the official browsers of those platforms).

I don't ever remember Google Maps being blocked in Konqueror or IceCat, so I'm not sure why they are using this tactic on mobile. More importantly, a lot of good-citizen webdevs work at Google like Paul Irish, must be rather awkward for those types.

<comment><USER3> I can't help but wonder if Google are trying to ensure they stay as the major non-Apple player. For all the popularity of Android, it is a far less interesting offering for a long-term iPhone user than Windows Phone.

<comment> jmcdonald-ut I wonder the same thing. It seems like Google is trying to make Windows attempt to enter the market as painful, and played out, as possible. (I'm talking about Windows Phone 8, obviously they've been players for a while).

<comment><USER4> And this just days after FTC cleared them if any misbehavior. Bravo!

<comment><USER5> The FTC cleared them of antitrust. This is just normal business competition.

<comment><USER6> But the EU hasn't. :-)

<comment><USER7> Well if EU can be influenced by lobbying as FTC can be then EU will clear them as well

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> And yet... you can use it to visit maps.google.co.uk [0].

Stop making excuses for Google. This is ridiculous ffs.

[0] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z8vfzurnKw>

<comment><USER9> Note that the video shows the user able to access the desktop version, but the article is about accessing the mobile version. Here's what the mobile UI looks like: <http://i.imgur.com/oCveo.png>

<comment><USER10> well neither works on windows phone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Bizarre.

I wonder if, in 10 years, WebKit will be viewed as the next IE6 when the latest/greatest HTML rendering engine comes along?

What happened to standards compliance?

<comment><USER10> The reason its not supported is not because of technological limitations. It's just anti competitive practices from Google.

<comment><USER5> There is nothing 'Anti-Competitive' about not providing your free service to customers of your competitor. If people want Google services they can choose Android.

It's worth remembering that Android was developed in the first place to be an Open alternative to prevent Windows phone from taking off. Why would they go to all the trouble of developing Android only to prop up Microsoft.

<comment><USER12> Of course it's anti-competitive! They took something that was working on a competitor's phone platform and intentionally caused it to stop working. It's probably not _illegal_ , but if it's designed to harm a competitor it is by definition anti-competitive.

<comment><USER5> Not adding value to your competitor's products for free is simply _competitive_ and part of normal business. "Anti-competitive" is a different thing and means using market power to suppress competition, whereas this move is about intensifying it.

<comment><USER12> First of all, forget "not adding value to your competitor's product" - this is about removing value that was already there.

Secondly, Google has market power in both the mobile device OS market and the online map market compared to MS, and is trying to leverage its position in the latter to hurt MS in the former. This seems like exactly your stated definition of anti-competitive behavior. How is this "intensifying" competition?

<comment><USER5> There are multiple players in the map market, Microsoft themselves being one of them. Google are competing against Microsoft by asking customers to choose between their integrated mobile offerings rather than supporting Microsoft by giving them a second maps option for free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> On the one hand, this isn't really any different than Microsoft not supporting Office on Chromium.

On the other hand, isn't the whole point of web standards to avoid situations like this?

I suspect we'll just get confirmation of something we really already know: standards are really important only when you're not the market leader.

<comment><USER10> > On the one hand, this isn't really any different than Microsoft not > supporting Office on Chromium.

How's that the same? Web is a agreed upon standard. An OS is not.

<comment><USER13> It's the same in the sense that a company with a product isn't necessarily obligated to support all potential platforms for that product. But maybe a better comparison would be to point out that web access for Exchange was not officially supported on Chrome for many years.

EDIT: To put a slightly different spin on it, it's easy to try to turn this into a moral issue rather than a business decision -- particularly with Google's foolishly-publicized "don't be evil" motto. But supporting multiple platforms requires additional resources, and companies have to make the business decision whether or not to provide them.

<comment><USER8> No, it's not the same. It's one thing to say a product isn't obligated to support all potential platforms, it's another to actively disallow other platforms.

If you watch this video (or time travel back to about 4 hours ago and use a useragent string modifier) [0], you'll note that using a Lumia 920's user agent string [1] will redirect you to a desktop version of the site.

But now if you try it, the URL will redirect to the main search page.

[0] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Z8vfzurnKw>

[1] Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 10.0; Windows Phone 8.0; Trident/6.0; IEMobile/10.0; ARM; Touch; NOKIA; Lumia 920)

<comment><USER5> Why should Google provide their service for free to their competitor's customers?

<comment><USER14> If that is the logic involved then why is iOS not affected?

<comment><USER5> Because iOS is still influential and they are hedging their bets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _The mobile web version of Google Maps is optimized for WebKit browsers such as Chrome and Safari._

Does it work with mobile gecko?

<comment><USER9> Sort of; using Firefox 17, the mobile UI loads, but is very jerky and zoom doesn't seem to work.

Regardless, I think Google Maps should try to draw something (no matter what browser the user has), with a big "unsupported browser" box. Redirecting to the home page is a user-hostile behavior.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Don't be evil, Google. Please remember it.

<comment><USER5> Google have provided a free, open source alternative to Windows Phone. There is nothing 'evil' about them not supporting other platforms.

<comment><USER17> Of course it's evil. Redirecting a user is hostile in nature and was surely done to piss off microsoft. What wouldn't be evil is putting a banner stating that the browser is not supported.

I get that google needs to make money, I'm fine with it, but don't for one minute think they are the good guys anymore. They are as evil as any other public company. Sad but true.

<comment><USER5> They're the only ones providing an Open Source mobile OS. Without them, we'd have only proprietary solutions controlled by single corporations.

Having put in all this effort to provide an open solution, they need to be somewhat competitive to make it succeed, otherwise it would likely languish the way the Linux desktop has.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> As a Windows Phone user in China, the feeling is very familiar. Bravo, Google, you've certainly learned a few tricks from the bloody Communists.

</comment><comment><USER19> I imagine there's a good market for a meta-mapping app that lets the user easily switch their views from various mapping services and providers. It would essentially be a webview that kept each map open on a different tab but with a smarter custom ui and animations for switching.

</comment><comment><USER20> IE across ALL mobile devices currently represents less than 2% market share according to NetMarketShare. In other words, less than the Blackberry browser. Would you optimize YOUR product for that?

<comment><USER10> Who said anything about optimizing here? Supporting and optimizing are two separate things.

<comment><USER20> OK. Would you do the work to make your product SUPPORT 2% of the market?

<comment><USER6> It works fine today. No work is needed by Google. They did more work to redirect the traffic.

<comment><USER21> Maybe Google is tired of the ongoing maintenance hassle and doesn't want to pay to write all the special-case code that will be necessary to support IE in future versions of their maps product.

From what I'm seeing, and to take just one example, IE 10 still doesn't support touch pan and zoom on mobile, which strikes me as a useful thing for a map application.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> i think the funniest thing is, it actually took this long for somebody to notice

<comment><USER10> nothing funny. Windows phone already has nice bing maps and nokia maps integration so nobody needed Google maps. But that's not the point...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Many Google engineers here. Anybody care to explain what are the technical reasons why this would be not supported?

<comment><USER23> Not a Google engineer, but I can offer a partial explanation.

As you probably know, up until the release of IE9, supporting apps across the major browsers (Safari/Chrome, Firefox, IE) was a massive PITA. Not just obscure features, either; even IE8 had some crippling misunderstandings of the CSS 2.0 standard (floats). Today desktop cross-browser problems are consistent subpixel antialiasing and less-critical CSS features like border-radius support, so it's pretty easy for an app to [mostly] work in every modern browser without testing. Plus computers are fast enough that you don't [hardly] notice IE10's stupidly slow JS engine.

