A Brief History of Dangerous Ideas - <AUTHOR> http://weblog.raganwald.com/2008/07/brief-history-of-dangerous-ideas.html <comment><USER2> This is the first time that I've had a sinking feeling inside when somebody announces the end of their blog.

Reg, you said things that resonated with me in ways that I couldn't say them. Your blog had top priority in my reading list. I almost feel like a kid learning how to ride a bike and suddenly realizing that my dad has let go of me. There will be a hole in my information stream that can't be replaced.

Thank you for the insights, humor, and powerful reasoning.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, although--to be very frank--I'd rather be the kid that introduced you to skateboarding or your weird cousing that listens to a lot of Jazz music :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Reginald, I will greatly miss reading your insights. I may not be a Ruby developer, but your feed has been one of my favorites ever since I discovered it.

Good luck being dangerous.

</comment><comment><USER4> Make something people want? The hell with that.

Make something DANGEROUS.

You will be missed, Reginald. Great blog.

<comment><AUTHOR> Once again I see I could have expressed myself far more succinctly. Make something dangerous will be on my new tee shirts :-)

<comment><USER3> Can I have one too?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was thinking "another solid post from reg". Then boom, didn't see that coming. It's too bad it will be his last. Looking forward to seeing what's next. Keep us posted, Reg.

</comment><comment><USER6> Raganwald, your history is backwards. The simple longbow was successfully used by English peasants with decisive, history-changing result against French knighted nobility at Agincourt and Crecy.

<http://www.stortford-archers.org.uk/medieval.htm>

<comment><AUTHOR> My suggestion (borrowed from the linked essay) is that figuring out how to put peasants to work killing knights is not dangerous, it's just a way to shuffle which nobles win the battle.

The dangerous thing is when peasants can kill knights all by themselves, without anyone leading them or organizing them or training them. Rather than England vs. France, you are suddenly looking at Monarchy vs. Republic.

<comment><USER6> Or Monarchy vs. The Reign of Terror!

Anyway, I neglected to add my regrets that you are leaving blogging. I hope you'll change your mind as you figure out the next big subversive thing and at least clue us all in. Best of luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> While not a Ruby hacker, I've enjoyed reading your posts as well. I hope that, when you do pursue something dangerous, you will write about that as well.

</comment><comment><USER8> Wow, that's upsetting. Midway through the article, I decided to subscribe there and then. The outro was quite the kick to the crotch.

@Reginald: Thanks for what I am sure will be a great set of archives to dig through if this post is any indication.

</comment><comment><USER9> Raganwald, your writing kicks ass. I wish I've mastered this language well enough to disagree with some of your points [regarding obsolesce of VCs] properly.

Have fun in August!

</comment><comment><USER10> whew, I'm sad to hear you go, but at the same time, moving on to other topics isn't a bad thing. We all grow, one way or another. I hope that if you end up discovering a dangerous idea to talk about or explore, you'll start blogging about it and let us know. til then.

</comment><comment><USER11> Hmm, why is the iPod/iPhone counted as only one idea? There's a lot of strong arguments for counting them as two. Especially interesting since the number comparison is made to Miles Davis who is said to have 5 ideas.

<comment><AUTHOR> take your pick:

1\. iPod Touch/iPhone is like a Macintosh, only smaller; 2\. iPod Touch/iPhone is like an iPod, only more sophisticated; 3\. iPod Touch/iPhone has something in common with a Macintosh and an iPod, but it is its own device in its own category, it transcends its parents.

If you go with #3, it deserves its own number.

I had to leave a lot of ranting out, but if you're looking for more material, I actually consider iTunes to be the strongest candidate for another Jobs-led hit. It is dangerous in its own right, and the music industry seems to hate it almost as much as they hated the "rip. mix. burn." ads for iMacs.

<comment><USER11> In that case, I think you really need to give at least "the tie" to Steve. Not only does #3 sound the best, but you just argued him another point for iTunes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Please help yourself:

[http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/cut-and-paste-one-line-of-code- to...](http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/cut-and-paste-one-line-of-code-to-make-any- website-editable/)

<comment><USER11> Just because you're being subtle doesn't make you any less rude.

Perhaps a better argument against: Are all dangerous ideas of equal value? How would you compare a reinvention of Jazz with iTunes? (A more polished and legal replacement of the original Napster.)

Ah, I see now. You meant the score as just a tongue in cheek thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> I absolutely meant the score as a tongue-in-cheek thing, which is why I tried to keep my response to you in the same spirit. I had no intention to offend!

Outside of having a laugh--supposedly at Steve's expense--I wouldn't try to compare the two men in any serious way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Reg I will miss your posts, you were one of the developers out there that constantly challenged and inspired me to be a better programmer. Your thoughts and explanations will be missed.

</comment><comment><USER13> Fantastic post Reg. Insightful as always.

I hope you'll still hang out here. You're one of the people that make this site great. :)

</comment><comment><USER14> Please don't take down the homepage. I love your blogs and plan to read them all finally but it will take some time.

</comment><comment><USER15> Reginald, consider pontificating online about your new hobbies/passions/dangerous ideas (wreck diving et al)?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been climbing for a good long time and diving for a few years. There honestly isn't much to tell, it has always felt like a terrible stretch to try to compare programming to one of my hobbies. Whenever I do it, I always ask myself, "how is this simile different from comparing programming to building a bridge?" And then I delete it all and start over.

I don't have a great dangerous idea, but to use a more folksy analogy, I want to be a Jedi that builds his own lightsabre, but not a lightsabre technician.

<comment><USER16> _I don't have a great dangerous idea, but to use a more folksy analogy, I want to be a Jedi that builds his own lightsabre, but not a lightsabre technician._

Great ideas are not had alone, though! Why not blog about "lightsabre building", and work off the community feedback?

<comment><USER17> Or about a lightsabre building. It would be the most dangerous building on the planet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I was hoping that e-gold would subvert the status quo.

Looks like I will have to keep waiting:

[http://stakeventures.com/articles/2008/07/22/the-man- finally...](http://stakeventures.com/articles/2008/07/22/the-man-finally- brought-e-gold-down)

</comment><comment><USER19> Paradigm shift. Market disruptor.

<comment><USER20> Reg's phrasing was more exciting and romantic, but yes, that's exactly what he's talking about...</comment></comment>


Analyse Asia Episode 28: Airbnb in Asia with Jia Jih Chai - <AUTHOR> http://analyse.asia/2015/05/09/episode-28-airbnb-in-asia-with-jia-jih-chai/ <comment><AUTHOR> Synopsis: Chia Jia Jih (aka JJ Chai), managing director of Airbnb, Southeast Asia and India sits down to discuss the story of Airbnb in Asia from how they started in a diverse market and gradually build themselves into one of the important players in travel and hospitality industry. We also discuss the challenges for US companies coming to Asia from payments to regulatory issues, and how they have to adapt and evolve with the local market conditions. Lastly, Jia Jih shares his thoughts on how the sharing economy has evolved in Asia and whether the ownership centric culture in Asia will change in the next decade towards an asset light culture.</comment>


MetaWear: The platform enabling the next 1000 wearables. - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/guardyen/metawear-production-ready-wearables-in-30-minutes This project will set off an explosion of unique wearables shipping in quantities from 1 to 1M+ <comment><USER2> Awesome sauce!</comment>


A Comprehensive Guide on Public Key Cryptography - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/blockwhat/public-key-cryptography-a-comprehensive-guide-1e8489e08104 <comment><USER2> Not to be disparaging, but I wouldn't call this a "comprehensive" "guide" to public key cryptography. In social conversation I can usually help non- technical people understand the basic principles of public key cryptography at greater depth than this and in less time. This article doesn't mention RSA or integer factorization anywhere, which is the most straightforward template for explaining how asymmetric problems work. It also comes close to conflating one way functions with trapdoor functions - these are not the same thing, but the article uses the same definition for both.

Despite the underlying mathematical complexity of public key cryptography it's a fairly neat and easy concept to understand. We don't need to call it "mathematical magic" because it's already intuitive to us. Ask someone to tell you all the numbers which multiply to 81. Next ask them to multiply 9 by 9, then ask them which exercise was easier. On paper, you can demonstrate that multiplication is both faster and conceptually easier than long division. Now you have taken an abstract concept - the "one way function" \- and grounded it in something the person learned as a child. It doesn't take much more effort to explain how you can use very large and difficult-to-factor numbers (large semiprimes) to obfuscate information. We all naturally struggle to divide more than we struggle to multiply. Conveniently, so do computers.

But that's just a one way function, which is insufficient for public key cryptography. There is no relation between multiplication and factorization suitable for creating public and private keys, or else we wouldn't need the entire RSA algorithm. One way functions are just hash functions (or the theoretical basis thereof). A trapdoor function takes this further and augments a one way function such that it's still infeasible to invert the output back to the input, _except_ if you have some piece of information. This is why hash functions are relatively easier mathematical primitives to understand, because establishing a trapdoor requires significantly more mathematical structure to get right while still maintaining security. They're far more delicate. You need enough mathematical structure to bypass the infeasible inversion without compromising the infeasibility of the inversion entirely. It's like poking a hole in an egg without breaking the whole shell.

