How Lanyrd uses HTML5 offline storage for its Mobile Web app - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/mobile/2012/01/how-lanyrd-uses-html5-for-a-gr.php

<comment><AUTHOR> We launched our Mobile Web app today, making the key features from our iPhone app available to Android, Blackberry and other mobile devices.

We're making extensive use of HTML5 offline storage in order to keep offline copies of event schedules and attendee directories - so even if our users are abroad on a bad data plan or are at an event with poor/no wifi they can still access the data.

Check it out here: <http://m.lanyrd.com/>

The ReadWriteWeb article has some of the technical details. Our blog entry about the new app is here: <http://lanyrd.com/blog/2012/mobile-web/>

<comment><USER2> "All our imagery is double-resolution, so everything looks sharp on high- density devices..."

But you also use normal resolution images, right?

Many (if not all) low resolution Android devices aren't able to scale images down by using background-size. Since it doesn't work, the UI gets blown out by huge images that haven't been scaled.

Just curious on that implementation detail since dual sized images for low to high res screens is something I deal with in my day to day mobile web work.

Nice work though. The mobile site looks really good.

<comment><USER3> We were hoping to get away with a single double density sprite, but alas, as you point out, not all devices support background-size. Not just old Android, but also old Blackberry (pre webkit), and Opera Mini.

We feature detect background-size in the head of the page and add a class name to the html element. We need to browser sniff opera mini as it gives a false positive on the test.

We only offline cache the larger sprite, assuming browsers that support appcache also support background-size.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Lovely implementation, I'd like to hear more about the cross over between mustache templates and django.

As read in here [http://www.readwriteweb.com/mobile/2012/01/how-lanyrd- uses-h...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/mobile/2012/01/how-lanyrd-uses- html5-for-a-gr.php)

Also did you have to do all the testing device by hand or do you use a service for this?

<comment><AUTHOR> We have a box of mobile phones in the office - Jake even had to take them down to the local London Underground station to check how they behaved with no signal (since airplane mode doesn't necessarily behave the same way as a genuine weak or gone signal).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For the Lanyrd team: when exactly are you caching the data? Is the expectation that I browse the events I'm going to attend in advance while logged into the app and you dump all viewed events into localStorage? As well, on first visit to the site I imagine you have some sort of if-storage-is-empty-and-logged-in dump to get the site scripting and design in there, and then just feed off of that afterward?

I'd love to hear more of the technical side as I'm _just_ getting into HTML5 but I haven't sunk my teeth into some of the crazier aspects outside of playing with canvas and familiarizing myself with JavaScript and its associated libraries.

<comment><USER3> You're not far off...

To cache everything you're tracking/attending visit <http://m.lanyrd.com/calendar/yours/> \- the root url redirects here if you're logged in.

The data for each conference is versioned, you can see the version number as data attributes on each list item. If the data you have doesn't match that version number, a few XHR requests are triggered to fetch the latest data.

Also, if you look at a conference page you're tracking or attending while online, we do a data-version check for that conference and update if needed.

I'm writing up an article on all the troubles we had with ApplicationCache, for there were many. LocalStorage was extremely simple & useful though.

<comment><USER6> I'm in the middle of a short build (~5 days) mobile app that is using app cache and annoyingly I can't see to get it working on iOS, all the standard web browsers seem fine but iOS is being a PITA. I don't suppose you have any top tips?

That said more technical details would be awesome - I'd love to see how other people are doing things like this!

<comment><USER3> We didn't have to do anything special to get offline stuff working in iOS, sounds like we're lucky we didn't hit the problem you're having.

Here's a simple demo that works in iOS <http://appcache-demo.s3-website-us- east-1.amazonaws.com/xhr/> \- that might make it easier to see what you're doing differently. Are you serving the manifest with the correct content-type header, for instance?

<comment><USER6> Thanks for that its really appreciated!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So I just tried it out but it doesn't seem to work as advertised.

The mobile interface is really snappy and one of the best I've seen. I tapped through to a few events, looked up some speakers, etc.

Then, in order to see the purported offline mode, I set my phone to airplane mode. All I get from the mobile lanyrd site after that a message that I was in offline mode.

I was expecting that at least the events I had been perusing would still have been cached and viewable. If you're expected to be signed in for the caching bit to work, I guess that's ok but there should at least be a notification somewhere. Ideally it should just work.

<comment><USER3> At the moment, the event you're tracking or attending are available offline. So yeah, you need to log in to trigger offline caching. When you view the 'Your events' page you'll see the events being cached if your device supports it (a reasonably recent webkit & firefox).

Whether you should be able to save events offline without logging in has been a bit of a debate in the office, so this feedback is extremely useful. Many thanks!</comment></comment>


Minimum Startup Overhead: Coffee Shop Programmer - <AUTHOR> http://nickmudge.info/?post=73

<comment><USER2> I'm a coffee shop programmer as well. Not always, but whenever I want to avoid the potential distractions in my apartment (tv, xbox, bed) I take my laptop and work from a coffee shop for the day. It's also a nice change of scenery.

The freedom to be able to work from anywhere is one of the greatest things about this arrangement. Sometimes I travel to visit friends and family, and that doesn't stop me from doing my work because all I need is my laptop.

<comment><USER3> How does the coffee shop feel about having people work at their tables all day? I have considered doing this, but I can't quite figure out the etiquette.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's better to go to two or three or more coffee shops in a day. Rotate. Buy stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have three words for you, my friend: "electric space heaters". :)

I won't dwell on the fact that laptops are ergonomically evil and will eventually send you to the doctor with one form of RSI or another. If you don't already understand this, it will be very hard to convince you.

Instead I'll point out that your productivity is proportional to how much monitor you've got. Researchers have measured this [1][2], hackers [3] and techies [4] have testified to this, and Apple has sold a lot of incredibly expensive 30-inch displays because of this. Why are you killing your own productivity in order to save the cost of running an electric space heater? Is it the coffee? Don't get hooked on the coffee!

[1] <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/screen_resolution.html>

[2] <http://research.microsoft.com/displayArticle.aspx?id=433>

[3] <http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/005541.html>

[4] [http://chris.pirillo.com/2007/05/31/dual-monitor-display- inc...](http://chris.pirillo.com/2007/05/31/dual-monitor-display-increases- productivity/)

<comment><USER5> Second the fact on laptops - they are indeed ergonomically evil, unless you have a laptop stand with an external keyboard ...but then you might be on a "web 2.0 three month mashup" - in which case it is probably ok , anything longer and youll screw up either your wrists or your neck if not both. If you want to have good food too consider moving your startup to india - it costs around 60$/mnth for your own personal cook.

<comment><USER6> When I'm moving around I often use a backpack to carry my laptop (I don't know how much of a threat this really is, but if I were going to mug someone I'd be more likely to go after the guy carrying case that almost certainly has a laptop in it, vs. a guy carrying a beat-up old bag that might just be full of dirty clothes.)

So I often throw in a keyboard and mouse. The microsoft 'comfort curve' is particularly well-suited for this, though it is a bit long.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've done development at various local libraries and I would definitely recommend this over coffee shops. There are more wireless restrictions at libraries but the quiet, privacy, and space to work more than makes up for it.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've told people about the coffee shop office idea, and no one's really come up with good objections. Just mix it with this and you're all set:

<http://www.theonion.com/content/node/32374>

<comment><USER9> It worked for Hiro Protagonist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> great read, I think the biggest problem is toilet breaks, at home you don't need to take your laptop with you :p And if you do I don't want to know about it...

<comment><USER11> A good laptop case + sleep mode helps. (I have working sleep mode even in Linux...)

Or you can just have a cofounder there to watch your stuff ;-) (See, THIS is why startups need cofounders... :)</comment></comment>


It's Comcastic, Or: I Accidentally Bought a House Without Cable - <AUTHOR> http://www.loomcom.com/blog/2015/02/22/its-comcastic-or-i-accidentally-bought-a-house-without-internet/ <comment><USER2> When I was 18 I worked in a call center for AT&T@Home broadband cable. This was 2000, when the business was in its infancy and there were often technical issues.

I worked the "supervisor" desk (i was not a supervisor, just a somewhat more knowledgable rep) so would take almost exclusively irate calls.

I tried to help everybody of course, but a few people stood out from time to time as having exceptionally bad service. Bury requests that were cancelled for _months_ \-- so you have to mow your lawn around a cable and it trips your kids and gets chewed by rodents. Techs that hang a "we missed you" card on your door and then run back to the truck without ever knocking. Installers napping. Installers looking at porn. Installers going through peoples things.

For those people, I gave them free service "for life".

Deep inside the GUI app that I believe was called ACSR was the service provisioning and in every market there were all the paid services and a fairly similar list of free services that were used when the equipment was just being installed and users were brought online to test it. So they had "1.0 MB Broadband" and "1.0 MB Broadband Pilot". By moving users from one to the other, their bills would just drop to $0.

I have no idea how long this benefit endured. You'd think at some point there would be an audit or migration that cleaned it up. But I hope not. Steve Roach in Memphis and the 1/2 dozen others: I hope your cable is still free.

<comment><USER3> My university was apparently grandfathered into that category (for their off- property students) when the local ISP company was bought by Comcast; the original provider had put the uni into their "Other" billing category as it was a special off-rate annually-negotiated contract, and when they unified the IT systems they got moved into that "billed 0" category in Comcast's backend.

Yep, sure enough, an automatic cleaning script came along and killed all those cost-0 connections, cutting many student residents off from the network for a few days. My understanding is that the meeting between the Comcast rep and the head of campus IT was an instance of _legendary_ restraint on the part of our IT head (in that everyone left the room with all their limbs still attached).

