In an Era of 'Smart' Things, Sometimes Dumb Stuff Is Better - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/21/technology/personaltech/smart-things-dumb-stuff.html <comment><USER2> Many years ago (just after I left for college) my parents decided to build a brand new house. The plan was to include a computerized lighting system where every light was individually addressable and all "light switches" were actually banks of 4 to 8 programmable buttons. The possibilities were endless! What could go wrong?

I asked my parents to use a regular light switch in my room. You know the kind that I am talking about - it goes on and off, closing and opening an electrical circuit. It would have been less expensive and (in my opinion) more reliable since after all, it's just a few pieces of metal. I joked that "when everyone else's lights are flashing on and off at 3AM, I'd like to remain asleep". My father accused me (his resident technologist) of being a Luddite and they went on their merry way, finishing construction and installing a fully-computerized lighting system.

A few months after they moved in, I got a phone call from my father that started something like this: "Please don't say 'I told you so' but I have to tell you what happened at 3AM last night..."

(they flipped that house, and when they built their next one, it had regular light switches)

<comment><USER3> I totally get the spirit of what you're saying, but to be fair a good reliable automated light-system would have an analog fail-safe that allows you to operate the lights normally in case of a malfunction of the central system, meaning that you just turn off the central system, and all the lights keep operating as normal lights that are not connected to it.

But also, centralized light systems are not new. Many corporate facilities have been using these for years and they rarely fail.

Maybe the problem is that your father just picked the wrong vendor/system.

<comment><USER4> That more or less describes how Philip's Hue works.

If the hub died, the smart bulbs can still still be operated using the regular light switch. If the bulb is in standby (smart "off") just flip the switch twice to turn it on. Then it will act like a regular bulb until the hub returns.

Hue only has one big defect with regards to this... If there's an electrical outage and the smart bulb is in standby, when power is restored the bulb will turn on. Meaning if power goes out and is restored in the middle of the night the lights could suddenly turn on full brightness.

And as an aside, the nice thing about smartbulbs as a concept is that they require zero re-wiring or specialized wiring. So if the manufacturer of your bulbs went out of business or you wanted to change vendors, just replace the bulb and your work is done. Simple.

<comment><USER5> I have a couple dozen Hue lamps, and they regularly "reset" to full bright white, presumably after a flicker in power that is otherwise imperceptible. It happens on average once every couple of weeks, and is quite annoying! I wish the lamps had a nonvolatile memory so they'd return to their previous color and intensity...

(I still love them and am happy I have them rather than regular LEDs though.)

<comment><USER6> This has been suggested many times and, as far as I can tell, Philips decided the current behaviour is best safety-wise (consider e.g. if your last preset had 1% intensity).

<comment><USER7> But it's the least smart thing to do. They could at least put an option in the setting to maintain settings after brief power outages.

We had a power flicker last week in the middle of the night and suddenly our bedroom lights were on 100% and our Echo was loudly complaining that the internet was gone. At 3am.

<comment><USER8> Which is why smart things are dumb. You can't just program features, you have to program context. And context rapidly becomes non-trivial. So you either have a dumb object that no one expects to act intelligently, or you have a smart object that tries to act intelligently but fails because it's not as smart as a human, and humans are random anyway.

For smart lights you need "Return to previous state, and then see if the state was on a timer. If it was, wait until you get an NTP answer (i.e. the Internet isn't down) and set up the state requested by the timer."

Which is fine unless the previous state was a party, it's now daylight, and all the bulbs are still different colours.

Or someone was adjusting the lights and accidentally set them to 1% instead of 100% when the power went off.

 _Everything_ becomes an edge case. The most useful solution requires an intelligent default with timer support, with some awareness of what's happening in and around the house.

And it still has to allow for user overrides, because some people - like my partner - sometimes want the lights on during the day, even when the room is bright.

<comment><USER7> I think you are over-thinking things.

I also have analog switches and dimmers in my house. If I have the lights at the lowest setting when the power goes out, that's where they are when the power returns. If everything was on full when the power goes out, then that's where things will be when the power returns.

Why should smart things work differently than what a lifetime of experience has lead me to expect?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great article, I totally agree.

One area that I feel is also a "sometimes dumb stuff is better" that the article left out, is that (at least for me) hardware controls are almost always superior (tho certainly less flexible) than software controls. There's no better example than the physical keyboard vs. the soft keyboard. Recently I had to purchase a replacement stove, and I am amazed at how much worse the UX is on this stove than my old one. I don't want to slide my finger to determine heat intensity, and select which burner that applies to by pressing a soft button corresponding to the hotplate. Just give me a physical knob for each hotplate please. The UX there is excellent.

A more painful example is my Ford truck. Almost everything inside of it is software powered, and the bugs drive me insane. At one point my GPS/stereo touchscreen hit some bug, and the only way to "fix" it was to pull over at a rest stop and power cycle my truck (turn off, then back on again :facepalm: ). That is maddening. As a software developer I understand that bugs happen, but as a consumer I just can't tolerate that kind of stuff in my vehicle.

Without question tech has brought us nice things, but with complexity comes bugs (both security-related and non), and with bugs comes software updates (which themselves sometimes introduce bugs in something that was working fine before). Internet-connected things can also be a nightmare for security and privacy. Truly, sometimes the "dumb" version is much better (and _way_ cheaper too).

<comment><USER10> Similar problem in an aeroplane, the Boeing 787 would fail if it had been powered on continuously for 248 days: [https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/may/01/us- aviation...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/may/01/us-aviation- authority-boeing-787-dreamliner-bug-could-cause-loss-of-control)

You don't really think it would be necessary to turn off your plane then turn it back on again, but here we are.

<comment><USER11> And I thought the car analogy was bad. Imagine hearing that excuse at 30,000 ft. (or being the pilot and having to give it) as all the lights in the cabin go off and the actuators stop working (would the turbines stop firing?) "Have you tried restarting it? Maybe boot it in safe mode." Loved the bit at the end 'Operators will perform periodic power cycling at scheduled intervals until incorporating a software update.'

Sad that this story's "thought experiment" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16393740](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16393740) from 8 days ago may be the future, not a joke. Sorry you couldn't drive to work, we're pushing an update to your car by the middle of the week.

<comment><USER12> Don't joke. On my first trip flying anywhere ever, on the first leg of the return trip, an AA flight from Austin to St. Louis, we had to abort takeoff while the front wheel was up because all of the on-board computer systems died simultaneously.

I've never been in more of a white-knuckle situation in my life, including the time a tire blew while landing at IAD. We then sat on tarmac for close to 3 more hours while they replaced the computers and we took off again in the same plane.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would say that _usually_ the dumb stuff is better. People are sometimes surprised (since I work in IT) that I am against putting too many functionality in stuff.

First example: in my experience, there is nothing better than a blackboard for explaining a subject. I have never seen a blackboard that does not work. I also have never had a smooth experience with a smartboard (for starters, it has to boot and the projector has to be on and connected which just takes some minutes), and I have rarely had a good experience with whiteboards (usually the markers just don't work well, and there's no way to see that beforehand, so you end up trying a lot of them).

It also irritates me intensely how often it is assumed that you're _always_ connected to the internet. Games nowadays not only have mandatory updates, but also require you to be connected. I used to play games once a week with a friend, and the experience just sucked. Call of Duty almost always had a multiple gigabyte update waiting for us, so that we had to wait half an hour to play (even though we didn't play online). It has happened multiple times that the internet didn't work, and we just had to find something else to do.

Then, smart TV's have some of the same problems too. I have had some new experiences since my roommate bought a 4k monstrosity with ambilight (which only purpose seems to be that ensure that no-one can concentrate on something else when the TV is on). I have never had to wait multiple minutes to turn the TV on before. I have never had a TV crash on me before. I have never been confused by a remote control before (the remote control has a button with a triangle symbol to go to all apps, and some other buttons with symbols I have never seen before, and there are two different places with apps - some of them are the same while others can only be found in one place). The TV also boots with the sound very loud, and I have to wait until the TV is fully booted until the sound can be adjusted. Which in practice means that I can't watch TV after my roommate goes asleep at 9:30.

<comment><USER14> We recently purchased a TV and chose one based on the lack of any Smart TV functionality. It boots in 5 seconds and doesn't try and join botnets. The future is stupid.

<comment><USER15> I recently brought my first smart TV. I tried to avoid it, but the cheapest not smart alternative was more than twice the price.

But you know, except for a "do you want to update now" nagging that made it unusable for the first 2 hours after I plugged it on the net, and a immediate "please accept this EULA so we can display ads" that I declined, the smart features have been nice since then.

I am still wary of a future "we are shutting down our servers, this TV will be no more", but not of much more.

<comment><USER16> Which features are available that you find useful? I'm surprised any are turned on if you declined the EULA.

<comment><USER15> I decline a EULA. Basically the one offering ads. I don't think it's necessary for anything actually useful.

It's very nice to connect to the TV by Bluetooth. It's nice to plug stuff there and browse the web too, but does not make all that difference because there's a Kodi machine just under it (right now I'm not sure I will keep the computer).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm going to verbatim copy a conversation I had on twitter a few weeks ago[0], because it seems particularly relevant, and I want to credit whomever is behind the algoglitches twitter account with coming up with the term "formerly fixable objects":

@JobvdZwan: _My mother called me the other day asking why I "installed Bing". Because she does not grasp that software can modify itself, it did not occur to her that Firefox itself switched after an auto-update. In this light it makes sense that family members blame you for "breaking" their computer if you helped them out months or years before: if you fix, say, a door, it will not spontaneously change after that. But fixing a computer is not like fixing a door._

@algoglitches: _Interestingly doors will probably be computers a few years from now cf[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/09/you-a...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/09/you- are-already-living-inside-a-computer/539193/) . We will refer to them as "formerly fixable objects" and they will produce their own glitches._

@JobvdZwan: _Did you just make up the term "formerly fixable objects"? Because that should be a term._

[0] [https://twitter.com/JobvdZwan/status/962328161429151745](https://twitter.com/JobvdZwan/status/962328161429151745)

</comment><comment><USER18> Soft touch "buttons" vs regular mechanical buttons.