<comment><USER3> Hash functions are OWFs, but OWFs are not necessarily hash functions. Among other things, for an OWF inverting the function is only hard on average, and recovering some information about the "preimage" may not be hard (the only guarantee is that there is _something_ about the input that is hard to compute). Also, there are common uses of hash functions that are not even theoretically sound (anything in the random oracle model), so we should be careful when discussing the "theoretical basis" for hash functions...

<comment><USER2> Yes, hash functions only approximate one way functions since we haven't technically created one - your point here is what I was referring to by mentioning the random oracle model.

But the random oracle model is fully theoretically sound - I'm not sure where you got the impression it isn't. Do you think everything outside the standard model of cryptography isn't theoretically sound? What, then, is your definition of soundness?

<comment><USER3> ROM is not sound because there are constructions that are provably secure that cannot be securely instantiated. I do not deny that it is pragmatic or that the problems have not been relevant in practice, but the ROM is just a heuristic.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are hackathons really effective? - <AUTHOR> Recently i attended an angelhack event in kenya and wasn't interested in coding but to see what happens at the event.After 24 hours hacking,the candidates presented their projects and the rest is history.The final contestant won,i kept on asking,what is twitter?what type of problems can be solved using twitter api's?are they suppose to be realtime problems like..you to guess. <comment><USER2> The goal of each hackathon (and each team) can vary a lot. There is a big difference between say a local community hackathon and TechCrunch Disrupt.

The most common goals I've seen are:

\- to learn a new tech: API / framework / language / etc.

\- to build a random side project

\- to solve a small personal pain point

\- to begin to solve a larger problem that many people in the world experience (i.e., an idea with potential to become a startup) [1]

\- just to win prizes

1: A lot of people think this is the only way to compete in a hackathon, or will go out of their way to present their product or idea as if it were a potential company, even if that's unrealistic. I don't think this is the best or only way to participate.

</comment><comment><USER3> Effective in what way? I guess people do it for the fun and experience but I may be wrong...

<comment><AUTHOR> like trying to solve a genuine problem i.e use twiter api trade stocks ...

<comment><USER2> Perhaps you could elaborate a bit more on what's meant by "using the Twitter API to trade stocks".

<comment><USER4> Create a bot with a set budget which uses a short term gains investment strategy called, "Day Trading". The timing of the purchase and sale of these stocks would be informed by a script written to digest and interpret live twitter feeds around the world and monitor them for key terms and indications that the stock of a particular company will dramatically go up or down.

<comment><USER2> Whether or not that's reasonable in real-life [1]... learning the Twitter API + doing some sentiment analysis, etc is a good scope for what could be an interesting hackathon project.

You could run the trades on a simulated network or just print out the trades and calculate when/if the bot can beat the market.

1: Much automated trading these days is very high frequency, on the order of milliseconds ([https://www.technologyreview.com/s/416805/trading-shares- in-...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/416805/trading-shares-in- milliseconds/)).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your advice.Do u think if you push live trade with the twitter api it will have positive impact i.e anyone can get a stock update provided they subscribe to a trading company of their choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A lot of hackathons have a corporate sponsor so you have to use their api to win the prizes. That kind of sucks. The best hackathons have no such constraints.

<comment><USER2> I've participated in many and been an organizer for several hackathons, including one with AngelHack.

This part about the best hackathons having no constraints is pretty baseless.

Every hackathon needs someone to pay for food / drinks / space / ideally prizes. Unless candidates cover this themselves (roughly Startup Weekend style), there will be sponsors. And sponsors do these events for marketing and exposure and sometimes feedback on their API. They will always want you to try their tech.

If there is a prize that requires using sponsor tech, it's almost always a smaller side prize vs. the main prize(s) for the event.

I think the best solutions build a sponsor's tech into another idea instead of being built around that tech itself.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Q8, an In-Browser VM for Learning and Visualizing Bytecode Programming - <AUTHOR> https://anchovieshat.github.io/Q8/index.html <comment><AUTHOR> [I'm the author] Q8 is a little tool I started as an experiment to visualize low level code as it manipulates raw data in memory, but has evolved into a full-fledged experimental environment for learning about low level programming. I'll be around to answer any questions. Thanks for looking at my project!

If you like this, you can catch my other projects at [http://pentaquine.com](http://pentaquine.com). If you happen to be hiring I'd love to hear from you. I've recently moved to the West Coast and am currently looking for a new job.

<comment><USER2> Seems like a great project! Can this be used alongside the NAND to Tetris project[0] for understanding low level programming?

[0] [http://www.nand2tetris.org/](http://www.nand2tetris.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> While it isn't quite the same emulated machine, and therefore has a different instruction set, it does tread similar ground to Nand2Tetris's project 4, however it lacks an assembler, so you'd have to input directly in byte sequences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> In a similar vein, here is a VM I made for educational purposes.

[https://zenoamaro.github.io/chip3/](https://zenoamaro.github.io/chip3/)

It runs in the browser, featuring a fully inspectable CPU and RAM, rewindable execution, and simple inline disassembly of the source. It's also got a simple assembler (no GUI yet, sorry for that) which it uses to run the example program[1].

The hardware is as simple as possible:

\- 3-bit instruction set, for a grand total of 8 instructions, inspired by the PDP-8

\- 5-bit addressing, giving 32 words of 8 bit RAM

\- A simple, integrated printer

The source is, I hope, documented well enough[2]. There is a handbook available[3], and a small IDE is in the works.

[1]: [https://github.com/zenoamaro/chip3/blob/master/dist/index.ht...](https://github.com/zenoamaro/chip3/blob/master/dist/index.html#L25)

[2]: [https://github.com/zenoamaro/chip3/blob/master/src/System/CP...](https://github.com/zenoamaro/chip3/blob/master/src/System/CPU.js)

[3]: [https://github.com/zenoamaro/chip3#programmers- handbook](https://github.com/zenoamaro/chip3#programmers-handbook)

<comment><USER4> Cute little cpu! I like the OPR instruction, neat way of handling increment/decrement (DEC by way of NOT and INC). Are ROR and ROL also chained? That's neat too.

<comment><USER3> Thanks! It is derived PDP-8's own OPR instruction, which goes even further, with many carefully aligned combinations leading to clever results. A testament of ingenuity which reveals fine craftsmanship.

In reality, I've considered switching to a regular mapping, so to have 32 no- operand instructions instead, which would fit the original five operations, all sensible combinations, plus more.

But chaining operands is definitely a more extravagant thing, so I think it can be instructive in showing how creative a solution can be in face of limitations .

<comment><USER4> The chaining kind of reminds me of how z80's ALU works [1]. It's kind of chained in together over time.

[1] [http://www.righto.com/2013/09/the-z-80-has-4-bit-alu- heres-h...](http://www.righto.com/2013/09/the-z-80-has-4-bit-alu-heres-how- it.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The visualizations remind me of the game "Human Resource Machine", which also allows to program in some pseudo-assembly instruction set and visualizes the execution through characters which are moving boxes. I really liked that for the facts that you could immediately see and feel how code optimizations influenced the runtime behavior.

</comment><comment><USER6> It looks neat but I could not figure out what exactly was happening.

It might help if you did some smaller programs first where it is clear what the numbers in the grid really mean. Do those numbers map over (assemble) to the instructions?

I guess they do but I never could find a table that said "store" is this number...

It does look cool though!

<comment><AUTHOR> On the page with the editable grid, [https://anchovieshat.github.io/Q8/q8.html](https://anchovieshat.github.io/Q8/q8.html) there's a table that maps numbers to instructions, and gives a brief description. It wraps below the grid to better support smaller screens. If you have a larger screen, you can expand the browser window, or if not, scroll down the page, and it should all be there for you.

In addition, once you have filled in the boxes a little, you can step through the code and the blue box under the grid will give you another, very brief bit on the instruction that your program counter is on.

Thanks for asking!

<comment><USER7> What exactly is one expected to do in order to solve say the very first puzzle? I can click on the grid to highlight a cell but I can't alter the contents.

If I use the buttons to run the existing program it does nothing but check if register A is zero, jumps to cell 254 and executes the error instruction.

There is something I'm missing but perhaps what I am missing is not so obvious.

<comment><USER8> I think this is meant to be a "hello world" level puzzle. You literally just click the cells and type to edit them.

Are you sure you can't edit once you highlight a cell? If so that's probably a bug.

<comment><USER7> It's inconsistent for me - it seems to sometimes get stuck in a state where I can't update any of the cells.

Sometimes it will allow me to update the cells but whatever I type merely appends to the existing contents with no obvious way to clear an individual cell.

<comment><USER9> Press backspace to delete a character inside a cell.

<comment><USER7> That's the very first thing I tried and it wasn't working at all for me earlier. Backspace was navigating to the previous page.

Now it seems to work... sort of... sometimes it'll clear one of the characters in the cell and sometimes instead the global handler traps it and attempts to navigate to the previous page in my web history.

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe I've corrected the backspace bug with a little help from a pull request, preventing default behavior and patching it through the same route the delete key follows. My machine doesn't have a backspace key, so I missed it during testing. Thanks for the heads up!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like it a lot, was looking for something like this to teach 13 with, so, thanks! Had trouble editing values in the tiles tho - backspace made the browser go back to HN and delete had no effect. This was in the most recent chrome on my ubuntu machine. Is there another way?