On mobile, that's not the case. Web-based Google Maps taxes my iPhone 4S Safari to the limit. It's so jerky it's hardly usable. V8 (Chrome's JS engine) is faster, so Android users might have more luck, but you're pushing your phone's hardware regardless. I haven't had the misfortune of owning a Windows Phone, but knowing Microsoft's previous disregard for standards, there may be some significantly broken features of IE10 mobile (though it supposedly supports HTML5 to the same extent as its big brother). At the very least, IE10 sees fairly significant lag with a few tabs on a recent desktop computer; I imagine JS performance on a phone is horribly unusable for an app like Google Maps. Optimizing JS for IE10 mobile could be a non-trivial task with diminishing returns—it might not even be possible to get it to run acceptably.

So there's a chance that capturing the 2% of the mobile market on Windows Phone isn't cost-effective for Google. It's probably political though—demos of IE Mobile have looked decent. [1]

Hopefully a real Google engineer can provide a more definitive answer though.

[1] [http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2011/02/18/watch-internet- ex...](http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2011/02/18/watch-internet-explorer- mobile-9-demo-new-html5-powers/)

<comment><USER10> AFAIK, IE10 on mobile has the same JS engine as the desktop one. What data you have to say that it is slow? This benchmark says its the fastest:

<http://crockford.com/javascript/performance.html>

Besides how do you explain the uk site that was working already that then got blocked?

<comment><USER23> All anecdotal. Maybe it's Trident (the rendering engine) then, but it really hangs for me after a few tabs.

(Exactly. It's probably political as I mentioned before.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


[PHP] Dlinkd D-Link backdoor checker - <AUTHOR> http://staypimp.in/butts/dlinkd This script will scan any backdoor'd dlink deviced and tell you if they're vulnerable. Wrote it for testing and educational purposes only :) <comment><USER2> So fresh tho</comment>


The $357 Uber Ride - <AUTHOR> http://news.rapgenius.com/E-c-the-s357-uber-ride-annotated <comment><USER2> While I do suspect that he might not have paid close attention to warnings of surge pricing (I'm an avid Uber user, and I've _always_ known if price is surging), I do think he is right to be irritated at the company's lack of response. Even if what he's claiming is totally false, there's a good chance he fully believes in his side of the story, whether out of malice or honest misunderstanding, and Uber should treat this as an opportunity to reacquaint a user with their service, rebuild a relationship, and minimize any possibly damaging PR.

The lack of customer support is a problem with many of the software-eating- the-world startups, one that I think will hinder wider adoption. When you're automatically charging customers variable prices for services of variable quality that often deal with your safety or personal property, you should probably provide customers with effective recourse.

<comment><USER3> The post is from December, 2013. Uber added the surge confirmation thingie in February, 2014.

<comment><USER4> Perhaps the type-it-in confirmation bit, but they've been very plainly notifying users of surge pricing since at least 2012:

[http://blog.uber.com/2012/03/14/clear-and-straight- forward-s...](http://blog.uber.com/2012/03/14/clear-and-straight-forward- surge-pricing/)

<comment><USER5> Uber should really update the price, not get people to sign off on a "multiple".

They are doing every thing they can to avoid disclosing the price, because of "sticker shock".

That's simply shady marketing, howver effective.

On that page it shows a fare and a multiple...it would be trivial for them to show the "adjusted price".

[http://blog.uber.com/2012/03/14/clear-and-straight- forward-s...](http://blog.uber.com/2012/03/14/clear-and-straight-forward- surge-pricing/newsurge-3/)

Instead, the "old price" is in a tiny font and the "new multiple" is in tripe size font.

The whold concept that by agreeing to a "multiple" is the same thing as "agreeing to a new price" belies the fact that they are not disclosing the new price.

They are leaving only the information that allows it to be inferred.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is not the first time I've seen people bring up Uber's plain shit customer support. In fact, I've had my own problems with them as well to justify that bold of a statement.

Back in the fall of 2013 a cab driver charged me $30 in Chicago instead of what the meter said (which was around $8). After this happened, I had contacted Uber support and they merely gave me some automated style response saying there was nothing they could do because the city sets the cab pricing. First off, they treated me like I was an idiot with a response like that. Of course I knew the city set the rates, that wasn't the issue I was contacting them about. Secondly, they completely ignored my problem all together. I wasn't complaining because the price per mile was higher than UberX or something like that. If I had, what they sent would have been a perfect response. But no, I was complaining because the cab driver down right stole money from me, and there was nothing I could do about it. They could clearly see in the receipt that the time traveled, distance, etc. could have no way in hell been worth $30 that I was charged. In fact, it was a cab ride to work so I had plenty of other receipts that showed it was typically around $8-10. So, like OP, my support ticket was marked "solve" and I was duped $20, and never contacted again (even after I replied trying to further explain my problem). It was after this that Uber always left a bad taste in my mouth. It was a straight slap in the face to me (the customer) by Uber.

<comment><USER7> Wait, what? How does the driver have any control over what you are charged besides pressing the trip start/stop button on the phone? The Uber provided iPhone handles all the charges and then they pay the driver.

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure, to be honest? This was in fall of 2013, so I wonder if back then the taxi drivers manually inputted the price?

...But my confusion is case in point that Uber's customer support did not address anything like they should have. If you are right, then they could have explained that to me. And that would also just mean it was clearly a bug in their system that charged me more. And had that been the answer, I should have gotten a refund. But I didn't, so maybe instead of the cab driver cheating me, they were just straight cheating me. Who knows. All I do know is that I was charged $30 for a ride that should have been $8-10, and I never got a real response from their customer support to refund me, help me out, explain what maybe happened, investigate, etc. That's the main problem I wanted to explain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We got charged $130 for a ride that was only 6 blocks away but ended up taking 15 minutes during surge pricing in Los Angeles. Ever since that experience, I've switched to Lyft and been pretty happy with them so far.

<comment><USER9> Why would anyone call an Uber for 6 blocks? Honest question. That's about 1/3 to 1/2 a mile!! Even if you'd paid half or a quarter of that, wouldn't you say that's a bit much for six blocks?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> There have been reports that Uber has an internal website only for drivers that advertises "More surge pricing than Lyft, etc if you switch to us!" or something along those lines.

They are clearly advertising that they will make sure that there are more surge pricing opportunities and this seems to be the result of that kind of attitude.

EDIT: Seems like I'm being downvoted by a bunch of Uber employees, but unfortunately the downvotes won't really accomplish much. I'm not stating any wild opinions. Just facts and reasonable assumptions.

<comment><USER11> >There have been reports that Uber has an internal website only for drivers that advertises "More surge pricing than Lyft, etc if you switch to us!" or something along those lines.

It's interesting how companies try to message differently to different groups, and how a message intended for investors really sounds bad to customers.

[http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/12/05](http://www.penny- arcade.com/comic/2007/12/05)

<comment><USER12> This sounds close to what you're describing (warning, Valleywag):

[http://valleywag.gawker.com/uber-forced-driver-shortage- to-b...](http://valleywag.gawker.com/uber-forced-driver-shortage-to-boost- surge-pricing-1531501176)

But Uber recruited new drivers for UberX, and then intentionally prevented them from driving on Valentine's day so that surge pricing would come into effect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've referred thousands of users to Uber and managed to earn over $100,000 in credits. I was only able to use $40,000 worth until they suspended my account for reasons unknown. I've been trying to contact their support for weeks now and like OP, they always ignore my messages and mark my case as "solved". Uber is fraud and more people need to know this.