Soft touch buttons are the bane of my existence. With most buttons, there's no feedback as to whether or not the button has been pressed. It's also difficult to develop muscle memory so you can you use the buttons without looking. For this reason I can't stand typing on an iPad's screen keyboard. Also the reason turning on a modern TV involves me dragging my fingers all over the bottom hoping I hit the power button.

The extreme of this is newer Macbook touchbar. Vim is a nightmare to use. Did I even press ESC? Can't tell.

Another great example: [http://www.homecrux.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/01/GE%E2%80%...](http://www.homecrux.com/wp- content/uploads/2015/01/GE%E2%80%99s-Smart-Sous-Vide-Probe-and-Touch- sensitive-Induction-Cooktops_5.jpg)

<comment><USER19> After Apple ruined the podcasts app in iOS 11, I switched back to my old way of listening to podcasts: download on the computer and listen on a Sansa Clip+ player (with Rockbox on it).

Especially the first few days were pure delight. A player with.. hardware buttons! I can skip tracks, jump back and forth, pause, everything without even looking at the thing! Several years of using touchscreen-smartphones for this had me totally forget how it is to use an MP3 player with physical buttons. Really, I didn't expect at all how much I'd love it. I've now gotten used to it again and going back to anything touchscreen-based is not an option at all anymore. And on top of that the joy of knowing that there's no ad- company tracking how/when/where I'm listening.

<comment><USER20> My only experience with the Clip+ was as a runner, but I switched away from my phone because I was terrified of breaking it. But the downsides of the Clip+ drove me back to my phone and a good, hard case for it.

\- had to hook it up to my Windows computer and download songs instead of just making a playlist on Apple Music or queueing up podcasts in Overcast

\- if the sun was out, I had to hold the Clip right against my eyeballs to make anything out

\- no 30 second skips, no chapter selection

And honestly, I'm not sure why you'd give up on the phone altogether without researching other podcast apps. Overcast is the best.

<comment><USER19> Note that I'm using the Clip+ with the Rockbox [0] replacement firmware, which adds features such as configurable skip lengths, etc. Without Rockbox, the thing isn't nearly as good :-)

> And honestly, I'm not sure why you'd give up on the phone altogether without > researching other podcast apps. Overcast is the best.

I looked at them, didn't find a single trustworthy one. Overcast is a good example of that: it's often recommended, but it wants me to make an account, which is completely superfluous and probably just a way for them to collect data about my podcast habits. No thanks. I only want podcasts, I don't want a cloud service to go with it.

[0] [https://www.rockbox.org/](https://www.rockbox.org/)

<comment><USER20> Just FYI, the creator of Overcast is a notorious anti-advertising and pro- privacy curmudgeon, and he even wrote Skeptic's FAQ for people put off by the account thing: [https://overcast.fm/skeptics_faq](https://overcast.fm/skeptics_faq)

It's very much worth it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Yes I would like a Starship Enterprise-style computer in my house. Who wouldn't? But it has to be the the ad-free version that works _for me_. It won't monitor the activities of my family and then sell the anonymized data to selected third parties. Then supply the de-anonymized data to government agencies and school boards at the drop of a hat for 'safe-guarding' or 'anti- terrorism' purposes.

In the meantime I recognise that there's some health value to getting up periodically to flick switches.

<comment><USER22> > _Yes I would like a Starship Enterprise-style computer in my house. Who > wouldn 't?_

I wouldn't. What's the point exactly? Take smart lights, what are they for?? When I enter the room I switch lights on, when I leave the room I switch lights off.

I'm not sure when I would need to switch lights on while already in the room. I never stay in the same room for so long that the sun sets while I'm still there not moving.

At night in the bedroom there are switches near the bed (attached to the wall, which can't get lost, contrary to a remote, and don't need sound, contrary to voice control).

My point is, we tend to accept technology even when it doesn't solve any problem we are actually having.

<comment><USER23> What if it were inexpensive, kept the physical controls and actually worked well?

I'm not in any rush to automate lights, but there are lots of people that would appreciate things like an "arrival mode" for their lighting, where lights switched on when they arrived at the house. Not really a big deal, but say you have poor night vision and reduced mobility.

<comment><USER22> Agree for reduced mobility, but re:poor night vision, I can do most things in my home in pitch darkness, as well as open the door from the outside: selecting the proper key from the key ring in my pocket, "feeling" the keyhole and inserting the key without looking at anything. Whenever I change the key cylinder I verify I can still do it with the new key.

This used to fascinate my wife. Now it just upsets her, she thinks I'm showing off to the kids. I'm not; I'm training for when the sun dies.

<comment><USER24> I can do the same. Although the 'open' or 'lock up' door in total darkness skill never fascinated my wife, ever. I always got the "just turn on a light..." whine instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think the advantage of "dumb" devices is that you can fully understand how they work, at least at a level of abstraction that covers all possible functionality you care about. For smart devices, you can't fully understand how all of them work, so you have to trust that they understand correctly what you want them to do and are actually attempting to do it. Or if you can't trust it, you have to spend time and effort verifying it. And you also have to trust (or verify) that they're not doing stupid/malicious things like punching holes in your firewall or leaking your personal data.

In short, you can simply _use_ a dumb device, but you have to _manage_ a smart device, and that requires much more mental bandwidth.

<comment><USER26> This is definitely how I view the "dumb" vs "smart" automation. Complex things are hard to reason about, and as much as you might claim they "just work" that's only true until they suddenly don't, and then you can't fix them easily. Simple things are easy to reason about. They may not always work, but at least when they don't it should be pretty obvious why. I bring this up a lot in my "why the Linux Desktop sucks" rants, but it sadly applies to a whole lot of technology. So many complex systems introduced to solve non-problems or problems created by the complexity in the first place.

It's enough that sometimes I want to just give up computing and live in a cave.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I have done some neat hobby automation projects, and I have some thoughts:

1\. With some more work it wouldn't be so, but when the power goes out it is like rebooting Jurassic Park to get my sound system back the way I like.

2\. The proprietary power grab is worse than any video format war or chat program territory battle. I've tried to DIY as much as I can, but Google Home is a no go for DIY. I can emulate on/off Phillips Hue stuff for Alexa Scenes but for Google Home you have to go through the net.

3\. I can't ask Alexa to do anything when the (rare) internet is out, but I can control everything fine with my phone or IR. Most automation projects seem to require outside the firewall stuff.

4\. Would be cool if I could come up with a port knocking thing for Alexa Skills to talk back to the LAN with some kind of reliable security and encryption... But Skills seem to be only available to call out insecurely or to a running EC2 instance say but I don't have a free tier account being an early adopter of EC2.

5\. In general, the products I will buy are ideally LAN only. Maybe that's unrealistic like a non smart TV?

</comment><comment><USER28> My favourite "smart" dumb device has got to be single sensor electronics. The automatic hallway light to be exact. It's a piece of plastic with a photocell and a LED.

So long as it has power (but a battery backup would be simple enough) it never fails to turn on "if this, then that". Daylight savings, changing seasons, solar eclipse.

It's never a device I have to think about.

And at home depot they sell $80 IoT light bulbs demanding a property app.

</comment><comment><USER29> ...and what no one giving us this "progress" ever seems to realise is how often it is slower.

For instance our Whirlpool microwave - touch sensitive digital and achieving 5 or 10 minutes takes much longer and more clicks than our old one (no 5 min button, but the Panasonic's touch keypad didn't much like damp hands). Setting power or grill is especially unfriendly and rarely succeeds at first attempt. First microwave had a rotary control, now the preserve of absolute bottom of range rubbish, time setting _always_ took one touch and under a second.

I find it's affecting my choices of cars though. Touch sensitive "improvement" of anything basic (heater or fan for instance) is a big negative mark for me as chances are I could formerly achieve it without taking eyes from road, but now I need to _look,_ and you don't want everything on the steering wheel!

<comment><USER30> About the microwave: it seems to be purely American thing. Here in the UK even high-end very expensive microwaves have rotating knobs for setting the time and power. I've seen those monstrosities with a million buttons on the front but they are certainly rare.

<comment><USER31> Likewise when shopping for a new hi-fi receiver, the most important feature I wanted was a physical volume control knob.

<comment><USER29> Grr. The old Denon bookshelf hi-fi had an analogue pot with slow motor tied to remote control, and infinite fine adjustment when using knob directly. After it died we just bought the current equivalent without exercising enough distrust.

The volume is now digital, so we have a choice between "too loud" or "too quiet". Turning the knob gives the same too coarse steps. No motor is required, saving Denon a few pennies and costing them a customer next time around.

The FM tuner (much better quality than DAB hereabouts), uses the digital stage somehow anyway, so analogue transmissions gain about a half second delay. As we often have the same radio station going in more than one room, this can be _really_ annoying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> There are varying levels of cynicism with which to view the smart home stuff.

On the plus side, smart home automation is great for those with mobility issues or disabilities, the elderly. It also could save a lot of energy globally.

On the other hand, a lot of things just don't need to be smart, and making them smart often means that they are not directly servicable by owners. When something breaks, you need a whole stack of knowledge about software to figure out where it went wrong. A lot of us here might have that knowledge, but even then it's a giant hassle. It seems insane that in the future it might require arcane knowledge of Python, bash, and Linux to get your lights on. That's some kind of fail.