(I'm sure it helped the uni's bargaining position a lot that we were in a metropolitan area; Verizon was champing at the bit to get those accounts).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> File a complaint with the FCC. I have done this twice now with comcast and both times somebody from their "executive support" contacted me the next day. It seems that their "executive support" might be the only people in the company that actually can solve problems and the FCC complaint is the only way I know of to get in touch with them. Clearly a very effeciient system Comcast has over there. [https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en- us](https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us)

<comment><USER5> I was also able to get ahold of "executive support," and received A+ customer service. All my issues were resolved and bill was discounted ongoing.

I spent a few hours putting together a single .pdf with all the evidence of comcast wrongdoing compiled together. It was 10+ pages of screenshots and explanations proving comcast fucked up and was charging me for it. I emailed Comcast explaining I was ready to forward to techcrunch if they didn't resolve the situation A.S.A.P.

Within two hours I had an email from a real person.

<comment><USER6> In what ways had they "fucked up"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As someone in the comments section noted to the author - there are plenty of short haul, unlicensed spectrum, wireless bridges available today that are very affordable. Even if he went with something more long haul oriented he could easily clear well over 30 miles LoS at over 500Mbit ([https://www.ubnt.com/airfiber/airfiber5/](https://www.ubnt.com/airfiber/airfiber5/)) in real-world expectations. I would put the money into building a tower on my property and find the closest fiber plant Comcast has for the HFC node that services the general area and make them give me a L3 drop to this bridge. Having done this working for a cable provider in the past, it's trivial and inexpensive (costing well under $10k for the expensive equipment, generally a 5 mile link can be done for under $2k).

Reliance on Comcast won't get you anywhere in most cases, but there are options for this guy other than selling his house.

<comment><USER8> Long-haul LoS can be pretty much impossible in parts of the Pacific Northwest due to the geography and ecology (read: hills and trees). The short point-to- point option with a cooperative neighbor could definitely work.

<comment><USER9> It's been 15 years since I last had anything to do with long range LoS wireless bridges, but at least back then they also tended to flake out during snowstorms and heavy rain.

<comment><USER10> My wired Comcast connection sometimes did this too, back when I had it. Might not be any worse!

<comment><USER11> That's probably not their equipment up on the poles causing that, you can probably fix it for good by replacing some old splitters around your house and just re-terminating all of the coax connectors.

<comment><USER10> I don't think anything in my house was getting wet. The stuff outside seemed to be in pretty poor condition, and was underground where it could get immersed and such. Their techs liked to just forget to put covers back on things after they were done working, which I'm sure didn't help. In any case, I don't live there anymore so not a problem I have to deal with now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> There aren't a ton of major differences between Verizon and Comcast as companies, but this one is sometimes (as indicated here) key:

Verizon still employs its own unionized workforce of service technicians for cable connections; Comcast outsources that to multiple competing front-line service contractors.

This isn't a system that _can 't ever_ work, but Comcast has not yet solved the problem of keeping communications channels clear and coordinated among different competing contractors who have no incentive to cross-communicate with each other (not only are they not rewarded for it, but the incentive system of free markets is actively structured so that if one contractor looks bad, others indirectly benefit). It leads to all sorts of little micro- aggressions; when I had Comcast hooked up at a previous residence, the contractor had to climb the ladder to the pole twice because the junction plugs that should easily wire my house to the main trunk were not only detached, but removed (likely by a previous contractor, because hey, free plugs). He had to go down and get new plugs and splice them in.

In contrast, everyone is on the "same team" at Verizon, structurally and legally. You leave the junction plugs there because the next guy who comes along and needs to connect the service again is your coworker.

It's a shame that none of that matters to this individual because of the way the service local monopolies are structured in the U.S. Living near a major metropolitan area, I'm lucky enough to have my choice of the two vendors around here.

<comment><USER12> Living in the D.C. area, I can only speak for experience but Verizon seems to operate two groups of techs.

One as you said are in-house and unionized, these guys seem to mostly handle the apartment complexes and large installments.

The other group handles regular houses, or off-one jobs when the market is exploding.

I've spoken to techs on both sides, and they both confirmed with mild disdain the existence of the other group.

Just an anecdote.

<comment><USER3> Tragically, the anecdote I've heard from our local techs is that Verizon corporate would love to switch to Comcast's model, and are applying attrition pressure to make it happen; their mobile business arm isn't unionized, and they're looking forward to switching out their retained employees with contract staff for all of the hookup work.

... which is a shame, because it's actually something I consider to be a distinguishing factor in their service options.

<comment><USER13> Verizon Wireless outsources literally everything but customer service. Everything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This reminds me quite a bit of my situation when we built our new house. Our local cable company is Mediacom, which serves smaller markets. They were extremely flaky about running cable just 2 blocks from an existing drop. Fortunately after extensive research, I discovered that our local telecom ordinance (which gives Mediacom exclusive rights in our city) requires them to run cable to new houses in a timely matter. After months of delays, once I threatened to file a formal complaint with the telecommunications commission, they ran a cable to our house within two weeks.

The problem is, it's fairly expensive to dig cable to a single house, and it's just not worth it for the cable company to dig. If we decide that broadband is a necessity, some sort of municipal broadband or government oversight is absolutely required to guarantee that each person has access, because the market sure won't.

<comment><USER15> > I discovered that our local telecom ordinance (which gives Mediacom > exclusive rights in our city)

Do you have a copy of the ordinance, by chance? Exclusive cable franchises are illegal under federal law. If you're litigious, you might be able to get the ordinance overturned.

<comment><USER16> Do you have a copy of the federal law, by chance?

<comment><USER15> 47 U.S.C. 541(a)(1). [https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/541](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/541). Part of the 1992 Cable Act: [http://www.lib.niu.edu/1994/im940207.html](http://www.lib.niu.edu/1994/im940207.html).

"A franchising authority may award, in accordance with the provisions of this subchapter, 1 or more franchises within its jurisdiction; except that a franchising authority may not grant an exclusive franchise and may not unreasonably refuse to award an additional competitive franchise. Any applicant whose application for a second franchise has been denied by a final decision of the franchising authority may appeal such final decision pursuant to the provisions of section 555 of this title for failure to comply with this subsection."

Theoretically, a pre-1992 contract negotiated before the law was passed might still be in effect. In practice, these contracts had 5-10 year terms and expired long ago.

<comment><USER17> I have a small amount of experience with this, having observed the negotiations between a city government and Mediacom. The deal, in that case, wasn't technically "exclusive", but it did require that any additional franchisee provide equal or better service.

In practice, this meant that the deal with Mediacom was "exclusive" since the market was small enough that no other provider would be willing to roll out the full set of services offered by Mediacom (another provider might have been willing to offer basic services to capture cost-conscious consumers). I'm not sure what the federal law says about this sort of thing.

<comment><USER15> I don't think that's been litigated. A few years ago, the Sixth Circuit upheld FCC rules that put an end to some of the more egregious municipal licensing authority requirements, though those rules didn't address the situation you raise: [https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=132938372903668...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=13293837290366870260&q=alliance+for+community+media+v+fcc&hl=en&as_sdt=20006).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I know a woman who works selling advert time for Comcast. She showed me what she described as a very special "just fix my problem and don't bullshit me about it" card that she had.

She told me she gets two of these cards a year to hand out when she's trying to sell someone advertising time but that client isn't buying because they're upset about some problem they have with their personal Comcast service. She gives them a card, Comcast then forces themselves to fix the problem, and she can make a sale.

So I asked her why Comcast doesn't treat all their customer's problems this way. She laughed.

<comment><USER19> When you hand over the card, make sure to say "Valar Morghulis".

<comment><USER12> Valar dohaeris, meaning 'all men must serve' would be more appropriate, I think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> In a situation like this, the key is to get a contingency in the house purchase contract -- and have the work done before the closing.

We bought a house that didn't have cable or DSL in a somewhat rural area -- the sellers were using 3G, satellite Internet, and dialup (!). They assured us that the only reason they hadn't had cable installed was the high cost they'd been quoted for running cable on the property (understandable as the house is almost 1/4 mile back from the street), and the cable company concurred that they'd be able to do the work, "no problem," and quoted a fee that didn't seem all _that_ bad in the end (we took it into account when negotiating the price of the house).

Nevertheless, we made the sellers agree to a contingency - cable co. would successfully complete the work (on our dime, of course) and hook us up before the closing, and the total amount wouldn't exceed what we had been quoted. If the contingency wasn't met, the sale would fall through and we'd get our deposit back.

That contingency clause relieved me of a lot of stress over the next few months. Everything turned out OK in the end, but it was touch-and-go for a while.

Cable co. accepted the order with no problem, did a survey I guess, called us and said they wouldn't be able to do it. They were persuaded (not sure how -- agent took care of it) to reconsider, but then came back with a quote that was at least five times higher than before. Cue lots of emails and phone calls. It was helpful having an agent who lived in the community. In the end a local contractor dug the trench for us at a very reasonable price, cable co. came down on their estimate, and the work actually was completed at just under the original quote. The dirt was literally being shoveled back over the trench on the day of the closing.

As I recall it was actually a few days later that the cable guy came to do the inside wiring and "flip the switch," so strictly speaking the contingency (cable installed and working) wasn't satisfied by the closing, but we assumed we'd be OK at that point, and there were in fact no further hitches. We moved in and have enjoyed a (mostly) reliable, fast connection ever since. But we would absolutely have walked away, even though it was our "dream house," had we not been able to get the cable pulled. The contingency clause gave us the assurance that we could do that with no penalty. And, had it turned out that the work _could_ be done but only at 5x the price, we could potentially have used the clause to negotiate a concession from the seller to cover the costs.

