On MetaFilter Being Penalized By Google: An Explainer - <AUTHOR> http://searchengineland.com/metafilter-penalized-google-192168 <comment><USER2> This is the problem with using associative reasoning to detect bad actors. Bad actors are attempting to look like good actors, but good actors aren't trying to avoid looking like bad actors. Bad actors will target a stereotyped set of good actor attributes, and your filters will mostly catch unique or idiosyncratic good actors, who aren't targeting anything.

Unless your good actors are willing to conform to a published set of (nerfed) behaviors that don't have the possibility of being bad, or are willing to register and be vetted by you individually, you can't help but be overwhelmed by false positives. It's the same reason why the most intricate, pervasive, and technologically flexible surveillance system in history can't find a terrorist.

edit: I think the entire endeavor is doomed. The bubble associating your current searches with your past searches, and attempts to eliminate spam and eHow through algorithms have just resulted in eliminating most sites from the searchable internet. You don't realize how bad its gotten from all of the search engines until you spend an hour on something like millonshort (which looks like it's down now.)

<comment><USER3> Reminds me of (forum) mafia: there's a set of heuristics for how "town" players behave. But real town players will break those heuristics occasionally, because they're trying to catch the mafia - so the players who conform exactly to the "town" heuristics all the time are actually more likely to be mafia players.

<comment><USER4> What it's resulting in is a 'news-stand' effect in which articles from the mainstream press will rank higher than anyone else on a given query if the match is close enough. Although I'm not a huge fan of the press as it is today, it could be worse.

You can actually identify opportunities by finding valuable queries that are being squatted on by the content mills. Lots of nice things in stuff like home improvement, insurance, and finance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm glad I experienced the old internet back in its heyday, when high quality sites linked to other high quality sites, and Google exposed this natural topology for all to explore. Google's success eventually led to the end of the old internet: AdSense captured its value and then SEO perverted it with noise.

I expect within 5 years some crotchety old programmer will have build a search engine that penalizes sites for anything more than basic markup. No JS, no CSS, no hints of a CMS. Maybe it's already been done. "Old Skool Search"

And it will still be a poor imitation, because if there is one thing you can't recreate and experience for yourself, it is an internet gone by.

<comment><USER6> This is kind of how I feel as well.

Google figured out how to monetize links. Good for them. Now they get to deal with the consequences of monetized links.

Live by the sword, die by the sword.

<comment><USER7> Ahh, the Eternal September...

I sincerely believe we need two Internets, or we need two Googles.

We need what started with ARPANET, but this time never let it commercialise. PageRank works for that network.

We also need the commercial network that works like a better Yellow Pages but actually gives valuable local focused information on businesses and services that can't be gamed and has different rules.

Trying to apply the same ranking rules to both types of searches pollutes the academic and destroys every local small business who are unlucky enough to not make it to the magic first page - because nothing else counts and the winner takes all.

Google has taken on a lot of responsibility dictating what they think we are looking for and they are failing us (and especially small business) big time. Maybe they are thinking about this? Maybe Google Local will factor more than PageRank for commercial. Maybe they will change the layout so more than 10 lucky links get to page one and you never get to have multiple listings for the same company. But right now it is bad and only getting worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> MetaFilter at least has the advantage of being old and respected enough in tech circles to get the attention of Hacker News and Matt Cutts himself when something like this happens. For the vast majority of legitimate websites who see their traffic drop or become non-existent when google pushes an update to their ranking algorithms, there is virtually no recourse. I understand it's a necessary evil and there will always be collateral damage when trying to combat spammy websites, but at the same time it's scary to know that there are people whose sole source of income is web traffic and overnight it can disappear without explanation.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's amazing how crappy Google results are nowadays. It's all Buzzfeed, Crackle, Mashable, Y!A, WikiHow, eHow, and other garbage results akin to those garbage sites. True information like you'd find on MeFi or some of the more interesting subreddits is now completely buried. There's no other alternatives, either. DuckDuckGo pulls info from less popular sites, and you can find real gems with the right search parameters and hashbangs, but the relevance is not nearly as good as Google's.

I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I think since we started getting blog/aggregator/quizlet-type sites on the web back in 2009-2011, the quality of search results has gone far, far down the river.

<comment><USER10> > It's amazing how crappy Google results are nowadays. It's all Buzzfeed, > Crackle, Y!A, WikiHow, eHow, and other garbage results akin to those garbage > sites.

I think this is just a sign of the fact that the web has come of age and everyone is on it -- the things that people are _actually_ most likely to be looking for no longer correspond very well to the things people who were actively and heavily using the web in, say, 1998, were looking for.

<comment><USER11> That's no doubt some if it, but there are sites that are pretty much worthless that still rank high in the search results.

Not worthless in the sense that I am making a statement about the type of content on them, worthless because there isn't any useful content.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> >At last, it's time to dig into what happened with MetaFilter. The short story is that I don't know.

<comment><USER13> The real kicker is at the start

>If you just can't wait to get to the specifics of what happened to MetaFilter, scroll further down in this story now.

I'm pretty glad I didn't read all that between those two points just to be told that he doesn't know.

<comment><USER14> I didn't, which there had been a warning or tl;dr.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Man, the use of Vine in this article is awful. It made the point he was trying to make so much more confusing vs. just posting the diagrams.

<comment><USER16> The whole article is way too long. He makes the same points over and over again... and then he doesn't even know what happened to Metafilter.

<comment><USER17> Sounds like almost every SEO blog I've ever read.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is what's so frustrating about Google. I don't want to spend time poking your black box to try to divine why my company's site has dropped in rankings. Especially when that means major architectural changes with no guarantee of any sort of payoff.

The small online retailer I work for experienced a 1/3 drop in Google traffic a year and a half ago. No discernible reason. Thin content? Maybe - we do have a lot of filters to make it easier to browse products.

Of course, these are things we built for our customers, not Google. I'm not going to spend a month or two rearchitecting them just to see if Google likes it.

</comment><comment><USER17> From Haughey's Medium post ([https://medium.com/technology- musings/941d15ec96f0](https://medium.com/technology-musings/941d15ec96f0)) about it all:

"Advice online was to scale back the "top heavy" ads... I removed most ads to the absolute minimum of just 1 or 2 per page..."

Also mentions first running ads that blended with the content to then running ads that stood out from the content.

Funny thing is that if you are an AdSense publisher, you get emails from Google all the time telling you what you should do. If you aren't using your full allocation of 3 ads and 2 LUs per page, they will often email to remind you to run _more_ ads. And they'll encourage you to run ads in prominent positions towards the top of the page. And to run ever-larger ads. And then change from text-only ads to image ads.

I have had AdSense-monetised sites for around 10 years and have had seemingly automated emails as well as personal emails from account managers about these things.

<comment><USER17> Funnily enough, I got an email from Google this morning:

"You could run 27 more ads on 15 pages of your website."

Apparently I should try to make more money by using the full ad complement on all pages... The 15 pages it's probably talking about are things like the contact form, about page, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Perhaps it's a "thin content" penalty.

Looking at the site, the posts have low wordcount. No images. Lots of links.

That's kind of consistent with the other trends we're seeing from Panda 4.0.

Thoughts?

<comment><USER20> That's hilarious. Metafilter's content is great, especially AskMe.

The idea that pictures would improve things _for metafilter_ is bizarre; it's a discussion site and the discussion is really deep on both MeFi proper and AskMe, which is where a lot of the search traffic went (very deep archives).

It's possible that people wouldn't "bounce" as much if there were lots of images, but it's not _obvious_ that getting people to stay that way is a good thing. Google's algorithms shape the web, they don't just measure it, and I'd rather see more link-heavy, image-sparse pages.

<comment><USER21> lauradhamilton said Metafilter's content was thin, not that it was bad or wasn't great.

If you answer everything in two sentences, Google is still likely to punish you for it even if those are ideal answers. They punish thin content even if it's supposedly great.

<comment><USER20> ... which is absurd. Google is basically admitting, as far as I can tell, that their algorithms have been gamed to uselessness.

<comment><USER21> I actually view the thin / thick content issue as a strong proof that Google's search engine is incredible dumb.

They have to constantly write edge case scenario algorithms because the overall of their search system is of very low 'intelligence.' They're whittling their way into a corner in the process, because they don't know any other way to deal with problems than to further narrow what's defined as the good with another specialty algorithm that someone inside Google hacks together to buy another day against spam winning.

The situation is: Google can't tell what's a good answer and what's not based on the content. They have to try to figure out what's good or bad based on every other measurement except the actual content. So if the ideal answer is a mere 47 words long, Google is too stupid to know the difference and understand there are many instances where short & concise is better than seven pages of verbosity. In the not so distant future, this is going to be laughable.

My opinion might be scoffed at today, but I think Google's search platform is little more than state of the art junk that scales well. It's the best junk we have right now, and that's not saying much.

Killing Google search should be on PG's list of hard things that someone should be tackling. They're a dinosaur.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Even let's just assume for the sake of argument everyone agrees on who's the good guys and who's the bad guys.

