How the Internet of Things Limits Consumer Choice - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/12/internet-of-things-philips-hue-lightbulbs/421884/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> IMHO IoT is a bad idea.

Recently we had the choice of buying heat pumps with a standard infrared remote control, or heat pumps with wifi.

You can control them from your ipad! As a bit of a hacker I'd love to play with this and see if I could attach them to temperature sensors and smarts around the house.

Tempting, but then a colleague pointed out that it almost certainly comes pre- packaged with bullshit closed source software from a bullshit company, full of bullshit security holes and probably never gets updates. Your chances of plugging into it with a random python script are close to nil. If it ever breaks, you'll have to pay $100 for some technically illiterate heat pump repairman to try and diagnose the issues. Good luck with that, and no thanks.

<comment><USER3> This is a classic integration / systems type problem. I have a generic "far north" HVAC system (aka killer efficient condensing furnace, mere afterthought of an AC unit) and its connected to an Insteon compatible thermostat via industry standard wiring and protocols (basically residential thermo is 20 mA current loop for heat/fan/cool), and that's connected to misterhouse via the usual insteon RF bridge and controller. Integrating it all is hopeless, like late night infomercials for combination fishing pole/swiss army knife/spark plug wrench gadgets. Its easier to debug industry standard components, also.

I messed around with it some years ago when it was new but haven't permanently implemented anything. I ran into the following problems:

1) UI. When my MiL visits she's at the Asimov-ian technological level where everything I do is at a high enough tech level to be magic, and correspondingly she's scared/intimidated and its all just a non-starter. She still has a round honeywell with a mercury switch at her house and occasionally does the typical woman thing of adjusting it multiple times a day to either 85 or 60 degrees while complaining "it doesn't work". To a lesser extent my wife does the same thing, seeing as they're related I'm not surprised. I've tested it and it works, its just that automatic control even at the simple round honeywell thermostat level is beyond her, pretty much. This will make smart thermostats a hard sell. Magic being interchangeable with Magic, this makes smart thermostats a hard sell to most of the population, why not just put a sticker on the existing thermostat like those stickers that increase cell phone battery life 50% or reduce RF exposure by 100%, or basically the entire audiophile industry in a nutshell, or astrology. I mean a controls engineer KNOWS the bode stability plot analysis of that algorithm is superior, but to the general public its just expensive, much harder to use, astrology. Astrology being cheaper to implement than actual control theory, I guarantee the IoT will be polluted by "smart" things that are actually dumber than "dumb" things, but none the less very well marketed and likely very successful sellers because they'll be cheaper.

2) Improvement is missing. I had some ideas that sucked, but were fun to try. So cycle the ventilation fan on and off at some rate to save energy rather than run all the time. Well that makes the place stuffy and if I wanted a stuffy moldy house I'd have installed a smaller cheaper fan, I'm not paying this kind of mortgage per month to choke or be chilly, etc. I ran into similar problems with messing with temperature control, such that anything I did to alter temperatures MOSTLY just reduced comfort. As far as saving money this was not cheap back then and probably not even now, and I should have spent a couple $$$ on yet more insulation, or even newer windows, or an ever more efficient furnace, etc. The one protocol that was a winner WRT comfort was slightly warmer temps in the morning when getting up and gradual lowering by bedtime. A lot of IoT projects are like this, very techno cool nerdy impressive display of hard work and solved engineering problems, but none the less completely utterly useless in practice. Why, if I spend $300 and a lot of hours, I can turn my nice comfy house into a drafty/stuffy dump, but its cheaper just to spend $100K less on the house if you want to slum it.

Anyone talking about IoT should be required to watch the black and white (free) Buster Keaton movie from about a century ago titled "electric house". There's nothing new under the sun and back when electrification was a "thing" there were plenty of crazy gadget ideas that could be made fun of (see the movie) but had no long term impact. A century from now, 99%+ of IoT will look to the future like Keaton's "electric house" looks to us. There is another immense insight to "electric house" movie that arguably the biggest impact of electricity to daily life is the microwave oven, which obviously was not predictable. If there is any high impact IoT device in the future, it won't be the 24352th model of thermostat, it'll be something unimaginable today, or at least unimaginable to almost everyone. Aside from the multiple learning aspects, Buster Keaton is hilarious so its worth the time.

<comment><USER4> > _She still has a round honeywell with a mercury switch at her house and > occasionally does the typical woman thing of adjusting it multiple times a > day to either 85 or 60 degrees while complaining "it doesn't work". (...) > I've tested it and it works, its just that automatic control even at the > simple round honeywell thermostat level is beyond her, pretty much._

I think there's a missing UX opportunity here no one is taking. Instead of showing the target temperature (and some symbols), show current temperature, target temperature, a plot that shows expected change and have this data refresh frequently (every second or so). Non-tech people have problems with such devices because they don't trust them; they can't trust something they don't understand, something which for them is doing god-knows what. They don't have a model in their head (and temperature is felt in a way that you can't always tell it's changing). So instead, let the machine show what it's doing and what is an expected outcome. People want to know the machine is doing the thing it's supposed to, so the machine should show that it is, in fact, doing it. A plot, or even a text that tells "current temperature: XX, target: YY, will stabilize at YY in 20 minutes" would be a good start.

> _There is another immense insight to "electric house" movie that arguably > the biggest impact of electricity to daily life is the microwave oven_

I'd argue that those are, in order, washing machine, dishwasher and microwave oven; the former two save _huge_ amounts of time for the person who would otherwise have to wash clothes/dishes by hand. But the bigger point stands - the most useful things are those that are considered... boring.

<comment><USER5> Yep, progress bar and desired temp eta.

Maybe add a 'turbo' button too :-D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Many years ago, I owned a Radio Hub from Westinghouse. It required an internet connection for it to work and I was totally fine with it. I got my weather info from it, set my calendar reminders, and it had a bunch of other small features. Pretty neat!

One day they stopped supporting it, and the whole thing became a brick. I couldn't even play CDs on it because it used to get the CD info online.

Today's IoT may barely work well on a good day, but wait for when a company drops support and you will be left with a brick.

<comment><USER7> > _but wait for when a company drops support and you will be left with a > brick._

How many times do you think this happens before the public wises up and the market corrects the issue? My answer is "not many".

One bricked item, or knowing someone with a bricked item, will change people's demands. Sort of like how it changed yours.

<comment><USER4> How many times SaaS startups have to disappear without a trace but a single post about their and yours great journey and founders being happy you helped them drink their drinks on a beach in hot summer, before people wise up?

Answer: quite a lot apparently, since it keeps happening and people _don 't_ wise up, and it has reached the point where the behaviour described above is a standard practice (known as "exit"), and it's the reason many start a startup in the first place. Such people pretty much intend to screw their customers from day one, and apparently customers are happy to being screwed time after time.

I don't see this changing for hardware.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Internet of Things is the proverbial solution in search of a problem.

For those who thought that modern life wasn't easy or technology-filled enough without refrigerators that order stuff for you and thermostats you can control from your watch.

<comment><USER7> > _For those who thought that modern life wasn 't easy or technology-filled > enough_

This trope has been around for hundreds of years.

<comment><USER8> > _This trope has been around for hundreds of years._

The same is true for this retort.

The thing is, just because it has been said for "hundreds of years" doesn't mean it's always false when it's said.

It could be that (always false), of course. But it could also be partly true, e.g. pointing to a real loss that we suffered because of the infusion of technology in everyday life.

Here are some examples of technologically-caused issues that a lot of people, if not most, could do without: environmental damage due to modern mining, plastics, etc. Noise pollution. Cities designed around cars, that destroy the human scale and prevent the kind of relationships and urban life fostered by places like Manhattan, Vienna, Paris, etc. Technology as enabler of surveillance and loss of privacy. Military technology that can blow the world 10 times over. The same-ization of the world and the cheapening of cities due to global commerce, tourism, etc. Loss of quality time with friends and other people in the era of the smartphone. That one might point at improvements in other areas that offset these negatives/losses , doesn't mean there wasn't any loss in the first place.

A last possible case, regarding the original complaint, is that while it might be said for "hundreds of years" it could be especially true now. Just because people might claim it's midnight from early morning doesn't mean that it wont eventually be midnight.

And I'd argue that that's the case, myself.

If somebody complained about the prevalence of technology in the eighties (and several people did), predicting that it will get to a point that we'll be so depended on it, as to have cpus in every damn thing, including our keys, shoes, microwaves, etc, they would have told him that he fell for the "slippery slope" fallacy. Well, the Internet of Thing is the actual realization of that slippery slope.

<comment><USER9> "environmental damage due to modern mining, plastics, etc."

Communicated using a network that wouldn't exist without modern mining and plastics, and using a machine that wouldn't exist without modern mining and plastics?

You could voluntarily give these things up. Indeed some communities (e.g. Amish) forsake some technologies. Instead you are using these technologies, enjoying them despite their ill effects, while claiming that most could do without them.

<comment><USER8> > _Communicated using a network that wouldn 't exist without modern mining and > plastics, and using a machine that wouldn't exist without modern mining and > plastics?_

Probably missed the part where I wrote: " _That one might point at improvements in other areas that offset these negatives /losses , doesn't mean there wasn't any loss in the first place_"

Just because something (e.g. plastics) had a useful result, doesn't mean all of its results are useful, that it's sustainable in the long run (e.g. wont come back to bite us in the ass), or that it's currently used optimally.