<comment><USER3> In general, yes.

In this instance, the buyer was 100% convinced that the property had the service of interest and was told it did by the local monopoly in charge of providing such service. There was no work to be done before the closing because Comcast won't hook up Internet to a property for someone who isn't the property owner or resident.

What you're describing would be a bit like taking out a contingency on the house actually having running water after you physically walked through the house and checked the taps and toilets, just on the off chance that the water is actually not coming from the local muni water source, but instead from an on-property aquifer that a previous owner had tapped and painstakingly routed into the house's internal plumbing, and immediately after closing the sale that aquifer runs dry.

Real people don't go to that level of contract detail.

<comment><USER20> Well, at least he will know to go to that level of detail next time! Once burned, twice shy.

I guess my point is that being "100% convinced that the property had the [feature] of interest" based solely on a phone call is pretty risky when you're talking about a purchase as large as a house and a feature as important (to him) as ability to get broadband internet. I totally understand and sympathize with his plight (I was screwed in basically the way, actually, many years ago, though it was a rental rather than a purchase, and DSL rather than cable, and it did work out in the end in that case too). And the degree to which he was jerked around by Comcast here is almost unreal. I could feel my blood boiling when I read the story. But in the end, I don't think he is going to have any actual legal recourse. He said this was his first home purchase; I imagine next time he will insist on seeing the connection in action next time, or getting that contingency clause in if not!

In any case, your analogy doesn't really fit the situation. The seller didn't have cable, or, presumably, any fixed broadband internet service. (That in itself is a bit of a red flag; I'd think most households who can get internet service at a reasonable price these days already have it.) The situation you describe -- well, it's hard to imagine it happening, because the seller would clearly have been legally obligated to disclose that the water was from a well and not municipal, and in any case the buyer would, one hopes, have hired a home inspector who would have noted this (and probably detected issues with the well as w... umm, in addition). But it doesn't sound like the seller hid the fact that there was no internet service _currently_ at the house, which means there's no liability there.

So this is more like buying a house with no running water at all, with the knowledge that this is the case, and then getting a verbal promise from the local water company that they'd be able to hook you up. If you were to buy a house under conditions like this, I maintain that you probably would want a contingency clause on installation of the water.

And for what it's worth our cable company (not Comcast, but another big one) had absolutely no problem starting the work (once they agreed to do it) for us before we were the owner or resident. If they had, we would simply have made the contingency something like "seller is obligated to have internet installed, for which the buyer will pay, prior to closing."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > I think this was the most productive call I've had so far, because I finally > got the clear picture of what's going on. Somewhere in Comcast's system, > there's a check box that says that I already have cable service to the > house. Every time I call to ask about new service, someone looks at this > checkbox and concludes that I don't need construction. Whenever a ticket is > opened in regards to construction, it's closed automatically because the > system believes it's not necessary. So I am literally in a Catch-22

This is what Kafkaesque actually means.

<comment><USER21> What I think I would try I that situation is to change the address. Pick a nonexistent address on the same street, and order service at that address. Change the numbers on the house to match and make sure they are prominent so any people dispatch there will find it.

<comment><USER22> This actually fits in nicely with the Comcast "rinse and repeat" method. Keep calling back asking the same question until you get the answer you want.

Maybe he should have just submitted phantom requests from every address on his street under different pseudonyms. Eventually someone might have made the mistake of initiating the construction... or a regional manager may have unlocked the project due to perceived demand!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wonder if the writer is being too quick to dismiss satellite - it certainly has its limitations but it could be a useful addition to the mix of limited connectivity that DOES serve the house.

The Verizon hotspots may have a 30gb/month cap - so buy two. John Woo rules apply - use the first 'till it runs out, then switch to the second.

Try combining multiple sources of connectivity with a load-balancing router, or similar. These can be set to send certain types of traffic via more optimal routes, so you reserve scarce/expensive bandwidth for applications/destinations which need it, and send other traffic across cheaper, slower or uncapped routes, etc etc. Combine satellite, mobile (cellular) Internet, wireline DSL, community wifi, even dialup into the mix.

Look at wilder wifi options too - if there's no connectivity at the house, do you have line-of-sight to somewhere which is better connected? Point to point antennas, high gain receivers, etc. More and more options to throw into the pot.

Obviously, it's all a lot of trouble, and is bound to be expensive - but given that the author was already considering paying some or all of the substantial Comcast buildout fees, even the most complex of these alternatives is still likely to be cheaper - and if it means not having to sell the house you love, then that has to be worth a thought.

<comment><USER24> 30GB month on Verizon is $120. That gets expensive fast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Contact the local municipality that Comcast gets it's cable license from and complain. The also hit the corporation commission, and other licensing agencies. Then sue them.

Basically, they have a monopoly on a service covering an area, and they're refusing service. That's utterly stupid.

<comment><USER15> > Basically, they have a monopoly on a service covering an area, and they're > refusing service.

They don't: [http://www.codepublishing.com/wa/kitsapcounty/html/Kitsap14/...](http://www.codepublishing.com/wa/kitsapcounty/html/Kitsap14/Kitsap1432.html).

See: 14.32.010 Terms of franchise.

"(2) Any franchise granted pursuant to this chapter _shall be nonexclusive and shall not preclude the county from granting other or further franchises_ or permits or preclude the county from using any roads, rights-of-way, streets or other public properties or affect its jurisdiction over them or any part of them, or limit the full power of the county to make such changes, as the county shall deem necessary, including the dedication, establishment, maintenance and improvement of all new rights-of-way and thoroughfares and other public properties."

If he's 2,500 feet from the nearest equipment, he's probably living in a low- density area that's not worth anyone's while to serve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is a pretty awful situation. I feel bad for the author. I've had two similar incidents in the past, although not quite as bad.

Years ago I lived in an apartment block with 9 apartments in the front building and 9 in the rear. This was the dialup era and I wanted (and assumed I could get) a 2nd line so I didn't tie up my primary line all the time. Turns out the telco had only run 10 lines to the rear building for whatever reason and I guess someone was using the "spare" already.

Interestingly, this was in the deregulation era. The guy I spoke to felt bad and explained to me how now they couldn't by law provide more lines for free. In the spirit of "competition" they had to price it "fairly". Oh well. It was a rental and I moved a year later anyway.

The second time was in the DSL era (which is still the case in Australia). The ACCC (sorta like an FTC/FCC hybrid) had decided that ISPs were allowed to install their own DSLAMs in the telephone exchanges.

Well that worked well in some exchanges and not well in others. Some ran out of space for racks very quickly. There was no spare capacity for me there. However I did get put on a waiting list that resolved very quickly. Now this was in the very early days of ADSL where it was still pretty unusual. I've heard some horror stories about how it is now in some parts of the country.

Anyway...

There must be other people in their street/area who also aren't serviced by Comcast. Can't Comcast justify wiring up the street by adding a bunch of new customers?

Also, the author mentions reading the franchise agreement but doesn't say anything more about it. I assume that means Comcast isn't required to service his area or at least isn't required to provide 100% coverage?

And Comcast wants to merge with TWC? They can't manage their current network. Why on earth should we trust a combined entity will be any better?

<comment><USER27> > Why on earth should we trust a combined entity will be any better?

Yeah. If I crap on a pile on crap, I wont get gold. I'll just get more crap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Calling this an "accident" is entirely too kind to Comcast. They're happy to claim they'll serve almost anything within particular geographic areas, whether or not they can or will.

(He mentioned DSL providers, too, which are their own brand of fun.)

<comment><USER10> Once I was getting fed up with Comcast, so I called Verizon to see if they could give me DSL, how fast it would be, etc. Their response was basically that they had no idea, but they could put in an order and see what happened. They literally could not tell me whether or not they could provide the service at all.

<comment><USER29> _They literally could not tell me whether or not they could provide the service at all._

As silly and frustrating as that is, "I don't know" is a much better answer than, "Yes, absolutely" that turns out to be false.

"I don't know" would've saved OP tens of thousands of dollars that he will soon be paying to sell a house he just purchased.

<comment><USER10> Oh yes, you're totally right. Just illustrating another small way these companies can be ridiculous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I used to live in Kitsap county and this story is very familiar. We had a house not far from the bridge where there was no (and probably will never be) cell phone coverage by any provider, dsl also wasn't an option, and comcast was the only game in town. You were lucky to get an FM/AM radio signal. Some of the problem is that houses are built sporadically outside Poulsbo and Bremerton proper - there really aren't neighborhoods so much as somebody bought an acre in the woods and put a house on it.

But, this is certainly not isolated to Kitsap county or Comcast. Now I live in the other side of the state, in Walla Walla, and I assure you that Charter is just as bad, even when you pay for a business-class connection. It seems once you get outside Portland/Seattle, the population density isn't such that the cable providers (or other potential internet providers) are much interested in the infrastructure investment. For the big guys like Comcast, Charter, etc - HQ is far far away and has _no idea_ of the local situation. The only option I've found is to become buddies with the local field guys (and there are only like 2 for the 4 county area over here...).

Frankly, while the isolation and quiet of the peninsula is nice, you are better off selling your house anyway unless you are willing to hold it for 20+ years and hope that King/Pierce/Snohomish are finally so full that people have no choice but to move to Kitsap county. House sales are horribly slow and values barely move.

<comment><USER31> I'm on Whidbey, and thankfully, the situation is totally different (at least on the south end). We've got a good local telecom company that provides pretty decent dsl and phone service. Best of all, they've got local tech support and their techs will go the extra mile to make sure everything is working.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I still really believe that the big cable companies would be so much better if their internal systems weren't so broken. The problem is that They bought up so many small companies and have never completely integrated their processes and data into their main system.

