Segway Inventor Dean Kamen Thinks New Stirling Engine Will Get You Off the Grid - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2014/07/02/dean-kamen-thinks-his-new-stirling-engine-could-power-the-world/?utm_campaign=techtwittersf&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social <comment><USER3> I'd say its quite inaccurate to say that Stirling engines will get you 'off the grid'. You are exchanging one grid, electricity generation and distribution, for another, natural gas production and distribution. Your engine may be physically connected to a residential gas distribution network, or practically connected to the gas industry 'grid' if you are expecting large gas bottles to be trucked to your door every few weeks...

<comment><USER4> To me the cool thing about a Stirling engine in the abstract is that it doesn't have to run on natural gas, it can run on anything combustible. They allude to that later on in the article, but it seems like maybe we're not getting the super-flexible versions in the US. If they were selling that, I would definitely consider getting one for my house (when I have a house)

<comment><USER5> They can be run by any heat source, including solar, geothermal, etc

<comment><USER6> That actually confused me. I understand how they can run _off of_ any heat source, but then why is it touted in this article _as a_ heat source? It mentioned that it might be a good idea for a laundry that needs a lot of hot water. But if that's the case, don't you just need an efficient furnace to heat the water regardless? Or is it that this thing can recapture a lot of the energy you're already expending heating up the water by some other means?

<comment><USER7> AFAIK, a Stirling engine is basically a heat pump, it mopved heat from the heat source to some heatsink using the expansion and ocntraction of air. If you were to run water over the heatsink, you'd probably both heat the water and increase the efficiency of the machine by giving a greater heat differential and greater heat conduction rate. S you could use the heat twice basically; one to move the engine's piston and a second time to heat water.

<comment><USER8> stirling engines are also known as hot air engines. there are different models and systems but i have one that already works with the temperature difference between room temperature and my hand temperature. Awesome. There is a german manufacturer under www.boehm-stirling.com that makes really nice stirling motors in different forms like cars, machines and so on.

<comment><USER7> I know, my girlfriend bought me a lovely Boehm stirling engine for my birthday a few years ago and it's fantastic =)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is traditionally called "micro CHP". It has potential in places without district heating infrastructure, otherwise DH CHP is much more efficient.

These aren't really new. Eg here is an article looking at an existing commercial gas powered Stirling micro CHP that's quiet and designed for your house: [http://www.f09.fh- koeln.de/imperia/md/content/personen/somme...](http://www.f09.fh- koeln.de/imperia/md/content/personen/sommer_klaus/forschung/rehva_micro_chp.pdf) \- there's also a comparison to an ICE based equivalent and it has much better electricity generation efficiency.

The total efficiency is going to depend a lot on where you use it. The heating output is locked to the electrical output so you're always going to generate the 5 kW of heat per each kW of electricity, so you have to stop the plant when your hot water tank and house is heated up - or start throwing away all the heat and just run it as a low efficiency genset.

The large pool case sounds like a fit, but from another perspective it's just greenwashing the huge energy sink of the pool. The laundries & restaurants case sounds better here. Or regular houses in climates where a lot of heating is needed most of the year.

<comment><USER10> If you run the number on based on an assumed 30% efficiency and retail gas costs of $0.8 - $1.50 a therm (I _think_ that's reasonable), then you come up with a cost per kWh of electricity within the $0.09 - $0.12 range many US utilities charge. That is, on a cost-of-electricity basis it's a wash.

Mind: gas delivery networks likely would crumble (hopefully not literally) under the increased demand.

Depending on system costs, this could be viable as a back-up power generation option (blackouts, etc.), where electrical service might fail but the gas supply would still work.

Capturing and making use of waste heat could indeed be useful. I see the possibility of full grid independence as very slim, and not particularly compelling (with distributed small, renewable, and intermittent generation, the grid is a useful way to move surpluses and deficits around). Though being somewhat immune to major grid disruptions is a possibility.

I'd also keep an eye on natural gas trends. Supplies aren't endless, though the US EIA's estimates suggest a reference resource case of increasing extraction through 2040 at least, the less optimistic low resource case suggesting a peak by 2030. With fracked _oil_ extraction very likely to peak before 2020, a transfer of fuel and energy uses onto natural gas will change market dynamics considerably. I've got my doubts as to how long gas will remain cheap. And suspect that its increased use in transport (EIA sees a large role in trucking) other uses may be limited.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Dean Kamen is one of my heroes, actually. In particular, his effort to make water purification machines for poverty-stricken areas is likely to have more health impact than anything currently doable. Given that some significant fraction of diseases are water-borne.