Besides, one can still acknowledge some harm despite the fact that he himself uses what's harmful (e.g. I don't like that pigs are killed for it, but bacon is delicious). That's not "hypocritical", it's just weighting pros and cons.

And it's not like it's a black or white thing either. Acknowledging the harm makes us able to make decisions about how to improve things. E.g, to give an extreme example regarding your question, one could very well say: I'm ok with using plastics for important things like computers, but not with the tons of plastic garbage every year but making tons of disposable plastic BS from it (e.g. see the ban on plastic shopping bags in some places).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not really related to the article itself, but I'm developing a serious aversion to the phrase "Internet of Things". It's part of the same trend that created the term "Web 2.0": full of hype and bullshit.

Why not just call it "Internet" like we always have? Was it not made of "things" before?

<comment><USER11> I maintain that IoT is short for "Insecurity of Things", not "Internet of Things". Makes the IoT hype so much easier to deal with.

<comment><USER12> Internet of Thrones :)

<comment><USER4> Internet of Toilets. Fits well with Cloud-to-Butt extension.

<comment><USER5> Uh, Butt-to-cloud, surely?

I might want to tweet my poops, naturally; but what data does my butt need?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Every sysadmin and programmer here has had problems with printers, right? Weird behavior, bugs, crashes, etc. Now expand this to _every single electrical device you own_. That is the Internet of Things.

<comment><USER4> That's not the worst of it.

Every user here had problems with printing experience - bullshit crap "management" software that bloats the system, expected lifetime of a printer being around one year, hugely overpriced cartridges that have absurd DRMs (chips that just have a decrementing "time to stop working" counter is pure evil). Now expand _that_ to every single electrical device you own. That is the Internet of Things - fly-by-night SaaS startup's wet dream incarnate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > every game console has its own game cartridge format

It took me a while to realize the author was not living in the 80s, but talking about portable game consoles instead.

</comment><comment><USER15> Why can't we have the things without the networking stack, then plug them into something (upgradable and open source) with a networking stack?

</comment><comment><USER16> I do not know why so much hate against IoT.

I have several devices which gives me useful data for quantified self proposes. I am also happy with my IP cameras and smart TV.

Like others, I would love to see these devices better secured. I would love them to be less cloud-dependant. But being like they are right now, they provide value.

</comment><comment><USER17> Matthew Garrett's article "The Internet of Incompatible Things" is topical here: [http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/37522.html](http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/37522.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> "In the 1990s, Microsoft used a strategy it called "embrace, extend, extinguish," in which it gradually added proprietary capabilities to products that already adhered to widely used standards."

What about TypeScript? What about "class" syntax in ES6? (who lobbied for it?) Microsoft still uses the same tactics. They tried it with JScript. Now they open source their JS and TS compatible engine and VS Code (contains mainly TS code).</comment>


HTML 5 Notifications in Mountain Lion - <AUTHOR> http://curiousmind.at/2012/08/html-5-notifications-in-mountain-lion

<comment><USER2> I don't understand how the anonymous blog author identified that this is feature new in "Mountain Lion" specifically, as this is a window.webkitNotifications is a javascript API introduced and adopted only by WebKit.

In other words, my copy of Chrome 20 running in Snow Leopard runs this site example fine.

I think he/she meant it's new in Mountain Lion's Safari.

<comment><USER3> Chrome and Safari push these notifications through the native Mac OS X Notification Center. Chrome on Snow Leopard has its own (rather ugly, IMO) implementation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Blog spam. Here is the direct link to the demo on github: <http://dangercove.github.com/html5-notifications/>

</comment><comment><USER5> I can't believe this has gotten any upvotes for what qualifies as blogspam.</comment>


Analyst claims power business users disappointed with AJAX apps - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/03/24/forrester-ajax-powered-web-apps-disappoint-power-users

<comment><USER2> Here's the issue with these kinds of studies: They take examples of building apps using build 0 of a toolkit or technology, then by the time the study comes out, that same toolkit or technology is on build 100.

The usability of web apps (specifically speed) is improving faster than we can develop our non-trivial apps for this platform. In short: time your version 1.0 with the assumed capability of the host platform at the time of release, plus two years. If you commit to spend a year on AIR development, because ajax or js execution or whatever is not where it should be right now, you're making a mistake.

That's what's bad about pre-obsolescent technologies like AIR - they distract from the future in favor of right now.

<comment><USER3> Here's another issue with these kinds of studies:

The researchers are either incompetent or on someone else's payroll. Either way, they're useless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's a quality to super-heavy ajax webapps - they reach the uncanny valley of similarity to desktop apps.

Just like an animated human starts to look really creepy as it approaches realism, there's something strange about web-apps that approach the style and complexity of desktop apps but don't quite reach it.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm personally using flex for my current app. I don't recommend it for every app, but for what I am doing it makes perfect sense. It makes doing a lot of things that would be difficult in AJAX extremely easy. But like I said, not for everyone.

</comment><comment><USER6> Actually, I think the research shows power users are still dissatisfied with enterprise software, regardless of how much "web 2.0" it contains.

</comment><comment><USER7> It goes on to recommend AIR and Silverlight. I hope my competitors are big believers in Forrester's research.

<comment><USER8> Nicely said. Sorry for accidental downmod, stupid CT syndrome... :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Do you think it's possible for Java applets to make a comeback, or has that ship sailed for good?

<comment><USER10> Java applets? Yeesh! I hope not.

<comment><USER9> Why is that? Load time? Clunky? Crash a lot?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Remember hackers: You can still have you cake and eat it. Rails + Flex makes a sexy combo. (There is a book by the name too, "Flex on Rails". Great stuff.)

<comment><USER8> Flex is not a technology. It's a marketng BS. In the end your "platform" is a lousy browser plug-in which is already having a hard time catching up to the variety of web-platforms (no iPhone yet, Linux implementation is buggy as hell, etc) while a new wave of Internet enabled portable hardware is just around the corner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> 90% of AJAX apps are just like 90% of Windows apps which are just like 90% of mainframe apps: they suck. A greater percentage of AJAX apps suck because the technology is newer, that's all.

I've seen plenty of great AJAX apps, especially for the enterprise. The problem is NOT with the technology, it's with the programming.

Forrester obviously doesn't understand that. They don't find any good AJAX apps (one wonders where they're looking), so something MUST be wrong with AJAX. Their recommendation: explore other technologies, including Microsoft's.

Run, don't walk, the other way from "research" like this. Look on the bright side - you're not the poor sucker who had to pay for it.

<comment><USER8> _Especially_ for the enterprise? No wonder. Enterprise software represents the absolute lowest form of life among all softwares: the requirements are relaxed, bandwith is fat and users are paid money to use such software, not the other way around. Makes me smile every time I hear "enterprise class" attached to something.

Just a little funny fact: in nearly all enterprise software UIs I've seen, even tab order wan't assigned on dialog panels.

 _That_ is not a test for technology, even junk like Oracle survives there.</comment></comment>


When Prosecutors Believe the Unbelievable - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2015/07/mark_weiner_conviction_vacated_chelsea_steiniger_text_case_finally_overturned.single.html <comment><USER2> Infuriating.

A lot of people immediately think of Mike Nifong when prosecutor misconduct comes up, and while that case was certainly disgusting, I think an even better (worse?) example is the prosecution of Mr. John Thompson by Harry Connick, Sr.

Though it receives far less attention, the facts of the case are no less than offensive. Mr. Thompson was prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced to die for a crime that he did not commit. [0] The DNA evidence that would have fully exonerated Mr. Thompson of any wrongdoing was deliberately withheld by the prosecutor, Harry Connick, Sr. (yep, the dad), long-time prosecutor in New Orleans.

Mr. Thompson spent _fourteen years_ on death row. Fourteen years of this man's life were stolen from him by Harry Connick, Sr., years that he can never get back. On seven occasions during his time on death row, he was given the date on which he would be put to death for something he did not do. [1]

Can you even imagine? To lay in bed, reflecting back on the events of a day in which you had been given a time and a place to be put to death for something that you did not do? I cannot. Don't bother asking Harry Connick, Sr. about that, though. He doesn't give one single fuck. [2]

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connick_v._Thompson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connick_v._Thompson)

[1] [http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/jury-gave-john- thompson-14-mi...](http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/jury-gave-john- thompson-14-million-wrongly-spent/story?id=13269542)

[2] [http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2012/04/former_da_harry_...](http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2012/04/former_da_harry_connick_defend.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Working in the legal system for many years, it was always very clear that these are courts of law, never courts of justice.

The legal system requires minor technical hurdles to be passed to "prove" guilt. Experienced prosecutors know that the facts of a case are irrelevant (as demonstrated here, very starkly). Get enough of your check-boxes filled in and you "win" and you're up for promotion based on all your wins (or election to higher office etc.). That's all a prosecutor is interested in (i.e. their own promotion, building a track record of winning).