<comment><USER14> How do you even use 40000. For a non uber user and someone who has only taken a cab a few times, that sounds like an incredible amount of money

<comment><USER13> Been using them for the last 2 years, not too hard when you take an Uber literally everywhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> To me, the only issue in this scenario is that Uber didn't show the author surge pricing before confirming the ride. For what it's worth, the app has always warned/informed me of the price hike before I confirm the pickup (though I've only started using the app in the past two months, and this was written in December of 2013.)

<comment><USER16> Whenever surge pricing above a certain amount (2.0X, I think) is in effect, it makes you manually type in the multiple - both digits, e.g. "3, 0, confirm" before it will let you even order a ride.

This guy's full of shit if he's claiming he didn't know it was surging until after the receipt came. It's quite literally impossible to order an uber at 2.0x or above and not be painfully aware of the surge.

<comment><USER17> They also send you a push notification that mentions surge pricing when the car is arriving.

<comment><USER18> Is it possible that all these fail safes were bugged in the author's circumstance? No software is 100% bug free.

<comment><USER19> That's possible. But it's also possible that the author is really upset at having paid such a large amount of money, and is exaggerating (lying) by saying there was no way to know the price beforehand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If you paid with your credit card, you can always file a chargeback if the pricing was unclear and customer support was unresponsive. Better yet if you paid with your AmEx.

<comment><USER21> ...which will result in Uber permanently banning you from future rides.

<comment><USER22> If you had an experience bad enough to warrant a chargeback, why would you _want_ to ride with them again?

<comment><USER23> What is the chargeback excuse? It was more expensive than I thought it was going to be?

<comment><USER24> Actually, that is one of explicitly listed allowed reasons for chargeback.

The price must be explicitly made clear to the customer before billing, and it's responsibility of the merchant to make sure that it happens.

<comment><USER23> Then every variable type charge (like a taxi ride) can be charged back? The taxi and Uber terms are given to you up front so I don't think this sounds very reasonable.

<comment><USER24> There is a difference between a variable type charge, and unexpectedly large charges; the boundary being a bit subjective but possible to resolve in most disputes. Variable charge means that your fare costs 50$ or 60$ depending on traffic/route; but if you reasonably expect the fare to be $50 and they charge you $350, without making it explicitly clear that the fares are such, then it may be a reason for dispute.

For example, a somewhat common scenario for such chargebacks is seedy clubs charging $1000 per drink to tourists. The fact that they had that tourist drink in their menu doesn't change that it's both unreasonable and unexpected, and according to mastercard/visa agreements chargebacks may be possible.

In general, the credit card companies are motivated to protect cardholders, so their agreements with merchants sometimes put stricter conditions than local consumer right legislation - the merchant can either alter their behavior; or pay chargebacks; or not accept those creditcards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "surge pricing" or not, does no one question how a glorified taxi ride can cost $350+ for just 14 miles? $25 a mile? In what world do we live that we can find people who are willing to pay a dinner per mile?

<comment><USER25> I'm pretty sure when they realize how much they pay they never return.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Surge or not, they would lose me as a customer over something like this. That is an obscene amount of money for a glorified taxi.

Luckily, I've had great experiences with Uber. Only once did I give a low star-rating, and they contacted me and adjusted the fare because of it.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm living in Moscow, Russia and, despite all the bears lurking in my neighbourhood, we have Uber here too. I'm frequent user of Uber, riding at least five times per week. Yes, sometimes, like once in two weeks I see their surge pricing thing and it is usually Friday, 3pm. Which is rather strange, considering that all Muscovites finish their jobs on Friday at 5pm-6pm earliest.

As for the user support - I would say it is just excellent. At least here in Russia. Once I had a ride with a driver who forgot to turn on the meter. When I received the receipt, it showed very different route from the route from my office to my home. I marked my experience with two stars and gave a "Wrong route" reason. Next day I got an email from Uber support person, explaining the problem (forgotten meter). The also gave me a rebate in amount of 30% or my ride.

So, I'm not considering them as evil, even despite they ruin gypsy taxi business.

<comment><USER28> This is the first time I hear about Uber in Moscow, and I live there. Never seen it advertised or anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Its unsurprising. I cant understand why anyone would use an unregulated taxi company. Predatory surge pricing is part of the reason taxis are regulated. Safety for the customer being the other large reason.

</comment><comment><USER30> Forgive my ignorance, but this guy must have specifically typed in the 3.75x multiplier before his ride was ordered. How can you complain about such things when you so implicitly agreed to it?

</comment><comment><USER31> The lack of customer service really is the crux of this article (putting aside the issues surrounding whether surge was agreed to or not).

On one hand, I can appreciate that Uber doesn't want to provide a 'service level agreement' when the service providers are third parties (the taxi/car driver).

On the other hand, not helping someone resolve an issue (that is well more than trivial) is worrisome.

Much has been said and promised of Uber (yes, I use it and love it). However, this could well be another example of a company that scales quickly promising a level of customer service that simply can't scale (either operationally or financially). The real question is how many repeat customers Uber has over time. Buying once is nice, buying everyday is what they need.

</comment><comment><USER32> I just checked my history and I have had 44 Uber trips in a variety of cities since 2012 and have not had a single negative experience. Am I just lucky? (not trying to be sarcastic, honestly curious)

<comment><USER33> People need to start blogging their mundane experiences.

"I got a coffee. They got the order right; charged me a reasonable amount; served me in an acceptable time. The place wasn't too crowded or noisy, and it was clean. I drank it - it was nice coffee, and then I left. We said a cheery 'goodbye!' as I left."

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Not to detract from this individual's experience, but a close friend of mine was given money back when her Uber driver didn't take the most efficient route. This happened two weeks ago and the kicker is that it was completely unprompted by her. She was happy with the service she received and they emailed her to refund her money she hadn't asked for. She's now sold on Uber, Lyft, Sidecar, et al.

$357 is completely exorbitant. My longest Uber ride was to the airport. A black car picked me up and drove the 30 or so miles and it didn't cost me more than $100. I can't fathom why the ride in this posting was as expensive as it was. My experience and that of my friends has been exceptional.

</comment><comment><USER35> On a totally off-topic bit. After reading that page I have horizontal bars all across my vision when looking at everything else.

Pure white text and pure black background seems to cause trouble like nothing else.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> A while ago my Uber account got banned when I had to leave for a flight at the SJC airport. I wasn't able to contact customer support or even get in touch with someone till almost 3 days later, after various tweets. Really disappointed in how they treat their customers. They also asked me to send pictures of my Drivers License and Debt Card over email to unfreeze my account for no reason. Luckily, I caught a Lyft. Uber needs to work on this.

</comment><comment><USER36> 1\. People use rap genius as a blogging platform? 2\. I have never, and know none who has ever, taken an Uber during surge and not been notified about it.

The options are i) Uber maliciously doesn't notify some users of surge ii) There was a bug which caused this user to not be notified of surge (locking in rate after clicking confirm), iii) this guy is full of shit. iv) something i haven't thought of.

</comment><comment><USER37> I've never used Uber (not available in my city). Are surge prices not reflected accurately in the app when booking a ride?

<comment><USER38> They are reflected quite well in my opinion. Here is a blog post detailing the system they implemented in March 2012 [http://blog.uber.com/2012/03/14/clear- and-straight-forward-s...](http://blog.uber.com/2012/03/14/clear-and-straight- forward-surge-pricing/). They also have useful notifications for when surge pricing ends. Not sure what happened in this situation though.

<comment><USER39> In fact, they've changed and improved the system since then. Now you have to confirm surge pricing by typing in the multiplier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Glitch in the system? If there was no known reason for the surge pricing (not New Years, not bad weather etc) maybe he was not notified beforehand of the surge pricing because it shouldn't have happened in the first place?