This is what we as engineers should be doing.

<comment><USER11> Yes and his work in FIRST. It may not be as philanthropic, but I've seen it save lives in the US. Kids who otherwise would turn to substance abuse/vandalism/crime, FIRST teams (at least my team) provided a safe, loving, and an actually exciting/engaging/educational experience to kids in not-so- nice homes and families. That man is doing something really great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The approach is not entirely new. A company called Sunmachine in Germany built a similar device producing 3KW and fed by wood pellets made from saw dust - <USER2> even more carbon friendly. Sunmachine had to file for bankruptcy as it couldn't find the working capital to produce the neccessary machines it had in its order books to bridge the gap before getting paid after installation of the units. It was aimed at the residential property market.

<comment><USER13> Surprising that they could not get a loan given their order backlog. Were the margins terribly small or something?

<comment><USER12> it was during the 2008/2009 credit crunch - banks just wouldn't loan. It was eventually auctioned off. They also had a technology to run the stirling engine via a solar dish that tracked the course of the sun...pretty cool stuff

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A similar product called WhisperGen was around a number of years ago: [http://www.whispergen- europe.com/productspec_en.php?fm=whisp...](http://www.whispergen- europe.com/productspec_en.php?fm=whispergen&fp=Product%20Specs)

Stirling Engine combined heat and power appliance the size of a dishwasher. About 10,000 Euros for 1KW of electricity output. I don't think it made it in the marketplace.

</comment><comment><USER15> Tangentially related - Anybody know anything about the progress or success of the BloomBox from Bloom Energy? They were billed as a close-to-magical way to produce energy when they were first announced, but I haven't heard much about them since then.

<comment><USER16> Sounds like they're making progress:

[http://gigaom.com/2013/11/18/apple-solar-farm-fuel-cell- farm...](http://gigaom.com/2013/11/18/apple-solar-farm-fuel-cell-farms- exclusive-photos-investigative-report/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Maybe I'm just failing at finding the info, but does anyone know how much natural gas is used to create that 10kw of power? As the Stirling engine is a heat engine, my first thought is that one could potentially have a dual-mode generator here, using solar thermal, etc, to help generate power in those areas where it's amenable to do so.

<comment><USER10> Stirling (and other thermal-cycle engines) are about 30-35% in converting heat energy to useful work. In this case electricity. So dividing 10 kW by 30% will give you the rough energy input. Casting that in therms/hr. (usual natural gas billing unit in the US is therms), it's about 1.14. Residential price is on the order of around $0.80 - $1.50/therm, so you're looking at about $25/day for 10 kW of continuous power. Which isn't far from what you'd be paying for electricity: $21 - 29 at $0.09 - $0.12 per kWh.

In terms of volume, 1 ft^3 is about 1025 btu, a therm is 10,000 btu, so you're looking at 97.5, let's call it 100 ft^3 of natural gas consumption per day.

As for running a Stirling engine on solar energy, or another heat source, yes, you could do that. Again, you need 33 kW of input power, which means a 33m^3 collecter surface -- that's 5.8m on a side, or 19 feet.

Because the Stirling's hot end is a point, you'd need tracking systems or a working fluid to deliver heat to it from your mirrors.

Incidentally, you can answer a lot of these questions using GNU units, written by Adrian Mariano. The great thing about it is conversion between different units and relationships, e.g., energy per hour per unit area. I find it invaluable in looking at energy, renewable, and related issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Does this seem like a step backward to anyone else? We want to generate electricity with renewable sources instead of fossil fuels. Also, I'm skeptical that a small in-home generator of any type could compete with the efficiency of a commercial power plant, even if that plant burns natural gas.

<comment><USER19> _I 'm skeptical that a small in-home generator of any type could compete with the efficiency of a commercial power plant, even if that plant burns natural gas._

A small local _generator_ will certainly be behind what a big commercial _generator_ will do, but if the waste heat is also being harnessed ("Combined Heat and Power," or CHP), combined efficiencies of 60%-80% are possible. Commercial electrical generation is typically around 40% efficient, so CHP really can offer very big benefits.

Of course, there's nothing fundamentally efficient about a single family living in a huge mansion with a 10KW energy demand and a big heated swimming pool.

I would have guessed these things would be most attractive to hotels, universities, airports, truck stops, apartments and condos, and other institutional-scale places that have a significant round-the-clock demand for electricity and hot water.