The most cynical view, which I sometimes dare myself to consider, is that all of this smart home/internet of things is just another bubble where hardware manufacturers are pushing their chips into literally everything because they have to keep making more money...somehow.

In the latter case, well. Civilization doesn't need more hucksters, even if they are selling little black squares of silicon this time around.

</comment><comment><USER13> Maybe a large part of why hardware buttons work so much better than software buttons is that they just _are_ there. They do not pop up whenever you enter a new screen, and usually, you can't miss them (as in 'oh, I didn't realize that bar was clickable'). They are also much more restrictive than software UI's - so the designer really has to put in effort since you can't replace the hardware interface by putting out an update.

I can't resist to draw a parallel with programming. In the early days, where binaries consisted of carefully handcrafted code, they were in the range of kilobytes. Nowadays programs are in the range of megabytes to gigabytes due to all the libraries that are statically included (and possibly duplicated). When I install Xilinx ISE (no support for anything above windows 7) or Visual Studio (both 2015 and 2017, because both have features that the other one does not contain), I have already used more space on my SSD than I'd like.

</comment><comment><USER33> I am a big fan of the Kindle 4. (2012) It's wonderful. I use mine practically every day. It has these huge things on the side called "buttons" that you can use to turn the pages. They have a tactile feel when pressed, and accidental button presses are never a problem. It's symmetrical, so you can hold it in either your right or left hand.

It's the last Kindle made before someone got the bright idea that people would rather have a touch screen instead of buttons. Because apparently, when I'm reading a book, the thing I want to do is use my thumb to cover up the screen (you know, the thing that is displaying the text that I'm reading), and hold the device in a very specific way such that I can press the page when I need to while avoiding accidental touches before I've reached the end of the page.

Recently, they decided to re-introduce the majestic "button" feature into some of the newer Kindle models. You can get it if you opt for the premium deluxe "Kindle Oasis" which for some reason has an asymmetrical bezel and costs $250. (The Kindle 4 originally retailed for $80, which is where pricing for current Kindle models also starts.)

I love my Kindle 4. I use it every day and take it with me everywhere, and whenever I misplace it and need to buy a replacement, I find myself going to ebay to look for a used version of the old model so I can have a device with buttons.

<comment><USER34> Oh yes, that was my biggest worry when i bought the paperwhite - If i would miss those buttons too much. Even now after a year, if I could get the paperwhite with buttons, I would. It just works, you don't have to move your finger to change the page.

It's not much I have to move my fingers to change page on the paperwhite, but it's still so much more than should be necessary, the old model just fit like a glove.

(I would still get the paperwhite even with no buttons, and it has not been as annoying regarding accidental page changes as I had initially feared. And i really love the background lighting)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> One of such example is when they offered us a "Smart Cup" on our Cruise (Royal Caribbeans). It has built-in chip so it know who it belongs to.

So you go to drink fountain, puts your cup in, LCD display nicely says your name (wow) and then you click which drink you wants and the cup fills in, while the display tells you from now on it remembers your favorite drink. Can't be better huh?

Five minutes later I go for a refil: "Sorry but you drank a cup less than 45 minutes ago. Please come back in 39 minutes".

I came back, but to the front desk to get a refund. Instead, I replaced it with more expensive regular cup that you could go to cafeteria and get refils of pretty much anything you want to as often as you wanted to.

<comment><USER36> This highlights one problem with smart devices. This device truly was smart, but it wasn't smart _for you_. It was smart for the cruise line, at your expense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> A bit dumber than a "smart device": the new AppleTV remote is a tiny touchpad that communicates with the box via Bluetooth. The problem is when this thing ends up in a cushion or gets squished under a pillow it pauses, stops, or starts rewinding the video. Compare that to a cheaper IR remote where it simply can't communicate with the unit in those situations. Turns out line of sight is a feature for a TV remote.

<comment><USER38> > Turns out line of sight is a feature for a TV remote.

It can be, but for bad TVs you have to do "remote tai chi" to get LoS between the remote and the TV sensor from wide angles or when there are people or things in the way. I wouldn't call digital signalling _better_ , but there are some benefits.

<comment><USER39> Often that means you have to replace the remote batteries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> "One of the most common uses of Amazon's Echo is to set a kitchen timer."

Truly worth the money. I suspect the greatest value of these things is that they seem like nice gifts. The same thing seems true of the cheaper drones.

<comment><USER41> I think the greatest value is probably in the speaker itself, most of the other features do just feel like fluff. Though personally I prefer a more "dumb" speaker I can control with my phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Most of the "smart IoT stuff" is built by (cheap) engineers and decision makers with no sense of IT security and reliability engineering

Also the infrastructure in a major city is usually much more reliable than someone living in the suburbs (especially in non-1st world countries). And I'm not even talking about internet, but electricity as well

See the Tesla remote unlock fiasco, people think it's a good idea to lock their car using a device which needs a recharge every day (and could break, has a higher chance of getting robbed than a key, etc), and needs access to cell towers to unlock the car? Compare this to other manufacturers where the mechanical keys will work even if the battery in the remote dies

See the bluetooth locks fiasco, you're putting a cheap and unreliable device between you and your house? Do people realize how stupid is that?!

</comment><comment><USER43> I've always preferred tactile/mechanical controls (buttons, knobs, sliders) to the touch screens we have today. And I always trust mechanical systems over fly-by-wire systems. For example, I'm very uncomfortable with things like the Tesla's slide-out door handles, electronic locks in hotel room doors, touch buttons in elevators and GPS navigation systems in aircraft.

Smart tends to mean complex, and complex usually means more things to fail. Some things only need shafts, pulleys and gearwheels -- there is no need to bring a microprocessor into the picture...

<comment><USER44> Bad news: GPS in airplanes is the least complicated piece of kit, and most commercial aviation is _literally_ fly-by-wire.

<comment><USER45> I can't find the plane/article but I remember reading about a military jet that is practically always in an unstable flight pattern and computers constantly adjust it to make it so the pilots can fly it normally.

<comment><USER43> I recall the main computer of the F-22 core dumping when it crossed the international dateline. And an earlier version of the F-16 flight control computer flipping the plane upside down when it crossed the equator in a simulation...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> There are two issues at play here. The first is that soft buttons, gesture recognitions and 'smart' UIs are applied tastelessly to give impression of futuristic product. UI design is very hard and I hope that best patterns will prevail over time. There are also many good examples of transition to digital UI and I like to think things are getting better.

The second issue is, in order to operate UI, you have to form a mental model (simulation) of it in your mind, in order to execute your intention. In analog days the controls were limited by space and cost, so UIs were simple to use. In digital age same UI surface can be used for different actions depending on context. It creates additional burden on user to hold this context in his mind, to know about all possible contexts and how to move between them. If you are surrounded with many such devices, all with different usage patterns, you will curse their designers often. I wish every digital interface would also have friendly API for remote control so I could build my own simplified interface for existing devices.

</comment><comment><USER47> This is why I have been getting superior results working with a $100 tascam digital 4 track compared to what I used to get from logic pro. For music being able to use knobs with eyes closed to record is actually huge to me the GUI is actually a problem for music for my work.

<comment><USER48> There are few worse design decisions than rotary encoders on a software synth

<comment><USER19> In almost all music software these days, the knobs are actually linear faders in disguise. Displaying them as knobs simply have the advantage of taking up less screen space.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> "Smart" is 100% a marketing term. "Networked" would be more accurate in most cases.

Do you want a "smart" coffee pot? Oh yes, you smart person, of course you do! Do you want a networked coffee pot? No, because that would be dumb. All the fun of rebooting and hackers, but you still have to physically touch it to make and pour coffee.

The _really_ dumb part of many of these devices is coupling. A truly "smart tv" would be a good screen + wires + a computerized device, so you can switch out screen or computer at will. Gluing them together guarantees crappiness and waste.

</comment><comment><USER50> Most of this is just marketing. Companies realizing that they can sell some tech gizmo by slapping a "smart" label on it. Technology isn't inherently "smart", but the _application_ of technology can be smart. When done right it works as an amplifier to our abilities, like all tools do. I you're merely interested in tech for it's own sake, better to get a raspbery pi or arduino and make your own crazy shit, it doesn't need to be useful.

</comment><comment><USER51> I despise gadgets too-smart-to-function-normally as much as anyone, but here is a counter example:

For a long time now, cars have a well integrated set of bells and whistles all connected via fairly reliable communication protocols (like CAN and such) and for the most part they just work. I never had the parking break not engage or cruse control drift. (I am not talking about the touchscreens and apple and android integrations as the article mentions it, those are closer to the 'smart' trend).

What if we didn't insist on retrofitting existing 110V systems and imagined a house with a modern power bus?

What if we stopped focusing on selling things in the <$100 range and sold entire systems that are designed to work well together?

What if we stopped insisting on unreliable radio communication and just used good'ol wires. The lower power thing is only good for sensors anyway. Anything else will need power.

Obviously this is not an option for existing homes maybe not even new homes, but what about hotels and office buildings?

I am just wondering (hoping) if this whole mess is not the fault of technology per say but the fault of the business minds and todays hype culture.

Can we use technology to make things better, not just smarter? I would be into that.

Edit: formatting

<comment><USER15> > I never had the parking break not engage or cruse control drift.

Well, at least around here those things are required to have an old style steel wires fail-safe. And I know that because I have needed the fail-safe once.

But about selling living-place automation as a package, it is basically the say everybody was doing it since the 80's. The <$100 things are basically a reaction from consumers against the huge packages inability to keep working after deployed for a few years (due to planed obsolescence) and the plain bad deal of depending on a single packager.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I love how my paper and pens never try to force me into paying them $5/month forever.