</comment><comment><USER41> I think there is room for a company offering lower fees.

</comment><comment><USER42> Someone is angry they didn't read their dialogs close enough.

</comment><comment><USER43> > Oh, they're real alright, buddy.

What's real alright? That quote is completely unrelated to the rest of the article.

I won't even go into caring what the BBB thinks. This article doesn't seem to be well-put-together.

</comment><comment><USER44> Fuck Uber. I've only been gouged by their app -- never Lyft. Lyft clearly warns and all the additional money goes to the drivers as an incentive. If I'm paying more than twice the cost of a cab I could wave down on the street, what's the point?

Just to be clear, I have no affiliation with either company. I'm just glad someone with a voice is complaining.

<comment><USER45> When you are paying more than the cost of a cab for an Uber, try getting a cab. Go out on the street and stick your thumb out or call a dispatch line. You'll soon figure out why Uber prices are surging.</comment></comment>


32 Years of Metafont [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/MFtalk.pdf <comment><USER2> These are the slides from a talk Knuth gave recently in San Francisco, at the public library[1]. I attended (it was _FREE_!), and I thought it was quite good — this was the first time I've ever seen Knuth in person, let alone a lecture by him. As other comments note, the slides in isolation aren't really that great; you really need the video. The talk was titled _Thirty Two Years of Metafont_ , with a subtext of "Donald Knuth will reminisce and talk about things he remembers." It was, in fact, his musings on Metafont, which I found quiet interesting.

lifepillar helpfully found the video in another comment[2]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LR_lBEy7qU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LR_lBEy7qU)

One of my senior classes in college was Typography, the final project of which was to author a font, A-Z a-z 0-9 and some punctuation. _That_ is a grueling task, and I have a lot of respect now for the people who can do it and have the result not look terrible (as mine did). In particular, in the talk, Knuth notes the difficulty of the letter "S" — which nearly drove me insane trying to render it as part of my final project, so I found it quite humorous that it also gave him a bit of grief. It is a frustrating letter when you need to not just write one, but accurately describe it to a computer.

[1]: [http://coopertype.org/event/thirty_two_years_of_metafont](http://coopertype.org/event/thirty_two_years_of_metafont)

[2]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12587556](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12587556)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks to you and lifepillar for posting the video! I found the link to the slides on his "news" page. I thought a few of the slides would help show, for example, the level with which you could parameterize METAFONT fonts.

There was a story recently that was talking about parameterized web fonts, and I found it interesting how few people realized you could do that with METAFONT. I think quite a few people think of it as a bitmap format. I find it to be more akin to svg.

The slides of Font Blvd are just plain fun. No surprise that he turned to cataloging diamond signs later. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't quite understand what can be gotten from these slides... There does not appear to be any narrative, so without a "talk" to go with it this link isn't very useful?

<comment><USER4> Here's the talk: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LR_lBEy7qU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LR_lBEy7qU)

<comment><USER5> This really should be the link instead of the PDF.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. I posted the slides since that link was on his site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's more like 8 years of Metafont, and 24 of its corpse clinging to TeX like some sort of husk.

<comment><USER7> I believe it is still the best way for Knuth to fulfill his goals:

"Ever since those beginnings in 1977, the TeX research project that I embarked on was driven by two major goals. The first goal was quality: we wanted to produce documents that were not just nice, but actually the best. […] The second major goal was archival: to create systems that would be independent of changes in printing technology as much as possible. When the next generation of printing devices came along, I wanted to be able to retain the same quality already achieved, instead of having to solve all the problems anew. I wanted to design something that would be still usable in 100 years."

(from "Digital Typography" by Knuth)

<comment><USER8> I remember reading something like that - the aim of TeX was to allow anyone to produce high quality typeset documents. Then when I actually used TeX (or LaTeX or whatever the variant was at the time), metafont not only allowed, but defaulted to bitmap fonts. :\

<comment><USER9> Metafont produces bitmap fonts, but the description is in vectors. You have to remember that generating bitmaps from outlines takes a decent amount of computing power, especially pre-1990, and caching the bitmaps is a reasonable default.

<comment><USER10> It was a reasonable default. These days it's far more suspect. TeX in general has the feel of an application that's been stuck in the 80s for a long long time.

<comment><USER9> The default now is that no one uses Metafont, so it doesn't really matter what it outputs. AFAIK, (almost) no one outputs dvi files, or uses whatever the old font choosing mechanism was, either. The Computer Modern fonts are still pretty commonly used, and probably look somewhat dated, but it's not that difficult to use other fonts, especially if you choose a TeX variant like XeTeX.

I think Metafont tried to address a lot of things that were really only interesting to type designers, who turn out to be largely allergic to designing fonts in a text editor. Some of the ideas were revisited in the Adobe Multiple Master fonts, now extinct, and I believe there's a new version of (fonts with axes in addition to size).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> how hard is it to add a single letter to your font. say a triangle?

I suppose I could use a Delta, and get HΔPPY -- I guess that's how the t-shirt was made.

in general, though -- is Metafont still the way we add new fonts to TeX these days in 2016?

<comment><USER12> > in general, though -- is Metafont still the way we add new fonts to TeX > these days in 2016?

Nowadays, we have XeTeX, which allows for the use of any OpenType font. In fact, for a long time XeTeX was the only non-Adobe product that could actually make use of OpenType features. I have fond memories of playing around with XeTeX in 2009-ish to show off all the really cool stuff my fonts could do.</comment></comment>


Web Graphics – Past, Present and Future - <AUTHOR> http://blog.chromium.org/2010/09/web-graphics-past-present-and-future.html

<comment><USER2> TLDR: Brief intro to WebGL, a new JS API that allows access to gfx hardware in the browser, used for embedding 3D gfx in websites. Another component of HTML5. Still being finalized, but is turned on by default in the latest Chromium builds for testing and feedback. Good stuff, more info here:

<http://learningwebgl.com/></comment>


Is It Maintained? - <AUTHOR> http://isitmaintained.com/

<comment><USER2> I think I prefer Open Hub: [https://www.openhub.net/](https://www.openhub.net/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd love this as a chrome extension!</comment>


Best way to find cofounders - - <AUTHOR> Thanks in advance - I'm looking for skilled Technical and Business cofounders.  Remote or in Orlando, FL - how should I go about it for best results -<p>Thanks! <comment><AUTHOR> Isiunsux, all,

[http://goo.gl/forms/qx7jVMfB8r](http://goo.gl/forms/qx7jVMfB8r)

Here is the intake form - if I need to change something to play well on Hacker News, please let me know. Thanks for keeping it civil -

</comment><comment><USER2> Might want to start with an email address and ask for resume's ?

Your post is pretty vague otherwise.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks much, it is my first post here - and so less is more.</comment></comment>


Get free $AAPL stock from Stockpile for #AppleEvent - <AUTHOR> https://get.stockpile.com/apple-event-2017/?utm_source=stockpile&utm_medium=hackernews&utm_campaign=stklg-apple <comment><USER2> This title appeared misleading to me, and may to others.

When I first wrote this I did not know what Stockpile's pitch is, i.e. fractional stocks. I still think it is misleading, but it now makes more sense.

At first blush, if you are not familiar with fractional stocks, they are advertising $5 of Apple stock and this appears strange since Apple's share price at the time I write this is $160 per share. This would appear to mean they are giving approximately a 3% discount on one share of Apple stock that you buy, which does not take into account fees (there seems to be a $0.99 fee, at a minimum).

However, apparently Stockpile pitches the ability to buy fractional shares of stock, "buy fractions of expensive stocks instead of one full share". I'd encourage people to read the Investopedia article on fractional shares, at [http://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fractionalshare.asp](http://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fractionalshare.asp).