There's still no way for an algorithm to correctly exclude all bad guys and avoid excluding all good guys. And trying to improve in one area often decreases in the other. (Before even getting to the fact it's a dynamic system where the bad guys are constantly trying to adapt to avoid exclusion)

> Often, there is an inverse relationship between precision and recall, where > it is possible to increase one at the cost of reducing the other. Brain > surgery provides an obvious example of the tradeoff. Consider a brain > surgeon tasked with removing a cancerous tumor from a patient's brain. The > surgeon needs to remove all of the tumor cells since any remaining cancer > cells will regenerate the tumor. Conversely, the surgeon must not remove > healthy brain cells since that would leave the patient with impaired brain > function. The surgeon may be more liberal in the area of the brain she > removes to ensure she has extracted all the cancer cells. This decision > increases recall but reduces precision. On the other hand, the surgeon may > be more conservative in the brain she removes to ensure she extracts only > cancer cells. This decision increases precision but reduces recall. That is > to say, greater recall increases the chances of removing healthy cells > (negative outcome) and increases the chances of removing all cancer cells > (positive outcome). Greater precision decreases the chances of removing > healthy cells (positive outcome) but also decreases the chances of removing > all cancer cells (negative outcome).

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

</comment><comment><USER23> Obviously, what happened to metafilter isn't right.

But it should also be obvious why Google doesn't say what needs to be done to remove a penalty. The sites that _should_ receive a penalty will just use that information to further game the system.

<comment><USER21> How is it obvious that what happened to Metafilter isn't right? I'm inclined to be sympathetic when any non-spammy site is hit by a Google penalty, but what's the basis used for determining that Metafilter is deserving of a particularly high ranking above where it's at right now?

The only thing I've seen are a few opinions stating that Metafilter is great. That doesn't make it so to the majority of web users.

<comment><USER24> It's not just that MetaFilter's own ranking has dropped. If that were the case, then you might argue that it was just the algorithm doing its job.

But Google has clearly miscategorized MetaFilter as a content farm or linkspam site, and is actively _telling other sites that it is penalizing them_ for outbound links from MetaFilter that it has categorized as spam, even in cases where those links are clearly not spam.

In this case, the algorithm is _not_ doing its job.

<comment><USER21> Excellent point. I didn't put together the link designation with the likelihood that Google had put Metafilter into a spam penalty box. I simply hadn't considered that a possibility given Metafilter's reputation.

Every time I read about this Metafilter situation, I cringe in thinking about how horrible Answers.com is with the abusive tactics they employ now when it comes to displaying content / answers. And yet they remain non-penalized; historically they're one of AdSense's biggest publishers, always found that interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> We had a site get hit hard by Panda 4.0 but we are not surprised. About a 35% drop overnight May 20th.

An observation that we have made over the years is that significant changes to Google's algorithms always seem to soften in the subsequent months for us and we return to a high level in the Google SERPs.

The site in question is a site where we curate free crafts projects and patterns which my spouse and I began in the 90's with our family and friends. The idea was to gather together excellent crafts projects on little known mostly small sites with the criteria that they are free, complete, usually require no email/login and are within two clicks of us. We still update it every week.

Over the years we have used user feedback to make design decisions. For example, when Pinterest became popular we got a lot of feedback to use masonry instead of tables for our images/links and lately we've been moving to make it fully responsive because we get a lot of feedback from tablet users.

The only time we were manually penalized by Google involved an issue where we had ignored our user's complaints about so they were right and we were wrong. We fixed it.

Our site looks thin to an algorithm and we almost always get hit by large algorithm changes but over the subsequent months, the site always moves back up and ranks very well. We can only imagine that this means the algorithm is somehow tempered by our visitor's behavior (we use adsense and analytics so they see all) and is not simply a switch that is thrown and left on.

I have to wonder how much MetaFilter has done to gather user feedback. The answer to their problem may be there.

Disclosure: The site described is AllCrafts

</comment><comment><USER26> Anyone with any experience in the SEO world knows that Danny Sullivan doesn't have a fucking clue anymore. He's no different than a talking head reporting on the daily ups and downs of the stock market on your local news.

<comment><USER27> Anyone with any experience in the SEO world knows that dchuck doesn't have a fucking clue anymore. He's no different than a talking head reporting on the daily ups and downs of the stock market on your local news.

Ad hominem. If instead of saying "X is an idiot, anyone can tell " you'd say what's wrong with his argument, you wouldn't look like a talking head.

<comment><USER26> If you were active in the SEO world, you'd know what I said wasn't an Ad Hominem but instead an accurate description of his abilities.

Danny Sullivan does not actively "do SEO" anymore, a field that changes monthly. He reports on news that other people discover about happenings of the search engine industry.

Hence why he concluded that he didn't know what happened to MetaFilter. Because he has no fucking clue how modern SEO works anymore.

And it's dchuk.

<comment><USER27> Thanks, that's a start. And of course, sorry for the misspelling.

In all seriousness, it would be more helpful if you'd mention what's wrong with the original article.

Since you seem to be knowledgeable and active on the SEO front, would you mind explaining what happened to MetaFilter?

<comment><USER7> The problem is SEO in general.

We have omnipresent and omniscient Google (or so they think) with high priest Matt Cutts bringing the tablets down from the mountaintop.

The SEO crew are on the ground busy reading chicken entrails and tea leaves and coming up with the best guesses they can but they really don't know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> MetaFilter's real problem is that on a web that is currently built around sharing, its audience shuns social media. I've never seen a MetaFilter link in any of my feeds. I've never seen a story on one of the major blogs use MetaFilter as a source (expect for this Google story).

<comment><USER21> They appear to be making numerous basic SEO mistakes.

For example their links don't have nofollow on them, when sites such as Stack Overflow (Rap Genius, Quora, etc) do.

That one change alone would likely boost their rankings significantly.

<comment><USER29> That's completely backwards, though.

The Page rank algorithm depends on the existence legitimate links, and MetaFilter has a high signal to noise ratio.

By inciting people to "nofollow" valid links to improve their own ranking, Google is damaging its index.

<comment><USER21> I agree it's backwards / ridiculous, but that is apparently how Google prefers links to be treated now. It clearly breaks the notion of good will value sharing between sites. It seems these days all the best ranking sites are careful to nofollow across the board.

I used to see claims that Google gave sites a modest benefit for sharing pagerank via links to other high quality sites or similar sites. That doesn't seem to hold up under scrutiny when you look at the sites that have done well by optimizing SEO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> MetaFilter should definitely nofollow their external links in the comments. That makes sure that spammy/unnatural links do not count as a vote (which turns MetaFilter into a bad neighborhood as far as search engines are concerned, and attracts the spammers).

... <a href="#">Sample</a>, an Indian online pharmacy. I have not ordered from them myself. ...

They should look real hard at their site structure and which pages they allow to be indexed. Too many vague subdomains, and 'posts tagged with...' in the index.

I wonder what their user metrics show to Google. I don't think Google is penalizing sites based on a mere hunch, or won't notice that a site like MetaFilter got hit by an algorithmic update.

This site is someone's child, so it's hard to be too critical, but the view that MetaFilter hosts the quality content of the internet is far too rosy.

Pages full like: [http://www.metafilter.com/67307/Gampoumlmbampoumlc](http://www.metafilter.com/67307/Gampoumlmbampoumlc) Which are veiled spam pages. Pages full of inane babble about medical issues or personal drama, with the credibility and authority of a Yahoo Answers page. Just because people paid MetaFilter to post, and a site is heavily moderated, does not mean it adds anything to the search results for most generic search terms.

Then most links or interesting stories are from elsewhere on the web. MetaFilter is kinda like trying to rank with the old Digg comments: not the best place on the internet to read a discussion surrounding a topic. Why deserve to rank for linking to a funny or controversial news article, and riling up 15 comments or so?

In the end there may be far more natural reasons for this. The user signals showed something was wrong with the site. People bounced a lot (be it the design, be it because you can't comment without paying, be it because 15 random internet comments have little value). In the meantime Reddit and other sites grew to large communities. You don't see Reddit comment threads ranking all too high either, unless they are really special, popular or significant, like the president doing an AMA.

<comment><USER2> There's absolutely nothing spammy about [http://www.metafilter.com/67307/Gampoumlmbampoumlc](http://www.metafilter.com/67307/Gampoumlmbampoumlc), and if it has to be excluded from the internet because it contains two links to the website of a product along with discussion of that product between two dozen people - your search is broken, not the page.

I'm not sure when it became alright to exclude "inane babble" from the internet, but I'm not comfortable with an algorithmic measure of lack of interestingness or quality being judged as an attack. I also think that it's moving the goalposts from detecting destructive or deceptive content to defining what all content on the internet should look like.

<comment><USER30> That page is commercial spam (or "veiled spam"). It serves no other purpose than to get a link to his own product site, no discussion, no nothing. Just: For the special price of 999 Euro you can get your own. How is that quality content?

It is also spammy in that it doesn't nofollow external links on comments. Those links should have been nofollowed like 6 years ago. That they still aren't, is telling about MetaFilter's knowledge on SEO. You know that Google sees your site linking to bad sites, and what do you do? Complain about it? Fire people due to an update 2 years ago? Or do you simply take action to fix it?

MetaFilter doesn't have to be (and isn't) excluded from the internet. It just doesn't have to rank well for terms like "Gomboc".

It became alright to derank "inane babble" the moment it increased the satisfaction of search engine users. Which is pretty much from the beginning of search engines. It is user metrics that count. Statistics don't lie.

It does not matter that you are uncomfortable with an algorithm. I think I don't get your "judged as an attack"-part. The alternative is not using a search engine that relies on algorithms.

I did a casual investigation of MetaFilter. It has not changed much over the years. The pages I did look at were all of the level of "inane babble". One line comments. Puns. Not adding much to an already thin topic. Perfectly alright to have a place on the internet to debate how to get your friend to take Viagra. But not much need to rank that for men's health topics, relationship advice or even Viagra.