Justice, I'm afraid, does not get a look in. Sometimes, by coincidence, it may meet, but that's never by design on the prosecution side.

<comment><USER4> I never understood why a guilty verdict is a "win" rather than a truthful verdict.

It really drives home that as far as the justice system is concerned, we all _belong_ in prison.

<comment><USER5> Why would you have a trial if you already knew the truth?

Edit: I appear to have been overly vague. My point is that you can't reward a prosecutor for producing a "truthful" outcome unless you know the truth to compare with. If you knew the absolute truth then an adversarial trial system would be expensive and redundant.

<comment><USER4> Why would you call it a failure to not send an innocent person to prison?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is the reason why the entire push for "Yes Means Yes" style laws and Title IX prosecution is terrifying. At some point it would simply be optimal to record your own surrounding for your own sake, lest you end up as a juicy target for rising democratic prosecutor or attention hungry "Activists". its not the "Surveillance State" americans should really be worried about, but their own DAs and bureaucrats in Department of "Education".

<comment><USER7> "At some point it would simply be optimal to record your own surrounding for your own sake"

Well, this article clearly shows how even with evidences, as a man displeasing a woman you are guilty in the system.

Sad, but the morale of this case is simple: don't interact with millennial women.

<comment><USER8> If the moral of this case that you take away is, "Don't interact with milennial women", I think you have a very skewed view of the world.

<comment><USER7> What is the moral to you?

<comment><USER9> Prosecutors essentially have the power to ruin anyone's life capriciously. It's not as though sexual assault is the only sort of crime people are ever falsely accused of.

<comment><USER7> That's a good point, but sexual assault is the perfect fit for greedy prosecutors who want to score a big win before an election.

Sexual assault is the only crime where there is sometimes not even real proof that the crime actually happened. As opposed to a murder or a theft or financial montages. Most of the time all we have is the word of a woman saying it happened. Sexual assault is the only crime where we lower the bar of "beyond reasonable doubt".

<comment><USER9> I don't really agree with you. And even if you're right about sexual assault being uniquely suited to this, what difference does it make whether the alleged victim is a millennial, or even a woman?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think something to think about here is that this is a middle-class white guy. While there are obvious and troubling disparities in the justice system based on both wealth and race, the focus on those sometimes, I think, makes it too easy to think of it as a problem that only affects other people.

</comment><comment><USER10> The prosecutor should really be disbarred. The local bar should be quite embarrassed to have such a high ranking member with no regard for ethics. At this point, Denise Lundsford has gravely undermined public confidence in the legal system.

I hope that Mr. Weiner sues that state for compensation for his house, savings, emotional injury, and anything else his attorney can pile on.

<comment><USER11> The prosecutor and the state rightfully should pay for this injustice. Unfortunately, prosecutors have absolute immunity for tortuous conduct committed in the course of their job. And for weird historical reasons, governments have sovereign immunity and can't be sued in their own courts unless they waive that immunity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Regarding the headline, " _When Prosecutors Believe the Unbelievable_ ": Here's what I wrote, two months ago ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9594806](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9594806)), which applies equally to prosecutors:

" _Lawyers actually "think" nothing. Or rather, what they write and what they argue is what they are paid to write and argue. It has no actual connection to what they actually think - they might not even have actually personally considered the issue, and may never do so. However, what they write is in many ways_ meant _to be taken seriously and reacted to, just like troll posts. Therefore, take care not to be trolled by lawyers._ "

</comment><comment><USER13> "This has been a horrific year in Charlottesville, between the loss of Hannah Graham and the Rolling Stone article about an alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia. There are indeed predators everywhere."

That would be the made-up story about a gang rape at the University of Virginia? Not sure how that can prove anything about predators. All it proves is that some journalists are incompetent.

""A Rape on Campus" is an article by Sabrina Erdely published in the December 2014 issue of Rolling Stone,[1] which has since been debunked and retracted by the publisher. " [1]

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

<comment><USER7> I can't believe the author didn't know the RS article was a scam. I guess the two examples are given to establish a dichotomy between cases where predators were actually involved and those where it's just paranoia, both falling under the umbrella of a "horrific year".

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The real question is why anyone in a position of power is allowed to _believe_ anything at all, instead of always acting rationally and always being ready to rationally justify each and every decision?

<comment><USER15> A rationally justified belief is still a belief.

<comment><USER14> No. It's a _hypothesis_. And a mindset of choosing to act on a basis of a well-grounded hypothesis (and knowing precisely which facts and conclusions lead to considering such a hypothesis in the first place and what will falsify it) is totally different from a mindset of acting upon some _belief_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Near the end of the article, there's this: "Because we elect our prosecutors, there is no chance of apology, and no admission of error."

Can anybody help me understand this? Does it really work this way?

<comment><USER17> If they admit they made a bad decision, they'll be voted out in the next election.

</comment></comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash The takeaway mistake would be to propose technical or legal solutions that would "prevent" something like this from happening again, like adding hoops to jump through or harsh penalizations that could chill legitimate prosecution elsewhere for fear of community retaliation. We have to reexamine our culture of vindictive punishment, winning as an absolute virtue, and the health of the community as a whole. Changing culture is hard, but it's the only aspect where things have lasting change.

<comment><USER18> Simple, arrest and charge the girl for making false accusations, with a minimum of 20 years in prison. Raise a legal fund and sue the hell out of the city, naming the prosecutor as chief in a conspiracy of abuse of power and corruption, also with a minimum of 20 years in prison.

This is nothing but corruption and pure evil, and unless you stamp it out, another poor fellow like this one (who was only interested in being a good citizen to a potentially vulnerable girl; remember Hannah Graham), will get his life destroyed by similarly evil people.

<comment><USER19> Prosecutors are immune from civil suits under a doctrine called "absolute immunity"

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

<comment><USER20> Funny how lawyers are protected from lawyers.

<comment><USER15> Prosecutors, not any lawyer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> We're just resources for arresting cops and prosecuting attorneys, anonymous metrics on performance evaluations and resumes.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is the girl currently being charged? How many years is she gonna spend in prison?

Remember people, "war on women".

<comment><USER22> Why do you think this is because she is a woman? The lion's share of individuals in jail are men, but it still seems like a war on people.

<comment><USER7> I think that the prosecutor was oblivious to all evidences because the "victim" was a woman.

All such cases follow this pattern, woman is the alleged victim, man is convicted, 2 years later details made public regarding disregarded evidence, man released.

That's my perception. Just like people can say "she was not promoted because she's a woman" or "he was pulled over because he's black" I can say "she was believed unconditionally because she's a woman".</comment></comment></comment>


Fix Social Networks' Fantasy Valuation Bullshit. - <AUTHOR> http://buddycloud.com/cms/content/not-future-i-signed-part-one-fixing-social-networks-fantasy-valuation-bullshit

<comment><USER2> Facebook happens to have the best advertising product that ever existed. When I click on your company's group's ad's like button, all my friends see it. No other advertising has ever parodied word of mouth advertising so successfully, and they've hardly begun to take advantage of this fact.

In addition, Facebook has reached the mindshare of the masses in a way that no other internet company has. No other internet company has EVER had my parents and aunts and uncles talking for hours about an internet company though the holidays. It brought talking about the internet in public to the masses.

Facebook will have a 12 figure valuation by this time next year, and Google will lose its current level of dominance in the online ads sector. I'll put my money where my mouth is if someone want's to propose a safe way to go about doing it...

<comment><AUTHOR> How long until the novelty of seeing your friends' "Likes" wears off?

If it's the ultimate advertising platform, where's the money?

<comment><USER3> The money is going to come from, and is already coming from, the fact that advertising on facebook has already been permeating other media and mediums.

On several commercials on TV this last weekend I saw name brands that I knew who, instead of listing their .com, listed simply their facebook URL instead.

This is seen in print now too.

So the scary aspect of this is that advertisers are already seeing facebook as the platform -- and this is due to the ridiculous amount of personal interest data, and further, connections between people and interests. (e.g. the number of people in your network that all like Burton Snowboards etc.)

For me, I refuse to have a facebook account for many many reasons, not the least of which is that I find advertising to be nothing more than Thought Pollution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 If you aren't an investor or otherwise involved in one of the company's with a "bullshit fantasy" valuation, how does the "bullshit fantasy" valuation hurt you at all? The article doesn't seem to answer this question.

If anything I would think that the existence of a "bullshit fantasy" valuation marks a great territory for someone to come in and innovate and steal the market, like Google did in the late 90s.

<comment><USER4> > If you aren't an investor or otherwise involved in one of the company's with > a "bullshit fantasy" valuation, how does the "bullshit fantasy" valuation > hurt you at all?

Gee, I don't know. Maybe it has something to do with the government giving away 700 billion dollars to financial companies burned by rampant bullshit fantasy valuations...

<comment> brown9-2 I should have phrased my question as limited to valuations of tech/software companies only, since that seems to be what we are discussing here.

<comment><USER4> > I should have phrased my question as limited to valuations of tech/software > companies only, since that seems to be what we are discussing here.

