Will London Fall? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/04/11/world/europe/uk-london-brexit.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> I am not so sure that Brexit will have such a negative impact on Europe (and the world).

I don't like the idea of these Super National organizations that politically and economically integrate people so tightly.

Really it's more about having our global society so tightly integrated and efficient. It means power (economic and political) goes to a select few people who get better and better at holding on to it.

These crazy large banks that are so freaking tightly integrated are the worse example. A crisis at one bank triggers a global meltdown. We don't want a global meltdown so we bail out the banks, making them bigger and more powerful, exacerbating the problem.

The more tightly controlled everything is makes our system so fragile.

If the UK is more separated economically from Europe, if one or the other has an economic crisis the separation will lead to less drastic economic crisis.

<comment><USER3> This is a well formed opinion. It shouldn't be downvoted; if people disagree there are better ways to express that than by downvoting it to fade out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article does a great job at capturing the mood in London. I think a lot of Londoners feel a kind of betrayal - when Brexiteers talk about 'reclaiming' the country, to diverse Londoners that means 'reclaiming' it _from them_. There is no doubt that people are feel targeted and alienated by this kind of discourse - and this very much includes EU citizens who have been witnessing the rhetoric with increasing concern.

I particularly dislike the arrogance of the uniquely British 'reassurances' given to skilled non-UK citizens with regards to this anti-immigrant rhetoric, which goes something like "Oh when we talk about throwing out the filthy immigrants, we don't mean YOU - so long as we find you useful". I mean, geez, thanks I guess it's just friends and family who'll get forcibly deported then, nothing to worry about.

In general there appears to be a (possibly wilful) lack of appreciation among the Brexit crowd that when you say horrible things about the Europeans and immigrants, those people can actually hear you. I'm not sure how they expect to build an 'open trading nation' while becoming known as the country that calls foreigners scum.

<comment><USER5> Is it really Leavers saying that, though? Or is it Remainers telling everyone that Leavers are saying that as a way of trying to make Leavers look bad?

Obviously, as with anything in reality, it's a bit of both. But polls both before and after the referendum consistently showed that immigration was _not_ the primary concern motivating Leave voters, support for immigration in general is still very high across the board (well into the 80s IIRC, and ISTR the most recent poll I saw showed only about a 1% gap in support for it between Leave and Remain voters), and support for all existing EU residents being able to stay after Brexit is near-as-dammit universal. The only reason that hasn't been officially confirmed already is that the EU refused to reciprocate for UK citizens living in the rEU until the Article 50 notification had happened.

I understand that a lot of people are anxious, and I hope things get cleared up soon to remove that anxiety, but the people continually screaming that Brexiteers hate immigrants and want to throw them out, against all evidence to the contrary, are not really helping matters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> London will fall just like Switzerland, Norway and Iceland have collapsed because they are not in the EU. The UK will become like Somalia.

No wait, actually those 3 countries are in the top 5 countries to live in the world. Why do people wish for apocalypses?

<comment><USER7> All 3 of those countries are still in the single European market though, with freedom of movement. Given UK appears to be heading towards a hard brexit and doesn't seem to want freedom of movement I think comparing them directly is a bit disingenuous.

<comment><USER8> And plenty of Norwegians would love to see the nation exit that market, because they are, much like most that voted for brexit, tired of seeing industry jobs being "offshored" and remaining wages being undercut by temporary workers from the former eastern block.

At the hight of the oil boom a local shipyard was 1/3 Poles, brought in by the busload. Some of them didn't have the first clue about English, never mind Norwegian.

For all the "champagne left's" kumbaya about EU being about European peace and solidarity, most of the working class see it as a way for the economic "elite" to defang unions and force down wages.

<comment><USER4> I find this argument mind-boggling when the people who have done the most to undermine workers rights are _exactly the same_ people who support Brexit.

In the UK, one shocking source of work insecurity is the zero-hours contract (basically, you have no guaranteed income but have to be available whenever your employer feels like it). The EU has _nothing_ to do with that, in fact most EU countries have banned the practise [1] but the British government refuse to do anything it in the name of 'labour flexibility'.

These same people are now claiming that leaving the EU, which offers important protections to workers rights through the treaties and the European Court of Human Rights, will magically solve problems they created and sustain themselves.

[1] [https://fullfact.org/law/zero-hours-contracts-uk- europe/](https://fullfact.org/law/zero-hours-contracts-uk-europe/)

<comment><USER9> > _I find this argument mind-boggling when the people who have done the most > to undermine workers rights are exactly the same people who support Brexit._

The people against Brexit were all major political parties that ruled for 50+ years, all mainstream press, all businesses, the financial sector.

The deep establishment, in other words, that is, precisely those who have done the most to undermine workers rights.

> _but the British government refuse to do anything it in the name of 'labour > flexibility'._

Yes, but the British government was all for bremain. So who are those people you were referring to?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Lots of people commenting to say "of course not, article is stupid". Ignoring the fact that the article doesn't really say it will, that view seems unnecessarily dismissive. At the very least, finance is massively important to London and many firms are considering their options. Of course, we don't know yet how that will play out.

Having recently moved back after 10 years, the country seems massively behind the times in most ways. Everything is slower and less efficient than in Europe; more bureaucratic, worse technology & infrastructure. Half the service at twice the price and takes three weeks to do anything. I don't feel farming subsidies are going to cut it going forward.

<comment><USER11> Depends on which part of Europe you are talking about. Europe is huge and diverse - kind of like the UK. Apart from your personal view, I doubt you can find the facts to back up your assertions. Example: France is famously mired in bureaucracy, with law that discourages scaling up a business beyond a certain size due to the tower of rules and regulations you have to comply with beyond that size. Another example: Crossrail, one of if not the largest infrastructure project in Europe just now, and it's in the UK.

Takes three weeks to do anything? BT are crap, granted, but Amazon Prime takes care of many things I need the next day, and apart from getting a mortgage banking is pretty swift these days. Healthcare? I call the doctor and get a triage callback the same day, and often an appointment the same day, with nothing paid. I remember telling colleagues in the Netherlands that we paid nothing, which punctured their idea of superiority a little given their compulsory health insurance charges, plus extra per visit costs.

You're not the only one that's lived abroad.

<comment><USER10> The places I've lived. Not just BT; literally every company I've dealt with since getting back has been somehow ragingly incompetent. How about a welcome letter with account number asking you to sign up online, followed by support call saying that won't actually work because it takes 10 business days to move your details from one computer to another?

The Netherlands is one such country: not perfect but vastly better - definitely including the health service. You certainly don't pay nothing for the NHS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If the EU citizens wanted security of living in London for as long as they want, why not apply for permanent residency after five years and then citizenship? Doesn't seem like that big of an obstacle.

Why is London the only prosperous city in England? Does that seem right? Germany has many prosperous cities.

And what is it that makes London a world capital so much more than Paris or Frankfurt? Perhaps it is due to something uniquely British? If so, perhaps that's worth preserving.

As someone living for years in one of these "global cities," they are all hype. They are modern feudal estates. Look at the mentality of so many of these expats who come into London... For example, the French. Do they treasure British traditions? Doubtful. They want to make their money and resume and go back home as soon as it's feasible. They want to stick to their own enclaves in London. Does anyone else find this odd and unappealing from both sides?

How did London become a global capital? Mostly money laundering for the world. They call it finance, but it's really just banking (not a lot of PE or hedge funds), which is really just money laundering when you talk about the top end of that industry. Screw banking and finance, every city they dominate ends up sucking. Leave and we can build a city based on something real.

I just saw this in Sydney too. Everyone openly says, the (white) Aussies have sold their property and bailed out to regional towns or what not.

It seems abnormal because what all the immigrants were chasing was the place, culture and system those people built.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is an awful piece of pro globalist propaganda IMO. Good job the online format makes it so hard to read.

The EU is totally undemocratic with 7 unelected presidents imposing layers of bureaucracy and regulation on everyone within the eurozone. It has failed to reform and modernize, a key reason why the UK elected to leave in the referendum.

Meanwhile Wall Street is locked in combat with the City of London, hence the 'poor old London the loser/ has been tone' of this article. 'Will London Fall?' etc

The reality is that the City of London is an entirely separate sovereign state within England, and is also one of the largest offshore tax havens on the planet. (This also urgently needs reform). [https://www.ft.com/content/7c8f24fa-3aa5-11e4-bd08-00144feab...](https://www.ft.com/content/7c8f24fa-3aa5-11e4-bd08-00144feabdc0)

As such it is highly unlikely that anything will change around London's global dominance financially..

I am all for integration of the peoples of europe, but on their own terms and wellbeing, not as chattels of a large globalist financial entity. Greece, Portugal, Spain and Ireland have all been badly damaged by the EU. We need a more equitable system that is about the people and not profits...

<comment><USER11> Spot on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> So much FUD it's difficult to know where to start! Just a few observations:

1\. Londoners are said to be more open-minded, but there's been plenty of narrow-minded sneering about Brexit supporters from Remainers

2\. There is a deliberately false picture being portrayed that no immigration will be permitted after Brexit. On the contrary - it's just that the UK will be able to exercise sovereignty over its borders once again. Nothing about that means the drawbridge is being pulled up

3\. No one makes the same criticisms about isolation etc. from other places that don't offer hundreds of millions of people the automatic right to move to. Canada? Australia? You never hear the same bleating about these countries skilled migrant programmes!!