Granted I am not an expert on stocks, but this does not seem like buying stock as much as it is buying shares in a share of stock. Questions that come to mind include: who gets to vote the share, who gets the dividends, do you have to sell through Stockpile, etc. Actually, thinking about it more, it sounds to me like a mutual fund where the fund only contains one stock.

<comment><USER3> great question! With Stockpile's fractional share platform you OWN the stock. you have all the voting rights, you get the dividend for the fraction of the share you own. So, this is a REAL stock, not a share of a share. This is not a crowdsourcing model, you get the ownership in the company stock with voting rights and dividends.

Re $5 apple stock, you are getting 0.03 apple stock ($5 worth of stock if the stock price is $160/share). You don't need to pay $0.99 for getting this free stock. The trading commission of $0.99 cents is only when you buy or sell more shares.

There are no account minimums or monthly fees.

Hope this answers your question!

<comment><USER4> It's also worth noting that Stockpile and fractional shares aren't only for people who want less than one share of stock. The benefit of fractional shares allows you to buy stock in whatever dollar amount you're comfortable with. For example, if you want to buy $100 worth of SNAP stock, which is about $15 per share, then you'd get 6.6667 shares of stock. Your shares go up and down with the market fluctuations just like owning stock in whole share amounts.</comment></comment></comment>


Can We Have Form Objects in Elixir? - <AUTHOR> https://blog.lelonek.me/form-objects-in-elixir-6a57cf7c3d30 <comment><USER2> I started my application before the embedded_schema API was available and the Assumption that a RDBMS was backing everything was a major pain-point for me at the time leading me to create a custom form abstraction using Vex ([https://github.com/CargoSense/vex](https://github.com/CargoSense/vex)). Now with embedded_schema the pain went away and I ended up refactoring my form modules away completely in favour of the new API.

I was using Ruby myself for 10 years before using Elixir and the Form object pattern was one I used very often myself. A general principle of Elixir I have often seen that if you think something doesn't work, or is the wrong way you in fact need to unlearn some of the brain damage acquired from Ruby.

A great example of this is Wojtek Mach's github_ecto project ([https://github.com/wojtekmach/github_ecto](https://github.com/wojtekmach/github_ecto)). His abstracting of the Github API behind a Ecto.Repo was mindblowing to me. Your app communicates with a HTTP API without knowing it's any different than your DB.

Elixir is very much a different way of thinking about problems than Ruby.

<comment><USER3> Holy crap. That's amazing. Thanks for sharing. Been digging into Elixir off and on for months, and hadn't come across this. Mind-blowing, indeed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For what it's worth, I've been learning Erlang and this was my first shot at json form parsing:

[https://github.com/cieplak/chat/blob/master/src/http/forms.e...](https://github.com/cieplak/chat/blob/master/src/http/forms.erl#L6)

[https://github.com/cieplak/chat/blob/master/src/domain/types...](https://github.com/cieplak/chat/blob/master/src/domain/types/message.erl#L32)

No data validation at the moment, but it would be nice to generate the form parsing and validation, as well as the getters and setters, from a declarative spec.

</comment><comment> J0-nas Totally of topic but could someone explain Elixirs syntax to me?

In the following code (from the linked site): What is embeds_many? Are :string and :map type information or Atoms? What happens to :changes, Change, primary_key? Does the code between do and end just call the field function twice?

embeds_many :changes, Change, primary_key: false do

        field :field, :string

        field :value, :map

end

<comment><USER5> It's confusing because it's using a library called Ecto, which provides it's own DSL for describing schemas and queries.

NOTE: I haven never used Ecto, but I have used Elixir for a few hobby projects.

1\. `embeds_many` is a function name, described here: [https://hexdocs.pm/ecto/Ecto.Schema.html#embeds_many/3](https://hexdocs.pm/ecto/Ecto.Schema.html#embeds_many/3)

2\. Anything that begins with a colon is an Atom in Elixir, including :string, :map, :changes, :field, and :value. These atoms are used by Ecto at runtime to identify certain things. `:changes` is a unique name given to the embedded schema, `:field` and `:value` are field names on that schema, and :string and :map are informing Ecto of how to treat certain values.

3\. `Change` is the name of a Module which describes the Schema we are embedding

4\. `primary_key: false` is a configuration option

5\. Everything after `do...` is describing what the embedded schema would look like. So it has a `:field` field that is of type string, and a `:value` field that is of type map.

Hopefully that makes some sense... I'm not totally clear on it either (having not used Ecto before) but that's what I'm grokking.

<comment> J0-nas Thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's good to see more people developing in Elixir. But having said that, I'm against server-side forms. I feel client side frameworks like vue.js completely alleviates the need for server-side form objects and does a lot more. Server-side forms at times can be a real pita to work with.

<comment><USER7> You still need server side validation so a form object with validators is still useful.

<comment><USER8> server side validation (which is indeed requried) != forms. also, Ecto does really good job with changesets, including hard-to-do-right pieces like "uniqueness"

<comment><USER9> IMHO, reusable server side validation == forms without widgets (and widgets are nice to have if one feels that JS is unnecessarily complicating what could be a simple static HTML form).

Or I'm missing something?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Electric Cars Soon Will Cost Less Than Gas Cars, Research Suggests - <AUTHOR> http://www.industryweek.com/energy/electric-cars-soon-will-cost-less-gasoline-autos-research-shows <comment><USER2> The premise turns on the batteries: They are still expensive and need replacing every 7-10 years. If you're modeling the cost of ownership, you should be factoring in a new battery pack after 10 years. (Message to ye who covet 1,000,000 miles) Therefore, the rate of adoption will be somewhat modulated by the ecosystem of lithium ion materials and production. It's obvious Tesla sees this as a crux since they are investing billions in battery production.

Li ion Battery cost per KWh has already been falling at about -14% annualized over the last 10 years [0]. However, mass adoption of EV autos changes the demand side considerably and we therefore cannot assume the same rate of decline as we have seen recently. Perhaps we will, given the ramping production, but if they don't move more or less in step, prices could be somewhat stubborn.

[0] [https://cleantechnica.com/2015/03/26/ev-battery-costs- alread...](https://cleantechnica.com/2015/03/26/ev-battery-costs-already- probably-cheaper-than-2020-projections/)

<comment><USER3> Most internal combustion engines are only good for ~200,000 miles, even with excellent maintenance. A worn-out engine is good only for scrap, but an EV battery pack with 50% capacity is still very useful as a solar storage battery.

Most of the 2011 Nissan Leafs are still going strong with ~80% capacity. Their outright failure rate is less than 0.02%. Cell and battery pack technology has improved dramatically since then, so I'd be very optimistic about the useful lifespan of a brand new Model S or Chevy Bolt.

<comment><USER4> Well crap. Both of my cars have well north of 200,000 on them. I was really hoping to keep driving them for a long time to come.

<comment><USER5> I had 250k on an +20 year old Toyota pickup, though things slowly start to crap. Leaky carb diaphragms due to ethanol, harmonic balancer wearing out, corroded brakes lines, bad clutch cylinder, dead ignition module. Donated that after buying a new Toyota pickup. Had that for 12 years now with zero problems.

Purchased a used 2015 Nissan Leaf recently and very happy with that. We'll see how the battery holds up.

I think many will ditch their cars not due to engine wear, but for stupid reasons like their smartphone not linking to the stereo.

<comment><USER6> I think a much better reason that people ditch their cars is the increased safety in the newer models. Very few cars had side air bags and a decent amount didn't have ABS 15 years ago. There are a lot of other improvements surely made that I don't know about.