<comment><USER10> Ah, this appears to be a chrome problem -- it works fine in firefox.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Really neat! Is there a list of the full instruction set somewhere?

</comment><comment><USER4> Really cool visualization of the VM!</comment>


Beginners guide to a modern web dev stack, from padrino to javascript - <AUTHOR> http://coffeespoonsofcode.wordpress.com/2012/04/07/beginners-guide-to-one-modern-web-development-stack/

<comment><USER2> In my opinion it's a bad idea to begin learning any web dev stack by using preprocessors like haml, coffeescript or less. You need to have a solid understanding of HTML, JS, and CSS first so you can make sense of the maddening quirks the preprocessors can cause.

<comment><USER3> Do you think that that concern is as outmoded as forcing people to have a good sense of x86 opcodes, and assembler, to have a sense of what the CPU is actually doing?

<comment><USER4> The thing is when you are still going to be debugging in a different language, haml -> html, coffee -> js.

As a CoffeeScript guy I think one of its main strengths is its harder to shoot yourself in the foot with is great for beginners but you have to be careful a beginner doesn't just bind all the way down using =>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This post is heavily opinionated and is hardly a beginners guide. I've never heard of Padrino to this day and I consider myself quite up-to-date developer.

Beginners should learn languages (preferably with standards in mind) first and then move to pseudo-languages/preprocessors like haml, coffeescript and less.

And it all depends on what you are writing, not all languages/frameworks/tools suit every purpose.

And Bootstrap is not a javascript library. It's a CSS framework (which includes some jQuery plugins).

</comment><comment><USER6> It's crazy to see the way the "modern web dev stack" has progressed over the years. I'm not so confident of whether this is really one that will last in the way LAMPP ever did, but I'm interested in seeing Padrino in particular. These days, the stack relies so much on personal opinions I can't wait to see where we go in the future.

</comment><comment><USER7> The only reason I dislike padrino is due to it's code quality - it's riddled with personal preferences of whomever was coding at the time. I also submitted an 'issue' but it was simply closed.

</comment><comment><USER8> Missing the following (I don't really know how well these flow with Padrino since I'm a Rails guy)

A BDD framework such as Cucumber or RSpec.

Something to give structure to your Javascript as all modern web applications are usually Javascript heavy such as Backbone.js or Knockout.js.

Templating for Javascript such as Mustache.

</comment><comment><USER9> Would have liked a bit more information about Padrino and what makes it unique or modern. The rest of the article is rather obvious to me.

<comment><USER10> Padrino creates a rails like structure around sinatra. It provides convenience scripts, helper methods and some glue code to create rails style apps. If you like sinatra but want more structure around it you should definitely checkout Padrino.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm just getting into web dev, and the amount of choices is rather overwhelming. I know the basics of html, css, javascript, and ruby. I'm trying to decide where I should start devoting my time though if I'd like to move into freelancing, but it's hard to decide which way to go with rails, sinatra, padrino, node, express, tower, ember, and so on.

I can see the value in less or sass, but I'd like to see more details on why you recommend one over the other. Same goes for most of the choices.

<comment><USER12> My take on pre-processors like LESS, SASS etc. is this: To truly appreciate and benefit from them, you should first start facing problems in scaling and managing plain CSS. I would argue that the same goes for CoffeScript. For simple apps, preprocessors offer negligible value addition.

<comment><USER13> If there's a good enough workflow, there's no reason to not use LESS and SASS in each app. You compile the CSS before production anyway, which means you work with beautiful code, and use automatically minified code for production, and all of it is (usually) taken care of in the background.

Plus, if I work in CSS for simple apps and LESS for complex apps, I have to keep two sets of boilerplates. I don't want to be writing CSS from scratch every time I make an app. With using LESS in every instance, not only do I only need one boilerplate, but that boilerplate is modular and I can take the things I need and exclude the things I don't. LESS effectively has namespaces to make this super easy and MORE efficient than plain CSS.

No comment on CoffeeScript, though. I've not had to write enough JS to warrant checking it out in depth.</comment></comment></comment>


Why the iPad doesn't need to "create content" - <AUTHOR> http://www.danielbrim.com/ipad-content/

<comment><USER2> >> _It's not like we actually need to create content. We live in a purely consumeristic world. Facebook, Twitter, RSS feeds, and all of the other websites create a world where we simply observe, collect, and re-share links that suit our needs. Most content creation is done at work, if ever._

Poe's law?</comment>


Show HN: Obtrusive Livetest Chrome Extension - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/franzenzenhofer/f19n-obtrusive-livetest <comment><AUTHOR> the f19n Obtrusive Livetest Chrome Extension collects the whole lifecycle of a pageload (HTTP-headers, server send HTML, document-idle DOM, ...) and executes pre-defined and custom tests against the collected data.

It's designed as an obtrusice, in your face real world testing framework, you can easily write your own tests. Hope you like it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh yeah, it already has about 500 active users, most of them from bulgaria.</comment></comment>


Google invests $75M (more) into home solar power. - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/taking-in-more-sun-with-clean-power.html

<comment><USER2> Our local utility company just hooked up our new solar setup to their grid yesterday afternoon. In exchange for a hefty rebate on the installation, we had to agree to be hooked up to their grid for 10 years.

What this means is: power we generate goes to a very nearby facility and we buy back power. Our setup allows me in real time see how much power we are generating, how much we are selling back to the utility vs. how much we are using. For most of today, it looked like we were generating about 800 watts more than our house was using. The installer looked at our historic electricity bills and installed enough panels so that we would get paid back some money every year, but not a lot. So, I expect maybe a "negative" electricity bill of about $400 a year, instead of a yearly "positive" bill of about $1000.

With the rebate and state and federal tax savings, our break even point is supposed to be in 5 or 6 years. I think it may be sooner than that because the contractor did not account for rising electricity costs.

Anyway, this is fun - part of the value.

<comment><USER3> Same here, got my install finished just a month ago. The inverters we used aggregates the data (to warn us of problem) which I have made public <http://enlighten.enphaseenergy.com/public/systems/TTAL25069> We also expect a payback of around five years (in MA). After running the numbers it was pretty clear in MA that solar is a very decent (300% return in ~10 years)* and safe investment. Just too bad that you can only really invest ~15K before you produce more than you need.

Edit:

      *
      100% return in SREC + no electric bill in 3-5 years
      Several more years of SRECS,
        easily 50% of the original investment
      The longer you stick in the house, the no electric
        bill once again pays back (With no tax!) the initial
        investment 100% after ~15-20 years
      100+% back when you sell the house (as they are
        depreciated on the initial 30K+ install cost, not
        your post tax incentive cost and probably still
        worth in the 20's) and solar seems to be causing
        houses to sell quicker to boot.

If I was going to retire soon and needed to start moving investments to a more predictive safe place to put some cash getting panels seems a win all around and removes one more unknown bill from my life. But again it is only ~10-20K of a retirement fund, but hey every bit helps.

<comment><USER4> 300% ROI for 10 years is about a 11.6% annual ROI... pretty much guaranteed. I have a feeling that companies will be springing up that match up investors who want that kind of a low-risk ROI (almost everybody) with people who want solar power on their roofs for free, with similar electric bills as they're paying now (also almost everybody in much of the continental US).

 _This_ is why solar power will quickly dominate soon, IMO.

<comment><USER5> I agree with your math but disagree with your conclusion :)

 _this_ is why Google is funding it -- getting an 11% return is great if you have giant piles of cash sitting around doing nothing. Those margins become substantially thinner if your cost of capital is 7%, 8%, 12%, etc.

edit to add: BTW, there's some great research that suggests when people "do the math" and figure out how much energy-efficiency/renewable energy technology will save, that they usually require ROI's of 50-100% -- i.e., "if your fluorescent bulbs/solar panels/low-flow shower head won't pay for itself within a year, i won't bother". It's sad, but it's a real obstacle.

<comment><USER6> _"if your fluorescent bulbs/solar panels/low-flow shower head won't pay for itself within a year, i won't bother"_

I'd guess this is largely caused by our psychological tendency to overly discount future gains combined with loss aversion (people are used to things failing after a year, so if it hasn't paid for itself by then, it never will (example: I just had a 4-year fluorescent bulb I installed one year ago fail, about a month after I threw away the packaging with the warranty info on it)).

[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Hyperbolic_di...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Hyperbolic_discounting)

<comment><USER7> My CFLs haven't lasted very long since production of most of them shifted to China. They last a year or two, which is a bit longer than the bulbs they replace, but not much. There's no place to dispose of them safely though so they are just stacking up in boxes for now. I found with the warranties that you have to ship the bulbs back at your own expense to an address, which because of the weight of the ceramic base costs more than the bulb did originally. This means in practice they don't really have a warranty, so you did the right thing throwing the warranty packaging out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I feel the title here is misleading as it suggests that Google is investing in developing some sort of solar systems with this specific $75 million. But reading the article, we see they are actually investing in funding a bank (finance company) which will be offering loans with interest for PV rooftop installations, for which they will receive payments with interest from the homeowners purchasing said systems at full cost. So they are investing in the same way that Chase invests in credit card debt by offering people credit cards, or that GM finance invests in cars by offering auto loans.