I had very similar experiences with Time Warner depending on who I talked I would get different results. It seemed like the main corporate office was not able to see notes that the local office entered and vice versa.

<comment><USER33> Absolutely never do online chat with Time Warner Cable and never call their national phone number. Only call your local office. I've had appointments scheduled through online chat that never showed up that the local office didn't know about. Also have had the local office successfully debug problems remotely on the phone that the main corporate number claimed they couldn't fix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Couldn't you sue? Your home purchase was predicated on Comcast's word that they could service your new home. You require it for work. Now you've bought a home, have to sell it for a loss, all due to Comcast. I don't see why you can't stick them with the bill. Call a lawyer, have them talk to Comcast, and maybe they'll change their tune about extending their line to your home.

<comment><USER35> Only if they had that as a contingency clause in the contract for the house. Which they probably didn't.

<comment><USER36> No... a contingency is between the buyer and the seller. It just gives the buyer an out if certain things don't happen. It doesn't give Comcast any obligations in the matter.

Comcast could be held accountable for other reasons, but not by a contingency.

<comment><USER35> That was my point. There's no way to force Comcast to serve them, but they could have gotten out of the purchase.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Even I hate Comcast. And I'm european.

<comment><USER38> And I thought BT were a shower of shits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> When I grew up the telephone company was still a state-run monopoly. To get telephone service connected you had to pay a nominal fee, independent of whether there was trenching and laying of cable involved, or if they just had to connect at the patch panel.

Today's unregulated quasi-monopolies are some progress. Can we get the government monopoly back? The thing is - it worked extremely well!

<comment><USER40> It was very reliable and simple in any case (talking about AT&T). Long distance phone calls were also about 50 cents/minute interstate (and even longer distance intrastate) in the early 1980s and for a long time you couldn't even attach your own gear to the phone lines in your house. You had to rent AT&T phones. Some of this is a function of the general technological advance between then and now of course but Ma Bell was certainly not a fast moving organization.

From a 1976 SNL skit: "We don't care. We don't have to. We're the phone company." Government monopoly wasn't nirvana by a long shot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Wouldn't the easiest way to verify cable internet service for a residence be to simply ask the current owner? They will know better than anyone else (including the ISP) whether their exact location can be serviced.

I'm a little shocked that the author would go through all this back and forth with a company with a reputation like Comcast, and never once ask the previous owner of the house.

<comment><USER42> He did ask the realtor, as well as Comcast themselves, and all were under the impression that it already had service. (First question in the FAQ.)

<comment><USER43> That is not what the parent said. He said ask the owner.

Realtor couldn't care less, no wait, they have an incentive to lie. Comcast couldn't care less.

The owner does care, because they become liable if they misrepresent the property.

Never spend a ton of money without doing the leg work yourself. Don't trust other people, especially people who have zero incentive to be accurate or truthful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> It's nice that cable companies claim they need rate increases, monopolies, subsidies and so on because of all the work they do putting up infrastructure to serve everyone, and then also charge the residents for putting up that same infrastructure.

</comment><comment><USER45> This happened to me in December 2014. I bought a house in way upstate NY. I called Time Warner to verify they could get internet to the location before I bought the house!! They said yes. I packed up, moved across country to then find out that Time Warner "made a mistake" and no internet is available. Not even DSL.

So, I am now the proud owner of a CradlePoint LTE modem, upped my data through AT&T since they were having a promotion to 30gb a month. It's a change in my browsing habits but 30gb is more than enough for work stuff and at the end of the month if I have 10gb to spare I go after those videos I wanted to watch.

</comment><comment><USER46> Also live in Kitsap county. I am sure you have looked, but is Wave Cable an option in your location at all? The business I am at in Silverdale utilizes Wave. I know others in the county that have Wave, as well. I am not sure how coverage is dictated between the providers.

</comment><comment><USER47> I bought a house about 1 mile from downtown Salt Lake City in 2008 and it took until last year to get a decent internet connection (from Comcast). First world problems!

<comment><USER48> What did you have before?

<comment><USER47> 512 kbps DSL -- just barely, frustratingly capable of watching Netflix at the worst quality level

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I only had time to read about half of the article, but wanted to let you know this EXACT same thing just happened to me.

We verified service (twice) before buying the house. Called to schedule an install and found out service wasn't available to our house.

Long story short, I was lucky enough to get a great technician and he schedule a drop bury VERY quickly. I got a call from Comcast's corporate office within minutes of his request. It took about 3 weeks for them to run a new RG11 line from the street to the house, but it's all up and running now.

I also work from home, so I was forced to use my 4G connection briefly as I waited.

I feel your pain. Good luck!!

</comment><comment><USER50> Does anyone here work remotely on a satellite connection? How has your experience been? I live in an extremely isolated town of 200 people in the North Cascades (Washington state as well) and currently use CenturyLink DSL. Because the line to my little community is saturated, they can only offer us 1.5 down. It's slow, but I make it work and thankfully the bandwidth is very consistent and my work isn't super bandwidth intensive. I have often wondered if it would make sense to put satellite into the mix as well. We already have Dish for TV.

<comment><USER51> I used to work in the business of supplying satellite links like this in Europe and the Middle East, so not the same as the USA. It is a good alternative if you have no practical alternative such as a landline but I would only call it a basic alternative to ADSL.

The biggest problem is latency and there are two factors that impact latency: 1) Distance (the satellite is really far away) 2) Contention (it is often a TDMA system so your packets have to wait for the next available time slot, in a busy network this can cause problems)

Bandwidth isn't the primary concern, it is usually quality and latency. They are tightly related but latency is something that always limits you because it makes VoIP, VNC and gaming difficult.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I moved my office to a complex that was supposed to have both cable and DSL internet available. Neither was installed yet so we bought a Clearwire device to fill the gap.

The DSL was a slightly better deal, so we had them in to install it, and it wouldn't push more than a few bits. After several service calls, they eventually gave up. We were too far away, even though their modelling showed our distance as fine.

So we call up the cable company (Comcast, of course) and our unit is too far from the service point. They set up an appointment with engineering to install a new pole and such. Six months later, we have cable service finally run. Not speedy, but at least they didn't give me the runaround.

It's too bad Clear didn't work out; saved my bacon. These days I'd have to get wireless internet service through one of the mobile phone companies, which is not nearly as good a deal. But it would still work.

Anyway, it's a mess. And a good lesson to assume you can't get service until you actually have it, both in residential and commercial settings. But then there was the time with my home service where the DSL office got slowly further away until they couldn't give me service any more...

</comment><comment><USER53> Maude: Lord, you can imagine where it goes from here.

The Dude: He fixes the cable?

Maude: Don't be fatuous, Jeffrey.

</comment><comment><USER54> Honestly that is exactly the kind of service experience I have been getting from Comcast, at&t and Verizon in all the years I lived in the States.

Not sure where the reputation for great customer service comes from. At least in the telco/cable space I have not witnessed it.

Most was customer service reps who didn't care, were powerless, badly trained, outsourced or (often) all of the above.

</comment><comment><USER55> Up until last November, one solution would be to buy an old Verizon contract with unlimited data on e-Bay (no longer transferable?).

[http://www.rvmobileinternet.com/verizon-unlimited-data- plans...](http://www.rvmobileinternet.com/verizon-unlimited-data-plans-no- longer-transferrable-effective-november-13/)

</comment><comment><USER56> I'm currently gearing up for a similar headache. I'm planning on building on a piece of land that is ~20 minutes from the city. Comcast's website is happy to sign up in my zip code and even my neighbors address, but they don't actually get there. Now I have to figure out exactly how far away it is, and how much trouble it's going to be (if even remotely possible) to get them to come down our street.

There are obviously other options. My neighbor uses a Verizon hotspot. Satellite is technically an option. But the data caps are really sad since we like having Netflix and other streaming services as our primary entertainment. 25-30 gb is really not something I'm looking forward to. Might settle for bad DSL I guess. I hope at least that is in the area.

</comment><comment><USER57> It's funny. We moved, about 10 miles from old house to new house, about 2 years ago.

At the old house, Comcast was utterly incompetent (took forever to finally get a wire run from the street over a pole in the yard and stapled to the house, but they never did follow up to install wire and a modem in the house), and AT&T was the bomb.

At the new house, AT&T was utterly incompetent (could not even get voice to work, let alone internet), and Comcast rocks.

Every neighborhood has its weird historical setup, I guess.

</comment><comment><USER58> How about contacting local news stations? Seems like an interesting piece for them.

I feel your pain--Comcast is the devil.

</comment><comment><USER59> And people are worried net neutrality will mess up the internet with governmental regulation.

<comment><USER60> Net neutrality regulations don't help with this issue – and could make it worse, because new ISPs will face extra compliance costs. Also, if a potential new ISP has novel business model ideas (involving cross-subsidies from other service providers), their ideas may be made illegal by the FCC's rules.

So the dynamic we have (and expressed to some extent in your comment) is:

(1) Comcast is a crappy company that people hate/distrust;

(2) Because of that hate/distrust, people support policies like federally- mandated net neutrality; but…

(3) Such federal regulation, even when it provides some consumer protection, also makes the crappy monopolist even more entrenched and sluggish, as was the case with 'Ma Bell', the 60s/70s airline industry, 20th-century rail/truck shipping, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I've had wonderful experiences with the BBB when wronged by various companies. Although comcast might certainly be an exception to that, everybody already knows they have crap customer service.