In Japan everyone junks their cars in 10 years because of the mandatory car check-ups (we pay $400-$2000 every 2 years for the check-up then have to pay every year once the car hits 10 years old). There are some exceptions and I don't know all the rules as I just own one car.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I couldn't buy a Telsa for the total spent for my '03 Camry, currently pushing 380K miles, including fuel costs.

In the 12 years I've had it I've put on 350,000 miles. Even at a conservative 25 mpg and a generous average fuel cost of $3 that's:

$15,000 in car. $42,000 in gas.

This excludes maintenance etc, but I fail to see how I'm saving money buying an electric car unless I'm already rocking solar.

Maybe it's cheaper by the mile but my assumption is any fuel savings will be quickly erased in additional insurance costs.

<comment><USER8> It sounds like you bought it used? While I'm unsure of a Tesla's longevity, it looks like you could buy a used Tesla for $35k these days. Which is cheaper than your $15k + $42k. No gas -- but I'm not sure how much it would cost per kilowatt hour. Now if you were to get a Tesla $35k and install a solar roof for $10k then you're looking at $45k and a renewable energy system, taking power out of the oil companies' hands and actually cheaper than the $57k... and that would be "free" power indefinitely -- way cheaper than the fact that you will have to continue to put oil and gas in your car.

Speaking of which, did you factor in the oil change costs? Assuming $30 an oil change, you're looking at $12k in oil changes. That's now $69k for your Camry.

Plus, the Tesla looks cooler and has faster acceleration than your Camry.

<comment><USER9> > Assuming $30 an oil change, you're looking at $12k in oil changes

If you change the oil every 5000 miles as suggested by Toyota, 350K miles is 70 oil changes, or $2100 not $12000.

<comment><USER10> You could go longer if you did periodic oil analysis plus put on a new filter (and top up the remainder) between changes. Could probably double the figure to 10k, depending on engine age.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> While this seems drastically unrealistic from the viewpoint of someone in the US, from a European point of view, I can totally see that electrics become very viable - take a look at the new cars from Citroen, Renault and Hyundai in terms of decent to serious range (200-300km+) and Europe seems more likely to push regulations than a Trump-administration US.

<comment><USER12> I have an electric car in the US and a 60+mi/day commute. My new electric car is so so so much cheaper to operate. It's actually below half the cost of using my older but still quite efficient Prius.

It'll still take time for me to see savings over a car in the $20-$30k range. But in terms of daily operating costs for equivalent priced cars I'm there. Gas prices can only go up and electrical storage is on a downward trend.

<comment><USER13> You must own a home?

I live in a place that prides itself on being 'green' \- but at-home charging stations for apartment dwellers are just a not-thing.

<comment><USER12> I rent a home right now (and I've rented a half house before). So yeah, that's a challenge.

The other option (and I do this a lot) is to just go to whole foods and use their monster-fast chargers. You can do a whole car in just a few hours with an L3 charger, it's amazing. This is more expensive than using any kind of outlet, but so is gas.

Please forgive the imposition, but if you live in the dense and expensive part of the city, you probably are best off simply not owning a car.

<comment><USER14> And you can fill a fuel tank with gas in 10 mins. Really wide spread adoption of electric vehicles will require a Nobel prize winning jump in battery tech.

And governments will tax electric cars to make up for the loss of fuel duty.

<comment><USER15> 10 minutes? 3 minutes.

I think widespread electric vehicle adaption will happen due to price but you have a very valid point on recharge time.

Basically your car is unusable if low and being recharged and there is nothing you can do about it. Unless swapping heavy batteries becomes practical.

<comment><USER16> If chargers become widely available then this is only a consideration for long road trips. Otherwise your car can be charging at practically any time it's not being driven. Meaning it stays near full battery most of the time you start driving. That's not true for gas; you don't have a gas line connected to your tank in every parking lot.

Teslas have a driving range of ~200 miles or something like that right? After driving 200 miles, most people are happy to stop and stretch their legs for 15-20 minutes. Tesla superchargers take about 30 minutes to charge your battery most of the way. Drive another 200 miles and you're ready for lunch or dinner, which could be a ~1 hour break, if you're not getting drive-thru and a chance for a much longer charge.

The only limiting factors I see are cost, the availability of charging options (and density of locations) and charging for apartment dwellers. Charge times are probably "good enough" already and likely to get better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This wouldn't surprise me, although manufacturing lithium batteries is still a bit complex. The railroads already use all-electric drivetrains; short-range locomotives carry batteries only, while long-haul ones use diesel to generate electricity and power the drivetrain. The big advantage of an electric drivetrain is regenerative braking, which is just as useful in cars (think of the Prius and its remarkable mileage) as in trains.

Over the medium term, I'd expect to see a car market that looks a bit like the train market: all-electric cars for city driving, plus hybrids for traveling in the country or in underdeveloped areas. Fossil fuels will probably never go away entirely (certainly the military will always need them), but oil is good for things other than fuel; 100 years from now, I expect electric cars will be the usual option while gasoline-burning hybrids are an expensive curiosity.

(Or we might move to a mix of electricity and hydrogen fuel cells; Toyota's betting on this, since natural-gas refining releases waste hydrogen. Safe containment of hydrogen is harder than safe containment of gasoline, though...)

<comment><USER18> We still have the occasional steam powered traction engine go past our house. We live on a very steep hill, so there is a lot of stoking to get up pressure before they attempt it. I'd say we see them 2 or 3 times a year. Really cool beasts.

<comment><USER19> I'd love to see a video of that

<comment><USER18> I never thought to video them. There are rallies every year in our local town where 20 or so get together and drive around.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gbs5BfpbAH4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gbs5BfpbAH4)

My father-in-law is a conductor on a local steam engine. My SO got to drive it -- the lucky lady :)

<comment><USER18> [http://prestonservices.co.uk/category/steam-engines/road- ste...](http://prestonservices.co.uk/category/steam-engines/road- steam/traction-engines/road-locomotives/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> .. in part due to assuming that the price of the internal combustion engine is "going to go up as a result of more stringent regulations especially regarding to particulate regulations", but also assuming that the battery (A) accounts for 50% of the sticker price today and (B) will drop by 77% by 2025. I wouldn't bet on these being the case (particularly on there being effective regulation in the US)

<comment><USER21> All the evidence points to batteries dropping a huge amount in the coming decade. What are you willing to bet?

Edit: somewhat minor, but you seem to be misquoting, they actually say:

>their prices will fall by about 77% between 2016 and 2030, the London-based researcher said.

Wich is a 14 year time span, instead of the 8 year time span from now until 2025

<comment><USER22> Even with mass production, the chemistry does not change. Limited Co supplies and a decreasing, but still present need for rare earths will only prop up prices.

Add to that new and exotic electrolytes and improved anode coatings, and it'll be a wonder if prices come down at all.

<comment><USER23> The existing battery packs have (vaguely) reasonable performance characteristics, I wouldn't think that manufacturers would adopt things that increase costs more than they increase performance.

(In fact I would expect them to mostly adopt things that cut costs without sacrificing performance)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> 1\. Gigantic longevity. Electric Vehicles will likely run 1 million miles or more without requiring any significant repairs except a net battery pack. Internal combustion engines develop all kinds of problems related to burning petroleum for energy.

2\. No gas charges. For the $35k Tesla, if you get an invite from a current Tesla owner, you can get $1k off and a free lifetime supercharger usage. Supposing you always use a super-charger and had no gas charges, on 200k miles you just saved $25k in gas charges...so your Tesla's net cost came in under $10k!! And it's probably still got a long life ahead of it so would have far more resale value than an internal combustion vehicle with similar mileage.