I wonder what it says about the device and the market that they're planning to sell to well-heeled homeowners first.

<comment><USER20> > I wonder what it says about the device and the market that they're planning > to sell to well-heeled homeowners first.

I think the key is in where he says a unit with a fifth the output wouldn't be a fifth the cost. If he can use the luxury end of the market to drive the manufacturing costs down, I'm sure general retail won't be far behind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > So in 10 years will everyone have one? > "I'd say yes. Ten years from today > the probability that you are depending on wires hanging on tree branches is > as likely as that you'll still be installing land lines for telephones. > Close to zero."

Well this seems out of touch with reality. This is how I read it: "Why maintain 1 power plant when you can instead ship and maintain 100000 instead?"

<comment><USER22> Remember, this is the same guy that was telling us the Segway would revolutionize travel.

<comment><USER23> I remember when Kamen was going on all the morning shows saying that he was going to change the world and transportation. Many speculated that it was a Sterling Engine. It was the Segway.

<comment><USER22> But the Sterling engine is 200 years old. It's hard to imagine he's going to be able to do something spectacular with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why do they keep talking about pool heating? If I just want to heat up something up and have natural gas on hand, I'm just going to burn the gas, not run it through some engine and use the electricity.

<comment><USER24> Cogeneration is a great way to increase the efficiency of these systems. It's not that you would buy one to heat your pool, it's that you can heat your pool from the waste heat of the power generator. The power plant that generates your grid-delivered electricity also generates waste heat, but it's many miles away so that heat is discarded.

A sterling engine isn't the only type of generation that works for co-gen. Most of these micro generation proposals involve some form of waste heat recovery in the form of warm water.

<comment><USER25> > The power plant that generates your grid-delivered electricity also > generates waste heat, but it's many miles away so that heat is discarded.

Not necessarily. Some areas have central heating and can use both the electricity and the waste heat.

<comment><USER26> They can't use the waste heat from the actual power generation though, just excess heat from electrical appliance inefficiencies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> An interstitial, a popover to explain the site's navigation, then an ad which scrolls over the content? You've got to be keen to want to read this stuff.

<comment><USER27> Didn't notice any of that. I use [httpsb]([https://github.com/gorhill/httpswitchboard/](https://github.com/gorhill/httpswitchboard/)). For Firefox, NoScript should do the job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> > _" Kamen believes that aside from mansion owners, the Beacon 10 is just > right for businesses like laundries or restaurants that use a lot of hot > water. With commercialization partner NRG Energy, he's so far deployed > roughly 20 of the machines."_

If the primary use for a potential customer is going to be heating water, essentially doing _heat- >generator->electricity->heat->water_, how is this a good idea? Surely people who want to heat lots of water would do better if they cut out the middlemen and just did _heat- >water_.

Of course electricity is more versatile than hot water, but if your primary focus is on heating lots of water and you are already committed to making heat yourself, it seems senseless to me to not just apply the heat directly to the water.

<comment><USER22> They wouldn't be using electricity to heat the water. Of course you would end up using less gas if you just heated the water directly like most of us already do for our morning shower.

The efficiency of any heat engine depends on the gradient between the input and output temperature. So if you have a constant supply of cold water the Stirling engine can operate very efficiently, and the cold water becomes hot water which you can use for other things.

Of course, like I said, this is true of _any_ heat engine. You can do the same thing by heating a boiler and using the steam to drive a turbine, which also generates waste heat for other things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Kamen has demonstrated a great talent for generating media coverage of his products - think back to the incredible level of media attention around launch of "It"... which turned out to be the segway. If he's working on a new product, expect a similar level of media engagement.

There's a good book about development and launch of the segway "CODE NAME GINGER: The Story Behind Ginger and Dean Kamen's Quest to Invent a New World"[1]. It's in paperback as "Reinventing the Wheel: A Story of Genius, Innovation, and Grand Ambition"[2]. It also has some interesting coverage of what happened inside the company during that time.

[1] [http://www.stevekemper.net/disc.htm](http://www.stevekemper.net/disc.htm)

[2] [http://www.amazon.com/Reinventing-Wheel-Genius-Innovation- Am...](http://www.amazon.com/Reinventing-Wheel-Genius-Innovation- Ambition/dp/0060761385)

</comment><comment><USER30> Sterling Engines are cool. Here is one being used in combination with a Fresnel lens. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_AFnW1bZL8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_AFnW1bZL8)

</comment><comment><USER31> There's a Canadian startup that I think is doing something pretty similar: [http://www.etalim.com/](http://www.etalim.com/)

</comment><comment><USER32> I'd love to see someone make a smaller, inexpensive stirling engine that can be used to recapture waste energy, eg turn some AC heat into electricity.