The claim that the monthly loan payments will be "often less than paying for energy from the grid" is certainly false and I'd be willing to bet money that it will not be established that people are generating solar energy for less than the cost of buying it off the grid.

Finally, if one was really interested in green technology, either installing a roof top solar hot water heater and/or a geothermal heat pump will save more energy than a rooftop residential PV installation will generate, but at a much lower cost.

</comment><comment><USER8> 10,000 homes sounds like a lot but it's tiny compared to the US population, only enough to make a press release make the news really. And very tiny next to the world population now approaching the 7,000,000,000 mark. The simple fact is that no energy that needs subsidies or other fiddling in the west is going to fly with anyone else.

Surely they know enough now about thin-cell solar to invest into more R&D for it. Give the 75 million to 75 professors to have 5 new PhD students each and a bag of money for experiments. Given the history so far[1] I don't think a few percentage points more from 375 PhDs is out of the question. Those few points would have a far more dramatic effect in the long-run than just helping to finance installation of current technology for the equivalent of one small town.

[1][http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ed/PVeff%28r...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ed/PVeff%28rev110408U%29.jpg)

<comment><USER9> The hard part is not to make higher efficiency solar cells (within limits), the hard part seems to be to make them cheap enough so they're commercially viable.

For instance, these 35+ % efficient cells have been available for two years now:

[http://gizmodo.com/5388795/sharp-triple-layer-solar-cell- set...](http://gizmodo.com/5388795/sharp-triple-layer-solar-cell-sets-new- efficiency-record)

But you wouldn't be putting them on your roof unless you wanted to achieve a specific number of Watts on a small surface.

The figure to monitor is $/Watt, and that's where any gains will come from. Any decrease in the price per Watt is real, immediate gain. Increases in efficiency are only good if they lead to a lower price per Watt.

<comment><USER10> In a typical installation, the cells aren't the major cost anymore. Because of that, efficiency does decrease $/Watt, even if the $/Watt price of the cells isn't lower.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "homeowners pay a monthly payment for the system, at a price that's often less than paying for energy from the grid."

Is Google claiming that this is profitable overall? As in the lifetime costs for installing the solar panels on my house are less than the equivalent cost of electricity from the grid? If so, shouldn't someone be offering to pay me to install this on my house and then selling the electricity back to me directly?

<comment><USER12> There are many companies doing just this (sunrun, solarcity, etc). There's currently some loophole that as a business they get paid more for their electricity than a homeowner would (due to subsidies to encourage businesses to use solar). So they get a price that you alone could not get. I think that's why it works.

<comment><USER5> bigethan -- that's not necessarily how it works. It does work differently in different state & local markets, so it's possible that there's a market that works that way. I don't know of any, personally.

Usually the deal is something called a PPA -- Power Purchase Agreement. It's usually set up that you agree to pay some fixed price-per-kWh, and that price escalates by some regular way over the life of the contract. That price could be higher, or lower, than the prevailing rates for electricity in that market, and that escalator could be higher or lower than rates at which energy prices increase -- but either way, they're locked in from the start.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I want to do solar power but I am terrified that as soon as I buy it it will immediately become outdated.

Here's some advice I got earlier: [http://www.jig.com/need/solar-power-for-my- house-near-los-al...](http://www.jig.com/need/solar-power-for-my-house-near- los-altos)

Still haven't done anything. Any advice?

<comment><USER7> Thanks for posting that link, the numbers they discuss are similar to numbers I am familiar with and thus I don't have to make any claims to use them.

So his system cost $51,000 and produces 7500kWh of energy per year. If he were to have set up with this Google Finance system that offers 20 year 11% financing, and assuming 1.25% property tax where he lives (PV panels will increase the value of his home after all) then his monthly payments will be $579.54, or $139,089.86 in payments through August of 2031, with a total of $75.339.86 in interest paid to the finance company Google is investing in. This is a good, safe investment for Google.

For the homeowner, the 7500kwH per year will cost him $750 to buy from the grid at 10 cents a kWh. Instead he will be paying $579.54 * 12 = $6954.48 for the power, nearly ten times as much.

Google's claim that you save money assumes that the cost of electricity will increase so dramatically in the future that the overall cost will be less with solar, not including your cost of financing, and not including any money you might have made from investing your money elsewhere for 20 years, but considering that the average price of electricity between now and 2030 will be more than 92.7 cents per kilowatt hour.

\</comment></comment><comment>

Solar PV is fine and sometimes the only choice if you are living completely off the grid, but it comes at a cost, and works best when you massively reduce consumption, switch all interior lights to 12V, realize you can't run high wattage things like microwave ovens or toasters, you'll need a kerosene powered refrigerator, and you have a costly bank of toxic batteries to maintain and periodically replace. I have done this.

For grid connected living if you are interested in going green I would strongly recommend taking a look at these things:

\- rooftop solar heater - free hot water, which otherwise is costly to heat

\- dry all clothes on clothesline. Don't even own an electric or gas dryer. These use a lot of energy. If living in an area that prohibits line drying, move to an area that permits it or accept that your community does not support green living and perhaps lobby to change things.

\- geothermal heat pump if you need conditioned air. This one depends on climate. Electric fans throughout the house are a better option than air conditioners. (Also do note that many estimates of typical household electric use which are used in calculating recommended solar size installations assume that gas heat is used and electricity is not used for heating during winter. This may be true, but the gas heat is an additional part of the total energy cost. With a properly designed geothermal heatpump you reduce your cost of heating significantly compared to either gas or electric.)

\- if building from scratch, do a passive solar design. Properly done (not easy to find those who can do this), you can have zero costs for heating and cooling year round.

Implementing even a few of these changes can save much more than the 7500kWh of energy that is generated by the PV panels year round in the example, and at considerably less cost.

</comment><comment><USER14> Has solar reached a point where further price declines are not highly likely? If not, then most people I've talked to would hold off on going this route.

If prices will decline significantly in a year, then it would make sense to wait and deploy solar systems until further price declines are unlikely.

<comment><USER15> It's more a question is the returns this year > decline over this year vs any given gain. AKA I could wait 10 years and buy a beastly computer but I would have to use a 'crappy' PC for those 10 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why not nuclear power?

<comment><USER17> If I had to guess I'd say 3 reasons.

1\. Nuclear is unpopular because of the Japanese Earthquake incident. Fair or not theres a lot of baggage that comes with nuclear energy these days.

2\. Second, the regulation surronding nuclear is a nightmare. A plant hasn't been built in the US since something like the early 80's because of this reason.

3\. The financing approach makes a lot of sense for Google. They can make a lot of money without building any sort of infrastructure.

<comment><USER18> _The financing approach makes a lot of sense for Google. They can make a lot of money without building any sort of infrastructure._

Solar is more hype than anything, and it's good press. Is anyone making money from solar?

<comment><USER5> Yes, we are. The numbers can work in a couple of different ways in a couple different markets. It's neither hype, nor press, but thanks.

I'm surprised Google is able to make residential PV contracts make sense: my guess is that the consumers here are either paying more than the prevailing market rates, or they are locked into a very long contract (20+ years?), or both.

By contrast, we target the commercial market, have shorter contracts (10 years), and guarantee a discount relative to the utility co's.

<comment><USER19> Residential is the most profitable part of the solar market because residential rates are by far the highest, so your PPA or lease revenue, even at a discount to grid, is still fairly high. Sure it costs more to install residential than commercial or utility scale, but the higher revenue more than offsets this. Also all PPA or leases are long term arrangements where the provider includes an escalator of at least 2% a year. If utility rates don't rise at least that fast, the long term contract is a bad deal for the buyer.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Debian Linux Wheezy OpenVPN and Squid3 How to with Transparent Proxying - <AUTHOR> http://www.iodigitalsec.com/debian-linux-wheezy-openvpn-squid3-howto-with-transparent-proxying/

<comment><USER2> Getting a 404... bad link? Cached copy is here: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:zb7A5UB...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:zb7A5UBhcREJ:www.iodigitalsec.com/debian- linux-wheezy-openvpn-squid3-howto-with-transparent- proxying/+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

</comment><comment><USER3> Is it putting the private keys somewhere under /usr/share/doc/ ?! Isn't that subtree shared by Apache by default?</comment>


W. E. B. Du Bois's Modernist Data Visualizations of Black Life (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://hyperallergic.com/306559/w-e-b-du-boiss-modernist-data-visualizations-of-black-life/ <comment><USER2> Digital re-creations: [https://github.com/ajstarks/dubois-data- portraits](https://github.com/ajstarks/dubois-data-portraits)

Presentation: [https://speakerdeck.com/ajstarks/recreating-the-dubois- data-...](https://speakerdeck.com/ajstarks/recreating-the-dubois-data- portraits)

<comment><USER3> Beautiful! In the spirit of supporting Black devs and W.E.B., feel free to DM or post cashapp or other link. Or even even that of an organization if you prefer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, these are absolutely brilliant! I've seen some 1800s sociological charting before and it's not very interesting. They seemed to struggle with the idea of visualization at all and resorted to a lot of charts and tables that the reader was to study and interpret, on account of there not being a lot of statistics that were invented yet. These aren't just strangely modern, each one is wonderfully unique and artistic and would be delightfully creative on a modern data-driven site like 538 or in the New York Times. Maybe I just wasn't reading the best turn-of-the-century social science, which is not a field I'm an expert in, but these seem completely out of their time.