<comment><USER53> Where did you find a notebook that never runs out of blank pages and a pen that never needs ink?

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> We don't realize how complex a lot of the simple things are.

<comment><USER41> This is true, I'm not sure the article is saying that the "dumb" versions aren't complex to make/manufacture/use. Just that sometimes they are more reliable to use in practice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I think a lot of us engineers are solving non-problems. We make life only marginally better for a lot of people (if we're lucky). To me it seems that a relatively simple job like e.g. highschool teacher has more impact and provides more meaning than what we are doing. Anyway, at least I feel better than those engineers who are trying to make people click ads more.

</comment><comment><USER56> I had an August smart lock for a while. I used it primarily while running so I didn't have to carry keys.

The whole process of unlocking the door was way more painful than a key. I switched back to a regular lock.

<comment><USER57> I find this [type of] lock quite usable, and much more convenient thne keys:

[https://www.amazon.com/Schlage- FE575-CAM-619-ACC/dp/B001RFDB...](https://www.amazon.com/Schlage- FE575-CAM-619-ACC/dp/B001RFDB6C)

Digital so I don't need keys, but still keeping it as simple as possible. Most have a power backup so you can power it from a 9V battery externally. I still wish it wasn't necessary to change batteries, but it's not too inconvenient given they last a couple years, timewise well worth not dealing with keys.

<comment><USER4> We have two of those, as good as they are I wouldn't trust them on an external door[0]. The locking mechanism has to be fairly light weight due to being driven by an actuator and a battery operated one at that, which means instead of a deadbolt-like configuration it is a traditional spring Latch, which could make it susceptible to bumping or even a strong rare earth magnet. Plus the key is pretty simple.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X038GMKwHNw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X038GMKwHNw)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Physical books are the ultimate dumb tool: No need to charge; no notifications; can take notes if you like; and fantastic life span if well looked after.

<comment><USER59> In defense of e-readers, I can carry an Infinite Jest sized book to the store with me in my pocket and start reading it while my SO is trying on clothes. I can download a new book from the library without having to check which branch has the copy I'm looking for and going there. I can preview a book without looking up which store near me has it, driving to the book store, and finding a place to sit to start reading through the first chapters. The battery life is fairly long as well so charging is usually not an issue. I still have several copies of physical books and still go to the library or the book store on occasion, but the experience of reading on an e-reader is superior in my opinion. The text size can be adjusted to my preference. I can read in low lighting without needing the light to be just right. I grew up reading in bed and now I don't have to lay on my side to make sure the paper is facing the light or deal with the annoyance of being too early or late into the book to where the pages aren't supportive of my hand. With physical books, thin or slippery paper can be an annoyance, but the e-reader is always the same size and experience. Of course, I didn't used to think about such things, I just read away, but once I got started on the e-reader, it's hard to go back. The one exception is a textbook or books where you need to flip back and forth a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I don't agree with almost all of it. If you compare a normal wristwatch with Apple watch w.r.t time keeping only, you're not comparing it fairly. The Apple watch can just do so much more than a normal watch can, and it's programmable, you can add things with time. Same can be said for the alarm clock and what not. Why no compare a smartphone to the analog alarm? That'd what most people use I think, and they instead pick some gadget alarm clock which not many use I'd say.

A big difference is that a smartphone and Apple watch is a device that can a do what a 100 "dumb stuff" can do. It's a all-in-one device and that's very valuable.

Their last point on touch screens in cars is very weak. With a touch screen, you can change the UI anytime. It's flexible with infinite buttons. A normal one with real buttons sure are more tactile, but when you ship it, it's set in stone with limited button and functionality.

<comment><USER61> I believe that's their point: while each smart device can usurp the function of dozens of single-purpose devices, for any single function the smart device makes tradeoffs that the single-purpose one can avoid. So, while it's cool that the Apple watch can check your email, tell your body temperature, and give you directions, it's less good _as a watch_ than a cheap, dumb ol' watch.

It's a question of whether the tradeoffs are worth it to you. Clearly to you, they are, but for the author and me, they aren't.

<comment><USER62> Also, you now have the usual software management failures. My Apple Watch 2 is about 7 months old. Every function on it works worse than when I bought it: e.g. Siri has gone from activating 80% of the time to about 30%.

No other industry gets away with such routine negligence of core job functions.

<comment><USER63> That's because people don't buy these things for their functionality, but for the functionality they imagine they _could_ have. Not coincidentally, that is also how they are marketed. People are always sitting on a park benches on their smooth-screened laptops with absolutely no glare and a huge grin on their face.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Smart meters. Since working in IoT on a "dumb" meter I figure the killer feature isn't automatic temperature and power regulation, it's knowledge. Once you know where and when you are using lots of power you can easily figure out a solution that fits _your_ situation, rather than endlessly coddling an intrusive system.

<comment> gm-conspiracy [https://openenergymonitor.org/](https://openenergymonitor.org/) based on raspberry pi

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> One of my favourite examples: resetting the router using a timer instead of scripting it

[https://www.howtogeek.com/289178/how-to-automatically- reboot...](https://www.howtogeek.com/289178/how-to-automatically-reboot-your- router-on-a-schedule-the-easy-way/)

<comment><USER24> Had a DSL modem years ago that had this issue (periodically it would simply quit interacting with the DSLAM, resulting in no internet until it got power cycled).

My solution was exactly this (although without googling for a solution). A 24 hour light timer, set to power cycle the modem sometime in the middle of the night. Since it usually took several days before the modem got hung, a nightly power cycle meant that things were working properly at other times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> I think real ubiquitous computing will require a different technological approach. These Wi-Fi enabled devices that you can access with an app on your phone are clearly not working out too well. I look forward to tech like smart contact lenses, that google jacquard project, and other interfaces... what if instead of telling Alexa to turn on the lights, you could turn your lights on and off by gesturing (think like mouse gestures--you move your wrist down and left in the air, and a bracelet or sleeve knows what you gestured). Or even better, just thinking.

So we're a few hardware inventions away (not to mention, truly enjoyable product inventions away) from knowing what 'Smart Things' really are...

<comment><USER67> IoT is built on a cruddy stack. Nobody in their sane mind would design it like that from scratch. The problem is technology is much more pervasive compared with earlier eras, and without careful future proofing you end up stuck in a lot of unfortunate designs that cannot be gotten out of, and more and more is thrown into the pit making it worse and worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> I can come up with an equal number of cases where the "dumb stuff" doesn't work the way I want it to.

1.) A dumb watch can't tell me where my next meeting is being held. Am I really going to go back to balancing my laptop on my knee to check that?

2.) A dumb alarm clock can't even play white noise that I use to go to sleep. Its display can't be customized for when my taste in Time face changes.

I could go on, but sufficed to say that the UX teams of these blockbuster products have already done this work. It's why people buy the damn products. Hipster Ludditism is still Ludditism and it gets boring really fast.

<comment><USER69> why not use your phone? Navigating watch ui's are horrendous. Plus you don't have to charge another device every night.

<comment><USER68> The Apple Watch displays the location of my next meeting beneath the time. The UI interaction is identical to a typical watch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> On the one hand, the analog watch they show to compare with the Apple Watch is an Omega Speedmaster, the first watch on the moon. Shows that you can do great things with just gears and springs.

On the other hand, it does cost $3,000...

<comment><USER71> On the third hand, it'll still be running after 50 years and fully compatible with all standard issue eyeballs. Amortized cost of $60/year. Will the Apple Watch still be running in 50 years? At around $300/watch right now, each one needs to last at least 5 years to remain price competitive.

<comment><USER36> In 50 years, will it still fit my sense of style? Will I manage to avoid misplacing it or getting lost for 50 years?

I'm not saying I want a Smart Watch (getting _even more_ distracted? No thanks). What I'm saying is that lasting power in a device isn't just about continuing to function.

<comment><USER71> Fair, but that particular style has apparently already made it 50 years. It's got lasting power at least with a decent sized (or well funded) segment of the market.

It's also an object you can give to children and grandchildren. I have a number of objects like these. I would have zero interest in passing on my 2017 Apple Watch 3 in 20 years.

There's something to be said, IMO, for things that will last generations and not just years.

<comment><USER72> I got a watch from my grandfather. It was completely wasted on me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> Sort of related but not exactly.. and I'm sorry if this is controversial... I just prefer my gas car over my electric car. My gas car is older, the cd play doesn't work however the radio does. I could replace it. I just don't care enough and prefer the randomness of the radio. My electric has mp3, satellite radio etc. Don't know if its nostalgia or what I've just grew up using but yea.. I hate my electric car.

<comment><USER74> I like elemental cars without bloated features as well, but most new cars both ICE and electric have screens and the like. I don't think this is unique to EVs.

<comment><USER73> Fair. But that's not totally why I dislike my electric car (Nissan). I mention the modern stuff just to highlight the car has significantly better entertainment systems. The nissan compared to the gas (a porsche) is an unfair fight. However I haven't been impressed with tesla when test driving them as well. It's the drive, idk. I know tesla is trying to solve that but so far I haven't been impressed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> This reminds me of multi-room sound systems, which are as bad today as they were decades ago. They're a technological solution to a problem that only marketing can convince you exists. And only once you pay thousands of dollars to enable the same sounds to by piped all over your house do you realize how unpleasant that experience is.

</comment><comment><USER76> I use the tablet to show recipes.. but it causes grief that its blackscreen at just the point I dont want to have to touch a device to wake it up.

The nice thing about paper is, you don't have to wake it up to look at that ingredients list.