[http://ask.metafilter.com/57406/Bright-light-flashes-in- my-r...](http://ask.metafilter.com/57406/Bright-light-flashes-in-my-right-eye)

Now would you want to find that page when you are searching for those symptoms? Or would you want credible medical advice?

If it is moving the goalposts, it is moving the goalposts to better quality content. Those visitors not going to MetaFilter are not gone, they are catered to by other sites. Every tag on MetaFilter has a specialist site now. Ranking MetaFilter so high before 2012 was a present. MetaFilter doesn't deserve to be deranked any further, but it doesn't deserve huge pre-2012 rankings either. In my experience, todays SERPS are much better than ever before, and the complaints are biased, reminiscing good old times or influenced by the fact that some paid to post on that site (You'll defend it, as you don't want to back a losing horse, and your experiences with the site are probably good).

<comment><USER31> _That page is commercial spam (or "veiled spam"). It serves no other purpose than to get a link to his own product site, no discussion, no nothing. Just: For the special price of 999 Euro you can get your own. How is that quality content?_

Just for reference: metafilter bans self-links (ie links to content that the poster is involved with in any way) outright in posts to the main page. It's extremely unlikely that the poster has anything to do with the product in this post whatsoever. The fact that they're a member of fifteen years standing with only 15 posts to their name makes it even more unlikely.

I wouldn't argue that that this post deserves to rank highly in any search engine, but to downgrade the whole site because of it? Madness: It's a link to an interesting mathematical shape, with a bit on perfectly on topic discussion underneath which contains a few other relevant links. Best of the web? Probably not. Spammy? Hardly.

 _It is also spammy in that it doesn 't nofollow external links on comments. Those links should have been nofollowed like 6 years ago. That they still aren't, is telling about MetaFilter's knowledge on SEO. You know that Google sees your site linking to bad sites, and what do you do? Complain about it? Fire people due to an update 2 years ago? Or do you simply take action to fix it?_

Links to spam sites will be flagged & then squashed by the moderators in short order. Well moderated comments by an active user-base shouldn't be nofollow - they contain actual useful information that a search engine (like Google!) ought to find useful, if page-rank matters at all.

It's possible that metafilter might have a problem with links in old posts ending up pointing to domain squatter sites I suppose, but if this is a major problem then it ought to show up in metafilter's google webmaster tools.

<comment><USER30> >metafilter bans self-links

I shouldn't have said that the poster owned that site, that was a mistake, and it detracts from my point. I should have left it as an example of a thin- content page that doesn't really add anything to the web. Of which there are many at MetaFilter. That the view that MetaFilter pages are all quality and deserve to rank well is not realistic. That it isn't a mistake to derank a site when user metrics and a/b tests show that that increases user satisfaction.

>but to downgrade the whole site because of it?

I do not think this happened. I do not think I found the single page on MetaFilter that deserved a downgrade of the whole site. It is but a symptom of a deeper underlying problem with the site's quality. Best of the web? Nope. Clear-cut spam? Nope. Somewhere in between? Yes. The rankings reflect that.

>Links to spam sites will be flagged & then squashed by the moderators in short order.

Except they aren't. Google reports followed links to spammy sites. I found a link to an Indian pharmacy in a few seconds of searching. Moderators ought to work. Nofollow will work.

The problem is not the old links, though they are accompanied by old stale content, which IS a problem. Also these are todays links:

\- "Everyone On Wall Street Is A Dick."

\- Is Using Lotion a Black Thing?

\- #basketball #trickshots

These link to other websites like vine.co or b3ta.com. They are followed by some comments that new visitors can not join in on, lest they pay. This is fluffy content that ranked well around 2006, it doesn't anymore. Why are these comments so special that they deserve a top 10? When 100s of other sites also put up a link and have a small discussion? Where is the unique quality content of MetaFilter? In the comments?

<comment><USER31> Ah, I think you're operating under the misapprehension that it was metafilter.com that was attracting the Google clicks & so you're reasonably looking at posts to metafilter.com & wondering how they could ever have ranking in Google searches in the first place.

As I understand things, it's the ask.metafilter.com Q+A sub-site that was the main source of Google search clickthroughs & thus ad revenue (Yup, 90% according to Matt Haughey's essay on medium.com: [https://medium.com/technology- musings/941d15ec96f0](https://medium.com/technology-musings/941d15ec96f0) ). The main metafilter.com site is pretty much irrelevant in revenue terms, although it may be affecting the overall ranking of ask.metafilter.com pages in Google search results for internal Google voodoo reasons of course.

NB. Let me know where that link to the Indian pharmacy is & I'll flag it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> If Google ends-up fixing this, I hope that they don't add metafilter to a white-list and call it a day. The results nowadays almost seem like a hand curated list that would only help the person that made that list.

</comment><comment><USER33> As someone who's not familiar with MetaFilter, my initial impression is that the design feels outdated and I can't quickly identify how the site works or the value it provides.

I'm sure that over time I could grow to love MetaFilter, and possibly even find value in the qualities that give me this impression. But perhaps Google has an algorithm that lowers the rankings of sites that scare away casual users who stumble upon it from a Google search result (High and/or quick bounce rate maybe?).

<comment><USER34> It is one of the better link blogs on the web. I've been reading it since 2005? and I gave them my $5 back in 2008. Prior to the rise of the fractal advice subreddits, askmetafilter was (and probably still remains) one of the best general purpose advice forums on the web.

The point is, it has an incredibly high signal-to-noise ratio and it's a damned shame it's getting penalized for it.

<comment><USER35> Really? I've had several links posted to metafilter, in every instance the comment thread was full of petty, small minded nagging. Seems like just another 'intellectual' echo chamber to me.

<comment><USER34> >petty, small minded nagging

I think you'll find this to be a facet of every forum or comment box ever made available on the internet :).

>Seems like just another 'intellectual' echo chamber to me.

Are big words bad? What's 'intellectual' about it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Fact: I didn't know anything about Meta Filter until I read the blog about it yesterday.

</comment><comment><USER37> Useless article by Danny Sullivan, his columns have offered zero advice for years now. He knows nothing special these days.

So MetaFilter has been getting some "help" from Google's public relations squad, as is usually the case with sites that hit a nerve with HN. What about the thousand or million other sites that lost their traffic?

<comment><USER38> Were any of those sites any good?

<comment><USER37> Apparently not...Google--the fair and balanced search engine--decided that ads and Google's own properties are better.

Have you noticed Google's earnings reports that mention a 20+% increase in ad clicks every quarter? Where do you think that's coming from? From shifting traffic away from other sites to Google, so instead of going to Metafilter Google decides that a G+ post of youtube video is better,

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> tbh I hate it when MetaFilter shows up on my search results.

</comment><comment><USER40> Sounds like illegitimate backlinking. If you don't know why your page isn't showing up in searches, then look up the blacklists...</comment>


Is the end of the kitchen nigh? - <AUTHOR> https://www.treehugger.com/kitchen-design/end-kitchen-nigh.html <comment><USER2> I really doubt that outcome - I feel like whoever is advocating this has never actually used SkipTheDishes. It's neither as good as a restaurant, nor as good as a home cooked meal. And we have cheap clothing because of outsourcing cheap labour and material overseas - that's one mighty fast drone.</comment>


Wheres the pixel? - <AUTHOR> http://wheresthepixel.com/ <comment><USER2> You should partner with a screen cleaning vendor.

<comment><AUTHOR> not a bad idea, right?</comment></comment>


Unlocking the cloud: Open-source software has won the argument - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13740181&source=hptextfeature&t=1

<comment><USER2> Hopefully the "opinion leaders" that read this article will have the the nous to pick the writer's argument apart in this very conservative article.

The point of the sub-title is made that open source software has won the argument largely thanks to dot com boom and especially by companies like Google. The major reason for this is the openess of the data formats in open source software. So far, so good.

The writer then warns of the danger of data lock-in by "Cloud computing" evidenced by the trivial example of moving you MySpace profile to FaceBook and then making a claim moving from one service provider to another could be even more difficult than switching between software packages.

I refute this as any/most "cloud" service providers will understand that data ownership and availability is a key buying decision. As always, moving from one app to another is a huge pain and has spawned an industry in itself. Data Migration/ETL <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extract,_transform,_load>, anyone?</comment>


Flickr screws up sign in process - <AUTHOR>

When I first signed up to flickr I needed to create a yahoo-ID. The id I always use on the internet is "defdac", but it was taken - so I had to use "defdac2" instead.
Thusly, I have always signed in with my yahoo-ID "defdac2" to access my flickr PRO account "defdac".
Today I was forced to login again, and noticed they have upgraded their sign in process so you can use your facebook/google account.
I tried my "defdac2" Yahoo-ID as usual, but was prompted with an error message:
"Your DefDac2 Yahoo! ID uses the email address email@example.com. That email address is already associated with the defdac account on Flickr.
If you are trying to access your defdac Flickr account, please sign in to Yahoo! again with your defdac Yahoo! ID."
.. Face palm .. <comment><AUTHOR> When I got home after work I flipped up my browser and noticed that I was still logged in to flickr. I could see in my preferences that it said I was logged in with the Yahoo ID "defdac" (which is not mine). I then looked up the Yahoo ID account transfer page <http://www.flickr.com/account/transfer/> and made a request to transfer my "defdac" flickr account to Yahoo ID "defdac2". It said "Um.. You are already signed in with Yahoo ID DefDac2..". I flipped back to the preferences in flickr and now it correctly states Yahoo ID "DefDac2" instead of Yahoo ID "defdac".