</comment><comment><USER5> If anyone is interested in more of this there's a beautiful, high quality book named "W. E. B. Du Bois's Data Portraits/Visualizing Black America/The color line at the turn of the twentieth century" edited by Whitney Battle-Baptiste and Britt Rusert.

<comment><USER6> I bought a copy of this for Black History Month and really enjoyed it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> When everyone uses chart.js or bokeh or matplotlib, you don't really see graphs that go out of the normal range of visualizations supported by these libraries. In a way the ability to use generic code hampers creativity because it's easy to find a "good enough solution" to your problems.

<comment><USER8> Are these really 'generic' though? d3.js is and people make all sorts of zany visualizations with it.

<comment><USER5> I wouldn't categorize it as technically generic, just culturally. d3.js is incredibly flexible but I can't count how many d3 graphs I've stepped through with the exact same spacing algorithms and interface.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Previous thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18524949](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18524949)

</comment><comment><USER3> Organizations now carrying on the work of documenting Black life through the data science lens include:

Just Data Lab, [https://www.thejustdatalab.com/team](https://www.thejustdatalab.com/team)

Data For Black Lives, [http://d4bl.org/](http://d4bl.org/)

Detroit Technology Project Data Justice [https://detroitcommunitytech.org/?q=datajustice](https://detroitcommunitytech.org/?q=datajustice)

The COVID Racial Data Tracker, [https://covidtracking.com/race](https://covidtracking.com/race)

</comment><comment><USER9> It's always fascinating to see historical data visualizations. History is a great antidote against the bias toward the current era. I feel like Ed Tufte would tear some of these graphics to shreds, but collectively the presentation manages to tell a powerful story.

<comment><USER10> It's not only HN which has been affected by George Floyd. I ran across the following modern visualisation on a site which normally runs container shipping news.

[https://slavevoyages.org/voyage/database#timelapse](https://slavevoyages.org/voyage/database#timelapse)

One can clearly see the British slave trade dry up post 1815. (on a site normally dealing with maritime issues, I see Lloyd's of London have apologised for their work insuring these voyages)

<comment><USER11> That's a great visualisation.

It's useful to read this wikipedia article in combination with the visualisation to see when various laws were introduced. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_Trade_Act_1807](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_Trade_Act_1807)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There is a modern version in the works: [https://www.blackbythenumbers.com/](https://www.blackbythenumbers.com/)

</comment><comment><USER13> These are really cool. It would be ace to write a ggplot theme for this style.

<comment><USER2> See: [https://twitter.com/CharlieEatonPhD/status/12708573955105095...](https://twitter.com/CharlieEatonPhD/status/1270857395510509568?s=20)</comment></comment>


California issues first rolling blackouts since 2001 - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2020/08/15/902781690/california-issues-first-rolling-blackouts-since-2001-as-heat-wave-bakes-western- <comment><USER2> I wish the massive financial bailout money could be used to build and improve infrastructure. There doesn't seem to be a lack of money but it never seem to do anything useful.

<comment><USER3> You'd think with the reduction in traffic there's all sorts of extra space and time for fixing old infrastructure.

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately, I think this is countered by municipalities losing funding from sales taxes.

<comment><USER5> California has gotten a windfall in sales taxes from Amazon and Ebay in recent years when sales tax collection was forced. The money is always poorly spent.

<comment><USER4> I don't know in detail what California's budget is like (other than they've been in the whole lately?) But I personally view a lot of the issues with local and state government spending as being associated with bidding processes and the cost of e.g., infrastructure. I think California generally has the right priorities (roughly, education, healthcare, safety (although this could perhaps be reshuffled, see zeitgeist), and infrastructure). If anything I think they probably need to work to reduce costs in higher education especially and spend more on infrastructure (or reduce costs, but I think that'll be harder than in ed).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Worth noting: This does not affect many of the major municipal utilities, including SMUD in Sacramento, LADWP in LA, and Silicon Valley Power in Santa Clara because many have their own generating capacity and are also in alternate distribution arrangements. The investor-owned utilities don't have much direct generating capacity anymore and rely on CAISO, and well, that has its limits. Also pretty sure that customers of the municipal utilities pay less than PGE/ SCE customers. For example, this is why Santa Clara has so many data centers (municipal utility, Silicon Valley Power).

Really unclear what value investor-owned utilities provide us - the municipal utilities in general seem way better.

<comment><USER7> I'm guessing it shields local government from lawsuits. You're right though, better alternatives to an investor owned utility would be a co-op or non- profit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> We're going to need lots of power grid upgrades over the next few decades, for all the new air conditioning (climate change), and the electrification of heat and transportation (trying to avoid climate change.)

Are these upgrades even in the planning phase? People will be hesitant to migrate away from fossil fuels if they can't trust the alternative.

<comment><USER9> In a word, yes. There are plenty of smart people thinking about distribution management systems to control loads, manage local generation (household PV) and even use electric vehicles as an energy store to power the during periods of peak demand.

Supply authorities in my corner of the world (Australia) are planning this shift, but I can't speak to the situation in other regions.

[https://arena.gov.au/assets/2020/06/future-grid-for- distribu...](https://arena.gov.au/assets/2020/06/future-grid-for-distributed- energy.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> We been having load shedding for a few years now in South Africa due to tender corruption , aging and badly maintained coal fired fleet and the late commissioning of new power stations.

Outages are at least planned and last about 2 and half hours every day for each area so we learned to cope plan our lives around it.

Solar power hot water/gas cooking appliance/DC battery backup system for the Fibre OTN box and Wireless router and wireless AP and I can continue to work.

</comment><comment><USER11> Strange reporting that people were "believed" to have been blacked out. We lost power yesterday in Sunnyvale from 5-9pm. Very interested in more info on the "hundreds of thousands" because it seems like the cuts were fairly limited. There was enough power to keep the fridge running but thats about it.

<comment><USER7> Lost power in the north peninsula from 9pm-12am. A warning would have been nice. We signed up for notifications via text, and we didn't receive any.

<comment><USER11> Yup, same. No warning. I left the house in my AC car and went out for ice cream

<comment><USER12> Discounted ice cream due to the power loss?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This my be a dumb question, but if I have solar (no power wall or batteries) will I still have power during a rolling blackout?

<comment><USER14> Some solar inverters can do it without batteries. But if a cloud passes over your panels you might get near zero watt.

<comment><USER15> Considering that yesterday's outage began at ~18:45, rooftop solar would have been generating 0-20% of its nameplate capacity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The article doesn't give a lot of details. The grid shed ~1000 MW of load and delivered ~46000 MW, so the outage was in proportion about 2%. Not great but it puts events in perspective.

If you're concerned about this, don't charge your Tesla before 10pm.

<comment><USER12> I lost power but don't have a Tesla. Your tip doesn't help me.

<comment><USER15> If you had one, your individual choice would not prevent your particular electric service from going out, so no big deal.

It would be neat if the utilities had the ability to selectively shed car chargers, clothes dryers, and suchlike loads. I imagine they have to make the choice at a much more coarse level, like at a distribution substation.

<comment><USER16> > It would be neat if the utilities had the ability to selectively shed car > chargers, clothes dryers, and suchlike

They have the capacity, though it's only used for AC reduction AFAIK: [https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/save-energy- money/savi...](https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/save-energy- money/savings-solutions-and-rebates/smart-ac/smart- ac.page?WT.mc_id=Vanity_smartac)

<comment><USER17> Maybe because I'm in Texas rather than California, but AC is the absolute last thing I'd want turned off. It doesn't make sense to try to convince people to reduce AC on the hottest days compared to something like charging a car, running a water heater, etc., even though this is probably the largest demand in such a case. What percentage of consumers have signed up for this program?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Where is all the load coming from? Aren't most of the office building (in the Bay Area) empty rightnow due to Covid?

<comment><USER18> As with other impacts of shutdown and quarantine, shifts in demand and consumption patterns can mean that infrastructure isn't able to supply electricity to where it's specifically needed. It's been pointed out that electricity is not storable --- it's less an energy _store_ as with fuel and far more energy _distribution_ as with a transmission or driveshaft, but with far more connections. Not only must the Grid make power available _when_ it is needed, but it must do so _where_.

Peak daytime demands in urban cores, offices, and factories is different from peak demands in residential exurbs, purely on distribution, even if quantity is comparable.

<comment><USER19> Residential solar once posed the opposite problem: generating power during the day in suburbs where it wasn't being consumed nor could it be transported to areas of high demand.

If our current problem is higher daytime residential demand, maybe power companies can stop fighting residential solar initiatives now?

<comment><USER20> As I understand it, the problem was evening demand, not daytime and that's probably also the real reason why all the empty office buildings aren't helping - most people would probably be out of the office and back home by them. If anything, residential solar makes this problem worse both by making non-solar generation less financially viable and causing a sharp increase in demand for it during the evening as the sun goes down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> [https://mobile.twitter.com/california_iso](https://mobile.twitter.com/california_iso) gives heads up on grid issues, stage 2 = grid at capacity, stage 3 = lights start going out for someone.