OK, then. When the web 1.0 bubble burst in 1999, a whole lot of people lost their money. Bullshit valuations make the stock exchange a snake-oil market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hmm, maybe that's what Diaspora should have been building - an open protocol for exchanging users' 'social' data, meaning you could migrate your FaceFriend account straight onto MyBook without setting anything up, or you could add friends from completely different services into your feed just so long as the same SOA was maintained across companies.

Facebook could do this themselves to stop anyone else ever getting a large share of the market (destroy the barriers for entry).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Remember when Myspace was worth billions?

How quickly the next hot thing comes crashing down: [http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2011/01/10/myspace-to- lay-...](http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2011/01/10/myspace-to-lay- off-550-to-600-employees-tomorrow/)

</comment><comment><USER6> The valuations will fix themselves in time. That's how company valuations work.

<comment><USER4> Or they will crash and burn taking jobs, people and national economies with them. That's also another way they work.

<comment><USER6> No. The world doesn't end when overvalued companies go through corrections or failures. It may seem that way for some people and for some time, but whole economies do not just stop working. And really, we're talking about Twitter and Facebook here, not Enron and Bear Sterns.

<comment><USER4> > The world doesn't end when overvalued companies go through corrections or > failures.

Nobody said anything about the "world ending".

And a few overvalued companies "getting through corrections or failures" has different effects than a whole lot of overvalued companies getting through corrections or failures. The second case is called a "bubble burst".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sorry, but you don't 'sign up for a future' without actively working towards it. Complaining that others haven't done what you wanted doesn't work.

<comment><USER8> Your complaint seems off base.

This is the first of a 3 part series. The third one includes this paragraph:

 _At buddycloud we're working to create an ecosystem of servers and clients that will enable open federated social networking. We're trying to avoid as many of the problems mentioned here by quietly doing things the right way. We are building some nice mobile clients. If you would like to help us please join buddycloud's dev team._

So it seems that they are indeed actively working towards the future that they are talking about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> wccrawford, bb hi Simon)</comment>


Digging out a linux threading regression - <AUTHOR> http://timetobleed.com/digging-out-the-craziest-bug-you-never-heard-about-from-2008-a-linux-threading-regression/

<comment><USER2> Copied from tl;dr: (Emphases in the original)

> This blog post will show how a fix for XFree86 and linuxthreads ended up > causing a major threading regression _about 7 years_ after the fix was > created.

> The regression was in `pthread_create`. Thread creation performed very > slowly as the number of threads in a process increased. _This bug is present > on CentOS 5.3 (and earlier) and other linux distros as well._

Actually, while it merits a (fine) blog post, it is far from being _the_ craziest as the original post title suggests. But what I find really important is surely the following paragraph:

> It is also very possible that this bug impacted research done before _August > 15, 2008_ (in the best case because Linux distro releases are slow) on > building high performance threaded applications.

Research is hard since you may be affected with every possible cause unknown to you.

<comment><USER3> I thought it was pretty crazy that a tweak to prevent XFree86 from breaking on 64bit systems + support for the ELF small code execution model would later result in pthread_create overhead so large that creating threads on a P4 would be as slow as creating threads on a 386.

But, hey, maybe it isn't that crazy to you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Love this bug! <http://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html></comment>


Exponential back off and jitter (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.awsarchitectureblog.com/2015/03/backoff.html <comment><USER2> AWS push this pretty heavily for their SDK too:

[http://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/api- retries.htm...](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/api-retries.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, it is built in to the SDKs. When I did some work with google drive[0], I had to implement it myself (not that it is that complicated, just that it is one more thing that I'd prefer a SDK handle for me).

[0]: [http://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/1450](http://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/1450)</comment></comment>


RightSide Capital- New Seed Fund Will Make 100-200 Investments Per Year - <AUTHOR> http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/02/21/rightside-capital-announces-new-seed-fund-will-make-100-200-investments-per-year/ <comment><USER2> I don't really care about funding that much but I wish them well. I want our capital markets to look more like our mortgage markets: you get your history read by a computer, numbers get crunched, and you get a take-it-or-leave-it offer presented to you by a junior employee of the firm (whose main purpose is to wear a suit to give you the impression that the piece of paper in your hands really is worth $200,000) which you can review and consummate inside of an afternoon.

If this happened, scaling would make "100 to 200 investments per year" look like the financial equivalent of "Our website serves 100 users _per day_! Bwahaha we're in the big leagues now!" Many, many local bank branches write more mortgages than that every year, and if you haven't noticed bank branches outnumber VC firms by, well, an awful lot.

<comment><USER3> But mortgages have an underlying asset that's usually of some value, as do cars, for instance. Getting loans for both is relatively easy, if you have decent credit.

On the other hand, I'm skeptical about this for a few reasons:

\- If it was as easy and plugging your qualifications into a computer, why aren't banks doing it already? There is obviously a high level of risk in a startup, and most investors have many defenses in place to try to assess higher quality startups, many of which are exceptionally frustrating to the entrepreneur (although perhaps justifiably so).

\- As a follow-up point, how are they going to defend against a large number of people who become good at "faking" a startup? If you're investing $20k, what's to stop someone hungry for cash from outsourcing a prototype and applying? Since they never meet in person, I'd think it would become exceptionally difficult to distinguish between the legit companies and those legitimately good at faking it.

\- As has been repeated many times, the most valuable part of YC isn't the money, it's the mentoring. Without mentoring, it's "just money". If you're just looking for money, family & friends of family are a pretty decent place to start. It's easy to think that if you just had money, you'd be able to bring the company to the next level, but oftentimes the reality is that you need help to get there. This model would seem to encourage people to take the money, lock themselves up, and plug away, which really isn't the right approach.

<comment><USER4> Those are moot points

What does mentoring mean? education that hasn't been formalized yet

People gaming the system by outsourcing prototypes? sounds like a good an entrepreneur

Collateral requirements? most bank lending apart from mortgages is uncollaterilized, even mortgages are not fully collaterized, you can default and the bank wouldn't recoup their full loan amount by selling the house.

Banks routinely deal with huge amounts of risk - trading stocks and bonds. Startups would just be a new asset class to exploit for them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This fund, and Graham's Y-Combinator, both follow the advice that Nassim Taleb gives for investing in an "extremistan" world of fat tails - many small investments, instead of a few larger ones. He argues that the profit from the few very successful investments will swamp the losses from the unsuccessful ones.

See <http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2007/04/taleb_on_black.html>

</comment><comment><USER6> Capital is one of the things that should have been democratized by computers and the internet but was not. Online stock brokers democratized the other side of it - investing, but nothing happened on the fund-raising part yet. This seems to be about to change.

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting. It's worked for Ron Conway, though maybe it only works when you have very high quality deal flow.

I couldn't get any sense of the terms with a cursory glance. How much do they invest? How much do they want for their investment?</comment>


Bacteria in clouds - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud#Bacteria_in_clouds

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/pf/64122879.html>

</comment><comment><USER2> If you hadn't posted the national geographic link as well, I would have thought it was an April fools joke.

<comment><AUTHOR> To be honest, I thought that too before seeing the link. I still have to say I found this today, which is April 1st, so I'd like to hear from someone else if this is true or not.

Edit: although it's unlikely that the link is fake.</comment></comment>


WikiReader - $99 E-ink offline Wikipedia reader that runs on 2 AAAs - <AUTHOR> http://thewikireader.com/index.html

<comment><USER2> Not sure how this would compete with other mobile devices. disconnected state? battery life? unifunction?

<comment><USER3> On the site there is info that batterylife is 1 year on "normal usage", whatever it means.

If i was to buy it, it would be as a cheap ebook reader. But only if it will allow reading pdfs with images.

<comment><USER4> It seems rather small for reading ebooks. And then 99$ isn't cheap, compared to the kindle.

<comment><USER5> Yes - forget reading PDFs. I have a (fairly huge) Kindle DX and it's barely adequate for most PDFs, with their small-ass type.

That said, it doesn't seem to say anything about how it will sync.

If it's clever, I'll probably get one for my husband.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The update mechanism seems to imply a 4GB+ download each time. Surely there's a way to apply patches?

<comment><USER7> Since there's probably a heavy compression used and the modifications happen all over the wikipedia, I don't think there is a way. The only thing they could probably do is to split the articles in several categories and allow to update them separately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's nice. But just wikipedia doesn't sound GREAT. Maybe project Gutenberg stuff will be a good addition. I believe that the device has space to grow in.

And nice to see openmoko in action.

<comment><USER9> And it's text only too. No images from WP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> OMG it's the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy!

</comment><comment><USER11> No WikiMedia images? That's a shame. I guess that including images for every article would suck up a lot of space and wouldn't work well on an eInk black and white display anyway, but a lot of the more useful information on Wikipedia is presented in chart and graph format.

</comment><comment><USER12> Could be a great device for schools–even more so if, as chanux suggested, they added Proj. Gutenbuerg stuff.

Heck, I'd even consider buying 10 of them for my daughters' private school (they have no computer lab).

On the other hand, linux netbooks are < $200 now.

<comment><USER13> Where do you get Linux netbooks for <$200? New?

<comment><USER12> [http://www.google.com/products?q=netbook&oe=utf-8&hl...](http://www.google.com/products?q=netbook&oe=utf-8&hl=en&price1=150.00&price2=200.00&);

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cute, but an iPod Touch is cuter.