So it makes a lot of sense for everyone really to buy a Tesla :-D!

That said if electric vehicles do last far longer than traditional vehicles you could reduce car sales by as much as 75%+...if you add in another trend of transportation-as-a-service via on-demand vehicles (e.g. Uber), that could reduce car sales by a similar amount.

Both combined could decimate the current car industry as we know it which has a lot of impacts on inputs e.g. mining for metals, etc. which go into car manufacturing. It does make the world a lot more efficient. If you look around the US, all you see are parking lots and cars everywhere sitting around (for like 97% of their life).

<comment><USER9> 1\. Lots of things on cars wear out over the years other than the engine/emission system. Some of the most expensive common car repairs are water pumps, AC compressors, brake lines, suspension parts, wheel bearings and brake parts, etc. EVs have all of those things, and they suffer no less wear- and-tear than ICEs. Even a full transmission or engine costs far less than replacing the battery in an EV, too.

2\. The referral program is only for the Model S and Model X, which start at $70K. There is no discount and no free charging with the $35K Model 3.

<comment><USER25> > EVs have all of those things, and they suffer no less wear-and-tear than > ICEs.

Brakes suffer less wear and tear.

Water pumps may be present, but they are not for the engine. If present, they are usually for an actively cooled battery. They are needed mostly for charging operations and do not run all the time. Meaning less wear and tear on them. They are also electrically operated, so there's no belt wear and tear.

Batteries very seldom suffer catastrophic failures, as opposed to, say, a transmission.

EVs can be much simpler than ICEs. Currently some of them are not, but they can be. The list of things that EVs do not have is even larger than the things they do have in common with ICEs.

Anyway, I will concede the point as being generally true – there are lots of other things that may break and are shared no matter how you power the car.

However, there's something that's harder to measure: everyday annoyances caused by parts that are "working", but not as well as they should. Engines with low compression, faulty spark plugs, or partially broken sensors feeding incorrect data to the engine's control unit. Things like that make the car feel "old", cause multiple annoying trips to repair shops, and lead people to replace their cars. Modern AC motors will run much longer, and just as well as when they were brand new. They are certain to outlast the battery that feeds them.

<comment><USER9> I have a Nissan Leaf, which I think is the best-selling EV outside China. It actually doesn't have an actively cooled battery, but like every other EV I'm aware of, it has a water pump and coolant. The pump and fan can be pretty loud actually, especially while charging.

It also has all those same problems you described. Noise from the suspension that can't quite be pinpointed. Partially broken sensors feeding incorrect data to the ECU (usually means the 12V battery voltage is low). Failing to turn on then working just fine minutes later. Throwing error messages about brakes, or "t/m malfunction", or going into "turtle mode" when the battery isn't low, or other inscrutable conditions that usually solve themselves but lead to multiple annoying trips to repair shops.

Don't you drive a Leaf too?

<comment><USER26> I have read forums and talked with many Leaf owners in researching my own purchase, and while there have been a few niggles reported (random charging problems, or noises, or ...), none have listed problems like this, and not all in a single car. I suppose it is possible you got one car with that many problems (or one undiagnosed issue causing many problems), but then you should be returning the car as a lemon or taking the dealer/Nissan to court. For example, going into turtle mode when the battery isn't low would be inexcusable and cause for a complete fix under warranty.

But you can read the leaf forums as well as I, you know this is way out of the norms, so why do you write like it's expected of every Leaf? I conclude this is FUD.

<comment><USER9> I come across reports of similar problems all the time.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/leaf/comments/6eydi6/my_leaf_is_goi...](https://www.reddit.com/r/leaf/comments/6eydi6/my_leaf_is_going_into_turtle_mode_again_seems/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/leaf/comments/67xw7l/help_needed_mo...](https://www.reddit.com/r/leaf/comments/67xw7l/help_needed_motor_power_is_limited_with_full/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/leaf/comments/62h18v/tm_system_malf...](https://www.reddit.com/r/leaf/comments/62h18v/tm_system_malfunction_something_under_the_hood_is/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/leaf/comments/5boton/tm_vehicle_sys...](https://www.reddit.com/r/leaf/comments/5boton/tm_vehicle_system_malfunction_warning_leaf_wont/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/leaf/comments/41jmzu/i_got_the_turt...](https://www.reddit.com/r/leaf/comments/41jmzu/i_got_the_turtle_when_i_had_50_battery/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/leaf/comments/4rooyw/ev_system_warn...](https://www.reddit.com/r/leaf/comments/4rooyw/ev_system_warning_light_coming_on_clears_each/)

 _Tons_ more similar stories on MNL and other forums. These are common problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> One thing I'm surprised about is the way Gogoro scooters are being rolled out and sold. The model 2 has a retail price of below $2,000 and is pretty much ideal as a city commute scooter. But they're not selling them for individual use, only in cities where they have their battery exchange charger stations set up.

So I have to wonder: what kind of loss-leader is the cheap gogoro 2 scooter? Because I guarantee I would buy one (and a charging station that let me trickle-charge one set of batteries while I ride around on the other) if they were for sale. I have a 10 year old vespa that I love, but is starting to get long enough in the tooth that I'm considering a replacement.

But they're not going to be sold in san francisco (or pretty much anywhere else in the US unless you're really optimistic), because they want to have a citywide network of single-use battery exchange stations.

By single-use, I mean: only good for this one product. With gasoline, you can fuel anything, but they are basically angling for a whole-city distribution of a single thing: battery packs just for a scooter. This strikes me as a pretty bad model, which circles me back to the start. I wonder how much the scooter actually costs, if they're willing to leave this much market on the table for individual bike / charger sales.

I suppose it could also be NTSB certification holding them up too.

[https://www.gogoro.com/](https://www.gogoro.com/)

</comment><comment><USER28> 'electric cars aren't going to take over' there seem to be endless articles on line pro and con electric vehicles [http://www.businessinsider.com/why-morgan- stanley-wrong-abou...](http://www.businessinsider.com/why-morgan-stanley- wrong-about-electric-cars-2017-5)

<comment><USER8> For now. In 5-10 years the debate will be "why do we have gas cars at all now that electric cars are all faster, drive farther, don't pollute, and are solar powered."

In my opinion, not having to deal with oil spills and carbon emissions will certainly win out in the long run.

<comment><USER29> Kind of a tangent regarding solar-powered cars:

Putting solar panels on a car is a good idea that sounds like a dumb idea that sounds like a good idea.

Solar panels don't actually generate anywhere near enough power to supply a car continuously. (1 horse power is about 700 watts. If it takes 10 HP to maintain highway speeds, that's about 7000 watts, more than most rooftop solar installations.) So, driving forever on a sunny day without stopping isn't something that's attainable except on specially-built cars with tiny motors and giant bodies and don't move at highway speed.

However, if I think about how I use my own car on a typical day, I drive a couple miles to work, park in the sun for about 8 hours, and then drive a couple miles home. Maybe stop on the way for groceries. If I had an electric car with a solar panel generating a hundred watts or so while it sits in the parking lot, that might be enough to keep the battery topped off.

I'd still have to plug in once in awhile if I drive around more than average or if I'm going on a long trip, but if it noticeably reduces the number of times I plug in per year, that's probably worth the added weight and cost.

(I realize that by "solar powered" you probably meant rooftop solar and charging at home or perhaps utility-scale solar.)

(I also realize that I could just ride a bike, but I'm lazy and technological cost-benefit analyses are more fun.)

<comment><USER21> I'd be surprised if you could get a full kWh per day out of solar panels on a car itself; they're at a non-ideal angle, can be parked in half sun half shade, etc.