<comment><USER17> How is the decision made as to who loses power first? Coolest area?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I live in a suburb of the Bay Area where temperatures are usually in 70s and 80s. Suddenly it is going to be 100 for 5 day straight. I have never seen anything like this

<comment><USER23> What? This happens every year - always.

<comment><USER22> 100 for this long ? Last year the highest we got was 90s for a couple of days. I have never experienced 100 degree weather here on 12 years of living here. And that too for days

<comment><USER24> Which part of the bay? We lived in Los Altos for 6 years and when we first arrived old-timers said the heat was unusual. Every summer after had crazy heatwaves. A couple were so bad I was concerned about my infant, in our old house with no central air and terrible insulation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Don't last year's blackouts count?

[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/23/pge-rebuked-over-imposing- bl...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/23/pge-rebuked-over-imposing-blackouts-in- california-to-reduce-fire-risk.html)

<comment><USER26> Those were for fire safety, not because of excess load on the electrical grid.

<comment><USER27> They were a tactic in a political battle. Saying they were "for fire safety" is stretching things.

<comment><USER28> Wikipedia attributes the outages to fire prevention: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_California_power_shutof...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_California_power_shutoffs)

Can you provide a source for your viewpoint?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is only going to get worse. Better get used to it. Also, go fix the climate crisis.

<comment><USER30> Build some nuclear power stations and you'll fix both. While you're at it build a breeder reactor and feed it with stored nuclear waste to both produce new fuel for other stations and reduce the amount of radioactive waste which needs to be stored as well as the period for which it needs to be stored.

<comment><USER29> I am building a breeder reactor in my backyard right now.

<comment><USER30> Aren't you mistaking your compost heap for what I described here?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The grid is slowly being decentralized using grid-agnostic solar and storage. (I.e., solar power that stays going even when the grid drops off.) A computer network -- not a large infrastructure project -- is likely to be the solution.

<comment><USER15> Almost nobody has solar power that can serve through a grid outage, so emphasis on "slowly".

<comment><USER31> That's true. But grid-forming tech began shipping this summer:

[https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2020/07/enphase- begins...](https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2020/07/enphase-begins- shipping-encharge-storage-systems-to-u-s-customers/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The (small) silver lining is that these blackouts are happening in the evening which suggests that solar is holding up the grid during the day when air conditioners are at max. In the evening though AC is still on but solar is absent. Tesla's megapack batteries might have found a niche market.

</comment><comment><USER21> Isn't this just a $ decision? Do you build a power point that runs only for 4 hours every 10 years? Batteries may pencil out?

<comment><USER33> Even if you had the plants I'm not sure how you'd run them - it's not exactly an unskilled task.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> What happened?

The power grid must not only have sufficient generation capacity to match load, it needs some extra - called spinning or operating reserve. This ensures security - the characteristic where the grid is resilient to any single failure. Because load is not normally controlled (i.e. people can turn loads on and off without permission from the system operator), the system needs to be able to respond to that as well as contingencies like a line or generator trip.

Imagine, for instance, that you're fully maxed out on generation with no reserve, and one generator trips offline. You will now need to trigger emergency load shedding very, very rapidly (within seconds) to arrest frequency decline and a cascading, wide-area outage.

So you carry a margin of operating or spinning reserve, essentially generation that is available to very quickly ramp its output up or down in response to system conditions. When that margin starts to get eaten away by lack of capacity, you can do controlled load shedding, where you remove loads that have been already marked as low-priority to get some of your margin back. By doing this, you can avoid uncontrolled load shedding, which would have worse consequences.

Official notice from CAISO:

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---- NOTICE: 202002424 POSTED: 2020-08-14 18:38:00 \</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---- CAISO Grid STAGE 3 System Emergency Notice [202002424]

The California ISO hereby issues a CAISO Grid Stage 3 System Emergency Notice effective 08/14/2020 at 18:36 through 08/14/2020 at 23:59.

Reason: California ISO is Reserve Deficient.

Refer to the ISO System Emergency Fact Sheet ([http://www.caiso.com/Documents/SystemAlertsWarningsandEmerge...](http://www.caiso.com/Documents/SystemAlertsWarningsandEmergenciesFactSheet.pdf)) for additional detail.

The ISO requires load curtailments, use of Interruptible Loads* and requests Out-of-Market (OOM) and Emergency Energy from all available sources. Maximum conservation efforts are requested.

Spinning Reserves have depleted or are forecast to deplete to levels below minimum requirements. Load curtailments are required and will continue until such time as sufficient Spinning Reserves are available.

Monitor system conditions on Today's Outlook ([http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx](http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/default.aspx)) and check with local electric utilities for additional information.

[http://www.caiso.com/informed/Pages/Notifications/AWENoticeL...](http://www.caiso.com/informed/Pages/Notifications/AWENoticeLog.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER35> Richest state of the richest country (by GDP) on the planet folks!

<comment><USER36> Infrastructure is 50+ year investment and everywhere in the country has been slacking in development. Given the growth of the bay area and the increase in hot weather due to global climate change the system gets exacerbated because it's going out of spec.

The fact that it has been as robust (in delivery, not hazard) as it has for the last 20 years is a testament to its strength.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Lol and I made fun of my country when this happened in Iran. Good job America.

<comment><USER38> When we didn't have power in Iran for 2 hours I used to think it's such an atrocity. It never happened for more than 5-6 hours though.

I had power outage in LA for ~17 hours last month.

<comment><USER37> Yep! Same here. This is hilariously bad for a state like California.

I wonder why I got downvoted.

<comment><USER5> Tribes.. everything is red/blue, white/black, us/them.. you can't say anything without really pissing off some group.. so disappointing

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The entire U.S. is feeling more and more like a third-world country. Corrupt government. Unreliable and deteriorating infrastructure. Extreme poverty (I recently learned that 30% of houses on Indian reservations don't have running water). Marginalization or even outright vilification of intellectuals. 75 years ago we saved the world from fascism. Who is going to save us from ourselves? :-(

<comment><USER40> That's just your human brain succumbing to its recency bias. As someone who has been around for way too many decades, it was like this in the 70's, 80's, 90's, 00's.

And corruption is _way down_ from say the early 1900's (don't even talk about the 1800's where it was odd for a politician to not be corrupt).

And your "save the world from fascism" happened at the same time most of the US was segregated.

<comment><USER41> And inequality is up since the 70's, as are housing, health care and cost of living expenses, while wages have remained stagnant for nearly 50 years.

<comment><USER40> Sure, you can cherry pick certain statistics for any period. That doesn't tell you anything.

My point was, the US is not falling apart. Or if it is, it's always been falling apart.

The current situation is not unique.

<comment><USER41> > _Sure, you can cherry pick certain statistics for any period. That doesn't > tell you anything._

I'm curious what this is supposed to tell you, then:

> _And corruption is way down from say the early 1900 's (don't even talk > about the 1800's where it was odd for a politician to not be corrupt)._

<comment><USER40> That was a counterpoint to the OPs concern about corruption today in an attempt to convey that it's not all that different now, not to argue it's better now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Obligatory book recommendation: [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33369264-blackout](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33369264-blackout)

This terrifying novel describes fragility of our society and its absolute dependence on power grids. Must read in my books

<comment><USER43> The more terrifying fact is that the scenario described in the novel has already partially happened in the real world.

* New Clues Show How Russia's Grid Hackers Aimed for Physical Destruction

> _Russian hackers planted a unique specimen of malware in the network of > Ukraine 's national grid operator, Ukrenergo. Just before midnight, they > used it to open every circuit breaker in a transmission station north of > Kyiv. The result was one of the most dramatic attacks in Russia's years-long > cyberwar against its western neighbor._

[https://www.wired.com/story/russia-ukraine-cyberattack- power...](https://www.wired.com/story/russia-ukraine-cyberattack-power-grid- blackout-destruction/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Why is this only happening in California?

<comment><USER45> It's a huge state with a lot of people with a massive heatwave covering a lot of it.

It's easy to rag on California lately but it's still American's living there and I feel bad for them.

<comment><USER44> What makes California different than Texas? I don't have a dog in the fight, I live on the east coast.

<comment><USER15> Texas generates more power than it needs (which is good because I seem to recall they also aren't tied to grids of neighboring states?). California doesn't. California banks on the probability that it can import power from Oregon, Washington, Nevada, and Arizona, and that all those states won't have one big correlated, synchronized demand peak, which of course is just stochastic. Sometimes you get the worst case.

<comment><USER46> _Texas generates more power than it needs_

And despite whatever stereotypes you might have about Texas, it produces more power from renewable sources (beside hydro) than any other state in America, by a pretty fair margin.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_electri...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_electricity_production_from_renewable_sources)

<comment><USER45> Texas seems to get hate for some reason but everyone I know that lives there (and many have moved from California) love it. I've been many times and I haven't found much to dislike other than I prefer the structure of East Coast cities and towns, which is a personal preference.

Texas is affordable, welcoming, and plays to its strengths. It seems like the land of opportunity today and it makes sense it is growing so fast. It seems like I hear jealousy about it in terms of it being a moderate to slightly conservative state overall.