</comment><comment><USER9> there's a video of it in action here [http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/10/13/wikireader-packs-all- of...](http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/10/13/wikireader-packs-all-of-wikipedia- in-a-power-sipping-portable/) maybe it is real after all ;)

Also photos here [http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/13/openmoko-branches-out- wit...](http://www.engadget.com/2009/10/13/openmoko-branches-out-with- new-99-wikireader-device/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Alternatively you could get a Zipit for 40$ and put Linux on it.

<comment><USER15> But then you're not the target audience of the device.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> dupe:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=880140>

<comment><USER8> My experience is that I can't post a duplicate link on HN. :-S

<comment><USER16> It looks like the dupe checker isn't smart enough to check <http://[www.]something[/][index.html][#somethingelse]>

(cue 100's of duplicate submissions of highly valued posts from the past ;) )

That shouldn't be too hard to implement

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm absolutely astonished that this was produced by the previously putrescent OpenMoko. _Astonished!_</comment>


I heard the funniest joke today...3D TV - <AUTHOR> http://eric.esft.com/blog_post.php?bid=19

<comment><USER2> So he tried out a different technology when he was a kid, and got a headache, so he's never happy to try any future technology.

I don't think that's the kind of person I want to take advice from.

<comment><AUTHOR> The bit about me getting a headache when I was a kid was for comedic purposes only. Apparently it wasn't funny, so I apologize. I'll stick to my day job and I promise to never crack a joke in one of my blog posts ever again

Focus in on the latter part of my article and you'll (hopefully) understand the underlying message. Sounds like you read one paragraph and then left this snarky comment. I don't think that you're the kind of person I would want to take advice about my blogs from ;)

<comment><USER2> I read the whole thing. The rest of it continues to say nothing about 3D TV.

It merely says that this is a conspiracy to sell us new TVs because otherwise the TVs we already have will not need to be replaced, because they do everything we need.

As I actively like 3D, when it's done well, I find that pretty silly. People who also like 3D will buy 3D TVs when they get cheap enough, those that don't won't. Making out that nobody actually likes 3D seems a tad silly.

<comment><AUTHOR> LOL "conspiracy". My blog posts are about technology, business, and marketing, not conspiracy theories. I would call it a marketing gimmick. By the way, did you hear that Apollo never went to the moon!?!?! The senile lady next door told me that along with the true identity of JFK's assassin. Don't ask who it is; you have to be a blood oath conspiracy buff.

Any regular HDTV can function as a "3D TV". Invest a couple hundred bucks into a few pairs of magical glasses instead of draining a couple grand into a glasses-less 3D TV.

That makes more (financial) sense to me...IF I were a consumer enthralled by 3D TV. Which, based on my article, I would assume I am not.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Reasons Not to Use Hadoop for Analytics - <AUTHOR> http://www.quantivo.com/blog/top-5-reasons-not-use-hadoop-analytics

<comment><USER2> Hopefully, anyone pondering a new project would investigate Hadoop (or any other tool) before choosing it. Not built for ad hoc queries? Yeah, that's fairly open. Requires programming ability? Well, yes, that's the intent: it's not a studio-type environment. You need staff to keep it running? If you have thousands of nodes and need them, then you probably should already have the resources for an engineer or two.

Maybe I'm missing something, but it sounds like the author tried to fit a tool to his needs rather than choosing a tool that already does so.

<comment><AUTHOR> A mistake many groups tend to make.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hadoop is good at what it's designed for (data processing parallelization built by programmers) and bad at what it's not (ad hoc queries by people who are not programmers).

Move along here folks, nothing to see here.

<comment><USER4> I'd constrain the description of what it's good at even further. The kind of data processing parallelization it's designed to support is map/reduce. That's only one out of a wide array of possible ways to organize a distributed processing job, and not all tasks are well-suited to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I work at Quantivo and we didn't post this but appreciate the shout out. Joe added a technical whitepaper written by another Quantivo staffer to his blog post, check it out.

</comment><comment><USER6> What does ad-hoc queries on extremely large datasets easily and in a reasonable amount of time?

<comment><USER7> Google BigQuery (disclaimer: I work on the BigQuery team): <https://developers.google.com/bigquery/>

<comment><USER5> Blog post from my brother (we both work at Quantivo) on BigQuery: [http://www.quantivo.com/blog/3-big-technical-limitations- goo...](http://www.quantivo.com/blog/3-big-technical-limitations-googles- bigquery).

<comment><USER7> This blog post would be more compelling if it made a case for how Quantivo avoids these BigQuery "limitations." Or if it were possible to find any technical detail about Quantivo's architecture without having to give out personal information first ([http://www.quantivo.com/resources/wp-behavior- analytics-tech...](http://www.quantivo.com/resources/wp-behavior-analytics- tech-intro)).

BigQuery is based on Dremel, which is an open book: <http://research.google.com/pubs/pub36632.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sounds like an ad for Quantivo. You can pry MapReduce out of my cold, dead hands.</comment>


Peloton Confidentially Files Statement for Proposed IPO - <AUTHOR> https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/peloton-announces-confidential-submission-of-draft-registration-statement-for-proposed-initial-public-offering-300862485.html <comment><USER2> When I see Peloton now, I always think of this twitter thread that critiques their adverts

[https://twitter.com/clueheywood/status/1089699762331217920](https://twitter.com/clueheywood/status/1089699762331217920)

<comment><USER3> My sides. I have friends working there that have tried getting me to apply. Glassdoor reviews indicated their backend interview is unnecessarily difficult and I have little faith in their business model. How many people are willing to spend thousands on an exercise bike? Let alone one that requires a $40/month subscription? It feels the same as Blue Apron - the market is people rich and lazy enough that don't want do the first half of the work (go to the gym or the grocery store) but still want to do the hard part (actually cook and exercise).

<comment><USER4> This bike is for people that don't want to go to a gym and/or don't have lots of time to leave the house on a daily basis. You can also finance the bike so the hit isn't so bad. Additionally, there's no extra charge for multiple accounts (up to 10), so if everyone in the house uses it, the cost makes more sense.

I work out of home and this is the only way I get consistent exercise. My fitness has gone up tremendously as has my quality of life. It's all about what motivates you to take your health seriously... this bike does it for me and a lot of other people. It's really hard to put a price on that.

<comment><USER5> Semi-related, I just got a $400 Oculus Quest and burned 1900 calories playing Beat Saber yesterday (as calculated by Apple Watch's "Other" workout type).

Much cheaper purchase and fun enough that I can enjoy playing it for hours a day. I have an (admittedly shitty) exercise bike, and will probably be using that a lot less now.

If anyone's looking for a home fitness gadget, give that a look. I'm told BoxVR is a better workout than Beat Saber but I haven't bought that yet.

<comment><USER6> >I just got a $400 Oculus Quest and burned 1900 calories playing Beat Saber

That's an absurd claim by your apple watch. An hour of expert level beat saber is closer to 360 calories.

<comment><USER5> I have a hunch that it's overestimating because you wave your arms around a lot, but 360 seems like an underestimate. Average heart rate in 70% to 80% range, and I'll have higher than average calorie expenditure because I'm overweight.

EDIT - did a comparison against Runner's World's calorie burn calculator, and the calories/hour burn rate lines up with a leisurely 11:30 minutes/mile pace based on my weight.

It honestly seems about right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A friend of mine got a Peloton, and I as a good friend razzed him about it a couple times. Like a $2k stationary bike, come on!

But now I get it. He is a busy professional who would not always have time to go to the gym. He is also a bit of a special case as he legally blind and could walk fast to exercise but could never ride a regular bike. This being said he has lost a decent amount of weight.

Part of it is the instructors, they do a good job of making you feel connected to the Peloton community. You see their friendly faces (who of course are all good looking) every day encouraging you . The instructors get followed on social platforms and there are active FB groups where users talk about their own lives and trade/sell Peloton gear. I half joke it is like a good cult.

He has a few friends with accounts and they use his bike and chip in for the monthly fee. This lead to one couple to eventually buy their own.

As a side note, the music lawsuit they are facing is a big deal, it is a major part the experience. It doesn't work without the music. So they have to settle that.

Would I buy the bike for $2k+? No. but I can see why people do. This isn't Juiceroo.

<comment><USER8> $2k isn't absurt for an exercise bike once you think about it. These are the same people who buy a $10,000 bike for recreational riding, remember.

You are dead on with the point about the instructors. My wife hated biking but they have Pelotons in her work gym, and she loves them, and talks about the instructors like they are real people.

People are fitness crazy right now. Crossfit gyms are $100-200 a month, Rogue has whole website of fitness equipment, you could easily spend $4,000 outfitting your house. And how many of us own a $600 blender?

<comment><USER9> _talks about the instructors like they are real people_

That's because they are real people! Working people who are doing a job, not actual friends of course. But still: real living, breathing, actual human beings.

Although I do wonder if buried somewhere in the business plan is the expectation of replacing them with AI-equivalents that don't cost as much & don't require pesky things like holidays or sick pay.