4\. No one could have predicted what London would have looked like in future even if we had stayed in the EU - let's not forget the EU has a good long list of serious challenges on its plate

5\. 'You can't live in an island and call it your oasis' said Shirley Watkins, 83 - might just as well say the same about the detachment of Londoners from the rest of the UK!

6\. Criticism of tabloid press over Brexit - let's not forget the almost unanimous media, political, business and academic consensus that supported remain, and the apocalyptic FUD saying things like the day after a leave vote an immediate recession would start, etc. etc. In that context criticism of one side hints at bias

7\. '..London is struggling so much now.'. Oh please.. Not from where I'm standing. So the borders with the EU become a little firmer. As if there won't still be millions of people interested in making the UK their home. Who's to say we won't have a more interesting and diverse London with more migrants from outside the EU?

</comment><comment><USER14> No, London will still be London. Why do people think that suddenly you might have to apply for a visa people will stop wanting to come and live in London?

<comment><USER15> Probably because one of the reason people from the EU came to London and, in general, the UK, was because you didn't need a visa.

Remove that possibility, then people will consider other places as well.

<comment><USER16> I highly doubt people keen on going to London would consider Brussels or Frankfurt an acceptable substitute.

<comment><USER17> Depends on where the jobs move to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So this article is about whether London will lose its multicultural appeal after Brexit. Here's an observation about the nationalities of the people cited. Quite a few Europeans, but also:

\- An Indian-British writer (Nikesh Shukla) who has compiled a set of essays about nonwhite Britons. (In case it isn't obvious, most (all?) European countries are mostly white and the countries that are mostly nonwhite are not in Europe).

\- Russian house-buyers.

\- A Canadian who wrote a book about London.

\- London's Pakistani-British mayor.

\- A Brazilian hairdresser.

\- A Japanese sculptor.

\- Jewish refugees from European persecution a hundred years before Britain joined the EU.

\- An Indian food entrepeneur.

\- Somali immigrants at the doctor's surgery.

\- The Bangladeshi-born mayor of Tower Hamlets.

\- Bangladeshi muslims at Brick Lane Mosque.

Excellent people, no doubt, and worthy contributors to the life of the capital (even the Russian oligarchs). The point is that they don't seem to owe their position to EU membership.

It's interesting, the opening lines of the article say 'after the "Brexit" referendum, its future as an international crossroads is far from certain'. But the sources make it seem like London's multiculturalism doesn't owe that much to the EU in the first place.

<comment><USER19> The Bangladeshi-born mayor of Tower Hamlets

Not an excellent person.

"An east London mayor has been removed from office and a poll declared void after he was found guilty of electoral fraud."

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england- london-32428648](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-32428648)

Current mayor is John Biggs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I sympathize that folks don't like the format how this story is presented. I don't think I am quite as irritated but I do not prefer all this activity while I scroll.

I think it's great that NYT is experimenting new ways to capitalize on this medium and not merely just publishing their print stories on the web.

...but it's probably best for them to learn from this experiment and not repeat it.

</comment><comment><USER21> Will we ever have titles that aren't clickbait?

Nicely designed site/story. But to put it simply: no.

There's simply no reason that London will "fall". Yes the immigration with the EU will cause problems, and yes they will lose a lot of financial industry business but London will continue to exist, and prosper. People will still immigrate to the UK, and people will still live in London. The strength of the city lies not solely as it relates to the EU, but because it is the capitol, and largest city of a long and storied nation that is largely prosperous and innovative.

I really wish we'd stop this whole Brexit == UK falls into the sea forever nonsense. Economic problems? Maybe. But prosperous people are innovative and responsive to change. Immigration is not the sole contributor to economic growth or innovation. If it was, than China, Japan, and many other countries would still be subsistence farming.

<comment><USER22> It's not saying that. It's pointing our how London is very much the emblem of a modern, integrated, multicultural city, and this is bound to change.

It doesn't say it'll fall into the sea. It wonders how such a city might change, most likely in directions opposed to its current identity.

<comment><USER21> Why is that considered "fall" then?

<comment><USER23> The idea I had of London as a place I could live for decades when I first moved here: that's starting to fade away. That's the fall. And it's not just me; it's lots of other EU citizens.

<comment><USER21> Yea but that doesn't mean London "will fall".

<comment><USER24> Stop being so literal. Rome is still there, and has been for 2000+ years. It just isn't a terribly important city any more, globally; London will be similar.

<comment><USER21> I'm not being literal. London will continue to be an important global city. There won't be any "fall".

<comment><USER24> I'm sure the Romans thought that too, and the Athenians before them, and the Babylonians before that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> London has been a "world capitol" ... meaning I guess that it has deserved that description as much as any other large city ... since at least the mid-17th century. Whatever affect brexit has on the UK economy and place in the European sphere I doubt it will fundamentally alter London's status.

</comment><comment><USER26> London has fallen. Is falling. Slowly thru a century.

As the focal point for economic activity of the planet moved from Europe to North America and eventually will move to China.

Brexit has got nothing to do with it; there are much larger forces at play.

</comment><comment><USER27> Right at the end:

"She pays $750 a month for a room on the edge of the city with seven roommates".

Financialisation of housing is killing the UK. Work has no real meaning because value created is unrelated to fiat money appropriated. The divide between have and have not is massive. Immigration is being used to prop up demand for housing as nobody can pay for a small apartment any more so people live 8 to a small house.

<comment><USER28> You're right but HN hive mind is destroying you.

<comment><USER27> It's the worst site on the internet for economics. The mixture of econ 101 and smug closed-mindedness from success in other fields is hard to beat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Stupid article. London has survived a couple world wars, invasions, depressions.

<comment><USER24> So has Rome. But Rome isn't exactly a globally-important city any more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I hope so.

The UK has brought the world much pain, sadly there is no omnipresent compensation, like Karma, that make things right again.

The only fear I have is that people will now flock to Berlin and gentrify the hell out of it. Shame.

</comment><comment><USER31> They asked the same question in 2008.

</comment><comment><USER32> web site design is moronic. i couldn't get past the second paragraph. who in their mind designed and approved it???

<comment> amiga-workbench Reader mode is essential on the modern web, everything has a crap signal to noise ratio.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I honestly tried to read this but couldn't get past the format. The rapid changes of background/text when scrolling were incredibly jarring. This felt like a regular long form article made into an "interactive" (in quotes because there is no actual interaction) for the sake of it.

Maybe this isn't a productive comment but the format ruined the article for me.

<comment><USER34> IF you're on desktop, I highly recommend using the reader view feature built into Firefox. Makes most of my reading experience so much better for most sites.

<comment><USER35> Thank you. This made it readable.

It's actually surprisingly readable in the source code, which is what I was about to do before I read your comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I am unable to read this on mobile. Can anyone tl;dr plz?

<comment><USER37> Londoners voted against Brexit, yet Brexit happened. London will be in ruins now as a world capital, surely.

That's quite literally the summary, if you normalize for all the musings and feel-good details.

<comment><USER38> A careful reading of this article will show that the authore made absolutely _zero_ objective, measurable predictions. e.g. the author doesn't say that the banking system will fail, or the stock market will crash, or that average incomes will fall relative to their continental counterparts.

<comment><USER23> However, the mood of the piece accurately captured my ambivalence about continuing to live in London.

I bought a house just before the election, but I'm finding it extremely hard to justify investing much in it because I can't really see a future for me in this country, if it continues to trend.

It's not about plummeting stock markets or failing banking systems. It's about living with the uncertainty as to whether I'll still be welcome as a non- citizen. The moment the UK state starts to vary treatment on important things like entitlements or tax rates, I'm out of here - I'm not like some cow to be milked for the benefit of the natives.

I reckon I'm 6 to 18 months away from leaving for someplace else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> your site is bad and you should feel bad</comment>


Joe Rohan Podcast: John Carmack - <AUTHOR> http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/john-carmack <comment><USER2> I would be interested in John's take/view on video games violence discussion.

Does it translate to real-world behavior change, if yes how, what are characteristics of susceptible people, vs non-susceptible, and so on.

General, video game addiction from early age, is that real, or made up concern in John's view...

I do not think those topics were covered, although I might have missed it.

</comment><comment><USER3> s/h/g/

iddqd</comment>


Siri is the Next Big Thing - <AUTHOR> http://gerger.co/yalimslodge/2011/10/13/siri-artificial-intelligence-revolution-has-begun/

<comment><USER2> I don't understand how this article rose to the top page of HN... it's not telling us anything that's interesting, new, or news in any way. Artificial intelligence has been around since the dawn of computers (think Clippy), helping us do our shit. In fact, AutoCAD is a bunch of 'artificial intelligence' that's letting you draw vectors and write code in a more intuitive way (ok, not exactly and technically, but you know what I mean)

It seems like the author of this article has never in their life seen a computer do anything more than push numbers, but machine learning and AI have been around for at least a decade. This is just a very mainstream case of very well developed AI.

Saying that 'this is the start of a revolution' is not only ill-advised, but totally baseless. What's the innovation? What has changed in what was previously possible? For a revolution to occur, there needs to be an innovation that causes expansion of technological capabilities. Although Siri is (supposedly) great, it does not represent an expansion of technological capability. Just because the team behind Siri spent years building out a great voice activated AI system does not mean that we all can now do it. Computers have not become smarter... they are the same as they ever were. People have not realized a more efficient way to create AI... it's the same as before.

I'm truly surprised that such a shallow and misguided article made it to the popular page in a community like this.

<comment><USER3> Hi Author here. Thank your for the harsh words. I guess I gotto take it to the chin.