<comment><USER44> If Texas is anything like GA, people fly into Atlanta and say it's not that bad but never experienced life outside of the metro area.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


EFF Begins Accepting Anonymous Donations via Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> http://www.bitcoinblogger.com/2010/11/bitcoin-gains-legal-protection-through.html <comment><USER2> Get 0.05 bitcoins, for completing a captcha. <http://freebitcoins.appspot.com/>

More on Bitcoin: [http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/2010/10/10/a-short- introduction...](http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/2010/10/10/a-short-introduction- to-bitcoin.html) <http://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/414452/b8bf16adf2d1564a/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Sounds like a marketing win-win for the EFF and Bitcoin, both.

<comment><USER4> No wiki page for Bitcoin, perhaps now they get one?

<comment><USER5> Wikipedia deleted the bitcoin page :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So is there already GPU-optimized code for generating bitcoins?

<comment><USER7> Yes

<http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=1334.0>

<http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=1721.0>

<comment><USER6> Thank you

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> i think they should move to the gold standard.

<comment><USER9> There is a crypto-currency like Bitcoin that operates on the gold standard, eCache (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECache>). They operate on the tor network. You can see a photo of their gold supply (<https://ffij33ewbnoeqnup.onion.meshmx.com/audit/current.png>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Umm.... was just thinking, why can't someone set up a EC2 cluster (or a plain old home computer cluster) and get it cracking on this bitcoin generating program? I mean they are fast and if this thing ever gains some traction then it will be a huge win.

Edit: I would also like to see the list of people using this for actual selling and not donations.

<comment><USER11> Coin generation rate is tied to the amount of computing resource in the network. So if you bring a cluster online the difficulty to generate coins increases.

EC2 machines are a bit too slow to generate coins in a timely manner. Even a cluster of them wouldn't be cost effective.

<comment><USER10> _So if you bring a cluster online the difficulty to generate coins increases._

I don't get it, I thought they were giving a bit coin on the computation power.

<comment><USER11> bitcoin generation is rate limited such that one 'block' is generated every 10 minutes or so. Generating a block produces 50 coins. As more computation comes on board the difficulty increases to try and keep the average around that.

<comment><USER9> How do they 'increase the difficulty'?

<comment><USER12> Roughly, bitcoins are generated by hashing some metadata about the state of previous transactions together with an incrementing nonce until you find a hash below a certain target value. If other users verify the hash and you were the first person to find one this round then you get some bitcoins.

As the computational power of the bitcoin swarm increases, the hash target is automatically decreased, leading to a roughly constant rate of generation.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Geeks Should Speak - <AUTHOR> https://justinjackson.ca/speak <comment><USER2> I did my first public speaking about a week ago. I was anxious for several days ahead of the event but once I started talking the anxiety subsided. I'd recommend everyone try public speaking.</comment>


Burnout – All-in-one workspace for startups - <AUTHOR> https://burnout.so <comment><USER2> If this is not satire I can only applaud the balls of the marketing. I am certainly not going to forget the name (reminds me of that airplane company "Boom"). On the downside all the HN comments will be about the name.

<comment><USER3> It is brilliant satire. See the apt use of Pied Piper, but more clearly the "But seriously, please take care" footnote.

Unless of course it satirizes product satire, in which case it actually turns out to be a product.

<comment><USER4> If you think satire layers cancel out, you clearly haven't spent enough time on the internet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I see some other comments have also mentioned the name, "Burnout". I don't typically find myself bothered by product names, even ones that may be disliked. However, the name "Burnout" just seems really distasteful to me. I don't know what it is about this particular name.

I'm also not sure whether my distaste is bad or good. It's off-putting, sure, but I will certainly remember the product now.

<comment><USER5> Taking a closer look at this it appears that the word "burnout" is being used incorrectly:

"Estimate stories and plan iterations or go with the flow. Analyze burnout chart or obsess about cycle time."

These sorts of charts are called "burndown" charts in my experience, not "burnout" charts.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are taking this chart too seriously. Burndown, burnup, burnout...

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure if I'm not responding seriously to satire, but are you aware of what "burnout" means?

From [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/burnout](https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/burnout) :

"Definition of burnout

1 : the cessation of operation usually of a jet or rocket engine also : the point at which burnout occurs

2a : exhaustion of physical or emotional strength or motivation usually as a result of prolonged stress or frustration

b : a person suffering from burnout

3 : a person showing the effects of drug abuse"

I mean, by the looks of the landing page, I guess (3) could fit somewhat?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> the-dude This feels like a landing page without a product.

I remember somebody telling (here?) they didn't fumble around with MVPs anymore : just put up a landing page & harvest email-addresses.

Only then decide wether to actually build anything.

<comment> the-dude I stumbled upon this while doing some research : [https://fibery.io/](https://fibery.io/)

It has some interesting similarities.

<comment><USER6> Hmm, there is something going on here. The user "tablet" appears to be behind burnout.so in this thread but claims to work on fibery.io in a much older comment. Is this some kind marketing (for fibery) by satire?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16660961](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16660961)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How is your product different or competing against [https://monday.com/](https://monday.com/)?

It seems there's a lot of products that are tying to bring all these tools into one application but what benefits does this bring? Has there been any research that this helps productivity and not produce negatives? Slack, Teams, Google Docs etc.. all of these have tons of functionality which are million dollar plus programs why squish all this into something smaller with half the features?

<comment><AUTHOR> I personally dislike Monday. I traced its evolution and Monday valuation is totally insane, since product is a set of quite weird tools. They have good automations, but poor views and not very good connectivity between entities.

Notion, Coda and Airtable are more promising. But they don't focus on real work management (so far?)

Burnout strength is that you can install and connect apps together, thus creating a single workspace. For example, you have an Account in CRM. You can connect Account to Features, Invoices, Issues, Pains or Conversations, etc. It means you have a wholly connected domain that you can visualize and work with using Views (Table, Board, Calendar, Canvas, Timeline, etc).

Every App is created on a single platform (thus it is fast to create) and customized via PowerUps (UI extensions).

If you take Notion as an example, you can do pretty many things inside Notion and it competes with many tools as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I assumed by the name "Burnout" that this would be satire, but it looks to be an interesting "OS for product teams". Question: how do you plan to compete against the top-tier products the focus on solving each of your features (CRM, customer interviews, task management, etc.)?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a very deep question. Under the hood we are creating a platform that allows to create Apps very fast and with all required specific cases. If you want more technical details, please ask. We use Clojure, PostgreSQL and Javascript.

<comment><USER9> Rather than technical details, I'm more curious about in what ways each application is better than what is currently on the market.

At the bottom of the page, it is mentioned that Burnout replaces Asana, Trello, Jira, Google Docs and more. In what ways is Burnout better than Jira? What does Burnout offer more than Google Docs? Asana and Trello tackle task management differently in its own way, and how does Burnout differ from both of these?

Also, if you add an e-mail feature, this would be the perfect example of Zawinski's Law ("Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail...").

To be honest, I am still wondering if this is a satire page because of such overstuffing of features and there is a lack of details about the product.

<comment><AUTHOR> >I'm more curious about in what ways each application is better than what is currently on the market.

I think if you take best apps on the market Burnout will not be better. The power is in unification. How many features of Salesforce you use? Usually just 10-20%. How many features of Asana you use? Maybe 30-50%. And these applications have so much in common (Database + common UI + some integrations). You can generalize on that and still add specific depth for every app via extensions and power-ups.

Unification saves time and money. If you can run all these processes in a single workspace, you will always know where to find stuff, how to connect work with customers, don't have to learn new UI tricks with every new app and have clear picture of the whole business. I know it sounds too ambitious, but that is our goal.

Apps can be installed and uninstalled. If you don't need CRM, you will not have. Burnout can be simple or complex based on your needs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This had me chuckling

"Vacations

Track vacations and plan burnouts"

If only it was that easy

I see people taking it seriously in here and I'm laughing - I hope I'm not in the wrong!

<comment><USER11> This is absolutely satire and the comments here and wonderful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not. Here is the real screenshot [https://d.pr/i/4yEClL](https://d.pr/i/4yEClL)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Burnout" – A very sensible name for an IT product!

</comment><comment><USER13> This is extremely useful! If the product is solid, this would easily replace 4 subscriptions that we already have. Good luck with the release. How do you plan to price this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Pricing plan (so far) is this:

\- Free - up to 5 people (to help startup in the initial phase for free)

\- Starter - $7/user/month

\- Advanced - $17/user/month (automation rules, visual reports)

\- Pro - $29/user/month (granular permissions, etc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Seems like a product that wants to do to much. I'm definitely not running a startup. So my opinion is of little value. But I do think using the flexibility of Clojure is an advantage you definitely can use it this space.

Reminds me products like Hubspot. It took a while before I even could grasp what they were offering. Perhaps they want to challenge something like airtable?

using unique selling points like "Track vacations and plan burnouts." doesn't give me that much confidence. For a product that is suppose to help the softskills side of a startup, it sure has it blindspots looking at the name. Could definitely be satire, even using quotes and names from the satire show "silicon valley"

Goodluck! Hope you focus on keeping it simple, the products you want to replace already want to do too much. Don't fall into the same trap!