</comment><comment><USER62> They are going to sell the house on account of this?! I wish there were more places like this, with their property values dinged by lack of cable. I would jump on such a discount.

<comment><USER3> I hear there's a guy in Washington you could make an offer to. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Seems to me that there could be a big market for an AirHelp-like service that focused on telecoms. A private, for-profit consumer protection company.

</comment><comment><USER64> Sue for misrepresentation. Will you win? I don't know. But it will likely be cheaper to give you service than to defend against the law suit.

</comment><comment><USER65> I must honestly say:

I'm angry at Comcast about this shit.

However i'm even more angry at the author about it.

He did not even try once to even get a supervisor, when he should have been throwing the book at Comcast by week 2 latest. How is a company supposed to learn and improve if people like this guy let them get away with literally lying to customers without punishment?

Don't blog about it on the internet. Record phone calls, pressure agents to give you their full legal names, push to get supervisors. And get a damn lawyer.

<comment><USER3> The first rule of being in business over the Internet is this:

Every bug report you get, you had better be damn thankful for. Each one represents an uncounted number of customers who just gave up on your product. Comcast is lucky this guy decided to document the precise way in which the system failed him; he gave them a roadmap for improving it.

<comment><USER65> That's the point. For big companies bug reports are meaningless unless they result in loss of sufficient quantities of hard cash. In fact, i'm pretty sure comcast is happy about the outcome of this so far, since the conclusion of the author is: Do Comcast's job yourself first.</comment></comment></comment>


Just a Thought... : Git, I'm not a fan - <AUTHOR> http://bloritsch.d-haven.net/articles/2010/04/01/git-im-not-a-fan <comment><USER2> Um? <http://www.google.com/search?q=git+http>

Also, using git-daemon or gitosis makes it pretty simple to create an central git repo. And the complaint about SSH keys is exactly backwards, they make it pretty easy to authenticate if you're using SSH already (which you probably are).</comment>


How many times should you shuffle a deck of cards? [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/teaching_aids/Mann.pdf

<comment><USER2> Related: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=966243> (uses some of the same probabilistic models and rising sequences)

I also wrote a simple javascript card-shuffling library based on these models after reading the davidson.edu article: <http://jazzychad.com/js/deck.php>

</comment><comment><USER3> so, how many times?

i read parts of the pdf but didn't find the answer. i did see it say 7 isn't enough.

<comment><USER4> Basically, "the more the better". In lieu of a summary, let me try to see if I understand it.

The deck is more random: the more times you shuffle, the more cuts you make, and the more you randomize the size of your cuts. To draw my own conclusion, the more chaos you throw into your method (which may even include lesser amounts of shuffling) the better the randomness of the deck should be.

<comment><USER5> > Basically, "the more the better".

Actually, no. Too much shuffling actually makes some sequences less likely.

See [http://www- stat.stanford.edu/~susan/courses/b494/index/node1...](http://www- stat.stanford.edu/~susan/courses/b494/index/node109.html)

For some simpler math for a related question, see [http://20bits.com/articles/interview-questions-shuffling- an-...](http://20bits.com/articles/interview-questions-shuffling-an-array/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 6</comment>


How to Erase a Memory - <AUTHOR> http://www.kurzweilai.net/how-to-erase-memory?utm_source=KurzweilAI+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=bec4044f34-UA-946742-1&utm_medium=email

<comment> a-priori Not quite. What this does is reduce the strength of the fear response associated with the memory. So, after administering this to a person, they would still remember the traumatic event, but they would tell you that it wasn't so bad after all.

Therapeutically that's the important part since it will help the person get on with their lives. That's why this discovery could potentially be revolutionary for recovery from PTSD, rape, and even phobia. But it's not the same as 'erasing' the memory, and arguably would be better for therapy.

<comment><USER2> The hypothesis though, is to remove the emotional part of the memory, which this does seem to be doing a reasonable job of doing it.

Much better than bilateral lesions to the Amygdala!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> There are too many movies and works of science fiction that explore this landscape to convince me this is good.

To erase our memories, our fear, and our pain is to erase what makes us human. Yes, there are terrible things that happen to people that we want to be able to help. This is our humanity.

But where do we draw the line? What happens when this technology falls into the wrong hands? I don't like it.

<comment><USER4> I was actually just thinking of a movie plot. A serial killer tortures his victims, then erases their memory of the experience. From their point of view, they came home, then woke up in bed missing their legs, or covered in horrendous scars, or something.

But so far, that's all it is. Any new scientific breakthrough is terrifying. I think I'm more scared of biological research than I am of this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> One has to wonder the consequences of use. The pros most-likely outweigh the cons for someone literally debilitated by a traumatic event.

But, "fear" was part of our evolution and survival as a species and actually serves positive results as well.

<comment><USER4> Sure, but evolution isn't exactly perfect. Pain serves a purpose, too, but what good does pain do someone who's in the final stages of dying of an aggressive cancer? Similarly, PTSD evokes emotions unnecessarily. Being afraid of bears because it slashed your leg is good. Jumping when a door slams because too many explosives went off nearby doesn't do you any good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It might be safer if the fear could be 'erased' without erasing the memory itself. Or even better - if it were possible to reduce the overgeneralization of fear associated with the memory to present non-threatening situations.

Removing memories themselves seems like a dangerous way to deal with fear, and an easily misused technology. Think governments protecting secrets etc.

<comment> a-priori _It might be safer if the fear could be 'erased' without erasing the memory itself._

See my other comment. That is what's going on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does this work on the game?</comment>


Volt (Isomorphic Ruby Framework)  v0.9.0 Released - <AUTHOR> http://blog.voltframework.com/post/117031476149/volt-0-9-0-is-here-and-its-amazing

<comment><USER2> I gave a talk on Volt yesterday using 0.9, and it went great. I'm really excited to see where the framework goes. It may not be a solution to all the problems a lot of us face with webdev, but I think it really takes me back to my first days with Rails and just having fun making something, even if its not a production piece. I've also seen it used for internal tools and had a good amount of success. :) Hoping it keeps taking off.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can someone who has used both Rails and Volt to an extent beyond a basic web application provide a rundown comparing and contrasting the two, please?

<comment><USER2> Ryan's talk on isomorphic development is a good starting point.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7i6AL7Walc4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7i6AL7Walc4)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is the best way to plug in to the Bay area startup community? - <AUTHOR>

I am a developer living in Birmingham, AL and am considering moving to San Francisco.  What it the best way plug in to the tech startup scene? <comment><USER2> Three ideas:

1) Meetups. They happen around the Bay almost daily.

2) Hackathons. They happen almost every weekend.

3) Talk to strangers at cafes. Everyone and their dog is doing a startup.

It is a great place. However, it has gotten very expensive and crowded. I moved away. I miss it the way it was 5 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would like to know too, as we are thinking of relocating to Bay Area from Seattle.</comment>


Besides Equifax, what other recent hacks were exploited by open source? - <AUTHOR> I know that Equifax was exploited through a vulnerability in the Apache Struts component, but I wanted to know what other recent hacks were also due to open source. I'd say most companies just reveal they've been hacked as opposed to clearly specifying what part of the code was hacked. <comment><USER2> MongoDB servers with no password security got attacked, their data stolen and told to pay bitcoin to get the data back. [https://twitter.com/0xdude/status/813865069218037760](https://twitter.com/0xdude/status/813865069218037760) There were reports that companies paid (the bitcoin address is open and so are transactions). Similar for Elasticsearch, Cassandra, CouchDB databases. I think it counts as misconfiguration rather than exploit when no passwords were set (or default passwords).</comment>


Radical diet can reverse type 2 diabetes, new study shows - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/dec/05/radical-diet-can-reverse-type-2-diabetes-new-study-shows?CMP=share_btn_fb <comment><USER3> I went on a medically-supervised, very low calorie and low carb (keto) diet after being diagnosed with diabetes. A few months and about 50lbs in, I had no signs of insulin resistance whatsoever, my A1C was down to completely normal values, and I was able to discontinue my medication entirely. That diagnosis, as hard as it was to hear, was one of the absolute best things to ever happen to me.

<comment><USER4> Same. Pre-diabetic and all kinds of other health issues started creeping up (obesity, GERD, really bad heartburn, sleep apnea, etc). Most doctors would've just had me take medications, wear a mask that would breathe for me while I slept, and put my bed at an angle so I could sleep through the heartburn/reflux.

Started calorie restricting and eliminated grains and sugar from my diet almost entirely, and all pre-diabetic symptoms disappeared within a month or two. Zero GERD, zero heartburn, no longer obese, no more disturbed sleep, lots of energy.

I think in most cases type 2 diabetes (and most symptoms associated with obesity, metabolic syndrome, etc) is a disease people inflict on themselves through poor diet. Particularly by eating refined carbohydrates (especially wheat and sugar) and being genetically predisposed to not metabolizing those very well.

The food industry spends a lot of money skewing the research on this and pushing people toward exercise so they can wash their hands of it all, and they have the cooperation of the USDA (just look at that ridiculous pyramid ffs). So you kind of just have to explore this diet on your own through a lot of noise and people telling you you're wrong. In my case it was an outright cure for a lot of health problems, and it didn't take very long to confirm that either. I don't read public health journals or articles about nutrition anymore.