So I guess I fixed the problem myself. No reply from flickr staff yet.

</comment><comment><USER2> You mentioned that you couldn't use "defdac" because it was taken, and then you mention you had a flickr Pro account using "defdac"?

Was it taken because YOU took it? It doesn't make sense.

Later you refer to the fact that the message said it shared the same email address. Couldn't you sign into the PRO account , change the email address, and log into your defdac2 account?

<comment><USER3> The flickr username is not the same as your yahoo username. They are linked, but can be different strings. You sign in to flickr using your yahoo username (ie, your @yahoo.com email address) but your flickr username is a completely different string.

The reason for this, I suppose, is that flickr was an independent entity, with its own user database, before being acquired by yahoo. It was long after the acquisition that yahoo insisted on linking it to your yahoo ID. Some will remember the brouhaha that caused.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So in effect you are locked out of your Flickr account?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yepp. =(</comment></comment>


Ultralow power transistors that could function for years without a battery - <AUTHOR> http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/engineers-design-ultralow-power-transistors-that-could-function-for-years-without-a-battery <comment><USER2> It's rather badly explained, but it seems they've developed the _Schottky transistor_ , using a TFT manufacturing process. Conventionally TFTs are slow and leaky compared to a regular CMOS FET in silicon. It sounds like they've greatly improved leakage, although I can't figure out where they say this in the paper. This makes printable low-power circuits more plausible.

<comment><USER3> It is a "Schottky-barrier indium-gallium-zinc-oxide thin-film transistor operating in the deep subthreshold regime." According to the original article in Science Mag. the currents involved are significantly lower then of the other possible technologies. It's not only that the OFF current is apparently an order of magnitude lower (as a property of the use of that material, IGZO) it's that the transistor does the useful work in the "almost off" state (as they operate it in that regime). The low currents typically mean also "slow" but for the applications intended it could be exactly what's enough, and the advantages huge.

I don't see that they give any exact estimate of some real life application, it can be that the practical uses technologically introduce some limitations that aren't discussed. At least it looks promising.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Subthreshold logic is already in use.. check out Ambiq's Apollo ARM MCU.

[http://ambiqmicro.com/low-power-microcontroller](http://ambiqmicro.com/low- power-microcontroller)

<comment><USER3> Thanks, here they describe the idea and the problems they faced:

[http://ambiqmicro.com/spot-platform](http://ambiqmicro.com/spot-platform)

"Operation at such low voltages is problematic due to susceptibility to noise, high sensitivity to temperature, and variability due to process drift. In developing the SPOTTM platform, Ambiq Micro has addressed all of these challenges by redesigning every analog and digital circuit in the chip to adapt for the temperature, voltage, and manufacturing variations that are problematic at these voltage levels."

<comment><USER4> Yeah, they are using the transistors near their highest gain point. It's impressive that they got this to work- If you try this with through-hole transistors, you will definitely be picking up your local AM station.

<comment><USER3> Do you by any chance know more details? I'd love to read about it.

<comment><USER4> Well here is their paper:

[https://www.fujitsu.com/uk/Images/Ambiq_whitepaper.pdf](https://www.fujitsu.com/uk/Images/Ambiq_whitepaper.pdf)

Also always fun to look at their patents, but who knows which ideas are really used in the chip:

[https://www.google.com/patents/US7009265?dq=ambiq&hl=en&sa=X...](https://www.google.com/patents/US7009265?dq=ambiq&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiK_eOwm_fPAhXq5IMKHanxBR0Q6AEISTAG)

This thesis seems to have a good overview:

[http://www.eng.auburn.edu/~agrawvd/THESIS/KIM_S/S.Kim_Honors...](http://www.eng.auburn.edu/~agrawvd/THESIS/KIM_S/S.Kim_HonorsThesis_FINAL.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Could this type of transistor be used in stacked silicon chips? [1] It would seem that such a low power transistor would produce much less heat, solving one of the largest problems with the technology.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three- dimensional_integrated_c...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three- dimensional_integrated_circuit)

</comment><comment><USER6> Is this an ultra-low-current battery, or an energy generation technique?

<comment><USER7> It is neither. As the summary at the top of the article says, it is a transistor that draws very little power.

<comment><USER8> And could be used with antennas that harvest electrical energy from the background EM radiation. It could lead to battery-less sensors with long life.

<comment><USER9> Humanity on its road to invent Pham Nuwen's localizers from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Deepness_in_the_Sky#Localize...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Deepness_in_the_Sky#Localizers) :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Better link: [http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/engineers-design- ultralow...](http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/engineers-design-ultralow- power-transistors-that-could-function-for-years-without-a-battery)

Paper abstract: [http://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6310/302](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6310/302)

<comment><USER11> Scihub link: [http://science.sciencemag.org.sci- hub.cc/content/354/6310/30...](http://science.sciencemag.org.sci- hub.cc/content/354/6310/302)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> How credible is Futurism.com as a source? Futurism, LLC, a Delaware limited liability company, was formed less than a year and a half ago [1]. In my experience, their content tends to be breathlessly hyperbolic.

[1] _State of Delaware Department of State: Division of Corporations_

</comment><comment><USER13> It's impossible to read much into articles that are so incredibly buzz word inundated. It sounds like a transistor with ultra low leakage power which is becoming an increasing problem. You'd still have dynamic power consumption.

<comment><USER14> There's something about running entirely on leakage power, never powering on into the normal region? I can't figure out what they're talking about with scavenging power at all; if it could scavenge why would it only last 'months or years'.

<comment><USER13> Scavenge is just used as a buzzword. Rather than having a battery, the IoT device could be low enough power to use just piezo capture, EM capture, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Bad title. Correct title "Low power transistor could massively extend battery life"

</comment><comment> loop-programmer Sounds like vaporware. These sorts of innovations rarely seem to be robust enough to commercialize.</comment>


Minimalist, decentralized, flexible Continuous Integration Server for hackers - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/timofurrer/minion-ci <comment><USER2> OK, and where can I find the documentation?</comment>


Counting and generating λ terms - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/abs/1210.2610

<comment><USER2> Out of curiosity, how did you encounter this paper ciderpunx? The authors aren't familiar to me from logic/computing, but perhaps they're combinatorialists.

If I find time I'll look at the paper in more detail as it's a question that I pondered but never bothered to answer myself when I studied the λ calculus.</comment>


Intro to Empirical Software Engineering: What We Know We Don't Know - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WELBnE33dpY <comment><AUTHOR> I thought this was a very thought provoking talk, even if we talk nothing the speaker says for granted.

A year or so ago I had a semi-breakdown over the fact that all the best practices I stood by was more or less just a regurgitation of what some software "guru" had to say on the subject. I didn't _know_ if it was true, but I damn sure _believed_ it.

I believed so hard that my opinions and feelings was almost (if not entirely) _religious_ in nature. Sure, I had some experiences with things that absolutely did not work, some techniques that worked _under the specific circumstances_ I applied them in.

But in general? After 10 years of software development, I can't tell you _why_ I solve a specific kind of coding problem the way I do. I can give you a lot of reasons, but only based on vague hand-wavey stuff such as feelings and experience.

Don't get me wrong; experience is really great. But it's not the same as _truth_. What works for me might not work for you, and vice versa. And what I _believe_ works for me might in fact slow me down.

And there's no real way for me to know for sure.</comment>


Ask HN: In the current climate, is it a poor decision to learn C++? - <AUTHOR>

I studied Computer Science, have always been a Java developer and I am still young, living in London.
I am considering picking up C++ more seriously so that I can spend more time closer to the metal where there is more to learn which is closer to my technical inclination.
However, I worry about the job market for C++ developers who want to be rewarded for their technical ability. I know in the past few years we have seen a boom in the financial industry around high performance systems, but are we seeing the tail end of C++'s popularity? [1]
It seems like a very vague question, but given the current trend, would I be shooting myself in the foot if I jumped the Java ship and embarked on a 5 year quest to learn to ins and outs of C++?
Is C++ here to stay as the language of choice for ultra high performance? Is there sustainable demand for the benefits of C++?
[1] http://langpop.com/timeline.html <comment><USER2> Two main areas: System Application / Native Application Programming AND "Business Application" programming.

System programming still considers C/C++ the best. Heavy applications that need good performance are still built using C/C++. For example, Google Chrome, Adobe Photoshop, Games etc.

For developing "Business Applications", they need a rapid delivery system, easiness of development, better collaboration etc., and most of the business systems consider Java programming. Because Java has a good collection of libraries and frameworks, great support and documentation. It's suitable for both desktop (Eclipse IDE is developed in Java) and web applications.

Other popular business application languages include Javascript (not related to Java in any ways), Python, Ruby, Scala etc.

So, you need to consider which is your preferred area to work on.

\- If you are too much interested in developing OSs, drivers, games, or high- performance applications, you can go with C++.

\- If you like to develop business systems (like websites, weather APIs, BigData analysis, this HackerNews website, social networks, online-shopping, share-trading platforms etc.) you can leave C++ and learn some trendy langs like Java or Ruby.

</comment><comment><USER3> We're finally starting to see some exciting substitutes for C++ in general systems programming, and increasingly many embedded devices are able to support runtimes that are more tolerant of faults and inefficiencies.

So even with it's innovations, C++ will probably _eventually_ fall out use over the course of your career. But spending a few years focusing on it will give you a tremendous amount of foundational knowledge and shouldn't hurt your ability of step into something else as it comes up.