<comment><USER15> > Seems like a product that wants to do to much.

Hence, burnout?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The one thing I really need from one of these task management platforms but that I can't find is a way to manage, share, and track the reading of academic papers and white papers on the site and on iPad (IMO iPad in the morning is the best way to consume papers.)

That means being able to store and manage PDF files and snapshots of websites and add them to a reading list with tags for different users. And then in the reader interface to be able to take and share notes.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. We tried Trello and Zotero but they sucked.

</comment><comment><USER17> Is having 2 emojis every sentence really the world we live in? Or is this satire -- is the product even gonna be real?

<comment><AUTHOR> We are going to launch in the next 3-5 months. So yes, it is real.

<comment><USER18> In that case, please consider not using emoji's so heavily.

I'm not 100% your target audience so my opinion should probably not hold a lot of value to you but they feel obnoxious and interrupt the flow of sentences instead of adding to them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, we wanted to create something "on the edge". But it seems quite many people take it as a satire. In the next version we will cool down a little bit.

<comment><USER19> The "diamonds in poop" emojis especially give the impression that it is not a real product. FYI you use "rodmap" instead of "roadmap"

<comment><USER20> Considering how overworked start-up developers are, instead of calling it a feature roadmap a feature rodmap seems highly appropiate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Replaces asana trello jira confluence pipedrive and Google Docs"

Uh, sure it does

</comment><comment> rajesh-s Nice work! When you say it integrates Content Production as well, do you mean it can replace a service like forestry.io?

<comment><AUTHOR> It is more like GraphCMS [1] replacement. Basically you create required content structure (maybe Categories-Posts for blog or Articles for Help), write content inside our tool and publish via static generator somewhere (like GitHub/GitLab Pages).

[1] [https://graphcms.com](https://graphcms.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This has got to be a joke. It's not April 1, but it feels like it.</comment>


Canon Employees Are Forbidden to Sit Down, Walk Slowly - <AUTHOR> http://www.dannychoo.com/detail/mac/eng/image/19639/Canon+Electronics.html <comment><USER2> Apparently the president of Canon Electronics (Hisashi Sakamaki) wrote this book: [http://www.amazon.co.jp/exec/obidos/ASIN/4396612486/mitsu-10...](http://www.amazon.co.jp/exec/obidos/ASIN/4396612486/mitsu-101-22/ref=nosim) whose title translates to "A company will do well if you get rid of the chairs and computers"

(Caveat: I don't read Japanese - I'd appreciate confirmation of that translation from someone. I read about it at [http://www.dannychoo.com/detail/mac/eng/image/19639/Canon+El...](http://www.dannychoo.com/detail/mac/eng/image/19639/Canon+Electronics.html))

It seems weird that anyone would bother with the 5M/3.6sec rule ... that's only 3.1 mph - I doubt many people walk much slower than that. Do they really think the morale hit is really worth the seconds someone would save walking 3.1 mph instead of a ultra-leisurely 2mph?

<comment><USER3> _"I'd appreciate confirmation of that translation from someone."_

It is correct. Here is the original in Japanese:

椅子とパソコンをなくせば会社は伸びる!

in Roman letters (romaji):

isu to pasukon wo nakuseba kaisha wa nobiru!

a literal translation:

chairs and computers (object) if do away with company as for improve

and finally a rather free-handed translation:

Get rid of chairs and computers to improve your company!

<comment><USER4> Feels like hearing some 16th century enslaver.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For some reason this reminds me of elementary school. In the cafeteria, we had this big traffic light that supposedly turned from green to yellow then red if there was excessive noise. If it went red there was some sort of artificial consequence, most likely some teachers yelling at everyone to quiet down.

</comment><comment><USER4> I hope this is some kind of a joke.

<comment><USER6> To us it is; to the Japanese it isn't. They're still not recognizing how counterproductive their entire culture is. They had their heyday and it's been downhill from there. Deflation, shrinking of the economy, suicides.

<comment> old-gregg _how counterproductive their entire culture is_

What a sentence! Instead of arguing and pointing out obvious, I highly recommend you read something about Japan, other than "internet news".

Putting a label on someone's culture at least calls for a few years of actually living there. After 10 years in US I still wouldn't dare giving a grade to American culture, it would take a tome (and I'd still be wrong), let alone labeling it with a single word.

Disclaimer: I'm not Japanese

P.S. Canon&Nikon, despite their "counterproductive" cultures, pretty much destroyed American and German photo equipment industries. These days it feels awkward to say "Kodak moment", most kids will probably ask "who is Kodak?"

<comment><USER7> Disclaimer: I live in Japan, I'm Canadian.

My girlfriend works at Proto, a company that produces a bunch of entertainment-related websites. Large company, 10k people. Between meetings and actual work, she spends approximately 15 hours a DAY at work. This is not abnormal. Another friend who works at a kindergarden works 6 days a week (sunday is spent preparing lessons) and about the same (15-16 hours a day).

Read that again, tell me how that is not "counterproductive". In my girlfriend's case, the meetings alone take up 3-4 hours in a day. She leaves at 7 AM and often gets back after midnight. And for what? So that the world can find out the latest gossip about Korean dramas with an easy-to-use GUI?

While working on my startup, I took a small contract at Fujitsu. I was responsible for cleaning up the translations on some of their cell phones (the Docomo F1100 being the main one - a story for another day). I had a chat with some people there and they told me how the game works; Fujitsu gives a small salary, and pays overtime. As a result, average workers sit around for half the day, then work like nuts during overtime to finish their work.

A lot of younger workers realize this is madness, but keep in mind that the people in charge generally came up during a worker shortage in the "bubble" era. These were less competent people who now have seniority in a seniority- based system. Can you imagine how depressing it is to work on a project that you know is going to fail? That's life.

I love Japan, I love the trains, I love the politeness and I love the people. However, given a level playing field (IE: No banks artificially propping up a company to avoid declaring losses on their own records), it wouldn't take much to break the back of a lot of local companies. (As much as I hate admitting it, but I can't work effectively after 8 or 9 hours - and the Japanese don't have superior body operating systems)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I remember time when City of London bankers and brokers used to have two hour lunch with a few pints of beer. Then their banks were bought up by soulless Americans and the enslavement began.

In a few years everybody was forced to eat their lunch at their desk.

That's why I don't see this Japanese example as excessively cruel.

<comment><USER9> You don't see the difference between not taking a two hour lunch and getting drunk, and not being allowed to sit down at your desk?

There _is_ a happy medium somewhere between anarchy and militarism...I'm inclined to say it involves being allowed to sit down, and doesn't involve a few pints at lunch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> From the article:

> The big boss, as a reward for thinking up all this stuff, gets to lounge in > a nice, relaxing chair

<comment><USER11> People in power use the power for their own benefit? That's something society has never experienced before...

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Next step: Habanero on the toilet seats.

<comment><USER13> Nah, they probably don't even have toilet seats.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Too little info, but it could be an ok idea in some situations. Not for every department, obviously, and it sounds a lot less inhumane if you imagine it properly spaced with breaks.

Might be a bit healthy too. There are few things that eat your soul as much as being in front of a computer with nothing important to do for a few hours every day.

<comment><USER15> I think it's excessive to have a machine set off alarms when it thinks your staff aren't working.

Employees are a company's most valuable asset. Of course it is management's job to keep staff productive but that is second to keeping them happy.

<comment><USER16> _Of course it is management's job to keep staff productive but that is second to keeping them happy._

Uh, no. Keeping them happy is just a likely way to keep them productive, not a higher goal. Sending them home with pay would keep them happier on average. :)

<comment><USER15> I disagree fully. You acknowledge that happy employees are more productive. You should also realize that unhappy employees equals no employees at all. When you install machines to prove your distrust in your staff's work ethic, you will create a poor atmosphere never mind dehumanize your staff. I will treat my staff as human beings before I will ensure they perform as machines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 So this President of Canon is using employees that he has some sort of supervision over to help prove a personal point of his that will net him a personal monetary gain?

That doesn't sound like conflict of interest at all...

</comment><comment><USER17> Is this article for real?

"Let's rush: If we don't, the company and world will perish."

<comment><USER3> _"Is this article for real?"_

Yes. The original article can be found on Nikkei Business Publications' ITpro site:

<http://itpro.nikkeibp.co.jp/article/OPINION/20090518/330168/>

Here is a photo of the "Let's rush..." admonition:

[http://itpro.nikkeibp.co.jp/article/OPINION/20090518/330168/...](http://itpro.nikkeibp.co.jp/article/OPINION/20090518/330168/Ph04.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> How are they measuring people's walking speed?

</comment><comment><USER19> Is this inhumane?</comment>


Watch Steve Perlman demo his 'transformative' pCell wireless tech - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2014/02/23/steve-perlman-pcell-demo/

<comment><AUTHOR> This actually has tons of applications. Low-power, high-bandwidth connections can enable the Internet of Things, always-on video recording (through things like Glass). This can enable having the internet everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER2> His talk is long on sales and short on science. If you're looking for a detailed discussion of _how_ this works not why-you-should-be-super-excited, you can skip the video.</comment>