<comment><USER5> While I wasn't overweight or obese I had definitely gained 10+KG a few years back, and was bordering on overweight (according to BMI, which is just one indicator, not the only one, and again, take it with a grain of salt and in moderation). For a while I completely stopped drinking alcohol, soft drink, wheat and refined sugar. Basically meat, vegies, fish, whole fruit (not juice). Lost all the extra weight within a few months, and enjoyed great energy. Being 100% honest, I now find that soda is very sweet, and I now no longer drink alcohol at all. I have re-introduced some wheat and refined sugar, but keep it to a very minimum and try and combine it with other ingredients. (e.g. banana avocado cacao mousse). Never going back to drinking all that soda and buying everything as a sandwich.

<comment><USER6> I started putting on some weight after beginning full time work after college (no longer walking around campus, always having a decent lunch--it made a difference!) Two years ago I decided to limit my consumption of refined sugar to two desserts a year. I cut out pop, fruit juice, don't drink alcohol or coffee, avoid white flours and aim for foods made of whole ingredients--- fruits, vegetables, meats, nuts, etc. I'm at roughly 10lbs below where I was when that started, which is nice, but also it's transformed my feelings about sugar.

Like gergnz, pop is really sweet! Unbearably sweet. Actually most sweets are just overwhelming concentrations of sugar, and they feel weird to eat.

Sweetness is something that your body adjusts to. Once you're used to eating a brownie a day, brownies no longer seem so sweet to you. But go without sweets for six months and suddenly you'll realize just how pointlessly sweet they are.

The thing that really drives me crazy is how _so much_ food is sweetened, even things where it makes no sense. It's like everybody's palette is so accustomed to sugar that now restaurants have to add sugar to their savory foods just to make them taste normal. It's a disturbing trend.

Reminder: the US government spends $2 billion a year on sugar subsidies.

Because there's just not enough sugar!!

[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bitter-battle-over-sugar- subsid...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bitter-battle-over-sugar-subsidies- heats-up/)

<comment><USER7> >The thing that really drives me crazy is how _so much_ food is sweetened, even things where it makes no sense.

Yeah.. thats restricted to US :) Visiting US from India, I ended up throwing away a loaf of bread cause it was as sweet as chocolate

<comment><USER8> Coming from The Netherlands to live in the US for a while, I found the same. It seems like just _everything_ contains more high-fructose corm syrup, and tastes sweeter. Even all breads.

<comment><USER9> It's not all breads, just most of them, especially the shelf bread from big outside bakeries.

In most stores there will be a few choices in the bakery section that don't have added sugar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Kind of related: it's fun as a Type 1 Diabetic when people tell me that I should be able to manage my disease with just diet. Or when they get upset because I eat a bowl of ice cream or something (even though I bolused properly for the carbs).

It's really unfortunate that T1 and T2 diabetes have the same name, since they're completely different diseases that just happen to share some symptoms.

<comment><USER11> I was diagnosed as diabetic in my early 30s with an A1C of 13. I'm vegan and at the time weighed about 135 pounds (down from my normal weight of 165), ran 20-30 miles a week.

The doctors I saw immediately diagnosed me as Type 2 and treated with Metformin. Between that, starving myself, and exercising like a maniac I was able to keep my blood sugar roughly under control for another year or so.

Then everything really went to shit and additional tests were like, "Whoops, guess it was Type 1 after all."

With doctors having a hard time getting past their own biases and experience, it's no wonder the average person does, too.

<comment><USER12> Somewhat similar story, (though I weighed a bit more). Went on a keto diet and got my blood sugar down to non-diabetic levels in three months (also lost a lot of weight).

But the type 2 diagnosis didn't feel right, and I pressed them for more testing, and found out that I was actually type 1. However, it's been four years now and I'm still not on insulin. Apparently the honeymoon period for adult onset type 1 is _highly_ variable, and they don't have much data on it. So who knows when I'll have to go on insulin, but have felt pretty lucky so far.

<comment><USER11> The only downside to insulin for me is the cost and I'm pretty lucky. I buy my testing strips and pen needles from Amazon and spend $200 or so every few months when I need to restock. I signed up for a Lantus (slow-acting insulin once a day) discount card and am fortunate to pay nothing for it. Humalog (fast-acting insulin taken with food) costs $75-100 a month.

I go to the doctor every few months and demand free insulin samples when I'm there. I also got them to fill out paperwork saying I'm disabled (this is technically true by the letter of the law in the US). I used that to get a reduced fare bus pass and free entrance into National Parks. Figured I got fucked over and am going to milk what I can out of it.

Overall though it's not that bad. It's more of a hassle dealing with the routine than anything else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > he diet was a formula of 825–853 calories per day for 3 to 5 months, > followed by the stepped reintroduction of food over two to eight weeks.

That is going to be a brutal 3-5 months. Worth it in the end though.

Also, c'mon, a range of 825-853 calories? Nobody is counting calories that accurately and it would have been better to say "roughly 850 kCal per day".

<comment><USER14> You can get quite a lot of food in 850 calories. Vegetables are pretty low cal. Below is a plan I just created that is less than 850 calories

Total Cals - <USER2>

Breakfast: 2 eggs - 156 calories

Lunch:

2 cups of spinach - 14 calories

1 cup of bell peppers - 39 calories

200 grams chicken breast - 226 calories

Snack:

1 banana - 105 calories

Dinner:

200 grams chicken breast - 226 calories

1 cup of broccoli - 31 calories

1 cup of bell peppers - 39 calories

<comment><USER13> That is certainly not what I would consider "quite a lot of food"! If I was forced to use your meal plan I'd eat it in a single sitting in the evening and fast the rest of the day.

<comment><USER15> This is why I hate the term "Two pizza teams". At best that is me and one other person. On a hungry day (say after training squats) I'd be working on my own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This reminds me that we had a cat that developed diabetes. Besides the usual treatment, we changed the cat's diet "radically". Eventually the cat no longer required insulin shots, i.e. it was "cured". I remarked to my wife at the time that maybe the reason T2 diabetes is considered incurable is that it's all but impossible to get humans to radically change their diet.

<comment><USER17> It's pretty common in cats for there to be a honeymoon period after treatment begins. The lower blood sugar levels allow the still viable ß cells to resume producing insulin.

After a time, however, the process that was killing them off in the first place often reappears and insulin is required again.

The biggest factor I've seen in previous cats with diabetes - dry vs wet food. Switch from free-feeding dry to measured, timed canned portions made a night/day difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Nice to see this hitting the mainstream. I vaguely recollect Robert Lustig of "Sugar: The Bitter Truth" [1] fame (or someone following/close to him) making a similar point a few years ago.

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM)

</comment><comment><USER19> All systems of the body follow a circadian rhythm. Following the body's circadian rhythm and adhering to a time-restricted eating pattern (i.e. intermittent fasting) is even more important than explicitly only restricting calories. Secondly, avoiding processed carbs and sugars is more important than explicitly only restricting calories. Combined, those two principles directly impact your insulin sensitivity, which is very influential in telling your body how to process the calories you eat, when to feel hungry/full, and to what degree.

Of course, by following a time-restricted eating pattern, you naturally consume less calories, but in general, calories are largely irrelevant when you are adhering to a consistent circadian eating cycle and eating clean, whole foods. Healthy insulin resistance directly negates fat/weight gain by telling your body to simply dispose of the excess energy rather than storing it as fat. Calories-wise, the body only uses what it needs and gets rid of the rest. To keep insulin resistance in a healthy range though, you obviously need to not consume things that will spike it and reverse the feedback loop. Following the body's natural circadian rhythm contributes to keeping it in a healthy range as well, and it is significantly easier to adhere to than restricting calories only.

For the curious, here are a few resources that I have found super helpful in learning to better control my diet and health.

 _The Obesity Code_ by Jason Fung, MD [http://a.co/7MHTlmU](http://a.co/7MHTlmU)

 _Found My Fitness_ Podcast with Dr. Rhonda Patrick [https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/foundmyfitness/id8181983...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/foundmyfitness/id818198322?mt=2)

</comment><comment><USER20> These guys are doing some interesting work around this - [https://www.virtahealth.com/](https://www.virtahealth.com/)

<comment><USER21> Yeah, really looking forward to some of their results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> What will doctors do about this, though? They can't just tell their patients "well, you just have to lose weight".

People want easy solutions in forms of pills, and there is no money to gain from prescribing caloric restrictions.

</comment><comment><USER23> Some great documentaries about this:

\- That Sugar Film

\- Fed Up (on netflix)

\- Sugar Coated (on netflix)

<comment><USER24> Another movie is "Forks Over Knives" on Netflix. That one is more about going to whole foods rather than just cutting out sugar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> My brother the doctor doesn't call it diabesity for nothing.

</comment><comment><USER26> Was there really no research before this that showed that losing weight was beneficial for sufferers of Type II diabetes?

<comment><USER27> There has been plenty.

I tried my first multi-day water only fast around 2005 after reading about it in a book written by an M.D. who used fasting to treat various illnesses. I can't remember the name though.

The article has some shocking statistics but most shocking to me was that the youngest person in the study was 20 years old, type 2 diabetic at 20.

I think the reason that drugs are the usual solution is simply that it is really really hard to get people to change their diets and/or fast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think the headline is accurate because that is indeed what the study shows, since it compared a control group to a group on a very low calorie diet.

But I'd really like to know if this is any _more_ beneficial than more normal, gradual weight loss, like a 2000 calorie diet that gets you down to the same weight.

<comment><USER29> A lot of people with sedentary lifestyles will _gain_ weight on a 2000kcal diet.

<comment><USER28> These are people who lost 15 kg or more (33+ pounds). Most likely they were pretty overweight to start with.

And the heavier you are, the easier it is to lose weight because it takes energy to just maintain all that extra body weight.

Point being, there are certainly some people would not lose weight on 2000 calories/day, but I would guess that isn't true for most of the people in this study.