If you want to do systems programming or other high performance work, it's probably your best bet, even while you keep an eye on some of the technologies that are competing for the same space.

</comment><comment><USER4> Step out of the HN echo chamber. C++ isn't going anywhere.

<comment><USER5> C hasn't decreased in popularity, but there are some indications that C++ has been losing popularity in the last ten years (e.g. tiobe).

With GoLang and Rust coming on tap for real, the next ten years will be very interesting as far as C++ goes (they really have the potential of "eating" C++ more than C in my opinion).

If you look at this site:

[http://langpop.com/](http://langpop.com/)

And turn off everything (set to 0) except Github, it is rather interesting seeing what new code is being produced today. So while I definitely think the legacy C++ code base is massive, and that jobs will exist for some time to come (40+ years), it doesn't seem like a lot of new projects are choosing C++ (I certainly wouldn't for a new project, unless it was a game, or I needed a specific library written in C++).

Security issues are a major boat anchor around C++'s neck, and while the newer standards solve a lot of those issues, if you're going to have to almost completely re-write to that, you could equally consider Rust or GoLang when they've stabilized a little.

But, right now in 2015, C++ is fine and the jobs should exist enough for it to be worthwhile. I am more just saying "keep an eye on it."

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> you better decide what you are interested in doing first, then pick a language that suits best. if you want to do kernel/OS, choose C; for big data Java/python is the way to go. C++ thrives in middle-ware systems, like messaging/storage/databases/gaming...

</comment><comment><USER7> If you can wrap your head around advanced C++ concepts and idioms, learning other languages will be a walk in the park. All the knowledge will be 100% transferable to anything you use in future. Also a lot of companies using java, c# etc will take c++ experience as relevant experience even though you aren't a java/c# expert, but the inverse is not true.

It's never a bad idea to learn something that has shaped essentially everything that has come along since.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think learning C++ is fine, and I don't think you should worry about obsolescence. I think any language that replaces C++ will still use its idioms. When it comes to high performance stuff, the real knowledge is not in C++, it's in dealing with cache-friendliness, how to shovel stuff in/out the network or other devices quickly, architectural stuff like event loops vs. threads. I think C++, the language, is a tiny portion of that knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't see a need to jump ship with java... Stick with whats paying you but that doesn't mean you can't learn C++ on the side. Personally I don't see C++ going anywhere (I code C++/C for a living) and learning a language closer to the metal will make you a better developer overall.</comment>


Design Thinking for Blockchains - <AUTHOR> https://designforblockchain.net/ <comment><USER2> Users don't care if the database behind instagram is mysql or couchdb. Users don't care if a site uses php or node.

So why are we telling users they are using blockchain tech? And forcing them to hold their private keys?

Blockchain should be implemented behind the scenes to increase user experience, in a way that improves the overall technology. Until this occurs, we won't see mass adoption of blockchain.

<comment><USER3> I get the sentiment, but believe you're missing a big part of a user's draw to blockchain tech: its novelty.

Designers: don't let a new tech's unique place in time be lost. Don't look down on a technology or its fans based on their current manefestations. This technology will only be new once. It's okay if early adopters are attracted to the risk. Be honest, but let everyone explore and discover along the way. We are figuring this all out as we go along.

<comment><USER4> > This technology will only be new once

This technology is decades old, and the fact that you consider it novel indicates that it can actually be new more than once.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A blockchain is an immutable distributed ledger. That's all. If you have a problem for which an immutable distributed ledger is useful, and there's no one you can trust, then a blockchain may help. So far, there are not many of those.

As for programmable applications on a blockchain, see this list of successful "dApps".[1] They're mostly gambling. The top Etherium application is CryptoKitties. The big problem is that any application which relates to the real world needs reliable info from the real world, like "did it get delivered". That means trusting some data source. In which case a blockchain doesn't help much.

Most blockchain applications involve empowering something illegal somewhere. First it was drugs, then it was getting money out of China. The binary options crowd had an ICO, but the system never came up. There's proposed "blockchain FOREX". All gambling, really.

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/7s81tu/successful...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/7s81tu/successful_dapps/)

</comment><comment><USER6> > One of the most significant obstacles against blockchain and cryptocurrency > products from entering daily lives is bad user experiences.

I think the biggest obstacle is the use-case for blockchain. Unfortunately, most of the articles written in favor of blockchain solutions don't cover the why and hows and instead directly go for buzz words like trustless, decentralization etc. Case in point about banks:

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/francescoppola/2018/04/21/bitco...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/francescoppola/2018/04/21/bitcoin- banks-and-a-whole-lot-of-fud/#190ac47521f1)

So I am really looking forward to a curated list of well-written articles on the use cases for blockchain.

<comment><USER7> Blockchain is a technology – and as with all technologies, it should be abstracted away from the user. The majority of people don't care about words such as "trustless" or "decentralization"; those are essentially meaningless. They need tangible benefits such as lower fees. Not sure why people in the cryptocurrency space don't understand that.

<comment><AUTHOR> The intention of the better design for products. Products also should be abstracted away from the user?

<comment><USER7> How is designing for blockchain different from designing for fintech?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Block-chain needs service design to succeed"... isn't the whole point of service design that you enter a project without fully knowing what you're trying to solve and then figure it out a long the way?

I work digitization, so we digitize things, typically. There is a town in Denmark with a design school called Kolding, they did a digitization project with service design, that ended up with a cardboard sheet for citizens to keep track of their case history and a less noisy waiting room because service designed showed them that was what their citizens needed if the goal was to reduce stress in the case working of long term sickness. They didn't go into this project expecting to do a non digital solution, like expecting something to save blockchain, but that's what they ended up with through service design. It's since improved their case working and citizen recovery immensely by the way.

Anyway, I find it interesting that people keep pushing for block chain. The largest municipality in Denmark has run some POCs on it, and even though we're the public sector where it makes sense to have public records, blockchain aren't the most efficient way to do it because we need to control the network. We can't risk a mining farm taking over 51% of the workload and we certainly can't defend even having a proof of work in a world that's destroying the climate.

So we'd need to control the nodes anyway, and then it just doesn't make that much sense. It may make sense for a company like Maersk who can share nodes with partners, but despite sitting on a sector which has a lot of public databases, like the land registry or ownership records, there just isn't that much of a use for blockchain tech.

</comment><comment><USER5> Now here's a "blockchain" example which could have been useful, but it's just another "coin" and a lot of hype.[1] The idea is to have a DRM system for assets in virtual worlds, which might be useful if VR ever gets anywhere.

When I heard about this, I thought, "they're going to use this to make assets portable". A game/VR/virtual world asset is basically a file, which has to be decrypted to be useful. It has a creator, who owns the IP rights, and an owner, who owns the copy. Currently, such property is slaved to a single game/VR/virtual world, and the owner can't move it to another one.

Think of a user A wanting to move an encrypted graphical asset created by creator B from Facebook Places to Apple's VR world. Creator B has to approve of portability between the two worlds, and user A has to request the transfer, but Facebook Places has no say, because they don't own the asset.

Now that's what I thought High Fidelity was doing. Nah. It's just another token with a complex backstory that doesn't do much. They're talking about a way for creators to prove ownership. All you need for that is a cryptographic time-stamping service. Those already exist. When you create something, you take the hash of it and get that time-stamped. Now you can show priority. No blockchain needed.

[1] [https://blog.highfidelity.com/tagged/blockchain](https://blog.highfidelity.com/tagged/blockchain)

</comment><comment><USER9> _One of the most significant obstacles against blockchain and cryptocurrency products from entering daily lives is bad user experiences. It is extremely difficult to figure out for someone who isn't tech-savvy._

This has nothing to do with "blockchain."

It has everything to do with public key cryptography. Managing private keys is a royal pain for ordinary people. Yet every block chain secures its users assets with the same basic technology.

Users detest managing private keys so much so that they'll obligingly turn over their digital assets to bank-like institutions (Mt. Gox and a cavalcade of others who rarely get mentioned). In so doing users undermine the original censorship-resistant value proposition on which legitimate block chains are based.

If you want to make block chains more usable, focus on making public key cryptography more intuitive.

<comment><USER2> I agree - this is the basis of the issue. Though there's no apparent solution. Using passwords is inherently less secure. What are the other alternatives?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would suggest a higher contrasting color for the sub titles.

</comment><comment><USER11> A site about design that uses a blue font on a black background. The irony.</comment>


Ask HN: How to recover from being overworked in the past? - <AUTHOR> Let me set the stage. You've worked at a startup for multiple years. This startup has worked you pretty hard, 65-80 hours a week, 7 days a week, etc.
You've left the crazy startup and you've joined a new company.
How do you become "normal" again, without feeling like you're under working or not pulling your own weight? <comment><USER2> In the bigger picture, the change in workplace cultures is an impactful life transition. There's no advantage in imagining it is otherwise.

To me, there are two separate dimensions. One is how the individual fits into a different work culture; the other is the work culture fits into the individual's life.