<comment><USER77> Some recipe apps (such as Paprika) prevent display sleep. I have found that more convenient than some books that always want to close.

<comment><USER36> Decent cookbooks have put thought into the binding so this doesn't happen. I'm not sure there's a clear winner here.

<comment><USER77> Since I am a vegetarian, the range of cookbooks is a bit more limited. I have some nice vegetarian cookbooks with binding that closes the book.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> I get his point and to some extent[1] I agree, but it seems a lot of his examples are caused by his technology choices. I can run Waze in my car with no issues (just use an Android phone); I don't use smartwatches for other reasons (I don't wear a watch, period); but when I did, it was always-on (years ago!).

[1] I agree that old technologies are always superior in some aspects to new technologies. But, crucially, they are inferior in others, that sometimes turn out to be more important. When that is the case, the new technology will typically gradually become better in all aspects (i.e. with time the inferior aspects get fix; but yes it may take a while)

</comment><comment><USER79> I'm building my house now, and I have plans for wall switches to control outlets behind the TV.

I mostly buy AV equipment that can be controlled by turning the power on/off.

</comment><comment><USER80> That Sharp alarm clock is the very one waking me up every morning. Nice and loud. And I like the "tick-tick".

</comment><comment><USER81> To do lists are still better on paper, too

</comment><comment><USER82> seriously guys? why is this being discussed? just get normal switches and try to use the saved time to develop a product which provides actual value to the world.

<comment><USER83> Because smart stuff is here to stay and make our lives miserable. I don't know if smart bulbs will ever become popular, but you can't buy a dumb TV today anymore. I don't even know if there ever was a 4k dumb TV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Dumb stuff have always been better. Most of the smart things are useless.

</comment><comment><USER84> I love how "techie" people needs nurturing to realize what makes sense and what not. So 2 years later, they realize what other people know the moment they hear about some product.

Something Silicon Valley engineers do. They invent silly things just cause they know how to code bluetooth communications. Like a water bottle that measures how much you are drinking during the day for example.

But hey, it's not their fault. It's hacker news fault. Didn't you spend years telling them "Ideas are worth zero. Execution is king". Now you have highly productive dumb people you helped creating.

 _I divide my officers into four groups. There are clever, diligent, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and diligent -- their place is the General Staff. The next lot are stupid and lazy -- they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the intellectual clarity and the composure necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is stupid and diligent -- he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always cause only mischief._

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Hammerstein- Equord](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Hammerstein-Equord)

<comment><USER85> A phone with a touch screen instead of physical buttons was a dumb idea until it was executed well.

Smart devices aren't a bad idea, they just haven't been executed well enough.

<comment><USER86> They're still bad _phones_ \- you can't answer or dial them without looking. It's just that they're far more useful as tiny internet tablets and people have in many cases gradually moved to text chat over voice.

<comment><USER87> "you can't answer or dial them without looking."

... How often did you dial something without looking before? You probably had a handful of numbers memorized. Otherwise, you needed to look up the number in a phone book or address book. Perhaps you memorized numbers for speed dial?

Now you can dial by talking to you phone if you'd like, so long as you have the person's number in your phone's computer. You can often dial a company directly from their page or from the phonebook... which is online.

And finally: Of course people have gradually moved to text. Voice is often not needed, and I would rather not stop everything to talk to most people.

<comment><USER72> _Now you can dial by talking to you phone if you 'd like_

The Nokia 3310, from 2000, already had voice dialing. And while the recognition may not have been as good (I frankly can't remember), it certainly didn't take the time that my current cheap Android takes to even start listening.

<comment><USER88> It worked good enough. I pressed a button and said Pizza and it immediately called my local pizzeria. For some reason I've never got that to work smoothly with Siri.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> Same for spellcheck, learn to spell and just turn it off. I also highly doubt I will ever pay money for a driverless car.

<comment><USER90> Even if you know "how to spell" it is easy to not notice when you've misspelled something. Also, there isn't really such a thing as just "knowing how to spell", it's an open-ended skill. And some people just don't have the mind to remember the precise spelling of every single random word.

I also don't know what driverless cars have to do with this. For one thing, it is possible that you might not have the option in another 25 years in some locations. For another, this actually is an extremely Luddite attitude, given the objectively horrify safety of cars which we've managed to psychologically lock away in modern culture. Not to mention the massive secondary benefits: you get to recover massive amounts of time dedicated to staring at a road, and being sober.

<comment><USER91> >given the objectively horrify safety of cars which we've managed to psychologically lock away in modern culture.

Ab out the car safety, I see your point mentioned every time selfdriving cars are mentioned but we could remove the bad drivers from the road today without having to wait 20 years or more until all or most cars are self driven. My solution would be to have mandatory systems to check the driver for alcohol or drugs and a system to check for the driver attention plus the collision detections and other driver assisting technology. I know there is a privacy problem but I think is not larger then the selfdriving cars one or we can adopt this technologies in countries with less bad governments.

My point we can improve car safety today if we want and not wait for selfdriving cars.

<comment><USER90> >My solution would be to have mandatory systems to check the driver for alcohol or drugs

I mean, I don't even know where to begin.

First, good luck getting the 200 million drivers that don't ever have this problem to agree to dealing with this system every single time they start their car. Not gonna happen.

Second, have you actually stopped to think about how this would actually work? BAC is already a pretty vague and inconsistent check of impairment, but it is literally the best available from any category. There are no sobriety tests for other substances. And there definitely are not ones that could be compacted and used on-demand in vehicles.

> a system to check for the driver attention plus the collision detections and > other driver assisting technology.

So instead of just letting software do everything, instead you think we should stop at a stage where the human is redundant and honestly a weakness in the system, just so that we can feel like we are doing something when driving? Why not just let the software do the last 10% of the work and free up 100% of your driving time? This just sounds like pure stubbornness, not an actually effective system.

And finally, it completely negates the enormous advantages of an automated driving network. Barring rare and extreme events like multi-lane closures, traffic exists entirely and exclusively because of fundamental issues in human habits and judgement. There would be no traffic if computers were automating freeways. Ever.

<comment><USER91> You did not understand my point,

1 I am ok with good self driving cars that are better then the average human

2 I am suggesting that forcing this systems on people is as problematic as forcing them to buy an AI car, so say from tomorrow in your city you have 2 choices : buy and install the system I suggested or buy a new car with self driving AI, why is second option easier to force on people?

3 My point is that if you want that in 30 years to force all cars in some regions to be 100% AI driven so forbid people the right to drive there, then why not also force that device I suggested today, you get the benefits today and in 30 years you can force no humans driver at all.

4 My problem is that the problem with car crashes has more then 1 solution, so if we want to solve it today we need to look at something else not only at self driving cars,</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Strangeness of Grief - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/01/06/the-strangeness-of-grief <comment><USER2> Grief really is weird - and perhaps even weirder for humans than for other species.

Human tool use has primes us to see things that we can control not simply as things we control, but as extensions of ourselves.

Human co and counter operative behaviour has forced us to adapt reflective cognitive structures in which our minds attempt to simulate the minds of others - most accurately for those we best understand, which includes the people that we are closest to.

We use this simulation as an interface by which we can generate expectations for how people we understand will respond to different situations - and we can treat those that we trust as complex extensions of ourselves (unexpected behaviour and especially betrayal in this context invalidates our internal simulation not only of the world, but of ourselves).

And the death of a person known and trusted leaves us still with the cognitive structures forged to deal with them, an orphaned piece of the mind which can never again serve its prime function.

Ironically our inability to cope with the loss leads us to neglect the final cognizant vestiges of the dead.

<comment><USER2> Sorry about the wall of text - I haven't been sleeping, and my mind's going weird places.

<comment><USER3> Actually, it was kind of beautiful.

<comment><USER2> Thanks man.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> grief is a sonnet.

it's beauty, it's a lukewarm waterfall.

it's a warmth that washes

over us, intense.

consuming, penetrating

until we yield.

and in that silence, we let go.

grief is beautiful because it's a gentle descent, where in that abyss is a hand that lifts us; like a infant just now born, being wrapped in warm cloth, and given to its mother.

i have an intimate relationship with grief.

i see it coming again to visit, and i know it will be one of the last feelings i will experience as i arrive.

it's only "strange" because we are not as familiar with non duality as we are with duality.

grief is a chain that unbinds. it's a 10-Ton weight that makes you lighter.

i guess it's time for bed.

</comment><comment><USER5> Having read a lot about VS Naipaul, and about his sometimes cantankerous nature, I am touched to see how attached he became to his cat.

It's always nice to be pleasantly surprised by someone.

I've noticed from personal experience that it's often easier to grieve for animals than for our own relatives.

The loss of my grandmother overwhelmed me so much that it could have passed for indifference.

The organs of grief seemed to have been seared away, like I had stared at the sun.

On the other hand I've wept over the loss of some of my pets.

Coincidentally, shortly after the loss of my grandmother, I was sick for three years with all sorts of undiagnosable problems.

It was only after I started feeling physically better that I recognized the depth of my grief. It felt like I might have followed her into the grave if I hadn't pulled out of it in time.

<comment><USER6> It seems that as emotions become more subtle and deep, is is harder to express them.

Think of the love between an old couple and a bunch of newly weds who can't stop repeating "I love you" to each other...eventually there seems to be a point where you don't need to say it anymore.

I've had a similar experience to you with the death of a loved one. The grief was so deep and overwhelming that no action (not even crying) could express it properly.

So I've concluded that surface emotions are easily expressed and you need a master to really express the depths (in the form of art, poetry etc.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> A few years ago I was forced to put my cat down due to a neighbors dog attacking her.