<comment><USER10> Probably what they mean is that she has a parasocial relationship[0] with the instructors i.e. she knows the instructor but the instructor does not know her.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Peloton has better legs than most, but the reality is that every fitness craze has eventually died whether it's equipment (eg Bowflex) or method (eg Tae Bo). It's just human nature, this and diet (eh Atkins) aren't sustainable things with how most people are wired. Peloton will fade one day just like all the others before it as people inevitably get bored with it and doing it becomes a drag.

<comment><USER12> The LCHF diet is not only sustainable, it has changed the lives of many people I know, including people who claim it has improved their mental states, emotional states, chronic pain, and weight gain.

I myself was pre-diabetic from the standard western diet of 2000kcal+ daily refined carbohydrates, and have pulled back from the brink by going LCHF.

Don't dismiss it without a little bit of experience. It's a growing movement, and it isn't a fad. It has provided real results and real improvement to many, many people, and has spawned dozens or hundreds of successful small businesses.

<comment><USER13> I read "How Not to Die" recently. By LCHF, are you referring to an "Atkins" diet of sorts? High meat/animal fats, vegetables, low carb, low fruit?

I'd be interested in any sources that support that diet for anything other than weight loss - I was under the impression it led to pretty poor health outcomes (apart from bmi/diabetes management)

<comment><USER14> I recommend taking a look at how ketosis, and the utilization of ketones as an energy source for the brain, affects cognition for more on potential benefits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Incredible marketing from Peloton and they builds on the Spinning/Indoor cycling trend that SoulCycle and FlyWheel started.

But I can't help but think a lot of people would be better off with a real bike, a smart turbo trainer and an iPad to access a variety of training programs (i.e. Zwift TrainerRoad). Less lock in, the ability to ride outside, and all possible for a similar price to Peloton bike.

As a cyclist I've also heard the power-meter readings from Peloton aren't as accurate as those from a Wahoo or Tacx turbo trainer.

Still congratulations to Peloton on the success and getting so many people exercising at home.

<comment><USER16> Agree regarding preferring Zwift and a turbo but the sort of setup you describe seems to appeal to cyclists whereas the Peloton seems to appeal to the spin class crowd, many of who would never consider riding outside. The market is weirdly bifurcated between the two without a ton of overlap.

<comment><USER3> > seems to appeal to the spin class crowd

This is the reason I don't see this as a good long term investment. The market seems to be people who are already really into spin classes and pay the premiums they demand. To them, having their own equipment and a lower monthly fee will seem like a good deal. But your average gym-goer won't be willing to drop thousands upfront and more per month just on a nice exercise bike.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> We have a Peloton bike. We used to be Flywheel members, at $300/mo, and that's pretty pricy. The bike pays for itself quickly if that's what you're replacing.

The class content is good. It's available anytime. Our friends have one so we can do rides together. And we're not paying $300/mo to Flywheel anymore.

Unfortunately we don't have a solarium to put it in, so we are really rubes.

</comment><comment><USER18> They've executed so we'll on selling a $2000 exercise bike that locks you into their subscription content.

Anyone who has bought one can comment on what the alternatives we're when you purchased? The way they position the financing makes it feel like a monthly membership fee to a gym or something.

<comment><USER19> I'm using the Peloton iPad app without their bike and loving it so far. All you need is any decent spin bike ($200-$600)[0], a bluetooth cadence [1] and heart rate sensor ($90)[2], plus their cheaper $20/mo app and you get most of the experience at a reasonable cost. You don't get the output number and can't compete on the leaderboard, but that's fine for me.

[0] I went with: [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07FCJH59R/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07FCJH59R/)

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Wahoo-Cycling-Cadence-Sensor- Bluetoot...](https://www.amazon.com/Wahoo-Cycling-Cadence-Sensor- Bluetooth/dp/B00L9XNFPY/)

[2] [https://www.amazon.com/Wahoo-TICKR-Heart-Monitor- Bluetooth/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Wahoo-TICKR-Heart-Monitor- Bluetooth/dp/B00INQVYZ8)

<comment><USER20> I use a high-quality spin bike at the gym with my iPhone clipped on. I kick my own ass quite fine without cadence or heart rate info. And I don't pay Peloton b/c I recorded a dozen or so classes when I had a subscription and stream them from my own server.

I'm not their target customer but I do really enjoy the product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Would highly suggest listening to the "How I built This" podcast[1] with the peleton founder John Foley, really great story with usual tech themes like doing things that don't scale and finding a niche but loyal customer base and expanding organically.

[1] [https://play.google.com/music/m/Dmjr6m5i4h3j6gaysgjd47ryhci?...](https://play.google.com/music/m/Dmjr6m5i4h3j6gaysgjd47ryhci?t=Live_Episode_Peloton_John_Foley- How_I_Built_This_with_Guy_Raz)

<comment><USER22> I was shocked at how successful he described their mall marketing!

Rough quote from when I listened a week or two ago:

"If I could get someone to ride the bike, there was about a 50% chance I could get them to buy it"

Also rough quote:

"People would ask what would happen if we went out of business. Since it was a subscription, there was an annuity value in keeping the platform going. Whoever ended up with our assets after a bankruptcy could use those revenues to spin up an instance of AWS to host the videos. I had a whole line ready to go about it."

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Peloton's business model is breathtakingly good, but I wonder about the size of their TAM and their ability to have sustained, multiplicative growth in the future.

First, the business model. They sell you a $2000+ bike, which includes a year of live classes with some of the best spin instructors in the world. Afterwards, you pay for a $40/month subscription in perpetuity to make your $2000 investment more than a boring (although very high quality) stationary bike. Whether you're hooked on the (excellent) service or not, if you're the kind of person who's willing to drop $2000 on a bike, you're very, very likely to be the kind of person who's willing to pay _just_ $40/month to make sure your bike retains its value (i.e., access to live classes), even if you're not using it that much. Doesn't hurt that in-person spin classes regularly cost $30-40 for a single class.

I imagine Peloton's subscription churn is extremely low. This is excellent, and I'm jealous.

But, growth.

How big is the market of people who are willing to spend $2000 on and have space for an indoor bike? What happens when Peloton captures nearly all the market? What happens when a lower-priced version of Peloton comes in and eats their lunch at the "bottom end" (so to speak) of it?

Once you've effectively exhausted the market for selling new bikes (when new customer acquisition slows), you've got three options: find a new market, sell new things to your existing customers, or charge them more for the same things.

Peloton's already doing the first two. They're trying to show investors that they can cross-sell and/or establish new markets: they sell a $4000 treadmill. (My theory about the treadmill is that nearly 100% of its purpose is to show the market that cross-sell is possible — I have doubts about whether they're selling). I have extreme doubts about the viability of this. I mean, how many workout machines are you going to put in your house? Rough estimate: this segment is no more than 10% of Peloton's existing customer base.

In addition to all this, they could (obviously) also raise prices, but at $50-60/month for the subscription, you start to put those great churn numbers at risk.

Either way, really interested to see what they do.

<comment><USER24> I am asking this in earnest: what makes a spin instructor a "best-in-the- world" instructor? I can see how an instructor for e.g. one of those classes where you do workouts with a weighted bar might have better techniques or routines than another, but from my naive perspective, it seems like a spin instructor can just tell you to pedal faster or slower. But I'm not just trying to dig at them! I really am curious. I'm more of a "get outside" type of person, so I don't know a lot about this sort of thing.

<comment><USER23> They're entertainers and motivators.

They know exactly what to say and when to say it to help you push hard at times when you're feeling ready to give up (at scale — they can't see you if you're not in the studio). They choose fun, energetic songs to keep you motivated throughout. They order their playlists in such a way that you push yourself just past your limit and have just enough time to rest.

Being a good instructor is like being a good comedian or even stage actor, where you're feeling the energy of the audience and optimizing for a given outcome. In comedy, it's laughs. In fitness, it's energy. In either case, people come back wanting more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Here's where the remote trainer concept first appeared.[1] Orwell's "1984".

"6079 Smith W! Yes, you! Bend over! You're not trying!"

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCfW6HFP5cI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCfW6HFP5cI)

</comment><comment><USER26> We haven't bought the $2k bike yet, but did roll our own Peloton with a lower- end bike and their $11/month streaming subscription watched on an iPad. It gets you most of the value without the pricey bike, though you miss out on the gamification part of their platform. Both my wife and I are users - and may eventually jump in for the integrated solution. It's a pretty well done offering, particularly once you find a trainer you like with a good mix of music and class structure.

<comment><USER27> I'm a bike owner, but I've done this as an alternative to the $4k (!) treadmill. I have a ~$900 treadmill with a tablet in place of the screen. It's not anywhere near as nice and you miss out on the leaderboard (a great motivator to push yourself), but I find it's a "good enough" option for my non-riding workouts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I really struggle as a potential investor in this (after IPO).

The business is real and lucrative and profitable. This is already so much better than say Uber. But the equities market demands perpetual growth and I'm not seeing enough audience for this in the future, who have not already bought it. In other words I feel it would be a very nice private company but it might struggle a bit as a public one.