<comment><USER30> > And the heavier you are, the easier it is to lose weight because it takes > energy to just maintain all that extra body weight

Well, the higher a calorie intake you are likely to be able to maintain and still lose weight, which is very much _not_ the same as "the easier it is to lose weight."

<comment><USER28> OK, I've got to admit that what I wrote was a bit ambiguous. I meant physiologically, it's easier to lose weight. But when you are starting with a group of people who are overweight to begin with, there are other factors like behavior or psychology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I have a hypothesis, though I haven't had a chance to dig through existing research to determine if it's an idea worth pursuing.

The basics of it are that there is a condition that has the same symptoms of type 2 diabetes, but isn't, and that "real" type 2 diabetes is a genetic defect that does not have as much of an impact as the type 1 defect. If correct you might say it's a nomenclature issue, which seems to happen from time to time in medicine.

If this hypothesis is correct, then people who are overweight and "cure" type 2 by losing weight are really just improving their health (which they should do). They never had diabetes to begin with. As I said before, I haven't done the research and only have anecdotal evidence from my own situation with diabetes. To elaborate, I've never been overweight and have always had fairly well balanced, low-sodium diet, yet was still diagnosed. Most men on my father's side of the family have been diagnosed with diabetes, so it seems genetics might come in to play. I manage my diabetes through diet, exercise, and medicine (not insulin).

I suppose the research I would like to see is a study of treatment controlled for the initial weight and lifestyles of the patients. If weight wasn't a factor to begin with, how did diagnoses take place and how did changes in diet and lifestyle affect it? I'm also curious of heart disease and kidney function actually correlates with diabetes only because of obesity (or in other words, actually only correlates with obesity).

Also, the article states, "Rather than addressing the root cause, management guidelines for type 2 diabetes focus on reducing blood sugar levels through drug treatments. Diet and lifestyle are touched upon, but diabetes remission by cutting calories is rarely discussed". Maybe that's true in the UK, but in my case, per doctor's orders I went to the diabetes control center and had a class on how to change my diet, which included meetings with a RN and registered dietitian who specializes in diabetes treatment.

</comment><comment><USER32> Maybe I am repeating another comment, but... that's not something new. It's a well known thing (at least here, in Europe/Poland) that type 2 diabetes at early stage is mostly caused by bad lifestyle and can be easily reversed within few months.

<comment><USER33> The interesting thing here is _what_ lifestyle is causing it/cures it.

In Denmark we call diabetes "sugar disease". I read a pamphlet from the The Diabetes Foundation where it said that it was 'a lifestyle disease' and made no connection with sugar or carbs. Rather, I got the impression it was still about reducing your weight, which has usually been a battle against fat contents. I asked my doctor about these statements and the connection with sugar, only to have him say "well, some studies make a connection but nothing official".

Which brings me back to the article. The point is the connection is becoming more clear: High carb diet (e.g. sugar) seems to trigger Type 2.

It's not news, but science is not about news - it's about rigorous testing to confirm our theory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> > The participants were all given support throughout, including cognitive > behaviour therapy and were encouraged to exercise.

I wonder if there's also comorbidity of obesity and mental health troubles which is helped by both of these aside from the diet.

</comment><comment><USER35> It is indeed so tiring to explain to people I'm not crazy skipping that dessert or pizza or pastry. Most of my peers still think bacon and butter are pure evil.

That's even skipping all the vegans.

</comment><comment><USER36> The way I found out that for example, sugar and meat are among my enemies, was avoiding one of them for days, and writing down how I felt. One thing easy to forget is how different our metabolism can be when compared with others. But you have to make an effort to avoid just that one type of food, and keep eating everything else as usual. Even better is to repeat the experiment various times. And write everything down, do not trust your memory.

</comment><comment><USER37> Confirms what I've known anecdotally.

I had a whole host of health problems before caloric restriction and cardio + weightlifting. High blood pressure, arthritis, and asthma all disappeared after an active lifestyle and CR.

I never took the Norvasc that was prescribed by my primary care doctor because my cardiologist told me I was too young to be taking any medications. Had an EKG and blood work and everything came back normal.

</comment><comment><USER38> This is less about the diet and more about the weight loss.

Type 2 diabetes is basically overloading your body so your pancreas doesn't work effectively. Removing those stressors and improving insulin sensitivity allows your body to work normally.

You can achieve similar results from any diet that someone would stick to and lose a similar amount of weight.

</comment><comment><USER39> I think this is what happened to me.

About 4-5 years ago I was very unhealthy and experiencing symptoms of type-2 diabetes. It scared the hell out of me and I cut out all sugar and started running multiple miles per day.

The result was significant and I lost something on the order of 60-70 pounds. After that, all of my symptoms subsided.

</comment><comment><USER40> Wasn't this already demonstrated by the same people (Newcastle) 2 or 3 years ago?

</comment><comment><USER41> Wait a sec. caloric restriction is a "radical diet" now? And how was this not the first thing that doctors tried before going straight to bariatric surgery? Nobody was like hey, maybe we should try to lose some weight first?

</comment><comment><USER42> Vaguely related [https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/ketogenic-diets-for- cancer-...](https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/ketogenic-diets-for-cancer-hype- versus-science/)

</comment><comment><USER43> I'd also recommend the book Diabetes unpacked and, if you are interested in the deep story of a low-carb vs high-fat trial, the brand new book Lore of Nutrition by world-class scientist Tim Noakes and Marika Sboros

</comment><comment><USER44> In one day this page has more commenters than there were study participants (149 participants) who were on the controlled diet. We could do our own study if we could have everyone post their numbers.

<comment><USER44> I created an email. Please send your 4 pieces of daily data firstname.lastname@example.com

Your height, Your weight, Your daily calories, Diabetes status ie Blood glucose level with units.

I will create a webpage with anonymous data. That is no email addresses. Each participant will have an anonymous Participant #

I plan to post a table Participant # - Date - Height, Weight, Calories Eaten Today, BG level

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> [https://www.reddit.com/r/keto/](https://www.reddit.com/r/keto/)

</comment><comment><USER46> This has been common knowledge for some time, but as with everything else in western medicine its "research evidence or bust".

<comment><USER29> Many things that were once "common knowledge" are now known to be false. That's why modern evidence-based medicine is increasingly effective and offers the only viable path forward. But it also makes me wonder what things we currently consider to be common knowledge today will be as thoroughly debunked as bloodletting 100 years from now.

<comment><USER47> Bloodletting has been an important and scientifically verified part of my father and aunt's medical treatment due to an excess absorption of iron (haemochromotosis).

Also some people find leaches useful for cleaning wounds.

Common knowledge is like a common cold. You just don't want it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> >Radical diet can reverse obesity, old study shows.

What a great news ! Now we should get rid of all overweight problems, right ?

</comment><comment><USER49> Well I know what most assuredly can reverse type 2 diabetes at least in overweight people - metabolic surgery. I was 30+ BMI, in the category 1 obese - nothing serious like rolling downhill kind of obese, however for a 5'9" at nearly 210 lbs (and not really going down), I was big..it's just that I'm one of those people who hides his weight really well (or carries it, if you prefer).

I had a VSG procedure 6+ months ago.. prior to it my (bad) cholesterol was high, I felt like lethargic s__t most of the time physically/mentally, and I'm pretty sure I had metabolic syndrome.. was also borderline hypertensive.

As age increases, none of this gets better, and quite frankly, no amount of exercise is truly going to reverse weight. What's needed is resetting the metabolic set point we all have, and unless you dedicate a significant chunk of your time/life by paying attention to everything you eat (e.g. probably low carbs/high protein for most like me), coupled with keeping in shape (e.g. 30 mins/daily exercise, nothing strenuous but enough to break sweat)... 90% of the time you're going to go back up to your metabolic set point weight, or worse, rebound above it if you lost the weight too fast.

This was shown to be the case with more or less 80-90% of Biggest Loser winners, whom were monitored 5 years down the road and determined to have regained all the weight and worse, more in some cases.. The ones who kept it off do so at a great expenditure of time as I pointed out above.

Top this w/the fact if you have a FT job or a business to run and a family to take care of... you will see the impossibility of losing weight to stave off all the potential diseases (type 2 diab included).

I've got your answer - but you won't like it because you have to give up your food addiction - bariatric surgery.

I've lost nearly 40 pounds since my VSG and am at a weight at 40+ years of age that I was in my late teens. Blood pressure, cholesterol, all normalized... energy through the roof. Moderate exercise, and I only do it because I feel like it now whereas before I felt like I was forcing it when I was obese/heavy.

Please look into this (ASMBS.org), and make a life altering choice that will possibly extend and -definitely- improve your quality of life as well as reverse type 2 diabetes and many other diseases related to being over weight.

If insurance won't cover it because you are not TOO FAT (like 35+ BMI), bariatricpal.com has doctors from all over the world, Mexico included that have performed successful surgeries with glowing reviews from Americans and Canadians for less money than what you'd pay in the USA (e.g. obesitycontrolcenter.com being a prime example, where I had mine).

Life's short... don't let being overweight ruin it.

<comment><USER29> The concept of a metabolic set point is a myth based on a misinterpretation of research. Many overweight people — including those with families and jobs — have gotten down to a healthy weight and maintained it permanently purely though lifestyle changes. So please don't claim that it's impossible.

<comment><USER49> You are one of them, I assume? How much weight did you lose, over what period of time, and what is your weight right now? Are you a doctor by any chance?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I wouldn't call increasing chromium and vanadium and decreasing sugar 'radical'.

</comment><comment><USER51> Type 2 diabetes is a solved problem, but pharmaceutical companies have yet to find a way to make money from a water fast, so no one tells people about it.