Please allow me explain my point in another way. I think Siri is to A.I. what Apple II is to computers. Does this analogy explain what I am trying to tell better?

<comment><USER4> I think that was clear from the article. What jenius, I think, was saying is that you don't offer much support for this claim. How, for example, can startups get on the AI-as-a-service bandwagon without having the resources and experience of a company like Apple?

<comment><USER2> Exactly right john_b... the author's follow-up comment addressed nothing that I said, just made another baseless claim - that "I think it's like the apple II of computers". Why? What makes it like the apple II? You have to back yourself up. I personally think they are nothing alike, and here's why:

The Apple II was a revolution of personal computing. It brought the personal computer to the masses, and made it infinitely more accessible in both form and function. The form and parts for the Apple II became the base for all other computers. Nobody had ever made anything like the Apple II before. The Apple II on its own sold like crazy, and brought the entire company to success. Siri is a small piece of software on an already successful device (which is significantly more 'revolutionary' that siri on its own). The idea for siri has been come up with and implemented many times before, in the exact same manner (see the many android comments). Apple just worked really hard on it and they allegedly did a good job.

<comment><USER3> Hey the author again. :-). It is true that in the article, I did not explain why I think that the era of A.I. started on October 4th. The article starts with the assertion that it has begun and moves on from there. I guess more than anything, the article is a call for action. I wanted the discussion to start and it did.

If I can present my chain of thoughts leading up to my decision in an interesting way I may write another article called "Why I think Siri is the Next Big Thing".

But here is my chain of thought for the curious mind in a very crude way:

What I did was to observe the moves of Apple and try to figure out their strategy. I put together the information that is available on the Internet. I connected the dots.

I knew Apple bought Siri for about $200 mil. I knew about Siri's history. You don't buy voice recognition software for this price. I watched the Mossberg- Jobs interview where Mossberg keeps insisting that Siri is in the search area and Jobs keep correcting him saying no Siri is in the A.I. area. I watched how the critical question "What are you going to do with it?" got lost during the conversation. When Mossberg said that the iPad is great for consumption but not for creation, it was very clear that Jobs did not see it like that at all. I also watched some Apple videos from late 80's which depicts a professor talking to his computer and getting his daily business done. It seemed to me that they had this vision all along and now they were implementing it.

Then I realized how iCloud fits in to this all. With the introduction of Siri it was clear to me that the next frontier the competition is moving to is A.I. Apple is going all in. IBM is pushing hard. Apparently, Google is baking some stuff.

While I was thinking about all these and trying to find its meaning, the interview between Fred Wilson and Carlota Perez helped me to put it all in context.

I think this is the time to invest in A.I. If a VC expects huge returns from his investment in 5-7 years, I think A.I. is the right way to go. If an entrepreneur wants to do something amazing, I think A.I. is the right way to go. My speculation is in 1-2 years this is going to be all we talk about.

I think A.I. is where the puck is going now. I might be wrong, I might be right. We will know soon enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What a blindingly ignorant rant. A couple breathless prognostications that really annoyed me:

"If A.I. knows about insurance, will you ever google for it?" Uh, all the "A.I." is doing is googling it. So basically Siri will use speech-to-text (which I've had on my Android phone for years) and put it in the google search box for me. Then it will read the first result. Zippity-doo-da.

"We will teach it how to use Excel." Can you possibly imagine trying to _tell_ a speech recognition system to input into a spreadsheet? Quite a step backwards, if you ask me.

Look, the interpretation of language into meaning and then into commands has been around for a while, and it's been constantly improving. Siri is another product in that crowded market. It's really swell that they included it in iOS; like I said, I've had it on my Droid for two-plus years and it's pretty handy. This is the worst kind of blind Apple fanboy-ism. They are a good company that makes some great products. Stop it with the hyperbole simply because you want to justify your new phone purchase to your wife before you're off-contract.

<comment><USER6> While I agree with you in principle, I feel like the conceptual use cases you're imagining implement current practices with basically a speech to text. What the author is suggesting is that it would be beyond this, skipping out the step where you determine _how_ you do something, but instead telling Siri _what_ you want to do. For example, with excel I'm not sure he envisaged something like "A5 is 20, A6 is 30" and so on, but more like, "Take my taxes from this pdf and put them into a spreadsheet".

That said, irrespective of any kind of AI revolution Siri may (or as I suspect) may not induce, I feel like predicting it's impact before we've even had the chance to test it out in any kind of capacity (OK the 4S has been on sale for two hours, but you know what I mean) is somewhat short sighted.

<comment><USER7> Except Siri doesn't do anything of the kind. It would be trivial to build "take my taxes from this PDF and put them into a spreadsheet" into Siri (or indeed any speech recognition engine). But that would only be one more special case. The code is literally "if (recognizedText == "take my taxes from this PDF and put them into a spreadsheet"){writeExcelSheet(parsePDFTable("taxes.pdf"))}

That's nice, but it is not AI.

<comment><USER6> Sure, and I'm not for one second Siri could do that, but

a) I was under the impression Siri was doing some kind of semantic analysis rather than straight text recognition?

b) I just meant if we suspended disbelief and Siri was this magical AI tool it would do something like that, my second point is just that because we don't know what Siri can/will do it seems ridiculous to say it's going to change the world.

I totally agree with you, I'm just saying there are almost two separate discussions here, one being Siri and it's implementation, the other being the impact of AI on our lives. If Siri _was_ the new AI, then these would be the same discussion, but as I don't think it is, it's not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is the AI winter really over?

Or is Siri simply the practical application of machine learning and NLP which we've manage to derive from off-shoots of AI research?

I think it will be some time yet when I can make a natural language query and have an AI agent fetch relevant data, sort it, and present it contextually. Or sketch an idea for a building and have an AI do all the hard work of creating the blueprints.

In the near future though it's obvious that we'll see more practical applications of AI in every-day products and I think that's pretty neat.

<comment><USER3> I think it is. I view Siri as Apple II of personal computers. Siri crosses the threshold and I believe the race is on.

<comment><USER9> I won't judge siri, as I do not know the details of technology or the machine learning algorithms used by it, but I would say this much: your one line pitch might just impress some businessweek readers but I don't think a really cool technology needs punchlines like that (..apple II..) - your article sounds like its coming from a non-technical observer for a non-technical audience - and that would be okay if the product had passed the stage of hype into early stages of common usage.

At this stage though I am more interested in how is it different from 100s of other AI applications that failed to take over the world or become the next big thing.

My need to criticize primarily came from your last paragraph where you are appealing to developers to jump in without realizing that that segment of your audience looks not very respectfully at phrases like 'buckle up' and 'amazing ride'

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's interesting that the Printing Press didn't make the list of previous revolutions, because I think this highlights two different ways of thinking about intelligence (and thus AI). We can either build AI systems that give us a correct answer 95% of the time and we don't care how they got it, or we can build systems that have some sort of designed thinking (ie we understand our own thoughts and try and replicate their process to some degree).

I think at some point the former became dominant, because its more achieveable, but its also the one that gets most interesting when it fails. Because of the way this AI learns, when its wrong it can be brutally wrong.

I think there will be a revolution in AI getting into more spaces, but only in areas where its ok to screw up (ie ultimately a human is filtering the AI response at some degree, whether its the user knowing when to ignore the GPS or Siri, or an overseer looking over the AI output and checking it before it goes out). I'd be really surprised to see AI doing anything important by itself.

Also, I thought Google already had a fairly solid AI research effort well underway.

<comment><USER3> Hi, Author here. I think you make an excellent point. I think the revolution will start from small things where it is OK to make an error. Stuff like Siri does. Then it will move on to productivity tools or the like...where it is still OK to make a mistake. And A.I. will improve really fast, like the PC has improved. I think in 5-10 years we won't believe what we have accomplished. I think Siri crosses an important threshold.

Didn't know about Google. They might be working on something but I don't know of any production use of their A.I. software.

<comment><USER11> Google Translate uses AI. It uses currently translated text to predict translation of strings that you provide.

<comment><USER3> True. Thank you for pointing that out. I missed it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> No matter how innovative company Apple is, I wouldn't give them credit just because they bought Siri and integrated it into iOS. I somehow find it odd that no one was talking about Siri before Apple's blessing, although it has existed for many years. It has been constantly evolving, and would have without Apple. There's lots of information about Siri available and the vision and goal of the project has been clear all along.

<comment><USER13> Taking an impressive but not all _that_ practical technology demo and integrating it into devices that are going to be in millions of people's hands deserves some credit. The major part of the credit goes to those who developed the technology, of course, but identifying the technology as practical for the masses and getting it out to them is important too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can anyone point me to write ups of Siri's implementation and history? I know Siri was previously a product on the iPhone, so I'm wondering what company created the the technology, and if they perhaps had a more open attitude in discussing their technology than we might hear from Apple and whether they might have some blog posts to look through, etc.

<comment><USER12> It was originally not a product for iPhone. That was the spin-off. It was originally CALO <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CALO>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is Siri really more than a little bit of sugarcoating on top of stuff others have been doing for years (Google, Wolfram Alpha)? I suspect it is doing ok for some tasks (calendar), but that is about it. For example on Android people have been calling contacts by saying their names for a quite a while already.

<comment><USER15> Android user here who frequently uses the voice commands. The primary differences I see between what we have and what Siri offers are:

\- More built-in app integration (like GPS). "Remind me to call Jennifer when I leave work" wouldn't compute. The Wolfram Alpha integration is also a nice touch.