I took her to an emergency vet and spent over $3k trying to save her, but at some point it became obvious that we couldn't and so the decision was made to put her to sleep.

Throughout all of this I was upset and worried, but not overly so. In my mind, I cared about her, but it was still just a cat.

Until they put her in my arms. I remember she looked up at me and started purring and I just completely lost it. I'm not one who can cry in front of other people, but at that moment I couldn't help it.

It took months before I stopped turning around expecting her to be there. When it first happened my girlfriend made a comment about killing the dog. I know she didn't mean it, she was just angry and lashing out. She still can't look at a picture of her without crying.

Reading the description of Augustus brought it all back.

I basically don't have a relationship with that neighbor. I haven't gone into detail, but that neighbor was either malicious or dumb. I chose to believe dumb because that sort of anger does no one any good but I can't bring myself to build any sort of relationship with the man.

I miss my programming buddy.

<comment><USER8> I lost my cat in my 20ies, which died of old age. I wasn't living with my parents anymore for years when this happened. I still sometimes weep when I think about it, decades later.

My father got cancer and lived with it for about 7 years before dying. Our relationship wasn't exactly close. When he was in the last weeks, I got so used to the hospitals and health issues that everything seemed so normal to me. I knew exactly what was eventually going to happen though. It only hit me two days before he died, and it was with the brutality of an instantaneous train-wreck.

You could have told me everything, exactly as I wrote it down now, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have made a difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Grief is the point of living. Only when losing something or someone hurts you, you know their true value to yourself.

<comment><USER10> _> Only when losing something or someone hurts you, you know their true value to yourself._

I strongly disagree. Self-aware, introspective people who deliberately examine what's important to themselves in a conscious effort to not take it for granted, do not need to lose it to only then know the true value of it.

<comment><USER11> I don't know, I freak out just thinking at the depths of loss I'll experience when my parents die. I'm aware enough by partially inspecting what they mean and do for me to have a hard time fathoming the total of that "calculation."

<comment><USER12> Read about stoics and negative visualization then give it a shot. Live in that uncomfortable mental space of life without your parents. Not to dull their life and your time left with them, but the opposite! The stoics used negative visualization to appreciate what they had. Many people mistake the stoics for being morbid, but it should work for most people to enhance their time and ability to stay present with people they love. It is a profound and different way to live compared to how most people seem to approach mortality, but it works well for me. When they pass, there will still be grief, but you will take their passing with the sure knowledge you optimized your time with them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Grief and love are sisters, woven together from the beginning. Their kinship reminds us that there is no love that does not contain loss and no loss that is not a reminder of the love we carry for what we once held close." \- Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow

</comment><comment><USER14> It has taken me a long time to internalize that grief is not a "bad" feeling, but rather just an uncomfortable one. Until I was fully willing to experience it, instead of avoid or ignore it, I was completely unable to move on. Grief is indeed strange.

<comment><USER15> Can't we argue this is true for all "bad" feelings? If they were utterly useless, why would they still exist? They have a function.

Love and grief is basically akin to "what goes up must go down". No high without the low, like the rollercoaster life is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> >> There are a number of high quality teams working on next generation protocols today (Dfinity, Cosmos, Polkadot, Ethereum 2, Algorand

If any of these projects take over and crush all the other projects, I'm going to have to seriously consider quitting software development and work in marketing instead. The best thing about these projects is their marketing IMO.</comment>


The Russian Laundromat - <AUTHOR> https://www.reportingproject.net/therussianlaundromat/index.php#home <comment><USER2> Not bad, but it is just one scheme among hundreds (Cyprus, anyone?), tailored for any arrangement. We Russians just love evading the government (any of them) — 70 years of USSR taught us the necessity and the skills required.

<comment><USER3> Long history indeed. While for decades it was the government enslaving its citizens and the individuals evading the government, now it's the crooks and thieves in the government stealing from everyone else.</comment></comment>


Saudi prince to donate $32bn fortune to charity - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-33353370

<comment><USER2> Wow</comment>


Definition of Hackerpreneur - <AUTHOR> http://www.ktaylor.name/2009/09/definition-of-hackerpreneur.html

<comment><USER2> Being a hacker and being an entrepreneur are both creative activities (even that is contrary to common wisdom).

There are lots of hackerpreneurs. How to make them more successful? Maybe getting across that it is more than just a great app. It is scratching an itch.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice...I guess some of us are stuck being hackerployees for the moment!</comment>


Adding a fiber link to my home network - <AUTHOR> https://michael.stapelberg.ch/posts/2020-08-09-fiber-link-home-network/ <comment><USER2> This is slightly tangential but if you are moving and fiber internet is an important consideration for you then check out this tool I made to check fiber connectivity in bulk:

[https://gigahood.com/](https://gigahood.com/)

It also checks within 500 ft of the address. You may be able to trench a fiber line out yourself at that distance.

<comment><USER3> Is there any service that will monitor MLS/others and look for houses and apartments in a price range, within a commute distance (by train or car or bus), and with internet access?

I think I'd pay for a service that did this.

<comment><USER4> I would build that - but I have a feeling that the realty companies would prevent and/or fight you for scraping their data. Anyone have experience with that that can offer some info/advice?

<comment><USER5> I've scraped MLS for personal use to build a very similar tool (draw on a map, highlight new listings, able to hide listings), and had no technical issues at all, just a simple curl call. This was a few years ago, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've used some of the pre-terminated assemblies w/ pulling hardware from these guys: [https://www.lanshack.com/PreterminatedAssemblies.aspx](https://www.lanshack.com/PreterminatedAssemblies.aspx)

The pricing is reasonable, especially compared to having a contractor come in and pull and terminate small, low-count runs, and the results have been very good for me.

Edit (now that I'm not on a phone): I like these assemblies because I get a "super power" feeling, being being able to cheaply add fiber runs for special cases. The most recent one was extending a single-mode campus fiber termination to a new closet within a building. Loss budget was very high (because the campus run was fairly short) so we did a simple "glass-to-glass" patch on one of these assemblies to the new closet. It was going to be a couple thousand dollars for a contractor to come in and do a proper fusion splice, but the Customer ended up spending $250 for favorable results.

<comment><USER7> As I wrote in another post, <1km fibre runs don't need fusion splicing. This is what I tell all people still insisting on using expensive multimode for local fibre setup for ease of splicing.

Multimode will start to struggle at distances at which even worst quality single mode setup will work just fine. I feel SMF has no sense economically these days.

Low power, single mode SFP transceivers are everywhere now, and in general, SMF setup is incomparably more future proof.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The photos show a lot of cables stuck to walls. I'm surprised people are ok with this.

Every house I have lived in has done it too and it's the first thing I rip out.

I see contractors (usually ISP installers) doing this inside and outside houses too and it irritates me. UV, animals/insects, wind etc gets at them and water goes in the holes. The fixings that hold the cable rust/degrade and fall out.

Doing it right costs more and takes longer but I'm unsure if the cost is greater when you look back 5-10 years.

Maybe doing this is slightly more repairable if the place is a rental?

<comment><USER9> You may underestimate the time and effort that can be involved in in-wall cabling in a retrofit situation... like most in my area I live in a house that is coming up on 100 years old, while I do my best to run all cables through walls there are situations where I have to run cables in conduits on the exterior as the only way to do otherwise would be to resheetrock most of the ceiling. There's just a cost-benefit analysis here, and most contractors aren't willing to put in the time (because the customer doesn't want to pay for the time!) to open up the walls to get access to run cables through them. Keep in mind that when you consider demolition, hanging sheetrock, texture, prime, paint, and clean, any cabling situation where walls need to be opened is probably going to be billed as a full day, and local building/licensing codes may not allow a low-voltage technician to perform that work, requiring a builder to be subcontracted.

There are tricks like flexible installer bits that allow for short runs through-wall without removing the wallboard but you're going to need an access hole every couple of studs at least... and at that point you're setting yourself up for so much patching it might be faster to just open up the wall entirely. You can also use all kinds of wire-pulling tools, I have a 30' telescoping fiberglass pole that I have used to run cables through inaccessible attics (flat and shallow roofs common here), but once again, you get into situations where running the cable for a single surveillance camera is an 8-hour job! I put up with this for my own house but clients aren't so happy about it...

And all of this is assuming wood-frame walls which are the norm for interior walls but exterior in many areas can be brick, adobe, etc., and blown-in insulation is great for heating bills but can make cable runs in exterior walls a huge headache.

At the same time, cables run "cable-installer style" (stapled to gables and run down exterior to straight-through holes) regularly last for over a decade and are very easy to repair when there are problems and modify when needs change. It's hard to blame them.

<comment><USER10> It cost me $3000 to have a professional run 7 CAT6 cables to every room throughout my 80 yo house, plus one to the modem, along with wiring proper earthed power into another four locations or so. The man was not claustrophobic. Plus less than $500 for another contractor to fill in and paint the sheetrock that was required in storage rooms. The cables meet in the basement in a server rack.

It was well worth it to me. I have teenagers and everyone has an Eero in their room, plus hardwire for the home theater and office.

<comment><USER8> That's a lot of money. I've run about that many and while the the material cost was relatively low, but it has been days of work and a lot of frustration and mess. I think you picked wisely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can confirm, DIY fiber is not too difficult to figure out yourself. For most uses outside of an ISP you don't need the super-low loss that you get with a fusion splicer.

When I needed to wire up a campground and some cabins I studied a couple of the Fiber Optic Association textbooks and I recommend them as informative and easy to read. Also it is pretty easy to spend $50-100 over and over again on "one more tool" to save time and effort.

On a random tangent, DIY fiber topics often makes me think back to a book about Kevin Mitnick (Takedown I think) where the author describes how he has fiber running around his house for various reasons. That was pre-1995 which was when the book was published; I imagine it was much more difficult and expensive back then.