<comment><USER52> I don't know if it's a solved problem. It's very hard to get people to fast. It's even harder to get people to maintain a healthy lifestyle and body weight after going into remission.

<comment><USER53> Well, the problem is solved. People just don't want to take enough ownership over their health to actually do it.

<comment><USER54> Fasts are so hard on the body and mind that it's not at all difficult to imagine situations in which people can't afford to do it.

I wouldn't be able to do my job if I did an 850kcal fast for 3 months.

<comment><USER53> Well, fasts aren't the only solution here. Changing your and adjusting your carb intake in order to offset insulin requirements can gradually get things back on track.

Doing intermittent fasting isn't even that taxing once you adjust. I have been doing it for around 4 years and I work as a developer. My most productive hours are still in the morning, and I don't even eat until noon-1pm on most days.

But to your point, yes, a drastic implementation of a clinical approach can be impractical. Fortunately there're a lot of ways to fix type 2 with diet which aren't as taxing.

So the problem is solved. It's just that most people would rather take insulin than change their diet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> [https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/](https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/)

</comment><comment><USER55> The only reason this is news in 2017 is because the food and pharma industries have been so successful at suppressing this fact. smh

</comment><comment><USER56> Let's not mention this to the "every body is beautiful" crowd. I had a similar journey in my 20s when my doctor let me know I was pre-diabetic. Weight loss and good diet now has me feeling better in my 30s then ever. It doesn't have to be complicated.

</comment><comment><USER57> I've been on an almost all meat, egg and almost no plant matter, ketogenic diet for nearly 5 years. AMA on my diet.

</comment><comment><USER58> This isn't a radical diet. This is our natural diet.

Carbs dissolve digest sugar and are unnecessary for human metabolism. If you stop poisoning yourself, you will find your health rebounds.

<comment><USER59> You aren't making sense. Take a moment to say something substantive, please.

<comment><USER60> I think the post is making the point that over the course of human history, low calorie, low sugar diets were the norm. Periods of fasting were the norm.

<comment><USER61> Many people make that claim, but it isn't backed by science.

Well fasting at times was normal. Everything enough though is questionable. We know that humans have been eating some high carb foods for ages. We also have every reason to believe that humans used to be more active than our "couch potato" current life. There were no office jobs, if you wanted to eat somebody had to chase down the food (sometimes a literal chase, sometimes just find it). Low sugar - there was plenty of fruit available at times. Of course this fruit did have a lot of complex carbs as well.

<comment><USER60> You touched on the 2nd part of this, exercise. Walking for transportation may seem "radical" today, particularly in the U.S. But this is only radical in a modern context. Walking is our "natural" mode of transportation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> I've always been slim and not eaten much. But a few years ago I started to develop a paunch! For the first time in my life, I started to check the sugar content of what I was eating. The results surprised me greatly. For example, I like chocolate protein drinks, and often have 4 or 5 per day. But the one that I liked had 10g sugar per serve. The different brand right next to it had <1g sugar/serve! So that was an instant save of ~45g sugar/day. I also had no idea of how much sugar is in orange juice. And the misleading labelling! One juice on our local shelves says: "NO ADDED SUGAR!" \- but has absolute truckloads of sugar already. Results (a few months later): me 1, paunch 0!</comment>


Can 5G replace everybody's home broadband? - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/12/5g-as-a-home-broadband-replacement-isnt-a-slam-dunk-yet-but-it-might-be-soon/?comments=1 <comment><USER2> 4G was faster by DSL but the mobile companies sold it at insane prices, if 5G is a repeat of that it won't replace anything, unless the mobile companies start selling flat plans.</comment>


Sleeping Beauty – Keep track of what's where - <AUTHOR> http://www.sleeping.watch <comment><USER2> This would allow the company to create a database of geolocations of valuable things. Such a database would not only be a privacy concern, but an invitation for thieves. That would transform this alleged protection service into an actual security threat to all that stuff.

So:

Where is the tracking data stored? Only in the device? On some server? Who has access to it?

</comment><comment><USER3> You need to hire a writer, or at LEAST a copyeditor. There's numerous mistakes and infelicities. You didn't do a good job of differentiating the different models - the first two sentences on each description are identical, so there's no need to include them at all. Like it took me way too long to understand that the "lock" model is _actually a padlock_. Also what is "interlending"?

You also need to hire a designer. The entire page is busy and confusing and doesn't communicate well.

The animation of the iPhone entering sleep mode - what is that supposed to communicate? It's too small to read its screen, so it looks like you're putting the _phone_ into sleep mode. And then it vanishes, for some reason? Does sleep mode make my phone invisible?

The looping background animation is confusing, distracting, and too hard to see to communicate anything worthwhile - it's like a series of nonsense images (crying baby, gun, toilet paper, various signs, a bunch of calendar dates? what the hell is all that supposed to communicate?). The scrolling lags for no reason. The "features" and "connections" sections have icons that respond to mouseover as if to afford clicking, but don't actually respond to clicks. You have quotes not from satisfied customers or impressed journalists, but from the people _who made the thing_ , which is completely pointless.

</comment><comment><USER4> There is nothing above the fold that tells me what the product is. A youtube video doesn't count.

<comment><USER5> This really doesn't deserve downvotes - it is a very valid point (even if "the fold" arguably isn't really a thing).

Everyone and their dog has videos on their landing pages now, but I almost never want to watch them, because having to turn the sound on will disturb whatever else I'm doing - and, to be perfectly blunt, listening to my music is more important to me than your product in the vast majority of cases. If there is explanatory copy that is compelling enough to make me watch a video, then you've done a good job with the copy and that was worth it in and of itself.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sleeping Beauty is a compact security device which protects and tracks your valuable possessions using a cellular network to triangulate its position.

Only if Sleeping Beauty is physically moved does it consume any battery power in order to send its location to your smartphone. This is the reason why Sleeping Beauty runs up to 2 whole years on a single battery, and why it's the perfect solution for protecting those possessions which should stay put for a very long time.

Almost any object can be tracked with Sleeping Beauty. And the real beauty of Sleeping Beauty is that it works anywhere in the world where there's cellular network coverage.

<comment><USER6> Just a little tip: we can get that information from the product page, I think most of us would prefer if you instead introduced yourself, explained the backstory, maybe some technical details, etc.

Nevertheless, a very interesting product and congratulations on launching. I couldn't work out how big the device was, however. I was wondering whether it would fit on the back of a watch (whilst the watch isn't being worn, I mean). If this was small enough, I could see this being very valuable for watch collectors.

<comment><USER7> I was wondering about the size too. One picture has a matchbox for comparison, based on that it appear to be the size of a hockey puck (about 8cm diameter) .

edit: 8 not 80cm!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Do data plans exist exist in the US that can make something like this not cost at least $20 or $30 a month? Like, something where you pay by the byte?

If so, I'd love to know about them. I have a half-dozen Opengear ACM5000 cell modems that I use to monitor telemetry. On average, I use 5 kilobytes per month - they wake up once a week or so and transmit a few hundred bytes.

Even on T-mobile's lowest data-only plan, it costs about $20/month per device.

<comment><USER9> There are a number of companies that specialize in this. You basically pay by the KB and it works on nearly every GSM network globally.

Search for "M2M sim" and you'll find these services.

<comment><USER8> Thank you! I think you just saved us a ton of money. I didn't know about that term.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Isn't one of your examples of sleeping beauty in a shipping crate, surely there wouldn't be GSM signal in that scenario, in the ocean?

</comment><comment><USER9> Call me a skeptic, but it's hard to imagine there are still people that will preorder hardware in this manner. So many people have gotten burned by Kickstarter or Indiegogo or even products by established companies like the infamous and elusive KarmaGo[1].

Maybe there is an alternative funding source you can use to build your initial run of products and instill confidence that it is actually achievable?

That would also help you understand how long the development and production cycle for hardware is - something that continuously surprises a lot of teams.

[1] [https://blog.yourkarma.com/karma-go-on-track-for- may](https://blog.yourkarma.com/karma-go-on-track-for-may)

<comment><USER11> We don't sell Sleeping Beauty you can "Pre-Order" and take the survey to get a 20% Voucher as soon as Sleeping Beauty is purchasable. We know how hard it is to build a hardware startup and we don't want to disappoint potential customers with Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaigns without delivering the product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> How big is the device? How much does it weigh?

<comment><USER13> Came here to ask this as well.

<comment><USER3> There's one animation that I _think_ compares it to a matchbox. Except the object is camouflage-colored, for some reason?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Every second or third time I try to load that website is responds with an error. Also, it loads very slowly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, we never had this much traffic - try to fix it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Cannot abide laggy scrolling

</comment><comment><USER15> Great idea!

It could have the option to send its location only on request, using in daily driving cars. Or even better if you are close, it could know about it somehow (bluetooth?, NFC?) and stay in sleep mode.

I was thinking about a similar thing, by creating an app which does the same, buy a low-end phone with GPS and hide it in my car.

</comment><comment><USER16> You write that the battery life is 2 years. But is that with it waking up once a year, or is it once a day, once every 6 hours, every hour?

<comment><USER11> It overcomes the power supply issue in an ingenious way: the battery life is profoundly extended because Sleeping Beauty only consumes power when the object is moved. When Sleeping Beauty is standing still, it remains in sleep mode and doesn't consume any power at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Seems the web site is having some troubles...

</comment><comment><USER18> just wanted to leave a kind advice: put some hints that the page already loaded .. I was looking at the "Zzzz" animation, and believed it was still loading. I almost closed the tab!

Anyways, best wishes for the product!!</comment>