\- Improved contextual awareness. "Is it going to rain today?" or "I'm in the mood for Italian" don't work for me. I have to explicitly use keywords like asking for a "map of italian restaurants".

\- 2-way conversations. I only speak a command and the voice command opens another application based on that command. Siri can talk back to you and resolve conflicts, such as calendar schedule overlaps.

Have we had voice commands on our phones for what seems like forever now? Yep. But that doesn't make me any less jealous of the neat innovations that Apple's done in the speech recognition AI field. Again, a great example of the fierce competition driving innovation, and the consumer wins.

<comment><USER7> Still, I think those are only some special cases (weather, calendar). Admittedly they are nice, but I doubt they are an AI revolution.

Also I suppose it is kind of a "desktop search" for the mobile phone. Google can not search your contacts and calendar (it could, but the Google search is not really tied into it yet, I suppose).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The only way we're going to achieve AI in the short term is by loosening the definition of the phrase, for example to include a new generation of complex automatons. I look forward to AI meaning about as much as "cloud" does today.</comment>


Don't try this at home. How credit card arbitrage funded my first company.  - <AUTHOR> http://www.humbledmba.com/dont-try-this-at-home-how-credit-card-arbitra <comment><USER4> > For some personal background, I do come from a financially stable family. My > parents could have covered the $16k to help me follow my dreams. But I > didn't ask them (and neither did they offer). The financial pressure and > responsibility of my startup was to be fully on my shoulders.

Even though he wasn't accepting money from his parents, he was implicitly using their financial security to shoulder this risk. If everything had really gone to hell, they would have helped him back on his feet. (Much like some banks could take huge risks knowing the government would probably bail them out, even if there wasn't an explicit agreement or exchange of money beforehand.) Other people, like maybe his friend, don't have such a financial safety net and so can't take on those kinds of risks.

<comment><USER5> Credit card debt is, in most states, entirely dischargable in bankruptcy. So while it would be unethical to take on all this debt specifically with the purposes of squandering it, the CC companies are extending you an unsecured loan. It's really not all that bad of an idea, provided you can survive a bankruptcy and a few years of exceptionally poor credit.

<comment><USER6> > while it would be unethical to take on all this debt specifically with the > purposes of squandering it

Actually, in the UK, if they can prove it, it's _illegal_. Be surprised if that wasn't the same in the West.

<comment><USER5> I actually worked for a US Bankruptcy Trustee in Florida for about three years. It is illegal here as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Back in the mid-2000s, when money-market accounts were paying around 5%, and there were a ton of promotional 0%-balance credit-card offers, people from fatwallet used to use the term "app-o-rama" for this trick of applying for a _ton_ of 0%-balance credit cards all on one day, so that they'd all be approved before the credit score was updated. Then, there were ways to essentially extract the balance as a cash advance w/o it being coded as a cash advance. A few cards (like Citibank's) would let you do a "balance transfer" via a check made out to you, and then you could transfer that balance to others and repeat. The end result was that you could take out a quick $50k or so in credit, put it in a 5% money-market account, and pay it all back 12 months later when the 0%-rate intro promotion would be expiring, netting $2500 interest.

You could also start a business with the cash, but that's a bit higher-risk...

</comment><comment><USER8> tl;dr: "And, so I raised my money through credit card arbitrage: $22k across 14 different cards. So, yeah. That's about it... For me, it worked out both terribly and perfectly. The terribly part is that our startup failed, and I never paid myself enough to pay the cards back. At the end of Openvote, I was saddled with all this credit card debt, plus opportunity cost loss from no salary, plus no job. It was a tough time."

It's a lesson in what not to do, as the author acknowledges. Though he seems sanguine enough and has got back up on his feet.

Then again, I think there are easier ways to learn it's not a good idea to rack up five figures of credit card debt on top of existing debt and no savings... but whatevs.

</comment><comment><USER9> Is this actually considered arbitrage?

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

While the 4th credit card company he applies to has imperfect information about what his credit is (at that point) actually worth, it seems like all the deals are independent.

<comment><USER10> True credit card arbitrage, which is what helped me bootstrap, involves real accretion of money

In my case, it was playing the us mint. They sell 250 $1 coins for 250 with free shipping. Fidelity Amex card gives 2% cash back. So I would order tens of thousands of coins and use the coins to pay the credit card build. 1K roundtrip = $20, and it was pretty scalable. Nowadays there is a limit

<comment><USER11> Nowadays you can't buy $1 coins with credit cards at all. Those were the days...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I went for the opposite tack when I founded my startup - live with my parents and do all the coding myself - and I would highly, highly recommend that over the credit card approach. My startup also failed. I also felt it was well- worth it for the experience and skills gained. I also found I loved startups and want to get back into them again.

The difference is that when my startup failed, I had money in the bank, no debt, and no particular time limit for finding another source of income. And that gave me options, and options gave me negotiating power. I was able to turn down offers that I felt would be career dead-ends or wouldn't teach me much, and would've even been able to found another startup immediately if the right opportunity hadn't come up. Instead of working 6 months on boring consulting jobs, I was able to spend that 6 months taking a job that taught me things (which has turned into 2.5 years, because the job is _still_ teaching me things).

</comment><comment><USER13> This is crazy - crazy interesting and crazy nuts. The idea of arbitraging has always be fascinating to me. I've had an idea for currency arbitrage in the travel industry, but never done anything other than back of the envelope calculations. Feel free to take the idea:

Tour operators publish their prices for the upcoming year's trips. They publish them usually in one currency, sometimes in two, rarely in three. They're beholden to these prices because they publish brochures and distribute them to places like Flight Centre.

So what you do is become a wholesaler of a bunch of tour operators' trips (this is easy to aggregate, many have XML feeds that publish their inventory, including pricing & availability). Then you use real-time exchange rates to figure out which currency it's best to sell in to a customer and then buy the product from the operator using another currency. For example, say the US & CAD dollars are at par when prices are published. If the US drops a lot compared to the CAD, you sell the trip to your customer in CAD but purchase the trip from the operator in US.

The beauty is that operators will pay you a commission (usually 20-25%) on top of whatever you gain from the currency arbitrage. There's some complexity in becoming a legal wholesaler and being able to accept multiple currencies etc.

At the very least it makes for some interesting math.

<comment><USER14> And then you get a client like me, who points out that the price in Euros in 10% cheaper than the price in AUD because of currency fluctuations in that period, and I would like to pay in Euros please.

The travel agency (in Australia) weren't able to do that for me, however - <USER2> it seems their agreement was in a single currency as well. I'm not sure how hard I could have pushed it, because the dates ended up not quite working anyway.

<comment><USER13> Ha, yes, but you'd be in the minority of travellers who think like that. But I know of tour operators who refuse to allow this. If you're an Aussie resident, you have to pay AUD. If you're in the EU, you have to pay in EUR etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Kudos for him _knowing_ that he was using his CC to fund his startup. I made the mistake of not realizing that I was using my CC to fund my business - <USER3> was using them for food, rent, and other things.

A lot of 'regular' businesses fall into the trap of building a lot of short- term debt that isn't really obvious - owing their suppliers, owing their employees, and owing the tax man. When a small hiccup hurts their cash flow, the whole stack of cards comes crumbling down.

Or so I've been told.... :)

</comment><comment><USER16> I tried this with my first startup. It worked, and my wife and I wound up with a nice little online magazine that did pretty well. Then I got cocky, I tried to do it again but wasn't as careful as the first time. Now I'm digging myself out from under $60k in CC debt. Now I live by 3 before 1, make 3 before you spend 1. We'll see how that works out.

<comment><USER17> I did exactly the same, except to get a contract outfit off the ground. I paid off about $60k in total (in GBP) over 10 years. I worked out that in total I made about 20% more than salaried people over the time. It definitely wasn't worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Kevin Smith used a similar technique to fund his first movie ( _Clerks_ ). Personally, I think funding a movie with this technique is WAY crazier than a startup.

</comment><comment><USER19> Did you ever do a credit report with all those cards? It would be interesting to see how having 14 cards with balances affected your score :P

</comment><comment><USER20> In most other countries and with some cards the introductory low or zero interest rate is only on purchases and not on cash advances or withdrawls.

There are a few ways to get around that. You are probably breaking money laundering laws if you do, though - so, disclaimer.

Find a friend or family member who has a small store and merchant account, or setup your own merchant account in a company name, or put up an item on ebay with a buy it now. Create one or a number of fake products with realistic looking prices (some merchant terminals let you enter an arbitrary price).

Buy it with your new card and kick back the cash, minus the transaction fee.

You can then just keep bumping the balance to a new card when the introductory period is up - just pay the minimum payments (which are usually very low). Juggling to new cards with introductory rates is a lot better than applying for many cards at once. It just looks like you got sick of your last bank for poor service etc.

</comment><comment><USER21> i'm not really well versed in funding or business operations, but this just sounds stupid.

<comment><USER22> Generally everybody says you shouldn't start a start up on credit cards.

What he went for is the advanced version where you can get free money if you stack the cards correctly. It is difficult to do, but companies and financial investors do it pretty often.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I feel like this is one of those "how to rob a bank" lessons that you find sometimes from old-time thieves. It shows you how to do something to take advantage of the system, definitely a hacker thing to do, but at the same time its very dangerous and often unnecessary. More than one person is reading this article and thinking "hmm..." I think this puts a lot of the "put the house on the line" risk back into startups. Say what you will about the time and effort starting a business takes, in this day and age of venture capital, it is almost stupid to get into that situation. Nonetheless, people have done crazier things, overextended themselves even thinner, and had no contingency plan, and become billionaires. Its all part of the game

<comment><USER24> Imagine he had $50k in the bank. So he didn't need to use the cards. He takes the $20k out of the bank at the beginning of the year, puts it into the startup, which fails within the year.