<comment><USER12> I honestly found it no harder than anything else - I just did a 300m run to an outbuilding, as 802.11g just wasn't cutting it, and the project basically compromised two media converters, a reel of armoured fibre, and a termination kit - took all of an afternoon to do.

I guess it's just overkill in most scenarios - but for long runs, you can't beat it. I've also got a 200m cat6 PoE run with a repeater/voltage booster halfway down, and it does duplexed gigabit just fine - which even further limits the scenarios in which fibre is the better option. Even with the repeater it was cheaper than the fibre alone, never mind the media converters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This bend-insensitive fiber the article mentions, combined with the narrower diameter than Cat-6, might make it more practical to run across the tops of mopboards in my rented apartment.

WiFi speeds are usually OK, but the apartments density is so high here (and new `xfinitywifi` APs are often popping up on my channel), that I'm almost ready to move back to cabled for most purposes.

<comment> TD-Linux If you want thinner than normal Cat6 but can handle a bit more than 0.9mm, there is also thin Cat6 available: [https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=34213](https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=34213)

It's 2.6mm diameter, and I had success running it between baseboards and carpet.

<comment><USER13> Thanks! I'll have to try at least one run of this thin Cat6.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What's oddly left out in the article is the detail of whether or not he already had a network switch with ports supporting more than GbE - the price for these things start at around 250-300 CHF which would double his suggested total cost - or if he's just linking two computers together. Personally I would just go with 2.5GBASE Ethernet and compact-diameter cabling. 2.5GBASE PCIe cards cost around $15 a pop.

<comment><USER15> QNAP has some fairly cheap routers that have a couple 10GbE ports, like this one: [https://www.qnap.com/en-us/product/qsw-308-1c](https://www.qnap.com/en- us/product/qsw-308-1c)

I paid $200 for mine. Not cost-effective if you have more than a couple 10GbE- capable devices, but great for hooking up a fast NAS to a couple primary workstations and leaving the rest of the network 1GbE.

<comment><USER14> Thanks for the name-drop, the brand was new to me, though it has just regular GbE ports unless I'm seeing the speeds wrong. 2.5GBASE/5GBASE is something that would be interesting as it works on regular Cat 5e/6 and 8P8C.

<comment><USER15> I think you're seeing the speeds wrong :P Not all the ports are the same speed.

> ... providing three 10GbE SFP+ ports (with one 10GbE SFP+/RJ45 combo port) > and eight Gigabit ports

<comment><USER14> No I'm sure I'm reading it right: the 8 ports on the side are the interesting ones which you can connect your regular wired devices to, as 99.99% of wired consumer networking is on 8P8C Ethernet, not SFP+.

<comment><USER8> I think it's a different usage you're thinking of. Presumably you'd like 10Gb everywhere, while the article and OP are presumably aiming to link a cor switch or high usage device (NAS) at 10Gb while everything else remains 1Gb.

<comment><USER14> I'd like anything over 1Gbit/s within the LAN, between all of the LAN clients. 2.5G is a very affordable drop-in compatible upgrade - plain Ethernet cables and PCIe cards - but I've been having problems finding a decent SoHo switch with 2.5G+ ports. The QSW-1105-5T recommended in this thread seems like a good solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm looking at using fiber and media converters to connect 7 houses and 2 entrances in a security estate. Main reason is to get IP cameras (and shared access to them) at various points but reduce the impact a lightning strike would have. We have a lot of lightning in this area and I'd be bleak if one strike wiped out multiple houses worth of network and gear.

If anyone has done anything like this, advice welcome.

<comment><USER17> Funny. Your first sentence had me wondering whether you're south african. Then you followed up with lighting strikes :-) Agreed, I think your best option is fibre. A few Mikrotik's (reasonably priced) and SFP modules will work perfect for you. I think just getting your own splicing kit will make this easier for you and allow some experimentation.

<comment><USER18> Don't forget that outdoor cable oftentimes has a metal strength member in it so it can be run from poles. The underground direct-bury kind of cable has metal armour for rodent-proofing and protection when the ground settles. Just because it's fiber cable doesn't mean you can forget about lightning protection and proper grounding. If the airwaves aren't too congested wireless might be a better option here.

<comment><USER19> You can always blow metal-free fiber in pipes. I'd use PE pressure pipe of suitable size, pull a string into it with a vacuum cleaner and pull fiber in... Hopefully the fiber survives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Skipping the field-terminated bit, I just grabbed a hunk of preterminated fiber and some dumb media converters. It creates a dielectric gap in my network, so lightning and surges coming in on the cable modem, can't damage the rest of the network. (I used to fry a wifi router about twice a year during storms, and got sick of replacing them...)

<comment><USER21> Wouldn't you still blow one of the media converters twice a year?

<comment><USER22> Probably not because the inputs were previously blown due to either ground shift voltage or EM induced voltage in the long Cat5 run itself. Neither occur with dielectric cable.

<comment><USER20> Bingo. Now the whole cluster associated with the cable modem can rise and fall with it, because there's nothing conductive tying it to a node at a different voltage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Armored fiber is another useful tool for the home or small business user. Much less fragile which can be a big help depending on your application

[https://community.fs.com/blog/what-is-armored-fiber-optic- ca...](https://community.fs.com/blog/what-is-armored-fiber-optic-cable.html)

</comment><comment><USER19> I'd recommend using managed devices as opposed to using dumb media converters. If there are issues, you have no insight into the issues with unmanaged devices.

<comment><USER23> To expand on this - instead of using a media converter, use a small managed switch.

A 'dumb' media converter is a little bit cheaper but there's no way of knowing if the failure is due to the cable, the media converter on either end, or what. Without physically inspecting it, that is.

All fine for something inside your house but not something where you have a remote location.

<comment><USER24> Better yet, if you're connecting two devices that have PCI ports -- an eBay Mellanox ConnectX3 is great. Solarflare also works, but Mellanox has had better driver support in my experience (though we'll see now that they are owned by Nvidia).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I just got fs.com to make up one for to the right length. Worked nicely

</comment><comment><USER7> A much cheaper set:

$13 single mode 10G SFP transceiver set [quite uncertain what they are now... maybe something not quite ethernet compatible]: [https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33040961103.html](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33040961103.html)

2x $20 DLink 10G SFP [a much more certainly standard compatible]: [https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32847226618.html](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32847226618.html)

$50 1km G657A2 bend resistant single mode cable: [https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33045053714.html](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33045053714.html)

$20 20x gel LC connectors: [https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32810983763.html](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32810983763.html)

$15 20x gel splices: [https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000183799694.html](https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000183799694.html)

<comment><USER26> That's not a bidi SFP. The attenuators aren't needed either.

Then there's the fact you are ordering from Aliexpress, rather than Fiberstore. Fiberstore has multiple locations and warehouses, a returns policy, a level of customer service and no shipping charges.

<comment><USER7> Yes, it's not a BiDi, and I think they messed up with the text. I picked the attenuators for the power of proper 10G-LR, so yeah, they are probably not needed for the short range transceivers.

<comment><USER26> LR optics don't require attenuators.

OP didn't mess up the text. They clearly wanted bidi optics as they only ran one strand.

<comment><USER7> Can you identify what those 1.4km transceivers are? [https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?SearchText=1.4km+10g](https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?SearchText=1.4km+10g)

Are they even remotely standard compatible?

<comment><USER26> 1.4 km is a curious distance. Perhaps they are optics that didn't make the 2 km cut and are sold at a discount?

I wouldn't worry too much about the standards. There are lots of optics that don't stick to the standards, but go above and beyond.

I'm more interested in the use case at hand and if the specs will support the use case.

<comment><USER7> I saw a lot of singlemode wired datacentres in China, worked on them, but never bothered to look what they use for hardware. I wonder if this is the proprietary semi-standard that big Chinese telcos push for top of the rack hardware.

I once heard that Huawei was trying to do singlemode with VCSEL laser, but the descriptions clearly identify those as using 1310nm DFB [http://www.6comgiga.com/downloadRepository/826d97f5-c91a-454...](http://www.6comgiga.com/downloadRepository/826d97f5-c91a-4545-ad90-7c44ecc5e61e.pdf) . It is not a 2km multimode

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Maybe watching Comcast employees use a microscope when fusing individual fibers together when installing their service has made me feel like sticking my own connectors on fiber is a bad idea.

The thin diameter is a nice feature, but the ease of breaking them would keep me from installing them anywhere copper wiring provides adequate performance.

<comment><USER28> People have to be careful when splicing fiber when every dB of loss is important, but modern fusion splicers make it pretty easy.

For just running between houses, I've seen links working over fiber that was cleaved with linesmens pliers before a crimp on connector was added.

<comment><USER29> So I searched up "fusion splicers" and apparently there are machines that automatically align the fiber and fuses them together, with only ~0.02db of loss. Does a human doing it manually with a microscope get significantly better results?

<comment><USER9> Fusion splicers are very expensive, under $10k is the cheap end. ISPs own them of course for field work but home installs are often done by small independent contractors (one-person companies are common) without the budget. The situation has improved a lot over the last few years, but historically fusion splicing was such a delicate process with sensitive equipment that ISP crews would pull around an air-conditioned trailer just to house the splicer and its operator. Actually these trailers are still the norm, but the machines have also come down in price and up in flexibility so they aren't so necessary any more (but I'm sure it still really helps productivity to have your tools on hand and not be dripping sweat on the workspace if you do this all day...).