The fitting into the work culture has to happen relatively quickly. Building a life around a work culture can happen over time...maybe there's a second job or a hobby or reading or all of them in varying amounts. Maybe it's another role within the current company or at a different company...eventually, that's almost inevitable.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> Keep in mind that working 65-80 hours a week is actually really really _bad_ for maximizing output. There's a large body of studies demonstrating this in a wide variety of fields. 40 hours is a lot closer to the sweet point for maximal output. See the references in [http://www.igda.org/?page=crunchsixlessons](http://www.igda.org/?page=crunchsixlessons)

So, first, remind yourself a normal 40-hour work week is actually the best thing you could be doing for your employer long term. See similar point I made over at [http://codewithoutrules.com/2016/02/24/go-home- already/](http://codewithoutrules.com/2016/02/24/go-home-already/)

Second, the biggest benefit you can provide for your employer is coming up with the smart solution that reduces the amount of necessary work by an order of magnitude. And you don't do that by working real hard for a long time. You do that by thinking. And thinking is in part a thing you do in the back of your head while doing other stuff. See Rich Hickey's talk [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc)</comment>


It Pays to Be Rich During a Pandemic - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/03/coronavirus-testing-rich-people/608062/ <comment><USER2> I think the testing mania has to be calmed.

Once a (presumably rich) person has been tested, what's to prevent them from 'needing' to be tested next week again?

It seems different countries are approaching it differently. Probably a good problem for computer geeks to work on.

<comment><USER3> > Once a (presumably rich) person has been tested, what's to prevent them from > 'needing' to be tested next week again?

Nothing which is why "testing mania" doesn't need to be calmed

> It seems different countries are approaching it differently. Probably a good > problem for computer geeks to work on

No need for computer geeks. You will soon be able to look at countries who test early and often (s korea) and those that can't be bothered (united states)</comment></comment>


Should I rent or buy a house?  - <AUTHOR>

I know it depends. Nevertheless, still interested to hear your perspective (opinion).
Just had a long heated discussion with my grandmother and her friend who ganged up on me and said I need to look into buying a house, instead of renting. I don't like the idea of having a mortgage. But, in their own unique way argued that it's a wise investment for the future.
What do you think? <comment><USER2> Home ownership tells me a story -- "You are staying right here." For better or worse it is not easy or cheap to sell a house. If you plan to stay in one place for a long time then there is a lot to be said for buying and methodically paying down the mortgage.

Internet experts analyze home ownership as an economic decision, using their personal beliefs about economics and investment theories, as well as the perspective of their extremely limited life spans. "What is true for my 32 years on the planet whilst breathing the air of Texas must be a Universal Truth for all sentient beings." I exaggerate slightly.

The point is, you are alive once. You are you. Owning a home is an important meta-message to your brain about who you are. Use that to your benefit.

At one point in my life I had to be told rather abruptly to just stay put for a decade. That mattered and it helped me immensely. I now have six years to go until my youngest child finishes high school. Things may change then. But the personal benefits of staying out have been immense.

So my suggestion to you is that your grandmother may be talking about these intangibles -- based on a lifetime of experience. You may be looking at home ownership with the investment logic in full gear. Both are important. But give greater weight to the story told by someone with a few more decades on the planet. She knows something you don't.

And remember. You can't make a mistake. If you buy a house and it is horrible and you sell it and you lose money? You have lived your life. You are not in a race. I have fucked up innumerable things, at great cost. I am richer for it.

</comment><comment><USER3> You don't mention buying an apartment, so I will assume you meant "rent a house or buy a house" rather than "rent an apartment or buy a house". I know that in some places, choosing whether to rent or buy also means choosing between an apartment and a house.

Aside from the financial considerations (mortgage interest income tax deduction, homeowner property tax deduction), there are some problems with renting that are magnified with a house rather than an apartment. There is maintenence (mowing the lawn, cleaning up graffiti, removing weeds/garbage from the front sidewalk, properly insulating the house) that is normally performed by the resident owner, which both the nonresident owner and the nonowner resident have a lower incentive to perform. For the nonresident owner, it's because they don't care about the quality of life for the resident, and for the nonowner resident, it's because they don't care about improving the property value for the owner. This is one big reason why "bad" neighborhoods are so poorly maintained: most people are renting. In "good" neighborhoods, usually most residents own their home.

On the other hand, it's popular just to see homeownership as a good way to engage in leveraged property speculation, but that really depends on whether you're living in a prosperous city or not. Buying a house in San Francisco is probably a good investment; buying a house in Detroit is probably not.

</comment><comment><USER4> Here is my opinion: if you after financial gains or losses, use this calculator: [http://apblog.imakescience.com/2013/09/how-do-i-identify- rea...](http://apblog.imakescience.com/2013/09/how-do-i-identify-real-estate- bubble.html)</comment>


Uber - not a great experience at peak times (eg: New Year's Eve) - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2012/01/03/car-service-uber-passes-economics-test-fails-marketing/

<comment><USER2> This is just yet another example of why taxis should be deregulated.

The reason Uber is as expensive as it is is that it there are too few cars. On New Years eve more people want to take a cap but there is no way to increase supply, because there are too few medallions.

<comment><USER3> I can also read this article as a reason why Uber _should_ be regulated more like cabs so folks don't get stuck with a $67 dollar cab ride for going less then a mile.

In fact in Uber's unregulated market there were _still_ too few cars on the road and it lead to artificially high prices it seems like this article is arguing _for_ regulation.

<comment><USER2> You could argue that Uber didn't make it obvious what the price would be, which might make them liable.

But in general these people didn't pay to drive a mile but to drive a mile on the busiest day of the year. That costs.

The alternative -- and the reason people didn't use regular cabs -- is that there aren't enough of them. So either you get shortages or you get higher prices (which are good, since they incentivice those who don't value the transportation as much to walk).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The cost of Ubers and unregulated market will fall as more supply comes on tap -- both via Uber and via 3rd parties.

In two years time Uber and everyone else will have a public API to communicate their permanent variable pricing, and they'll be a ton of smartphone apps that talk to all of the APIs from all of the providers and suggest which one to take based on the current supply/demand curve and other factors.

</comment><comment><USER5> The article suggests that Uber subsidize the price on NYE. Given that the price is set by demand, that doesn't make any sense. However much Uber or Amex subsidizes the price, there are still X people that want rides and Y < X rides available, and the amount you the rider have to pay to win the auction is the same.

The anger came because Uber didn't do a good job of setting expectations. Their customers expected that they could get a ride anytime, even NYE, if they were willing to pay a certain premium over what a cab would cost. But the premium on NYE was much larger than the customers (rightly or not) expected. If Uber had done a better job of managing expectations, they wouldn't have angry customers.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is similar to what they did on halloween. I wouldn't go so far as to say they were taking advantage of their customers, but one would think that UberCab users would only be willing to pay up to x20 the rate of a yellowcab when they're intoxicated in the middle of the night New Years Eve. Kind of like when you pay $15 for a beer at that hip after hours bar. If you're potential customers weren't drunk people out partying, it'd seem like an absurd pricing mechanism.

</comment><comment><USER7> Uber should consider implementing an app feature where I can enter my destination address and it calculates the price of that route AT THAT moment: "If you were to book a car now it would be $X" not just "hey its 6.25x". The UI is terrible. People dont know what 6.25x means. Give it to them in dollars.

This feature alone would have solved this NYE public relations drama.

</comment><comment><USER8> I use Uber from time to time and enjoy it immensely. I agree with several of the article's things Uber could have done better, but so much of the whole outcry is people not wanting to take responsibility for their own actions.

<comment><USER9> It sounds like this is too extreme to apply a blanket label of "responsibility for their own actions". People have certain reasonable expectations of what something will cost, especially when it's a service they use habitually. If you suddenly change that cost by a factor of 4 or more, you can't reasonably expect people to spot that and change their behavior accordingly unless you make it _extremely_ obvious. It doesn't sound like Uber made the surcharge as visible as the size would require.

I imagine this will attract some replies which say that it's still their fault no matter how unreasonable one might consider the price change to be. If you're planning to write one, then before you do, please consider this question: do you study a taxi's rates from top to bottom before accepting the ride every time you take a taxi?

<comment><USER8> I agree that blame isn't all on the user... but most articles seem to be very one directional.

Even the person in the article mentions seeing the warning but quickly dismissing it. Think how often you see an alert pop up and dismiss it without really reading it.

I think even if Uber did a better job of notifying people, you'd still see an outcry.

<comment><USER10> It's probably also a factor that a lot of people were fairly inebriated on New Year's Eve. :)

It's one thing to create UX for the optimal user to notify them of the price surge, but people celebrating New Year's Eve?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As much as I love Uber, I use it because my work pays for it (expensed travel to client sites) - but I would very very rarely use it for personal use.

I have used it once for personal use - to go to a wedding at a church 1 mile from my house; $23.00

I spend ~400 a month on Uber Cab right now...

\---

The service is fantastic but the prices are rather ridiculous.

I would NEVER have used them on NYE - and the prices people were paying just shows that either all those people are really rich, or really stupid.

I am pissed that I can buy a single leg from SFO to Seattle on Virgin for $59 -- but to take a cab from my house to SFO is $65.00

We can talk about supply/demand market etc all day - but there is just something wrong with the cost of transportation in SF. Period.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have used it in Seattle, for business and personal.

Honestly, the reasons I'm happy to pay a premium are the phone app and the reliability: I'm fed up of booking a cab that turns up 30+ minutes late.

If any of the three/four big taxi firms in Seattle put together an app like Uber's (basically with the 'pick me up from this spot ASAP and keep me up to date with how far away you are' feature) - they would be my go-to ride every time, and would be incredibly popular.

Have never taken a cab in SF; the crazy shortage of medallions in the city sounds almost criminal.

<comment><USER12> Excluding the weather right now, Yellow Cab is likely the worst thing about Seattle. TaxiMagic is supposed to work ok, although I've never tried it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I bet Uber will pivot rather than be involved with peak time travel the way they did on NYE. It is bad for the brand to charge ultra high rates when people are feeling festive.