</comment><comment><USER33> As cool as this is. Even with the fact that in the US it's decided you'd hook it up to a gas line. There is still the issue of "leasing it" to the homeowner.

Seriously, why would anyone lease a home generator. Maybe I'm old school, but I can't see the benefits to the homeowner if you're undercutting your savings from installing one of these devices by paying "RENT" on the generator?

</comment><comment><USER34> This article reminded me of a very log blog by some guy in south america who detailed building his own hydroelectric power plant. I wanted to find it so I could link it here but I cant. Help?

<comment><USER35> Was this it? [http://ludens.cl/paradise/turbine/turbine.html](http://ludens.cl/paradise/turbine/turbine.html)

<comment><USER34> Yes! Thank you

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> No mention of the cost of the output electricity?

<comment><USER37> No mention of how much more efficient is it compare to any other generator either...

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I thought he died using a Segway, but it was the owner of the company, Jimi Heselden [1].

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1315518/Segway- tycoo...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1315518/Segway-tycoon-Jimi- Heselden-dies-cliff-plunge-scooters.html)

</comment><comment><USER39> Let's look at who's behind it, what it is, how it can be used, and where the benefits accrue:

* Who: NRG, while not a utility, is an owner of utility-scale generation capacity. They wholesale electricity to utilities for distribution and resale. Their portfolio is largely fossil-fuel but increasingly renewables [1]. They see themselves in the "death spiral" some other generation suppliers do [3][4].

* What: Per [2], it's a combined natural-gas-in ( 50KW Th ) heat-out / grid-power-in / gas-to-electrical-power-out (Stirling engine, 10 KW max ) / grid-and-home-power-out (15KW max) / solar-power-in / battery-power-both-ways (15KW max) / inverter system, tech specs subject to change.

More per [2]:

      "A single unit can integrate natural gas, solar panels,
      wind turbines and batteries for storage," NRG says. "The
      device is connected to the grid, which allows the two to
      work seamlessly together. But if the grid's power goes
      down, the engine's energy stays up. Any excess generated
      energy can be sent back to the grid and may be credited
      for your benefit."
      .
      Aside from the 15 kW maximum electrical output, output
      can be used for space heating (35 kW or 0.12 MMBTU) or
      hot water (200 gallons per hour at 70° rise). Additional
      uses include snow melt and spa and pool heating.
      .
      The technical specifications are subject to change.
      .
      When necessary, the unit seamlessly transitions to a
      backup power system, to maintain continuous operations,
      NRG says.
      .
      The Beacon 10 unit's dimensions are 3 ft. 8 in. long by 2
      ft. 6 in. wide by 4 ft.high, which NRG says is slightly
      larger than a washing machine.
      .
      The unit weighs 1,500 lbs.

* How it can be used: Disrupt the utility's business by selling or leasing equipment directly to end users, and by doing energy arbitrage with the utility.

The whole business of solar integration and battery integration is optional, and smells of "greenwashing-by-association" to me: The cheapest install of this machine would not include a solar component nor battery, each of which might be very expensive in addition to this machine. Who could afford all that? Certainly not everyone.

* Where benefits accrue: See [5] for the long story, but it looks like NRG mainly. If you lease it from NRG, you may not get as much of the benefit of energy arbitrage.

* What I think of it: Regulators should insist on a "connection charge" for this and accept energy sold at wholesale prices, while selling to the user at retail prices. Disclosure: I own a solar system with net metering, but believe a "connection charge" is entirely reasonable /for those who have their own generation capability/ and thus use the grid for sale of distributed generation, but /not/ for those who don't.

</comment><comment>=

[1] [http://www.nrg.com/renew/renewable- generation/](http://www.nrg.com/renew/renewable-generation/)

[2] [http://www.energychoicematters.com/stories/20131022a.html](http://www.energychoicematters.com/stories/20131022a.html)

[3] [http://www.utilitydive.com/news/facing-decline-nrg-energy- fo...](http://www.utilitydive.com/news/facing-decline-nrg-energy-forges-new- business-models/234896/)

[4] www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/NRG-Energy-Deploying-Dean-Kamens- Solar-Smart-In-Home-Generator

[5] [http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/11/who- wi...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/11/who-will-compete- with-energy-companies-in-the-future-apple-comcast-and-you/281109/)

<comment><USER40> > The cheapest install of this machine would not include a solar component nor > battery, each of which might be very expensive in addition to this machine. > Who could afford all that? Certainly not everyone.