What's the difference between the two situations? In one, he spent however amount of time earning the $20k before he put it into the startup, in the other he spends however amount of time working off the credit card debt after the startup fails.

The real difference between these two is the interest rate on the credit cards, and that's about it. In both cases he has to work to earn the money he put into his startup, though it might be more painful to do it after failure than before.

[I think its amusing that this comment has been down voted. I wasn't disagreeing with the person I'm responding to, didn't say anything offensive, and offered a different way of looking at things that seemed to be missing.]

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't get why everyone is hating on the author for his usage of credit cards. It's not the first time I've heard a story like this, and it's certainly not going to be the last.

I did something similar with an Amex card, and used it to bootstrap the development I couldn't perform myself. As long as you manage the risk and plan accordingly, it's not as bad of a play as it's made out to be.

Also, the author never said anything about bankruptcy, and he seems a man of his word. I didn't get the impression he was going to burn through the cash and then file bankruptcy if it didn't work. In fact, he didn't, and it didn't.

When you have a dream, and you believe in it, you do everything you can to make it work.

</comment><comment><USER26> > Learn how to code so you don't need to hire programmers.

Yeah, you can just get one of those "Learn how to Program in 30 Days!" books, and it's just as good as hiring someone who does it professionally.

This whole post reads like a big "Don't Do What Donny Don't Does" book.

</comment><comment><USER27> For a software startup it is perfectly possible to get off the ground with an outlay <$100 and some of your time. I really don't see the need for dramatic and totally silly strategies like these.

Using one hole to plug another never was a really good idea.

<comment><USER28> I think you missed the part where he says they had no coders as founders, and also the part(s) where he says "don't do this".

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Wow, a very pleasant read! For someone who was seriously considering doing this I have to admit your perspective is quite admirable.

The only question I am left with is how much did you end up settling for or how long did it take to eventually pay it all off?

</comment><comment><USER30> Back when I graduated college in 2002 into the tech bust and kept getting credit card offers to "transfer my balances at zero interest for six months", I took a bunch of zero-interest cash advances and put them into the ING savings account yielding 3-4% at the time. I did it for between 6 months and a year and netted a few hundred bucks before closing them all out. I wouldn't recommend it because a) it was more headache than it was worth to keep track of payments, and b) who knows what it did to my credit score. It was definitely an arb, but probably not operationally worth it...

</comment><comment><USER31> I worked with someone who financed a feature film on 67 credit cards. He didn't make his investment back at all, and had to disappear for awhile, as he was saddled with about $300,000 in credit card debt. But when the credit card companies did catch up with him, years later, he was able to settle his whole debt for about 30k.

Running from the credit card companies ruined his credit, of course, but I wonder if the author of the article would have gotten a better rate of return if he had just hid from the credit card companies, waiting for them to get desperate enough to settle.

<comment><USER32> The opportunity cost involved in "hiding" might make this a bad deal though. The author was involved in doing above-board consulting work and planning his next startup.

I would expect that taking legal employment under your own name makes you relatively findable. Worse, recruiting investors for a startup is likely to be much more difficult if they perform due diligence on you and discover that you have a history of running away from creditors.

Of course, even worse than that is that the author planned his moves carefully in advance. While running off when you owe too much money isn't the best move, _planning_ to run away from your debts might well be prosecuted as fraud.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> "My friends that deferred their startup dreams for high-paying consulting jobs got no closer to learning how to build a startup and, worse, became accustomed to the life that a high salary affords."

It seems to me that the simplest way to solve this problem is to keep a very close eye on your standard of living. Personally, I buy most of my food from the dollar store and think of my summer internship savings as a "bankroll" that I should gamble with carefully.

</comment><comment><USER34> Maybe I'm missing something but how is this even arbitrage? If you were just putting the money into an interest bearing account and repaying before the interest rate kicked in then yes it would be arbitrage (if you could even beat the 3% fee) but that wasn't happening here.

The author was just taking the 0% rates and using them to fund his company which didn't work out. There was never a guaranteed upside to this which is what you would expect with arbitrage.

</comment><comment><USER35> "Learn how to code so you don't need to hire programmers."

That's the hidden gem. Only do this if you enjoy programming, though, because it's hard work, _especially_ in the beginning. Expect a year or two to get fluent, not a month or two.

But once you know how to program, you don't have to spend time finding scarce developer talent, you don't have to spend time communicating requirements et cetera, and most of all you don't have to pay them $X.

</comment><comment><USER36> 1\. This isn't arbitrage. Arbitrage has a specific meaning (profiting from price disparities in the same item in different markets). This could be described as a carry trade, but it's mostly just an inconvenient way to get a business loan.

2\. This isn't even correct. It claims that you can get your credit score for free, which is incorrect. When I notice one error, I suspect there are other errors.

<comment><USER37> I get a free score from all 3 bureaus for free once a year.

<comment><USER38> No, you get a free credit _report_ from all 3 bureaus once a year. Getting your score costs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I think you are talking about moving balances between cards, sometimes called floating. It might loosely be arbitrage if you use the cash back features to think of the value of a dollar spent on one card being less than the other. If 3% cash back, spending one dollar on the card really only costs 97% of one dollar, then pay it off with a normal 0% cash back card.

</comment><comment><USER39> Wow... that takes balls. Getting 0% introductory rate credit cards, and taking a cash advance... and then putting the cash in a bank account that pays interest. Of course, if the business fails - as it did in the author's case - then you're stuck with all of the debt and a broken credit record, but it's all about taking risks right?

<comment><USER40> As long as you have the ability to start earning quickly and are smart about it, you can get through that without breaking your credit record.

The key to dealing with credit cards is understanding the terms -- it's all written down in a little document that nobody reads. In particular, you need to understand precisely how each lender defines "default". "Default" == no more 0%.

Also, this guy had the business networking chops required to jump into consulting gigs immediately upon declaring failure. The exit strategy is essential.

I did something similar to this with a house that I needed to get out of quickly. I borrowed $52,000 over several cards and ended up using $40k. The $12k was used as a pool to make the automatic payments from. End result? The value of the home increased by $80k.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> This isn't arbitrage but it's a good article anyway.

I did something similar about 5 years ago but with "investing" the money in HYIPs (high yield investment programs). I was woefully ignorant of how many of these are scams (99.999%) but managed to make a decent return and not lose my shirt.

I wouldn't recommend doing this to anyway. The risks are extremely high.

</comment><comment><USER42> Arbitrage is not the same as borrowing money.

</comment><comment><USER43> This is the second article I've read on HN in as many days from this blog that ends every post with "my new company $x is going to change how the world does $y"!

The title is also inaccurate linkbait.

I appreciate self-promotion as much as anyone, but I think this isn't the way to go about doing it.

</comment><comment><USER44> Why did submitter take a cash advance? Typically, you can get 0% purchase APR. The correct course of action is to cash advance the minimal amount you need and pay for every purchase you make with your 0% cards. Would have saved this guy a few hundred dollars.

</comment><comment><USER45> Setup an Adwords campaign say $0.25 CPC. Funnel the traffic to a page where you have Adsense ads paying $0.30 CPC. That's arbitrage for you. Not sure why you guys using gold and CDS as examples on HN.

<comment><USER46> You're forgetting something: click through rate. Unless it's somewhere above 90% (in which case you're one hell of a marketer -- or you're paying for the traffic), then you're essentially burning your money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> For bonus points:

Find the credit cards affiliate program. Sign up to it, and use it. You might get for example $50 commission, for signing up to a 0% credit card, if you use your affiliate link.

<comment><USER48> I don't think the fraud is really worth $50.

<comment><USER47> Several affiliate networks explicitly allow you to use your own affiliate links.

Also, if you're more concerned about it and want an easier way, use some reward/cashback program website.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> One of my co-workers did this in the early 00's, but for the opposite reason: to pay off $50k off capital gains task. Worked quite well for him.

<comment><USER44> The IRS has pretty high convenience fees if you use a credit card (~2%). In the higher interest early 00's, this might be worth it; today, not so much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> I first heard of this in Bram Cohen's (bittorrent) PyCon keynote in 2004 (?). He basically started bittorrent the company this way.

</comment><comment><USER37> You forgot to talk about the part where you use arbitrage, you simply described how to get lots of credit quickly...

</comment><comment><USER24> This isn't credit card arbitrage. Let me describe one idea for how Credit Card Arbitrage could work.

You take out a bunch of credit cards, as he describes. Preferably ones with zero interest for the first year, or 6 months. You extract as much cash from them as you can. You put a chunk of that cash in the bank to make minimum payments from, and then you put that cash into an asset that will return more over the next year than the cards will charge.

[EDIT TO ADD: Want to clear up some confusion. In order to arbitrage interest rates, you have to have whatever you buy return more than what you have to pay for the money. There's one factor that people often forget when thinking about interest rates, and that is inflation. Dollars spent to pay off a loan are worth less than dollars you get at the beginning of the loan. This means, the asset you put your money into, needs to return not only enough to cover the interests & fees on the credit cards over the time period, but the monetary inflation rate over the time period. Thus, something that is an inflation hedge is beneficial. This is why I talk about gold below, and later I talk about CDs and even stocks.]