</comment><comment><USER14> Wow he managed to get a car at 1:30am after NYE? That's amazing! I'd definitely pay those prices for that kind of convenience! Would be prefer cheaper prices but no cars available for several hours? I think not.

<comment><USER15> I recall a Halloween night in SF where I and my SO waited over two hours and had to share a cab with two other partygoers who did not live particularly close to us. I would have killed (ok, maimed) for the chance to use Uber.</comment></comment>


Decision Fatigue - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_fatigue

<comment><USER2> Looks like a good segway to my startup www.decideall.com (Honestly I have no connection to the OP!). It is an attempt to make Decision Making more rational.</comment>


Programming Languages Have Social Mores Not Idioms - <AUTHOR> http://learncodethehardway.org/blog/AUG_19_2012.html

<comment><USER2> >If Not Idioms Then What?

Shibboleths?</comment>


Asian Murder Hornets Have Arrived in North America - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/02/us/asian-giant-hornet-washington.html <comment><USER2> These sound scary :)

Japan's human deaths from murder hornets are "up to 50/yr" (from the article). US's deaths from bee stings are "annual average of 62 deaths"[1]. My rudimentary math (US pop. / Japan pop. * 50 deaths/yr) says that it would be about 131/yr for the US. (Of course this doesn't take into account whatever other factors there are).

The bees on the other hand... Hopefully WA can figure out how to stop these things. I want my local honey...

[1] [https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/68/wr/mm6829a5.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/68/wr/mm6829a5.htm)

<comment><USER3> You don't need to die to find them unpleasant. In my senior year of college one of these built a nest outside the library and they would dive at me menacingly when it was warm out. They are at least as big as hummingbirds and behave much more aggressively.</comment></comment>


Kindle Fire HD hurts Microsoft more than Apple - <AUTHOR> http://www.cringely.com/2012/09/07/kindle-fire-hd-hurts-microsoft-more-than-apple/ <comment><USER2> > "if Apple gives up its position" which it clearly hasn't.

so, moot?

> Amazon is copying Apple's playbook, page-by-page...

> What, after all, has Amazon (or Microsoft) actually invented here? Nothing. > They've emulated Apple at a lower price point and to some extent > disintermediated the mobile carriers.

Not according to Jeff Bezos, who spend a good portion of his presentation explaining how Amazon make money with their pricing strategy of the Kindles. The difference between iPad and Fire HD is not in price, but in their producers' business models.

The author clearly doesn't get it.

<comment><USER3> > Not according to Jeff Bezos, who spend a good portion of his presentation > explaining how Amazon make money with their pricing strategy of the Kindles

He may have explained how they _want_ to make money, but I don't recall Amazon or Jeff Bezos ever having stated the Kindle Fire has made them a profit. Indeed, Amazon have been very reluctant to even release hard sales figures for the Kindle Fire.

<comment><USER4> Amazon's fans seem to think that Amazon can sell a tablet at near cost and make money on either digital sales (movies/books/audio) or as a kiosk to sell physical wares.

What makes them think that they can outdo Apple in the first category? Apple which clearly has a huge installed base, yet runs the iTunes store at break even.

And using tablets as a kiosk might add some value to Amazon, but is it really necessary? Are iPad/Nexus 7/Surface users going to magically find a better/cheaper online merchant?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >Apple is the innovation leader. What, after all, has Amazon (or Microsoft) actually invented here? Nothing.

It's not like Apple invented anything either. As with most things they do, the ipad's secret was not innovation but polish, taking existing technology and putting in the integration and software effort to make turn it into a great user experience. I'm not saying this isn't valuable, but it's fundamentally no more or less innovative than what Amazon's doing (making the same experience available at lower cost).

Of the three Microsoft is the truly innovative company. E.g. many of the ideas behind iOS' sandboxing mechanism originated at Microsoft Research.

<comment><USER6> >>the ipad's secret was not innovation but polish [which is no more innovative than selling products cheap to earn money on content, Amazon Kindle style]

Uhm, no one on the planet knew how to build an affordable pad that would be interesting outside niches. Microsoft tried for a long time, too.

Then comes the iPhone/iPad. The market, the _world_ , is different.

I do smell a bit of spin in what you wrote... :-)

<comment><USER5> If you're talking about changing individual people's lives, I'd be willing to bet that the amazon effort will eventually reach more people than apple did, simply because the market at $299 is a lot bigger than that at $499.

If you're talking about showing the world what's possible, those of us who had tablets years before the ipad could see that. The software was clunky, but if you were willing to spend time learning and work with it (which, yes, is a niche market) you could do everything you can today.

What apple did was undeniably a huge step forward. But I don't think it was qualitatively different from those who came before or after, and I think chalking up their success to "innovation" is missing the point.

<comment><USER7> Innovate on the experience, not just the features dammit! I'm really tired of hearing this refrain that Apple is not innovative because all they do is take existing features and put them into....a package that people can actually use!? But then "isn't that the easy, uncreative, uninnovative part?" Yes, building usable experience is innovation, and yes its very important.

<comment><USER5> >"isn't that the easy, uncreative, uninnovative part?" Yes, building usable experience is innovation, and yes its very important.

If you consider that to be innovation, surely offering an equivalent product at a substantially lower price (as amazon is doing) involves just as much innovation.

<comment><USER7> Apple innovates on the experience, but they've also refined their supply chain (actually, Cook's main contribution). That is more good engineering than innovation (we can even argue if good engineering is innovation in itself, but its kind of pointless). Amazon has come up with an interesting business model by focusing more on content sales to offset low hardware prices, whereas Apple's thinking is quite the other way (content supports hardware sales, not the other way around!). If you want to call that "innovating on business model", I won't argue with you, but now the term is so diluted that its not very meaningful. My original point was that Apple did a lot of work to bring products to market that were usable and didn't suck, and that is really the innovation that most people acknowledge and notice.

"just as much innovation" is such a weird term, how do you actually measure innovation? At least this isn't another "Apple is successful b/c of their marketing" argument, which is bogus since their marketing budget was (until recently) absurdly low compared to other companies in the same industry.

<comment><USER8> "their marketing budget is extremely low compared to others in the same industry"

Any pointers to the figures?

Apple's marketing seems unlike any other hardware manufacturer I can think of. But maybe that's just my perception. When you're watching a film and the camera makes a special pan around a laptop to show the Apple logo, it's hard not to think "This hardware company really puts a lot of effort into marketing. This is not your ordinary hardware company." I have seen Dell do this sort of product placement on occasion, but nobody seems to do it to the extent Apple does.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. To discount the amount of Apple marketing and its effects as "standard for the industry" or even below standard seems a little like willful blindness.

<comment><USER7> <http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/27/apple-ad-spending/> quote "And while $691 million may seem like a massive amount of money, it's still less than half of what Microsoft spent on advertising last year. And it's less than what Dell spent last year."

I'm not sure what the case is like today, I'm sure its gone up a bit but would be surprised if they surpass Microsoft yet. Apple doesn't pay for product placements; see [http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-05-10/apple-the- ot...](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-05-10/apple-the-other-cult- in-hollywood) quote "The cast's (Gossip Girl's) sudden conversion cost the Cupertino (Calif.)-based iPhone maker nothing. Apple has spent decades strengthening its subtle but powerful grip over Hollywood, and unlike many companies, says it never pays for its products to appear on television or in movies."

Apple doesn't SPEND much on marketing, but the marketing done is incredibly effective. Turns out, just having the best product makes the job much easier.

<comment><USER8> "Turns out, just having the best product..."

This is why Apple gets a bad rap in the forums. Who would say that that about their computer (except a Linux weenie)? The reality is these are cheap electronics in a hermetically sealed but stylish enclosure that use publicly available OS configured for dummies. So simple is the design they can be used by lower primates.

I like Apple hardware, it continues to look good after all these years, but comments "Turns out, having the best product..." make me like it a lot less. Apple is attracting some brainless users and will be catering to them more and more. This is not good.

Maybe this userbase explains the product placements. Hollywood wants to convey a sense that a character is not the type of person that would know anything about computers, hence she uses Apple products.

Touche.

And thanks for the links.

<comment><USER7> The truth is brutal: they build the right products, they practically sell themselves, and once they've reached critical mass, what else do you expect them to do? Now you bring out the sheeple argument...ah...ok...

At all the computer science conferences I go to, Macs outnumber PCs; no I mean they actually dominate PCs! Now Apple has cultivated an image that the smartest people use Macs? Or maybe these people just use macs b/c they are the best coding machines out there, and they really don't care paying more that? Or maybe we CS PhDs are just sheeple and like shiny things just like less technical users?

Really?

<comment><USER8> No. Apple has always been popular with intelligent people (whether they are technical or not) and it has always been the best choice for certain uses.

But things are changing. First they started selling mp3 players. Then phones. Now Etch-A-Sketches. And now we have CS PhD's getting defensive about their choice to use Apple computers. New types of users. New focus.

Xcode makes for "the best coding machines"?

You mean that's better than a machine that comes with a compiler already installed and ready to go?

With no certificates? And No hoop-jumping?

How is it better?

<comment><USER7> (I'm not downvoting you , just so you know)

If you know if a laptop that is better than a high-end macbook pro, please let me know. I mean, please...I'm not supposed to use Macs myself given who I work for...I am desperate for a decent work laptop without a fruit logo on it.