<comment><USER29> What if the plan includes expanding to new markets, say China or Europe or even West coast? When I used Peloton in a hotel at late night pacific time, it did not have anything live going on until 2am or something. That made it less attractive as an owl type person.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Not to shill for Peloton (I don't have one), but the success of SoulCycle and Barry's Bootcamp show that there's appetite for $32-$35/class "boutique" fitness classes. If you would otherwise go to either/or 1x-2x/week then the math does work in Peloton's favor when you factor in the class + transportation to/from + removing temptation of buying a $10 smoothie too + any "add-ons" you'd otherwise buy (e.g. water).

<comment><USER31> Both are in person, not remote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> These types of companies are really interesting to me, I had no idea they've raised close to $1B over 5 rounds/7 years though[1]! Curious what they've needed that for, I would presume they've sold quite a few of these plus the whole subscription model.

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

</comment><comment><USER33> Why would they do a press release for a confidential filing?

<comment><USER34> To signal the action and intent to go public.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> What factors into a company's decision to file confidentially or not?</comment>


Ask HN: Good books/blogs for improving Email skills? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Can you clarify that headline a bit?</comment>


Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritual_of_the_Calling_of_an_Engineer <comment><AUTHOR> I recently finished my Engineering degree in Canada, and while I always knew about the iron ring I had no idea the ceremony itself was authored by Rudyard Kipling (The Jungle Book).</comment>


Europe's Dependence on the U.S. Was All Part of the Plan (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/07/15/trump-nato-europe-history-dependence-219011 <comment><USER2> Suggest you read The Accidental Superpower for why this structure is now breaking down.</comment>


Ask HN: Is free college an existential threat to ISA-funded schools? - <AUTHOR> Thinking from the perspective of an ISA funded school like Lambda, would free college effectively destroy, or at least severely limit the growth potential, of those types of schools? <comment><USER2> Theoretically, free colleges would eliminate 90% of the colleges. Only the high end, Ivy League, and exclusive colleges would be able to survive as private paid colleges. There wouldn't be much of a point to cost saving or tuition sharing colleges if state run colleges were free.

</comment><comment><USER3> It depends on how free college is implemented. If it's a voucher system, where students get a certain amount to spend, the ISA night go away if the voucher covers the full cost of education. Otherwise, an ISA could still be used to cover the excess funds.

If the money goes directly to the institution, and the price exposed to students is always $0, the ISA goes away completely.

Regardless of how we implement free college, there will most likely not be a restriction on the existence of programs that are not free. These programs may have a drastically smaller market, but a market of some sort may still exist. This is primarily due to [my guesstimation] that we simply don't have enough seats and beds to cover every high school student going to college.</comment>


Designing for Informavores, or, Why Users Behave Like Animals Online - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/ <comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000882.html>

Apologies for submitting a top-level domain...</comment>


Apple AirTunes private key extracted - <AUTHOR> http://www.mafipulation.org/blagoblig/2011/04/08#shairport Now that the AirTunes private key is known, it could allow for 3rd party software to act like AirTunes devices. If this for example would be implemented in XBMC, Plex, Boxee etc you could send audio from your IOS device straight to XBMC using IOS built-in Airplay support. <comment><USER2> Hah, awesome. Many years ago, I patched iTunes to use my own public key, so I could stream to an AirTunes server I ran on another machine. I had intended to pull the firmware off the Airport Express, but didn't have the hardware skills at the time. It's awesome to see this happen.

</comment><comment><USER3> Could someone explain the implications of this?

edit: it looks like it would allow another software to show up as an Airport Express in iTunes, thus becoming the potential target of streaming audio over WiFi from iTunes. But am I right?

<comment><USER4> The Airport Express public key was previously known, which allowed anyone to write a program to stream audio to an Apple Airport Express. Now that the private key is known, anyone can write a program to receive audio from iTunes, or from another program that sends to Airport Express.

This means you will be able to easily send audio to other rooms in your house with something like XBMC running on a PC, nettop, or netbook.

edit: Just to clarify - previously you could do this:

iTunes -- stream to --> Apple Airport Express

3rd party software -- stream to --> Apple Airport Express

Now you can do this:

iTunes -- stream to --> 3rd party software/hardware

<comment><USER5> Speculation: If iTunes plays the role of the Fairplay DRM decoder and relied on the channel between iTunes and the Airplay device being encrypted to secure content would it now be possible to use the private key to masquerade as a capable Airplay device and dump a the stream pure and DRM free? Would this work for video enabled Airplay devices?

If so, Apple and this hacker are about to be lawyered hard by the MPAA.

<comment><USER6> Airport Express only streams audio out (no movies/tv/video), so it would be the RIAA, not the MPAA.

<comment><USER7> Apple TVs work similarly now for video streamed from iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch devices since iOS 4.2. Might they use the same private key?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> ASCII key, from the source: <http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=RFeUcdXd>

<comment><USER9> The whole source: <http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=mXVK93sY> (edit: updated with 0.03)

<comment><USER10> Already out of date - 0.03 fixes IPv6. Please, get it from the site (if it hasn't been Slashdotted or something yet :/)

<comment><USER9> The first time I tried it was slashdotted so I pastebin'd. Thank you for your work!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What are the legal implications of selling a small unit that acts as an airport express, then? And what if you didn't ship the key, but it was obvious to users where to get it?

<comment><USER12> "Wink wink" has been long dealt with in law. If it's a device that is useless without the key, it'd wind up as a distinction without a difference if Apple really chased this down rather than hiring the devs. "Substantial non- infringing use" is the bar to clear in patent terms.

<comment><USER13> Except, streaming music you own to a computer you own is legal regardless of whether or not some piece of propietary software you use has a private key that you aren't supposed to know. The key is out. Using it for anything is legal.

<comment><USER14> Uh, I'm not so sure about that. The DMCA makes circumventing a copyright protection measure illegal unless you fall into one of the very narrow exemptions.

<comment><USER13> How is this circumventing a copyright protection measure?

This is like opening the hood of a car that requires a key that the manufacturer will only give to authorized dealers. If you figure out how to open the hood, the government is not going to stop you from messing around with the stuff in your car. It's yours, after all.

Here's what's happening here. Apple wants you to buy Apple hardware, so they cripple iTunes such that it will only speak with devices that know a secret password. Now, with the secret out, it will talk to any device.

This has absolutely nothing to do with copyright infringement.

<comment><USER14> _This is like opening the hood of a car that requires a key that the manufacturer will only give to authorized dealers._

Yes, that's exactly what it's like. Indeed, auto manufacturers have already been abusing the DMCA to prevent independent repair shops from accessing computer diagnostic codes.

<https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/05/right-repair-law-pro> (The bill mentioned in that article that would have addressed this died in committee, by the way)

<comment><USER15> Wow. That's nasty on the auto makers' part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I know the OP probably isn't reading this, but I'd be curious to know what OS the Airport Express runs.

I always wondered. My guess is maybe a proprietary RTOS to perform its simple functions?

Back in the day I figured it'd make a great OpenWRT Linux box, although now boxes with those features/size/price-point are much more common.

<comment><USER16> I asked the OP and they responded to me offline and confirmed vxWorks.

<comment><USER17> Hadn't heard of vxWorks before. Did a quick googling, it's been used in a huge array of products: Boeing aircraft, industrial robots, Apache attack helicopters, BMW iDrive, Linksys routers, even spacecraft!

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VxWorks#Notable_products_using_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VxWorks#Notable_products_using_VxWorks)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Works great! Even supports multiple audio streams!

For Debian/Ubuntu users, I had to do a few things to get it to compile: 1\. sudo apt-get install libcrypt-openssl-rsa-perl libao2 libao-dev 2\. comment out line 642 in hairtunes.c 3\. 'make'

<comment><USER10> Fixed the code bug in 0.02, and added this to the documentation. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder if people will get their IPs subpoenaed for looking at that link, as was the case with the Sony keys?

<comment><USER14> I'm pretty sure Sony's goal there was to gather information to support their argument that a California court is the right venue and generally to intimidate geohot. Not to sue anyone who merely viewed the page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is awesome! I know many have tried before, but have not been successful.

Also, I thought i would put this out there: As with the creation of the new AirPlay protocol, the RAOP (AirTunes) protocol was also changed (to support album art and other metadata, I assume). My proof of this lies in the Apple TV. If you analyze network traffic between iTunes and the ATV's airtunesd daemon, you can see that the initial pairing does not have the 'rsaaeskey' field but instead a 'fpaeskey' field. So instead of a RSA public/private scheme, it uses something else to encrypt the session keys. I found this out when trying to reverse the airtunesd binary, trying to get the key that way. :P

</comment><comment><USER21> So, are there no alternatives to embedding a single private key across multiple hardware devices?

<comment><USER22> You could store the key in a TPM, which would at least require carefully applied stong acids and an electron microscope to dump them.

<comment><USER21> Interesting. So why didn't they use a TMP? Cost savings? International distribution constraints? (I see TPMs are illegal in China -<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Platform_Module.>) It is somewhat peculiar given Apple's known DRM policies.

<comment><USER23> Probably cost and lack of effort. Just look at the iTunes / App Store DRM. It can be removed quite easily, it's mostly there for deterrence. As soon as Apple could, they dropped DRM on iTunes audio files by switching to iTunes Plus (and before that, you could burn the songs to a CD and import it back).