I'd suggest buying gold, or gold miners, or if you're super sophisticated, options on solid gold mining companies. (each of these has increasing leverage to the price of gold.) But it doesn't have to be gold, it just has to be something that is a "no brainer" way to earn a positive return above the rate of the credit card interest.

This may be difficult, and in fact, it should be difficult, because if it were easy the credit card companies would do it instead of loaning the money to you.

Potentially, you could take the money from the credit card company and put it into a CD at the very same bank. This works only if you really have "no interest for one year". Buy a 9 month CD (or better yet a 10 month CD), and then when it matures, pay off the credit card, and you get the interest from the CD for free.

The thing that makes such arbitrage opportunities so valuable is that, because the asset you're buying returns more than the cost of your money, you can scale it up pretty much infinitely.

But this is where things get problematic if you don't cover your downside. When the Bank of Japan was lending money at nearly zero interest, many banks borrowed in japan, converted the money to other currencies, and then bought treasuries of other countries. This is called the carry trade.

In fact, I wish I could start up a bank right now. I'd love to borrow money from the Federal Reserve, which is loaning it out at almost nothing, and buy the best bonds (along with some protective put options) I could find on the market.

A company wants to borrow for capital expansion, it will pay a reasonable interest rate-- say %6. The Federal Reserve is loaning at something like %1. %5 profit, at the only risk of the bond (so protect it with a CDO.) It must be great to be a bank.

If you have a startup you need to fund, and you can get a CD the interest rates right now are about 1.15%. So, I think this doesn't work for arbitrage, because while you may have "zero percent interest" there are going to be some fees that will overwhelm that meager interest rate.

But, if you could get a CD that paid out %6, and could borrow at %1 (on the "zero interest" plans) then you'd only need $400,000 in credit card debt in order to raise $20,000 for your startup!

Realistically, credit card arbitrage doesn't really work too well. If you get something with a higher rate of return, and you use borrowed money to buy it, then that's really investing on margin and not really something you could call "arbitrage". I'm sure it works for some people doing startups.... but isn't really reproducible on a wide scale.

BY the way, if you want access to some of that federal reserve money at cheap rates, at least some brokers are passing it along to their margin customers. Then you can start looking for a solid high yielding company, borrow %50, effectively doubling your yield... don't forget to buy some put options to cover your long position in case it crashes.

<comment><USER51> I don't think what you are talking about is arbitrage, either.

You are talking about using interest free loans from credit cards in order to make a leveraged bet on the price of gold; that is not arbitrage.

If gold decreases in price - and its close to record highs, however you want to intrepret that - you are taking a huge risk.

<comment><USER24> Maybe I should have been more clear. What you're arbitraging is two rates of return-- the interest rate of the loan, and the return of the investment. In more conventional arbitrage, you're buying a commodity at one price in one market and selling it at another price in another market at exactly the same time. Here you're doing that, only the commodity is money. (Gold is money.) You could substitute a foreign currency, or foreign bonds for gold in my example, just as easily.

In that case, you'd be borrowing US dollars and buying, say, Greek Bonds. I picked that example because greek bonds have a high rate of return. They're also debt... you're getting debt in one market and selling it in another.

Greek Bonds obviously have risk. All arbitrage has risks, and those risks can be huge. That the risk is huge doesn't make it any less arbitrage.

FWIW, I don't think gold is at a particularly high price. I think the dollar and other currencies, which have been long over valued, are a little less overvalued than they were. I don't price gold in dollars, I price dollars in gold.

<comment><USER52> You're missing the key point of arbitrage: its risk-free.

Say you borrow $100k at 0% for 1 year. You then buy (at $1734/oz) ~57oz of gold. Next year, you plan to sell it and pay off your $100k.

But you've taken a risk. If gold is only $1500/oz next year, you're going to lose ~$13k. Of course, if its $2000/oz, you're going to make a nice profit. You're speculating on the gold market. You could build a similar position with gold futures, for example.

Arbitrage would be if you could take that $100k, and immediate buy gold in USD, sell it in EUR, and then buy USD with those EUR and wind up with >$100k. Then you're not taking any risk, because you can set up all those transactions practically at the same time (and the markets are liquid enough you know the prices you'll be able to buy/sell at).

<comment><USER11> While the academic definition of arbitrage requires it to be risk-free, in practice there is always risk of some form.

If you're buying gold in SF for $100 and selling it in NYC for $101, you carry the risk that the price will move while you're executing the trade.

If you're doing the yen carry trade (borrowing yen, and lending dollars), you carry the currency risk.

If you're taking 0% credit card loans and buying CDs, you carry the default risk on the CDs (mitigated, of course, by the FDIC).

That said, I agree with your general point - buying gold with a 0% loan carries so much risk that it's really just a leveraged investment, not an arb opp.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I did this once when interest rates were above 1%. Currently risk-free interest rates are too low for this action to be worth it.

</comment><comment><USER54> Completely deceptive linkbait title and a worthless blog post about racking up credit card debt. THIS is what gets upvoted on HN now? Pathetic...

</comment><comment><USER55> This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. I definitely would not want to be blogging about this.

What happened to good old fashioned shame and just getting on with your own business? Everyone wants to be a fucking celebrity.

<comment><USER56> Wow, you must really hate pg and patio11. They spill about everything openly. What attention whores, amirite?

These types of blog posts are merely confessionals with learning points attached that the confessor hopes the reader would find salient. You apparently didn't. And...?</comment></comment>


A Review of Neverware's Cloudready as a Possible Alternative to Chromebooks - <AUTHOR> https://cheapskatesguide.org/articles/cloudready.html <comment><USER3> I put Cloudready on a Google Pixel laptop because the original Chromebook OS stopped getting updates. I like it a lot except there are issues related to the laptop when it attempts to upgrade.

<comment><USER4> Same rationale here, I have a Toshiba Chromebook 2 (swanky) that stopped getting updates last year, now on the dev channel of Cloudready and it's got working Linux containers even (but getting Android apps working via ARC is sort of a headache). I remember part of the install process is going into the ChromiumOS settings to enable media playback (and even Flash, I was amazed to see), I wonder if the author missed that step?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I didn't look at the list, but I ran Cloudready from USB on a Lenovo Yoga Pro 2 and a Toshiba laptop I have, without issues. Also installed on to a hard disk on the Toshiba and it ran well. I didn't try the offline use after getting apps, but boot up and shutdown worked fine.

</comment><comment><USER6> I set up Cloudready on a Dell Optiplex 3020 for my parents. They like it and the maintenance I have to do is non existent.

Before that I had set up a ASUS CHROMEBOX-M004U. It had gotten too slow, especially with photo viewing and basic internet browsing - <USER2> unfortunate.

</comment><comment><USER7> I used cloudready to get an old windows netbook (asus eeepc) up and running for my kids and it has been great.

</comment><comment><USER8> "The main problem I have with Chromebooks is that they are not guaranteed to be supported by Google for more than 6.5 years. " I was seriously interested/engaged in this then stopped there. I thought to myself, if I am still using the same Chromebook in 6.5 years, either an apocalypse occurred or I am so poor that I will have other problems that are more pressing than worrying about Google support.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h Why? Hardware holds up well, and web browsing isn't _that_ resource intensive; why should a perfectly good machine just stop working?

<comment><USER9> It doesn't stop working at all. It stops getting free OS updates, presumably because there are many dozens of hardware configuration to manage, and having fallen into that trap once with Android devices, they didn't want to immediately jump into the same pit a second time.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h > It doesn't stop working at all. It stops getting free OS updates

No security updates on a browser (a program designed entirely for pulling and running/rendering arbitrary code and data from untrusted sources) _is_ a death sentence.

> having fallen into that trap once with Android devices

Google doesn't maintain any Android devices except its own.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


WTFJS – a list of funny and tricky JavaScript examples - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/denysdovhan/wtfjs <comment><USER2> > If you are a professional developer, you can consider these examples as a > great resource for interview questions and quizzes for newcomers in your > company

No, do not consider these examples as a "great" resource for interview questions. They are nothing more than tricks and hacks abusing the bad aspects of the language and anyone who includes them in an interview has failed in screening JavaScript developers, at least in my book.

A JS developer should understand that JavaScript has some flawed, unfixable core concepts and educate themselves on how to avoid them, not use them in actual production code or memorize every coercion scenario.

Some simple rules:

1\. Always use referential equality checks (triple equal `===`). In idiomatic JS you can also use double equality only when explicitly checking against undefined or null (foo == null). It's the only use of abstract equality that I find acceptable.

2\. Learn how the `this` execution context works. Kyle Simpson explains it very well in YDKJS ([https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know- JS/blob/master/this%...](https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know- JS/blob/master/this%20%26%20object%20prototypes/ch2.md)). There are four simple rules that matter and are straightforward to grasp.

3\. Familiarize yourself with how type coercion works in JS but avoid it. The spec is quite easy to follow in this matter and follows very specific, documented rules. e.g.:

[https://www.ecma- international.org/ecma-262/8.0/index.html#s...](https://www.ecma- international.org/ecma-262/8.0/index.html#sec-additive-operators) [https://www.ecma- international.org/ecma-262/8.0/index.html#s...](https://www.ecma- international.org/ecma-262/8.0/index.html#sec-abstract-equality-comparison)

Use strictly as reference.

4\. Stop using plain ES5, the language currently is ES2017. ES2015 and beyond provide modern constructs that make most of ES5's weirdness obsolete. For example, never use `var` anymore, `const` and `let` are superior initializers.