Sometimes MBPs are bought and Windows/Bootcamp is installed, sometimes they install Linux, sometimes OSX is perfectly OK because they are using Eclipse or some other cross platform IDE anyways. And their are those that actually do Mac/iOS development. Fun stuff.

<comment><USER8> (I know it's not you. You seem like a cool guy. But looks I've gotten under someone's skin, lol. Sorry, whoever you are!)

It really depends on what you want to do with the computer. There's no shortage of forum debates on the merits of one computer over another without any mention of the intended use. That's pretty silly when you think about it.

Can't you cover up that logo with a sticker? (Taking a tip from the movie studios in the businessweek article.)

I don't think you are buying the MBP just for the specs though, are you? I mean, the enclosure, Cocoa graphics layer, all that ease-of-use must factors, right?

If you are saying MBP specs really are the best for a laptop in that price range, then you have made me curious.

My solution to the hoop-jumping for development would be to boot another OS, that already has a compiler installed, from USB. But I'm not even sure that would work. I'm not writing stuff in Java or ObjectiveC. I just want a working clang/gcc.

<comment><USER7> Just one more post in an argument that is probably misplaced and not very interesting to anyone else besides us :).

It used to be that buying a Mac was a hard decision. Not only were they more expensive (not a great value), but you also had to give up performance (especially in the PowerPC age) and app availability. Today, you no longer have to make those hard decisions, while the PC vendors have gone low end and have let their quality fall dramatically (which wasn't that great to begin with). That I say macs today are the "best" computers we can buy have something to do with Apple continuing to focus on quality, having value that compares to the PC vendors, and the PC vendors having sunk into a race to the bottom with each other, leaving Apple free to reign over the +$999 market.

So just show me a laptop that is "as good as" the the retina MacBook Pro that comes in at +$2000, a price I'm willing to pay (be it me or my employer, I'm worth it given how much time I spend using my computer). I honestly can't find anything that compares in the PC zone, and believe I've tried!

<comment><USER8> (I've ended up with +2 karma despite being sandbagged! =)

I would have to do some research to be of any use to you with respect to lappies over $2K. My focus is on ARM development boards and embedded systems. I am looking at the opposite end of the spectrum: low-power, highly portable, cheap computing. For the common man and woman. Alas, the forbidden fruit keeps popping up at this end of the stick too. Cupertino is no longer content to just sell high powered high-priced development machines. It's not the same company as when I bought my first Mac.

I can't wait to see the first low-power Apple ARM devices where they will attempt to sell a $20 computer, locked down like Fort Knox, for several hundred bucks. What new gimmicks will they use to maintain the reality distortion field? It should be most entertaining.

Clearly you are not of the Apple cult, just a guy looking for a high-end laptop. My apologies for mistaking you for a fanboy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > What, after all, has Amazon (or Microsoft) actually invented here? Nothing. > They've emulated Apple at a lower price point and to some extent > disintermediated the mobile carriers.

Well, perhaps Amazon. But while Microsoft have emulated Apple in hardware a little, they certainly haven't with the OS. Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 have a very different, very fresh UI. They only use some of the same gestures, even.

<comment><USER10> And, indeed, MS were responsible for a bunch of pre-ipad touch research that helped shape current UIs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> _just as Apple had to accept competition in the MP3 player market, Cupertino will have to adapt to the Kindle Fire HD._

Did Apple "accept" competition in the MP3 player market? There were mp3 players before the iPod. Apple came into the market and absolutely owned it. Portable music = iPod. That's the end of the story.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm not a big fan of Cringely's but I do enjoy this particular insight. It is unclear to me that Microsoft is even in the same game here because of their lack of content.

Specifically Amazon innovated in the book space, its in their roots and they have leveraged the crap out of it. Apple if you recall innovated in the music space. The similarities are stunning, take something people continually consume, is fashion driven, and reduce the friction of that consumption, golden. The 'chunkyness' (in terms of price per transaction) is bigger in books than in music but the mechanisms are similar. All we need now is NetFlix to introduce a dedicated 'video' device, then move up to phones and tablets.

</comment><comment><USER13> I disagree - I've been considering buying a tablet just for my kids, and Amazon has put a better option on the table for parents. I can't tell you the number of times I've found my kid browsing some Youtube videos or in the Apple store after being upsold something in the game itself.

So for me - and I expect for other parents if they can get the word out - Amazon is making a play for my Apple business.

Still amazes me that Apple didn't see the kids/children's market and provide a better solution than the restrictions - I mean they are ok, but the lack of separate profiles means I'm constantly tweaking them as I work on the iPad, then my son grabs it, etc.

</comment><comment><USER14> Who is this author? Since when does "disintermediating an industry" mean "selling and subsidizing the products of an industry"?

And what pundits -didn't- predict a larger Kindle Fire? I thought that was a signed and sealed rumor straight from WSJ+Amazon themselves.

<comment><USER15> The author has been around quite a long time, but he is better known lately for his (perhaps intentionally) counterintuitive opinions and goofy predictions. I think, sadly, he is going more for pageviews than credibility.

But to answer your second question, _"Amazon next week will announce two 7-inch Kindle Fire models, one with new hardware and the other an updated version of the original, CNET has learned. That's counter to rumors it would launch a larger version."_ Oops. [http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57504515-94/kindle-fire- won...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57504515-94/kindle-fire-wont-go-big- to-take-on-ipad/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Cringely is at his most prophetic in the comments when he says: If Facebook drops much lower Microsoft might make a play.

Try to list all the reasons Microsoft should not buy Facebook.

Try to list all the reasons Facebook would resist acquisition by Microsoft.

</comment><comment><USER16> >The tablet market was already broadening, flattening, and moving down market before yesterday's Amazon announcement

Right, but Microsoft is trying to bring it up market with the Surface Pro and other small x86 tablets(many of which seem to come with a keyboard or a laptop style dock, sometimes optional). Eg. see [http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/30/hp-envy-x2-laptop- tablet-...](http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/30/hp-envy-x2-laptop-tablet- hybrid/)

As I posted in another comment a few days ago, They will be expensive, but far more capable and powerful(heavier and less battery life too). For example, they can run the full Visual Studio or Eclipse.

You can take a Surface Pro and a Kindle Fire with you, run Eclipse with the Android SDK loaded, connect the Kindle Fire to the Surface and take the program you just wrote on the Surface and run it on the Kindle! Or write your code while on a roadtrip or on the subway and debug it on your Android or Windows phone(don't know how Hackintosh it can get for running apps on the iPhone).

Can you do that with a Kindle, iPad or any other tablet on the market right now, which are used by most people as consumption devices?

Where Microsoft is competing with the Kindle, Android tablets and the iPad is with Windows RT, which is a different beast(and costs less than $100 for OEMs + they are rumored to get kickbacks on ecosystem sales). The only big advantage Microsoft has right now in this space is Office RT. Amazon's tablets are oriented even more towards content consumption(read Amazon's content) than the iPad. It all boils down to how much consumption vs. 'creation' the consumers want to do on their tablets, or if they want to get one device that does it all.

<comment><USER17> So these new Surface Pro things are going to be like a current ipad-style tablet, but with a keyboard, heavier, have shorter battery life and be more expensive. That sounds very much like a device I already have, which is called a laptop. It runs Eclipse pretty well on the rare occasions I want it to.

Less than $100 is still a pretty hefty tag in this market too; that's half the price of a Nexus 7! I think Microsoft are going to have to learn that this market isn't going to allow them the huge margins they've traditionally enjoyed on PCs.

<comment><USER16> >So these new Surface Pro things are going to be like a current ipad-style tablet, but with a keyboard, heavier, have shorter battery life and be more expensive. That sounds very much like a device I already have, which is called a laptop. It runs Eclipse pretty well on the rare occasions I want it to.

This reminds me of the folks that discounted the iPad because it was not good as a smartphone for portability(oversized iPod Touch) and much less powerful than a laptop. Predictions based on personal anectodes in a billion plus device market are a dangerous thing.

I agree that the Surface Pro is trying to create a new market here(spaced between iPad style tablets and the laptops/MB Air/Ultrabooks which is an uphill task, but I do think there are a lot of people who want a no- compromises powerful portable tablet for on-the-go use.

<comment><USER7> The tablet market, at this moment, is going the other way, to include devices that are cheaper, a bit smaller, and more oriented toward pure consumption (Nexus 7, Fire HD, iPad Mini). This market has lower margins but the potential for lots of sales even beyond the iPad today.

Now Microsoft comes with Surface (Pro and non-Pro), sounds like they are going after niche high-end tablet markets (those who want Office + a keyboard), and higher-end tablet markets (though who want to run Visual Studio). Completely opposite direction that at best will be a successful ultra-book. I'm not seeing mass appeal, but a lot of that will come down to pricing.

<comment><USER16> New products can and do disrupt market trends, especially in such a huge market.

> sounds like they are going after niche high-end tablet markets (those who > want Office + a keyboard), , and higher-end tablet markets (though who want > to run Visual Studio).Completely opposite direction that at best will be a > successful ultra-book.

Niche in this market mean at least tens of millions of people. Not to say that the Surface Pro will succeed(pricing is important as you say) but the laptop/ultrabook market is still much bigger than the tablet, both the install base and sales.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Fresh on Our Radar: React Native - <AUTHOR> http://www.railslove.com/stories/fresh-on-our-radar-react-native

<comment><AUTHOR> The big news of last week's React.js Conf was the announcement of React Native, Facebook's soon-to-be-released open-source solution for building native iOS and Android apps with React. In this post, I will give a brief overview of what we know so far about React Native and the promises it offers.</comment>