I've seen German stirling engines that use a fresnel lens focusing sunlight to supply the heat - and the most expensive part is the sun-tracking software and equipment.

<comment><USER41> Do you have a link?

<comment><USER42> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXl8DJdrsuc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXl8DJdrsuc)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I have serious objections to anything that increases reliance on fossil fuels. Or anything that releases more carbon to the atmosphere for that matter.

There are clean ways to get you off the grid. This is not one of them. At least not entirely.

</comment><comment><USER44> Oh, it's Mr. Ultra-Hype again.

</comment><comment><USER45> Wait, I thought Segway inventor died after driving a Segway off a cliff. Not trolling.

<comment><USER35> Not the inventor, the new CEO who had bought the company: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimi_Heselden#Death](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimi_Heselden#Death)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Andrea Rossi's Energy Catalyzer, which uses LENR (Low Energy Nuclear Reaction), is far more interesting and will actually get you off the grid.

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

<comment><USER47> I'll believe in ECAT when Rossi lets _anyone but himself_ test the thing, and those tests demonstrate the things he's claiming.</comment></comment>


Mender and Azure IoT Facilitate Robust and Secure Software Management Update - <AUTHOR> https://mender.io/blog/mender-and-microsoft-azure-iot-facilitate-robust-and-secure-device-software-management-update <comment> Lex-2008 Smart move for Microsoft!</comment>


Paul Graham on immigration - <AUTHOR> http://rwcg.wordpress.com/2014/12/29/paul-graham-on-immigration/

<comment><USER2> The topic of immigration and jobs to foreign workers can be a contentious issue for many people with strong national pride and identity but the world is just moving at such a fast pace and technology at an even faster pace that fundamental fixes to many modern skills and labour challenges are on trans- generation timelines... time that the momentum of change doesn't have to wait. As this is the case we have to look beyond our borders and reach out anywhere we have to, to overcome the challenges. This is fundamental entrepreneurship and business.

I don't feel that Sonics counter arguments to Paul Graham hold much clout when we really think about it so I'll break a couple of his counter points down and give my thoughts on them. I've removed some of the original text for the point of being succinct.

1) 'why is this 'exceptional' thing suddenly the standard? No, we need to leave all those people (99% of normal americans) sitting at home and rewire all our immigration laws to ensure that some mythical 'exceptional programmers' can get here'

Fortunately these workers are not mythical and it's not a hope that these people exist. Factually they're out there. Exceptional coders are not just people who can write code, they are people who can self interpret challenges and visualise the solutions far beyond the spec and the stated requirements. Great programmers can marry the standard technology with new and unexpected solutions. You cannot teach this stuff, it requires individual initiative, passion and personality. This goes far beyond textbook college coding education.

2) 'we might just as well assert that 95% of 'great', oh, let's say, construction workers, or librarians, or dental techs, are born outside the US. But so what? Does this mean we need to displace all the domestic construction workers/librarians/dental techs so that we can suck up only the 'great'/'exceptional' ones from elsewhere?'

These industries themselves rarely have innovation and deal with constants. Tech however transcends all industries and is thus driving the modern economy. Whether it's Banking & Investment, Social media & Communication, P2P Lending, Manufacturing or what ever you can imagine, coding is needed.

3) What's so special about programming that it – and it alone – is the industry where the US has to wave everyone in?

Tech is the fabric of the modern world, little else can be held to the same stature. And as I wrote above, it transcends all industries. In the interconnected world that we live in, watching and reacting to competitors is nothing like it's ever been before. Small teams of great programmers can launch a competitors idea and get traction quicker then the good team of programmers originally working on the idea.

4) Who exactly are these 'few thousand' 'great programmers' – so great that they're (uniformly) greater than any American – that we don't let in, anyway? I actually don't buy this.

They're people who are much hungrier than the comfortable consumer in the west. From societies and cultures that drive home discipline and education far beyond us in the west. They're from countries where being the best you can be is the only way to a proper life. Work ethic, skills and culture is superior to the comfortable and personal standards of average western individuals.