By following the above rules a JS developer should be fine in 99% of cases, in my experience. Yes, JavaScript will possibly implode on you on the rest 1%, but I'd be hard pressed to find a (similarly popular) language that doesn't. If one finds that to be unacceptable, enabling types via TypeScript or Flow should make their life even easier.

<comment> aaron-lebo _1\. Always use referential equality checks (triple equal `===`). In idiomatic JS you can also use double equality only when explicitly checking against undefined or null (foo == null). It 's the only use of abstract equality that I find acceptable._

I've found this advice in guides and in codebases, but it seems unnecessary to me. The vast majority of equality checks are of the if (str == 'str') or if (n == 0) type. It's rare that you are actually comparing two objects of different types and when you are it's kind of nice to see === and know, otherwise it's just kinda ugly (kinda like const in languages, but we don't gotta hash that out here). There is a debate like this in the lisp community over eql and such. Similarly, isn't (foo == null) redundant? In most cases if (!foo) is what you are interested in and it's cleaner.

Is this incorrect? Would be cool to have it clarified. Have never actually run into a bug due to it, so not sure if the limitations of == are mitigated though coding style or what.

But in total agreement otherwise. Modern JS is really good, it's as productive as anything else, expressive, and once you know the quirks they are easy to avoid. Where JS has problems is inexperienced devs where they can code with var and for (var ...) monstrosities that date back to like 1996.

<comment><USER3> > Is this incorrect?

Yes it is. The reason for the deep equality check is not so much that you want the check on type, but because this way you avoid the entire giant class of errors caused by type coercion, just like in PHP. Think things like:

      function check_user_id(user_id) { return user_id == 1; }
      check_user_id('1 error detected');

It's obvious when you see the exemples, and is usually a bug somewhere due to a missing check, but in language such as this it can often causes deep errors yet stay unseen for months.

There is a reason why strict type hinting has become a most-wanted (and now beloved) feature of PHP, and of JS through language such as TypeScript: most of the time, you don't really care like you said if it's '1' or 1, but because it's supposed to be a number anyway it makes no sense to not force it to be one or error out.

In other words, it's better to trade "I don't want deep equality check most of the time" with "I don't want lax equality most of time".

<comment><USER4> To be fair, your example returns false in JavaScript, unlike in PHP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _We can fix this with Greater than or equal operator ( >=):_

 _3 > 2 >= 1 // true_

What? No, JavaScript doesn't have chained comparison operators, as the author seems to know but not explain. Overall this list is pretty misleading and uninteresting IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER5> > Object.create(Array).length === 1 //true

it bothers me how the examples are often misleading or just misusing language features but people who don't know the language will gladly agree with them and have their "js sucks" belief reinforced

<comment><USER6> Agreed, although some things like:

      NaN === NaN // -> false

Are pretty f*&^%$ up, no matter how you look at them

Edit: well, apparently there is a non f&^%$ up way to look at it: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14891810](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14891810)

<comment><USER7> NaN is meant to represent a non-sensical mathematical operation (like divide by 0). One non-sensical mathematical operation is not the same as some other non-sensical mathematical operation (1/0 !== Infinity/Infinity)

<comment><USER8> Nor is it the same as the same non-sensical mathematical operator :-)

1/0 !== 1/0

<comment><USER6> That's mad. In JS, 1/0 is Infinity, not Undefined. And Infinity is not equal to itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9>
      $python
      Python 2.7.9 (default, Jun 29 2016, 13:08:31)
      [GCC 4.9.2] on linux2
      >>> True + True
      2
      >>>

okay...

      python3
      Python 3.4.2 (default, Oct  8 2014, 10:45:20)
      [GCC 4.9.1] on linux
      Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more   information.
      >>> True + True
      2
      >>>

I'm going to try this in Rust.

<comment><USER10> That's probably because

        $ python
        >>> int(True)
        1
        >>> int(False)
        0

<comment><USER11> No, that's because (for historical reasons of booleans having only been added in Python 2.3[0])

        >>> issubclass(bool, int)
        True
        >>> True == 1
        True
        >>> False == 0
        True

[0] [https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0285/](https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0285/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> From a few years back but made me laugh a lot: [https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat](https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat)

</comment><comment><USER13> Such blatant misuse of the language in these examples. Not sure what to think. It seems like the author has a good understanding of JS, but then goes out of the way to purposefully misrepresent things to construct strawmen simply to then tear them down. If someone comes across this without being familiar with JS, they could very easily be misled.

As a comparison, how many WTF C++ examples could be constructed if people misused arrays, pointers, bitwise comparators, oeprator overloads, templates, etc... to create nonsensical operations?

<comment><USER14> There is plenty of verbiage at the top explaining the motivation (some of it even under a big heading 'Motivation').

These aren't misrepresentations (let alone 'strawmen', whatever that might mean in this context) and there is no 'tearing down' at all, just links to explanations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> NaN != NaN should be obvious, otherwise Math.sqrt(-1) == 0/0

</comment><comment><USER16> More WTF, [https://wtfjs.com/](https://wtfjs.com/)

</comment><comment><USER17>
      (typeof (new (class { class () {} }))) // -> 'object'

      It seems like we're declaring a class inside of class. Should be and error, however, we get an 'object' string.
      Explanation:
      Since ECMAScript 5 era, keywords are allowed as property names.

Can anyone explain why allowing keywords as property names seemed a good idea? To me it creates a lot of potential for confusion without providing enough benefits, but I'd like to be... enlightened

<comment><USER11> Because they found out they had little reason not to, and it can be convenient e.g. in Python when messing around with metaprogramming you have to use `cls` or `kls` or `klass` rather than the obvious `class` as a local variable name, just because keywords can't be used in other context. It's even more annoying in JS as e.g. a property named `class` is very common in DOM contexts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> From now on I'm going to include at least one of these in each interview I'll be conducting - for extra points of course.

Anyway a lot of these examples can be explained if you know how type coercion works in JS and are aware what the `valueOf` method exists for.

Here's a nice write-up about this mechanism: [http://2ality.com/2011/12/fake- operator-overloading.html](http://2ality.com/2011/12/fake-operator- overloading.html)

<comment><USER2> > From now on I'm going to include at least one of these in each interview > I'll be conducting - for extra points of course.

There's absolutely 0 benefit from an engineering standpoint in having type coercion memorized in JavaScript.

I'd personally immediately terminate every interview that posed such questions ({} + [] + '' or whatever).

I mean no offense, but I'd ask you to reconsider. People who ask trick/puzzle questions and hacks in interviews do not understand (or haven't thought deeply enough) how to properly screen JS developers which eventually goes through to the team itself. There are at least a dozen more interesting topics to question on if you want to assign extra points than useless stuff that should never be into production in the first place.

<comment><USER18> > There's absolutely 0 benefit from an engineering standpoint in having type > coercion memorized in JavaScript.

I would argue there is one:

tl;dr: Planning for the worst from the people who tend to generate code which is, in one word, bad but which they managed to push to production.

===

When you know you're going to work with people who are not familiar with this concept, but still managed to shoehorn some code that looks a lot like these examples.

Recent case: A local front-end server for development purposes and an SPA with a login form. The server checks for certain, hard-coded credentials and if they match lets the user through. Problem was, if you didn't get them right at the first try the proper credentials stopped working until you reloaded the page.

How did that happen? There's an extra field in the form that is initialized to an empty string, but if the form is reset(on login failure) it is set to null, while the server checks for: field == '', because somebody assumed this would be enough.

Null is falsy, but it's not _equal_ to other falsy values. People who don't know that are usually left scratching their heads.

===

Anyway no offense taken and I'd be happy to hear some suggestions on how I could improve this process. Usually when I ask a "trick" question I give a warning beforehand indicating, that this is not something which is going to affect their score negatively. I found that normally people _like_ this part and are often curious about the proper answer.

EDIT: One thing I would like to note is that I conduct interviews for the project which I'm currently in, so I'm going to suffer the consequences of any bad decisions on my part eventually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My favorite:

        x = "053"
        y = 50
        z = "40"

        x > y
        // -> true
        y > z
        // -> true
        z > x
        // -> true

<comment><USER19> To be fair, that's the case in Ruby and C as well, and probably other languages. It's because 0 coerces it into an octal.

I actually had a bug because of this a while ago at work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Except for "Precision of 0.1 + 0.2" which all programmers should know is a floating point fraction arithmetic limitation, not a JavaScript issue.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is really useful because of the attached explanations.

</comment><comment><USER22> That's one of proofs that JavaScript is an evil without TypeScript especially in inexperienced hands :)

</comment><comment><USER23> It's interesting to see that a lot of people make fun of JS, publish articles on how weird it could be, receive a ton of likes, but still it's the most popular programming language at the moment. It's like Stockholm Syndrome we developed with time!

<comment><USER24> > It's like Stockholm Syndrome we developed with time!

It's easy to use and widely available. Give me example of another computer language that is installed on every computer with internet access.

The base language isn't that bad, it's just that some bad initial decisions and backwards compatibility forced some really sharp paper cuts, most of you can avoid.

Does this means that One True JS Programmer can write flawless JS Code? No, but in practice you don't have to write flawless JS Code.

<comment><USER23> I agree that most of "very strange things" about JS can be avoided. 90% of these "look, js is weird" articles are quite useless as they make use of very artificial scenarios.

<comment><USER9> These are merely extreme cases. Javascript is full of less mind-boggling inconveniences. It's not like they only kept the really bad features for laughs and fixed the rest.