But in any case I find it more likely the installer was using an inspection probe/microscope to verify a field assembly connector than actually splicing. Most field assembly methods don't require a microscope but it's common to use a specialized type of microscope to check the correctness and quality of the face of the connector before use, to avoid future callbacks, which said independent contractor will be penalized for.

<comment><USER28> Expensive if you need to be competitive with higher volume.

Old fusion splicers can be inexpensive. Tradeoff is they take longer to to do alignment and are much heavier than modern splicers.

I got a FSM-30S for sub $3k on eBay years ago. $350 for calibration. I see listings now for under $500. Paid for itself very quickly vs. hiring out as a little ISP. Wasn't hard to learn from YouTube videos and material from Fiber Optic Association.

<comment><USER26> FYI, brand new fusion splicers can be had for under a grand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I've run fiber from my basement to my second floor rack (two cables). It's really cool. Right now its 1G, but I can upgrade it to 10G whenever I feel like paying for new switches.

</comment><comment><USER31> Back in university, my old roommate did networking at a car dealership and brought home old 10Mb fiber connectors. Yes, 10Mb .. designed for range, but certainly not speed.

</comment><comment><USER32> So what? Running the actual fiber to my shop was far less interesting than digging the trench with the backhoe, running conduit, and backfilling the trench.

</comment><comment><USER33> Does anyone actually know how these transceivers work? Is it software or hardware? They can pass an amazing amount of traffic and I've never had them crash.

</comment><comment><USER34> I wish home grade routers would start using SFP already. Very few of them do. Why is that?

<comment><USER35> > home grade routers

That's your answer. The average home user just wants to plug in a device, type in the wifi code, and never think about it again. Only tech nerds want fiber type connectivity. Putting SFP into home devices would see that SFP sitting unused 99.9999% of the time. Why incur the expense of adding it?

<comment><USER36> In fact only tech nerds want wired connectivity at all. Ethernet ports have pretty much disappeared from all laptops.

<comment><USER34> Good ones always come with Ethernet port. I wouldn't even consider buying one without it.

<comment><USER37> I have a MacBook, which don't come with ethernet for the last 4 years. But I do want ethernet. So I simply dock my laptop, and the docking station of course has ethernet.

Of course I do understand that if you're a network engineer, you don't want to screw around with docking stations and dongles and such.

<comment><USER34> I don't consider Apple laptops good to be honest. Things should be simple, but not simpler than simple.

That said, if some device is simply too thin to accommodate a network port, I don't mind using an adapter through USB-C / upcoming USB4 and etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I have symmetrical gig fiber service, and this says it's not possible.

</comment><comment><USER39> I love this:

> I had only ever seen 2mm fiber cables before, and the 0.9mm cables are > incredibly light, flexible and thin! Even pasta is typically thicker:

> (Image of some disorderly 0.9mm thin fiber cables)

> Preparing a delicious pot of glass noodles ;)

</comment><comment><USER40> i was recently in market for a tv. surprisingly, most of it doesn't have Gbps ethernet but just 100mbps.

i ended up using wifi

</comment><comment><USER41> any other reads like this? maybe a bigger one, like connecting a whole building or connecting to an ISP?

</comment><comment><USER42> This is a very unsubtle ad for the website it links/mentions by name about a dozen times.

<comment><USER43> Yeah I got the same feeling that this is an ad, or at least in part sponsored by fs.

<comment><AUTHOR> FS has not paid me to write this, I'm just a happy customer. I paid for all the gear with my own money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> is that 10gbit or 10Gbyte?

<comment><USER45> 10gig ethernet is bits.

100gbit ethernet does exist, but its not overly cheap. That will get you to about 10gigabytes a second. more or less.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Alternative to QuoteRoller + SugarCrm - <AUTHOR>

Quoteroller looks be an ideal service (sugarCrm integration) but their pre-sales team is basically non-existent. The voice messages or email requests to them to answer simple questions hasn't tempted anyone I guess.
I've tried proposable,bidsketch and a few others but none plug-play with sugarcrm.
Does anyone have any suggestions? <comment><USER2> Full disclosure: I'm the founder of Mimiran.

Mimiran integrates with Sugar, although calling it plug & play may be an overstatement. If you ping me through [http://www.mimiran.com/contact/](http://www.mimiran.com/contact/), we can discuss what you need to do and whether Mimiran is a good fit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi thank you for the pointer. I will check it out and ping you as needed.</comment></comment>


How to recognise and deal with a workplace sociopath - <AUTHOR> http://www.cio.com.au/article/537320/how_recognise_deal_workplace_sociopath/

<comment><USER2> This content is very backwards given today's increased focus on mental health. None of their scenarios explore the issue, just traits to watch for and the repeated recommendation that you or they change jobs.</comment>


Rivian Wants to Do for Pickups What Tesla Did for Cars - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/rivian-wants-to-do-for-pickups-what-tesla-did-for-cars/ <comment><AUTHOR> [QUOTE]Rivian is using standard cylindrical cells, like large AA batteries, built into packs. But then it's cleverly sandwiching two layers of packs together, with the liquid cooling that batteries need sealed in the middle. Scaringe grabs a pack to show me "the flow has been optimized to make sure the maximum temperature difference between the hottest and coldest cell of the pack is less than three degrees." That's important because lithium ion batteries are happiest in the same temperature zones as humans. He gets excited again as he explains the cooling loops for battery, traction system, and cabin. "It's so cool, the battery and the thermal system are my favorite parts!"

Double-decker batteries helps Rivian promise huge 180-kWh and 135-kWh capacity packs for its vehicles. The largest pack Tesla now offers is 100-kWh. Its testing shows 450 miles of range might be possible, but it's a long way from EPA tests with an official rating to prove that. Although Scaringe says his team has has worked hard at smoothing air flow, a truck is not an inherently aerodynamic shape, which means freeway driving will be far from efficient.

Eventually, when Rivian is entirely happy with its battery pack design and manufacturing process, it will have to scale it up. As Tesla has shown, that can be the tricky part. The company will do mass production at a plant in Normal, Illinois, with deliveries due to start in late 2020, and sales targets of 50,000 vehicles a year in the US.[/QUOTE]</comment>


Is Getting a PhD Worth It? - <AUTHOR> http://siavashk.github.io/2018/09/05/is-getting-a-phd-worth-it/ <comment><USER2> Why not? It is all worth it, if you have to get PhD just to brag about it and never put it into heart on what you learn, then it's not worth it.

But if you use it for you to share to others, build new ideas to contribute and put it in passion, then it is really worth it.

Many people are struggling and finding a way to get PhD to pursue your dream, but they have lack of funds. But if you can, then why not? Every thing that you learn specially in education is a valuable thing for you as for you to know, education is the only thing that not any man can stole from you.</comment>


Google to drop search rankings of sites with many takedown notices - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/08/google-to-drop-search-rankings-of-sites-with-many-takedown-notices/

<comment><USER2> This concerns me, although maybe more than it should.

My experience with YouTube has been that rightsholders will lie about what they own. Whether this is because they're malicious or lazy, I don't know. But I do know that I've had many YouTube videos incorrectly claimed by music rights agencies.

(To be clear, the videos in question are screencasts of me programming. The only audio is my voice.)

When this happens, I have to dispute the claim. In one case [1], the rightsholder confirmed ownership--even though the video is me _programming_ and the only audio is _my voice_ \--and now I have no recourse.

I can't describe the feeling of anger and powerlessness this has given me. Even though it's just one video and the revenue is in the single digits. Some _asshole_ has claimed my shit as their own, and when I asked for help, the 900-pound playground monitor said _I_ was in the wrong and now refuses to talk to me.

So I'm concerned about Google exercising similar unchecked power over search results.

Now, I've never had anything like this happen with my website, and I don't know that it's fair to extrapolate my experience with YouTube to Google Search. But there it is: I don't trust Google to evaluate copyright infringement correctly.

[1] The video in question is here: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zHt3zlq_Po>

This is what Google says about copyright for that video: [http://jamesshore.com/images/lets-play-tdd/kickstarter- updat...](http://jamesshore.com/images/lets-play-tdd/kickstarter-update12.png)

<comment><USER3> > When this happens, I have to dispute the claim. In one case [1], the > rightsholder confirmed ownership--even though the video is me programming > and the only audio is my voice--and now I have no recourse.

You do have a recourse, a DMCA take down notice requires that the requester swear under penalty of perjury that their statements are true. While suing them would be effective and probably unreasonably expensive, a quicker and cheaper solution is to send a letter to the legal department of said company explaining the situation. Do not threaten to sue them in the letter, as that is illegal, instead clearly explain what they did wrong (issued an invalid take down notice) and how to fix it. Lawyers don't like getting sued and they will work to fix this issue on the off chance you decide to sue them.

If this was very important to you really could sue them, probably for way less money than you think, as this video does make money but also, the take down notice has damaged your brand and wasted your time all things that are valuable and you can demand compensation for.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the suggestions. I did send them an email doing just that, actually. I got no response. I could escalate, but it's not clear to me that the time invested would be worth it. (Actually, I'm pretty sure that it _wouldn't_ be worth it. My opportunity costs are high.)

You mentioned the DMCA, but I'm not so sure YouTube is operating under the DMCA in this matter. My video wasn't taken down, it was just "claimed" under YouTube's own rules.

One thing's for certain, I won't be starting anything new on YouTube. I've moved to private content hosting for my new Javascript series. I pay for it, and I like it that way.

<comment><USER4> Perjury is a felony. It is also grounds for disbarment.

Where's the/a/any prosecutor?

Where's the ABA?

Fail.

P.S. Now, Google, I and a lot of other people will see you as taking sides.

As others have snarkily commented, elsewhere, how soon will you be deranking YouTube?

Fail. Time for us to move on.</comment></comment></comment></comment>