Most cars get really close to 3.3 mi/kWh. So unless your commute is really short, it's not going to make a huge impact on the number of times you need to plug in.

<comment><USER29> My commute is really short. I don't drive long distances very often, so I think it would make a difference.

Another way to look at it is if I could get one extra kWh per day from solar and can go 3.3 miles per kWh, that's about 100 extra miles of range per month. I typically drive maybe 200 or 300 miles per month, so that's a pretty big reduction in total plug-in power that I would need. (In our Oregon winters it might not help so much, or if I can't reliably find sunny parking spots.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'd love one. Unfortunately, I - and quite a few like me in large cities in the UK only have on-street parking, so no way to charge at home.

Once some of the large supermarkets start offering charging in a large proportion of their parking spaces, it'll get more interesting.

<comment> pi-rat We're slowly but surely getting there in Norway. Most supermarkets offer free charging, and fast chargers are being put up all over the mayor cities ( ex: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k73-rYe82lI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k73-rYe82lI) ). Some parking spaces have 100s of chargers: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktNKWLwjQJM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktNKWLwjQJM)

It's totally feasible to own an EV without home charging in Norway now, especially if you get one of the longer range ones like Opel Ampera-e (/ Bolt).

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I've made this point before and people are always skeptical. Consider how many fewer moving parts an electric car has. It's like the difference between solid state electronics and vacuum tube electronics.

<comment><USER32> Tangents:

Vacuum tubes can work a very long time without breaking, if they are never turned off.

Wankel engines have less moving parts then piston engines and can last longer because of it. Problem with Wankel engines is that they need heat and a good seal to be efficient.

Stirling engines could, in theory, be superior to bout piston and Wankel engines, in efficiency and lifespan. [0]

Fuel cells used to power electrical engines is yet another alternative that combines the high energy density of liquid fuel with robustness of very few moving parts.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_Vnxapd5fs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_Vnxapd5fs)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> This projection that electric cars will soon become cheaper than gas cars assumes an exponential decay in cost. All exponential trends ultimately cease due to some physical limiting factor. We're seeing Moore's law sputter to a halt because it is getting more expensive (and not less) to make smaller features on microprocessors- semiconductor manufacturing processes are just not scaling the way they have for decades. Nevertheless Moore's law was a truly exceptional exponential ramp unrivaled in the history of technology. Does battery manufacturing have the same advantages that will allow for a tremendous long-term exponential ramp analogous to Moore's law? I am wondering how long it will take for battery technology to "hit the wall". Hopefully batteries will become significantly cheaper, safer, and faster to charge but I am skeptical that we will be able to ride this exponential curve for anywhere near as long as we've benefited from Moore's law. I hope I am wrong.

<comment><USER5> Though I don't think it needs to drop exponentially. Take any of the new EV (Leaf, Bolt, Model 3) that are $35k and drop the price by 2/3, keep the 200 mile range, and ICE car sales will die fast. ICE car prices are not dropping. EV only need to drop below ICE, not a continuous Moore's law.

I bought a used 2015 Leaf recently for $8500. Yes, it's only 80 mile range, but that gets me to work for two days without charging. It's nearly free to drive; $0.02/mile energy costs, or nothing if I charge for free at local charge stations.

<comment><USER34> There's the flipside to consider too: ICE car prices are as low as they are today because of huge efficiencies of scale in existing engine supply chains and also a large inventory of used cars. Used car inventory is something that will market align over time. Engine supply chain disruptions are hard to predict, but can snowball quickly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> ⃰Unfortunately, still only after factoring in regulations.

<comment><USER12> The dual of this for gas cars is, "Unfortunately, still holding gas prices at their current lows and ignoring any supply issues."

<comment><USER35> At first I was just upset seeing another piece of speculative PR, I guess, so I had to make a salty comment. Of course your example is true too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> > "On an upfront basis, these things will start to get cheaper and people will > start to adopt them more as price parity gets closer," said Colin > McKerracher, analyst at the London-based researcher. "After that it gets > even more compelling."

"Research" needs to include repairs for accidents (even though I've never been in an accident in my own cars). Because I'm OK with the upfront basis, but definitely not OK with the after. I've seen many articles regarding rare parts and long repair times with Tesla. I've put in $5K of repairs in past 2 years for my aging gas car... about 10% of what I plan to spend on my next car, so repairs are a big deal and even more so when (not if) I get into an accident.

</comment><comment><USER28> ...'will be cheaper to buy in the U.S. and Europe as soon as 2025'...is the sub head. The article makes a number of assumptions to reach this conclusion

<comment><USER21> How would one prognosticate about the future _without_ making assumptions?

<comment><USER37> The parent is saying that these assumptions will be incorrect in other parts of the world. If you limit the statement in the title to US/EU then it becomes a more reasonable claim.

<comment><USER38> That's literally what the article is claiming though. If you limit the statement to just the title here, it's not an article, it's just a headline, and headlines are not there to tell you the entire story.

<comment><USER37> The title implies that the cars are actually getting cheaper, not that social costs are being externalized into this market.

The suggestion to change the title is valid. It's not the cars that are getting cheaper, it's the laws that are getting more expensive. That has nothing to do with the efficiency of the production or operation of EVs. It has everything to do with social policy surrounding the use of fossil fuels.

<comment><USER21> >It's not the cars that are getting cheaper, it's the laws that are getting more expensive

Not quite, it _is_ the case that electric cars are getting cheaper, and that analysts expect them to continue getting cheaper. From the article:

>"One is EV technology cost reductions because there are more breakthroughs in the cost of technology and more volume, so the cost of EVs will go down. ICE going to go up as a result of more stringent regulations especially regarding to particulate regulations."</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A working example of Puppeteer on Glitch - <AUTHOR> https://glitch.com/edit/#!/puppeteer-example <comment><AUTHOR> Glitch is a great coding sandbox built by Fog Creek. The main differentiator is that it lets you run build workflows before your app deploys, and it gives you control over server logic. Puppeteer is essentially a browser automation tool that has access to Chrome DevTools features. Disclaimer: I work for Google as the tech writer for DevTools. No relationship with Glitch.

<comment><USER2> Glad you made it worked, saw the thread in the support forum.</comment></comment>


Dr Nancy Grace Roman Has Died - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-46720014 <comment><USER2> Dupe from earlier: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18792389](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18792389)</comment>


Ask HN: Convert Product Descriptions into Metadata? - <AUTHOR> Hi,
I'm looking for a tool that can extract metadata and categorize products based on descriptions. So if I'm selling 10 different fragrances for example, this program should analyze the text and identify that the [colors] are different.
I think a YC startup does something like this. Anyone have pointers to code or what this domain is called?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Are you referring to ontology[1] and Semantic Web[2]? Did you take a look at [https://schema.org/](https://schema.org/), particularly [https://schema.org/Product](https://schema.org/Product). Practically all ecommerce websites use it.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_(information_science)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_\(information_science\))

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

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm building a solution for our company now.

In the end, it's a mix of human labor and machine learning. We use keyword matching to categorize the product and then NLP to understand some of the fields, such as product dimensions.

This domain is called data ETL. Which yc company does it? I want to know it too.

</comment><comment><USER4> You need to give us some more context, what do you mean by "analyze" ? how will the "program" get the data ? Is it textual analysis ?</comment>


No lens? No problem for FlatCam - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2015-11-lens-problem-flatcam.html <comment><AUTHOR> tl;dr: Aperture coding, embedding a known pattern into a mask in front of the sensor, is used to make reconstruction possible. 512x512 image reconstruction currently takes 100ms.

Link to the paper: [http://arxiv.org/pdf/1509.00116v1.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1509.00116v1.pdf)</comment>