<comment><USER23> Agree. "this" thing in JS can be really inconvenient for beginners.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


YouTube - Robot learns to flip pancakes - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_gxLKSsSIE&feature=player_embedded <comment><USER2> See also the report from Wired a week ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1541261>

Much discussion there.</comment>


Smart Child Left Behind - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/28/opinion/28petrilli.html

<comment><USER2> Teaching the smartest 5% of kids in a classroom is like surfing Hacker News. It might be fun and rewarding, but it isn't "real" work. It isn't part of the job description, it isn't what teachers are paid for, and it doesn't affect their performance metrics. Smart kids just have to be satisfied with the lectures and assignments that are designed for the marginal kids.

Even in an AP class, the top few kids in the class are guaranteed 5s. The teacher will focus effort on the kids who are hovering around the 2/3 boundary.

<comment><USER3> Does this fact not strike you as sad? According to [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1653653,00....](http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1653653,00.html) if we are generous in our estimate of how much is spent on gifted programs, we spend 10 times as much to educate the mentally retarded as the gifted. Yet which group poses greater potential returns for society?

Gifted kids should not have trouble with school. Yet they drop out at the same rate as everyone else. And frequently are pressured to under perform. I consider this a tragedy.

<comment><USER4> The question should not be who gives greater returns to society but the allocation based on need.

It is probable that children with learning disabilities will always need more care (and hence money). I think the real issue is that we are falling short of stimulating our brightest children. That doesn't justify taking from children with specific needs for support.

<comment> alan-crowe > The question should not be who gives greater returns to society but the > allocation based on need.

That kind of impractical, feel-good sloganising stifles democracy.

How are people supposed to respond? They know that generally people takes a more hard headed approach to issues that directly effect them and the sloganiser is probably being hypocritical. But complaining about the hypocrisy is to derail the discussion; switching from how resources are alocated within education to quarrelling about how one participant organises his private life ruins the debate.

One might try to argue in a loop, saying that allocation based on talent will expand the economy eventally allowing more needs to be met. But the slogan is a feel good slogan. If you are backed into arguing against a feel-good slogan you have to take the role of feel-bad guy in the discussion and that really does feel bad because you are pretty damn sure it is just a slogan: the other guy is probably pretty ruthless in his private life (just look at his debating tactics).

But why have this discussion at all? If you have a job and a family you don't actually have time to waste on a "from each according to his ability, to each according to he need" neo-Marxist bun fight. You want to have a adult discussion about educational priorities. So when some-one kicks off the bunfight with "allocation based on need." you are effectively disenfranchised.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This system won't work for high achievers. It just can't -- the goals are too far apart, the incentives too perverse. I eventually got tired of waiting for a miracle, now I educate my own children... but even that's not a real systematic solution. It just means we'll have the blind leading the blind. There are no easy answers here.

</comment><comment><USER6> Smart children aren't being left behind, per se. You might say, rather, that their opportunities are being diluted by big leaps in the education of the margins of society.

I wonder if we really know yet if this is good or bad for innovation.

<comment><USER7> > I wonder if we really know yet if this is good or bad for innovation.

The top performers produce pretty much all the progress that is made in a field. From a global progress perspective, it's much more important for the top performers to advance than for the lower ones.

On the other hand for the "everyone needs a job" perspective, and "not all progress is revolutionary, you still need people to do ordinary work" you need the bottom performers to advance.

But this is not a zero sum game (as you imply). You can advance both, it's just not as many politicians care about the top performers. That's because politicians don't care about global progress, they care about bulk numbers: the majority of people need to be happy, and have incomes. And that implies helping the bottom and middle levels.

<comment><USER8> The highest achievers will always have to fight politics instead of depend on it, since while a top achiever may produce 1000x the societal contribution of an average achiever, he/she will still only have 1 vote.

<comment><USER9> Consider also: "For each decision, consider the impact on the next seven generations"

If you can thrust up the lowest achievers into a better lifestyle, their children will be even better off. Why should "contribution to society" be limited to top achievers? Why should we be cynical about the ability of a democratic society to make decisions?

SAT performance, and education performance in general, is heavily correlated with socioeconomic class. We _should_ spend more on those who need more. The next generation will be substantially better off. Over time society should become "wealthier," able to help its citizens better as more are able to help themselves and others.

<comment><USER10> Take a look at <http://www.hcz.org/our-results>

It shows what kids from the lowest socioeconomic class can achieve, _given support, encouragement, and an enriched learning environment from an early age_.

The kids in Promise Academy's third grade classes (scoring 100% at or above grade level in one school, and 96% at the other), had been intensive preschool since age three.

Read the book _Whatever It Takes_ by Paul Tough for more details of one of the most hope-inspiring stories in education today.

One thing to consider in deciding how much to spend on education for poor students is the effect this will have on welfare and prison costs for the next generation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Heard an interesting point once regarding teaching the gifted. Apparently we devote tons of time and effort teaching kids that are at the left side of the intelligence curve. But the equal number of gifted students on the right side are supposed to make do with whatever they get. It might be reasonable to think that this latter group has unique educational requirements just as does the former. The current system has gifted students just surviving, not thriving.</comment>


Linus Torvalds on the Linux desktop's popularity problems - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/linus-torvalds-on-the-linux-desktops-popularity-problems-7000003641/ <comment><USER3> Let me be the first to say these "popularity problems" are BS. Do we say Maybach has a popularity problem? Or that troop transportation vehicles, ion engines or other exotic solutions for very specific problems have "popularity problems"?

Desktop Linux is a niche product. It appeals to two crowds: software developers (specially software that runs on Unix-like servers) and their parents (because said software developers don't like to disinfect Windows computers during their visits).

<comment><USER4> It's easier to have your parents use a mac.

<comment><USER3> Not as easy to update/manage remotely without a GUI. With a Linux distro, all you need is an ssh client.

<comment><USER5> I prefer Linux myself, but lets get real, if you can ssh, you can RDP into a mac too.

<comment><USER3> Not always. Have you tried to use a remote desktop from a mobile network?

<comment><USER5> Getting a little contrived.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The real problem is evident in every single one of their replies: Logistics. The common user is simply not going to go out of their way to install linux -- if they've even heard of it. Microsoft and Apple ship their OSes to retailers pre-installed on machines. A linux box would be $300 - $400 cheaper than the same machine running Windows, but how do people get linux on their machines? They buy a windows machine, then put linux on it. I know a few manufacturers are selling machines with linux pre-installed, but I don't see them at my local Best Buy and I even have to go out of my way to find them online because the selection is simply limited and not widely distributed. And that's why the problem is evident in each and every one of their answers: These aren't business guys. They didn't even consider that they might have a business problem. It doesn't occur to them. That's why linux has a popularity problem.

</comment><comment><USER7> Since this, frankly over hyped piece of work keeps generating non-news I'm obliged to refer all interested to this well known little essay/rant: <http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm>

Despite focusing on Windows it's still relevant as insight into the culture of Desktop GNU/Linux.

</comment><comment><USER8> Perhaps its popularity "problem" is an advantage.

Most DEs have a long way to go before reaching what most end / enterprise users would consider the same level of polish of OS X, or even Windows relative to their experiences and needs.

In Linux, those of us who use it use Linux on the server for reasons of reliability, and on the desktop for reasons of convenience (similarity). We don't often need an "enhanced multimedia desktop", and don't need the environment burdened by compatibility issues with 5+ year old office programs.

Linux is doing very well on the server, and good enough on the desktop - <USER2> those that need it.

</comment><comment><USER9> Most of the content is direct quotes from a single source [1]. I'd suggest reading the original thread instead of this article.

I really wish I had downvoting privileges. Anyone know what the karma threshold is?

[1] [https://plus.google.com/115250422803614415116/posts/hMT5kW8L...](https://plus.google.com/115250422803614415116/posts/hMT5kW8LKJk)

<comment><USER10> 500, I believe.

<comment><USER11> You can still only downvote comments, not stories.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Dotnet New Shit Template - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/lusocoding/dotnet-newshit <comment><USER2> Your submission link 404s. I assume this is the correct repository? [https://github.com/lusocoding/dotnet-newshit- template](https://github.com/lusocoding/dotnet-newshit-template)

<comment><AUTHOR> Correct. Sorry for that</comment></comment>


Go will be the server language of the future - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@kevalpatel2106/why-should-you-learn-go-f607681fad65#.1f403ge8j <comment> awinter-py I've spent the last 2 months on a from-scratch dev project with parts in C, C++, rust, go and python.

Comparing C to C++ gave me the most insight on what & where golang is. Writing C code forces you to spend your time rewriting parts of C++ every time you try to do anything. The C++ typesystem has features that have penetrated the C++ compiler ecosystem (clang/msvc/g++ et al) because they matter to devs.

Go feels like C in this respect. The 'empty interface approach' to polymorphism is the worst. Compare this to the 1970s approach to polymorphism in C, struct sockaddr_in. Go feels the same except there's a greater carpal tunnel risk from typing braces and parens everywhere.

Operating generically on typed collections in go often means using the reflect package. go:generate is 1000x worse than the C preprocessor. Yikes.

the most impressive go project I've seen is grumpy, google's in-house port of python to the golang runtime. It makes a serious case for the go garbage collection being best in class. The rest of the language isn't there yet.</comment>


EBS Snapshot Copy - <AUTHOR> http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ebs-copy-snapshot.html?ref_=pe_2170_27415460 <comment><AUTHOR> From a quick look, this will not only allow you to copy backups across regions, but will also allow you to effectively copy EBS backed AMIs across regions.

AWS does it again :).</comment>