You'll find a quite different story when Palm made the Pre compatible with iTunes through reverse engineering. The certainly didn't want non-Apple devices in the iTunes ecosystem and spent quite some effort to put a stop to that, even though it had nothing to do with DRM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The source code is very cool. I'd encourage everyone to skim through it.

<comment><USER25> Could you provide a mirror? The link seems to be dead.

<comment><USER26> I uploaded it to Github here in case anyone wants to hack on it: <https://github.com/bbhoss/shairport>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is very cool. Do you know if this would work with AirPlay video streaming as well as audio? I can imagine it would be pretty cool to display video on any PC monitor.

<comment><USER3> Is AirPlay encrypting streams though? There are a few apps that can playback AirPlay videos. Recently, I started to use a script that made Plex show up as an AirPlay target and it worked fine.

edit: NB: I'm not sure "encrypting" is the right word here… do not hesitate to correct me

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure - I've heard of an Android app that can send video to an AppleTV, but I haven't heard of an app that can receive video from an iOS device. If you know of one, I'd appreciate a link.

<comment><USER3> AirPlayer from Erica Sadun would work: <http://ericasadun.com/ftp/AirPlay/>

However, she mentions that you can't stream music to AirPlayer due to RAOP: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_Audio_Output_Protocol>

which, I guess is not true anymore due to the parent link :)

But it does seem to show that iTunes was indeed checking keys before sending to an Airport Express, but that AirPlay (for video) wasn't affected. As far as I know, AirPlay is not much more than HTTP Live Streaming.

Also of interest in the same area (though this is an iOS app, so could technically include some key checking without knowing it): <https://github.com/nto/AirView>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> A couple years ago I unsuccessfully tried to extract the keys from the AppleTV version of OS X (which provides the same functionality).

The binaries were heavily obfuscated, and I couldn't get the IDA Pro remote to run on the AppleTV, nor could I port the binaries to run on normal OS X. Gave up after a week or so. I figured that some pro reverser would get the keys eventually that way, but I never expected that anyone would find success cracking open an Airport Express!

<comment><USER28> cool story bro

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> There have been a number of manufacturers implementing 'airplay' devices that support being airtunes speakers but it's great to see this making it possible to do with open source. It would be nice to see airtunes added to some of the cheap linux wall warts on the market.

</comment><comment><USER30> Has someone tried it and was able to play something?

I tried it and iTunes lists it as a device but I cannot activate it in iTunes (if I select it, it immediately unselects itself). From the console output, I see that iTunes even does not try to connect to it (to TCP Port 5000).

I am currently on a Mac so I needed to do some porting (<https://github.com/albertz/shairport/>) but I think this shouldn't have an impact on the behavior I am getting.

<comment><USER31> Author states this is broken on a Mac.

<comment><USER30> That is why I have patched it. For example, it uses `dns-sd` instead of `avahi-publish-service`. Registering seems to work, at least iTunes shows it. But there is no single connection attempt, so everything else (all the C-code etc.) is anyway unrelated because it doesn't even get there.

Maybe it refuses to connect because it is the same (localhost) machine? I don't have another machine at hand to try out right now.

<comment><USER6> Is your firewall blocking the port?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> For those who might not know this, you can stream the audio from one mac to another.

[http://www.macgeekery.com/tips/configuration/playing_live_au...](http://www.macgeekery.com/tips/configuration/playing_live_audio_on_another_mac)

I use it to move music streams to the other computers in the house.

</comment><comment><USER33> Does Apple use the same protocol for streaming video to an Apple TV? If so, is the key from an Apple TV needed to emulate a video endpoint, or is just some tweaking required (presumably to the MDNS service data) to identify it as video-enabled?

<comment><USER34> Video is seemingly not encrypted, only pure audio streams required the key. See Airplayer (<http://ericasadun.com/ftp/AirPlay/>) and apparently Airfoil Video Player (<http://www.rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/mac/>) for example.

<comment><USER20> Video is also an entirely different protocol.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> wasn't this done before, years ago, by Jon Lech Johansen? he wrote justeport - <http://nanocr.eu/software/justeport/> (and i rewrote that in java as jjuste, but no longer have the code...)

here are the keys he found - <http://nanocr.eu/2004/08/11/reversing-airtunes/> and <http://nanocr.eu/sw/justeport/itunesrsakeys.txt>

<comment><USER36> Johansen found the public keys to allow you to stream music to an Airport Express... now we are talking about the private key, which lets you emulate an Airport Express with any hardware that is capable.

<comment><USER35> ah! thanks! (the idea that someone had to "find" the public keys seems a bit odd, but i guess it was obfuscated?)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Totally want to try this, but my Snow Leopard won't install Crypt::OpenSSL::RSA via cpan, any ideas? <http://pastie.org/1783565>

<comment><USER38> Try this:

ARCHFLAGS="-arch i386 -arch x86_64" perl -MCPAN -e 'install Crypt::OpenSSL::RSA'

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> i am trying to use the hairport (on apple tv1 running ubuntu hardy)... i am getting the following error:

atv@appletv-ubuntu:~/scripts/bbhoss-shairport-31cf954$ make gcc hairtunes.c alac.c -D__i386 -lm `pkg-config --cflags --libs ao openssl` -o hairtunes hairtunes.c: In function âinit_outputâ: hairtunes.c:642: error: âao_sample_formatâ has no member named âmatrixâ

Could someone help me with this matter :) ?

</comment><comment><USER40> awesome!, now only if we can get forked-daapd to show up under home sharing we'd be set!

</comment><comment><USER41> I wonder if another aacs controversy is going to rise.</comment>


Why Is Snowplowing Still a Thing? – Motherboard - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qvw7kd/why-is-snowplowing-still-a-thing-heated-pavement-holland-reykjavik?utm_source=mbtwitter <comment><USER2> The Motherboard article has this written:

> Check out this paper from researchers at Iowa State University for a deep > dive into the CO2 footprint of heated pavement versus traditional snow > removal. Spoiler: Heated pavement is better, even when heating systems are > powered by coal.

This got me curious given how counter-intuitive it seemed. I opened the paper itself ( [https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&...](https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&context=ccee_conf) ) and did a string search of "maintenance" and found this gem:

> METHODOLOGY AND DATA SOURCE This study only considers the operation phases > of both traditional and heated pavement snow removal systems, which means > that construction, maintenance, and rehabilitation phases are not included > in the system boundaries

So basically they ignore the costs in building and then maintaining the system. Also the paper seems to be highly focused on airports. Presumably this simplifies the problem greatly.

Regardless the author of the article seems to have found the title of a paper and then whipped up an article without every really thinking about things.

Ignoring all that, it is of course true that salt is very damaging to both infrastructure and the environment. Personally I really like how Sweden does it (at least Stockholm and other relatively dense areas) and just throws gravel on top of the snow. I've heard people complain, but I personally love it. It's like having crampons on the ground so you don't have to put them on your shoes. I run outside most of the winter and rarely wear spikes.

<comment><USER3> I've seen sand used in the upper Midwest, I'm not sure how often it's used in other parts of the country. My understanding is that it's better than salt once the temperature gets cold enough and the salt can't help melt things.

<comment><USER4> Regions around Toronto will switch depending on the weather.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article isn't that great. The idea of heated surfaces is not a new one. However, it doesn't exist widespread because it is not practical at all.

I live in an area of NY where it is not unheard of to get a foot of snow every few hours for several hours. You can wake up with 4ft on the ground. No heated surfaces is ever going to take care of this amount of snow.

</comment><comment><USER6> I do not live in a region with lots of snow or ice. Would there be any concern about melting the closest 'layer' of snow over pavement and creating a snow 'shell' over the road? If an area is getting sufficient ice precipitation I wonder if such a system could keep up and what the dangers would be of a road that was not salted/sanded in this condition.

</comment><comment><USER6> End of the article:

> Sounds good to us. BRB moving to Holland.

Journalism sure has changed a lot in my time. It's fascinating.

</comment><comment><USER7> Not that I expect anyone at VICE to understand basic physics let alone thermodynamics, but the amount of energy and labor necessary to heat all city streets would surely surpass $1B anywhere in the U.S. ...

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't know about other cities in North America but heated sidewalks would work only for a very small area in the city I live in and is covered by at provincial, federal and each municipalities jurisdiction. The entire are that would need to be done to stop snow ploughs being needed is almost 100 square kilometers. Most of the city is laid out in a fairly spread out way almost entirely the opposite of the European cities and small American towns used in the example. The cost to implement a heated road and sidewalk system here would be ridiculous and the city already seems to leave their roads more unmaintained than they should anyway.

I just don't see such a system of water heated roads being feasible in North America not the the parts of it I've seen have been designed, without drastically rebuilding most cities.

Not to mention we get a lot of snow and already have flooding problems in the city when there's heavy rain or big snow melts. This just changes things to a different problem.</comment>


AFrameJS Tutorial - A Response to "Backbone.js Tutorial - By noob for noobs" - <AUTHOR> http://www.shanetomlinson.com/2011/aframejs-tutorial-for-noobs/

<comment><AUTHOR> If anybody has any suggestions, comments, ideas, bug fixes, please tell me, I want to make AFrameJS the strongest Javascript MVC library out!</comment>