5) why doesn't this hypothetical guy, if he's so 'great' and 'exceptional', just do his own thing?" Where they're from the infrastructure and support networks perhaps are just not up to scratch. The cards are stacked against them even more than in the west. Not only this, the blog post author is assuming that exceptional coders, as a general rule of thumb, should want to run their own company.</comment>


To help model financial systems, some economists are turning to biology - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/549725/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> 18 years ago Jane Jacobs published _The Nature of Economies_ , which explicitly applies principles of biomimicry to economic philosophy. It's absolutely brilliant and has been the cornerstone of my economic thinking ever since. Also, it's been a somewhat sardonic pleasure to watch the mainstream economics world haltingly get the memo. They've come a long way since 2000, but still have a long ways to go.

If you want to see what economic understanding will eventually look like, just cut to the chase and read _The Nature of Economies_ today.

</comment><comment><USER3> Economics 2.0 from Accelerando here we come.

<comment><USER4> So your comment was very interesting in that it kicked off a 30 minute wiki investigation into that book and other sci-fi novels. I'm currently finishing 2312 from Kim Stanley Robinson and he uses the term _Accelerando_ , so that piqued my interest for searching [0]. Haven't read any Stross, but it looks interesting!

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando#Title](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando#Title)

<comment><USER5> His Laundry Files are excellent as well.

<comment><USER6> I politely disagree - they are funny, in a wink-wink, nudge-nudge sort of way (if you've read your Lovecraft), but pale compared to his 'harder' SF (like Accelrando, Singularity Sky, Glasshouse). That said, I do much prefer the Laundry Files stories to The Merchant Princes, but I have a low tolerance for Urban Fantasy...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I suspect financial market are like a hoey trap for economics researchers. Fast, plentiful transactions, rules about information flow and limitless liquidity, "scientific" valuation of derivatives...

It's so damn close to a theoretical model and it exists in real life! Data is easily accessed and interpreted. Compare this to the markets for real estate, used cars, or online advertising. It's all precise enough to tie to monetary rules, central bank actions ...the policy levers top economists have available in a normal year.

Whatever your theory, it will be easier to test for publicly traded stocks or commodities.

The problem is that public markets are formalized, centralized markets. They are rational by design. This is unlike every other market.

To extend their ecological metaphor a different way... Researching public markets is like cells in a petri dish, not a real ecology.

<comment><USER8> Which doesn't mean it's not interesting to study :) The omnipresence of fibonacci ratios is interesting by itself.

Last year, I was reading Proudhon's criticism of the speculative part of financial markets. His main objection was that speculation was adding absolutely no value to the world, by opposition to investors (who help making something useful real) and merchants (who displace products from somewhere where they're abundant to somewhere where they're scarce). It hitted me back then: actually, they do produce something, they produce data. Financial markets have produced the longest lived and most detailed dataset ever (I can't think of a bigger one, at least). Would be a waste not to try to use it.

<comment><USER7> True, I don't mean to say it's a bad idea to study it. I just mean "watch out" with theories that are general, but studied mostly within the confines of these market where the dataset is (as you say) orders of magnitude bigger/better than anywhere else. .. searching under a streelamp

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Are _turning_ to biology (present tense)?

Evolutionary economics has been a thing since 1898 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_economics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_economics)

And had a resurgance in the 1990s, see for example R. H. Day & P. Chen, eds, 'Nonlinear dynamics and evolutionary economics', Oxford University Press, USA

</comment><comment><USER10> Could the doubling of stock price of CUBA, mentioned at the beginning of the article, be a result triggered (largely or merely partially) by a certain number of automatic trading systems that did not directly involve human rationality (or irrationality) -- or simply without any manual intervention?

</comment><comment><USER11> This reminds me of Sugarscape.</comment>


AquilaOS: Posix Compliant/mostly ISA Transparent Operating System - <AUTHOR> http://aquilaos.com/ <comment><USER2> It's good to see an operating system begun with the idea that all of the terminal emulation for a console belongs in application space not the kernel. In case you are interested:

* [http://jdebp.eu./Proposals/linux-console-daemon.html](http://jdebp.eu./Proposals/linux-console-daemon.html)

* [http://jdebp.eu./Softwares/nosh/user-vt-screenshots.html](http://jdebp.eu./Softwares/nosh/user-vt-screenshots.html)

* [http://jdebp.eu./Softwares/nosh/guide/user-virtual-terminals...](http://jdebp.eu./Softwares/nosh/guide/user-virtual-terminals.html)

* [https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/177209/5132](https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/177209/5132)

* [https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/178807/5132](https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/178807/5132)

</comment><comment><USER3> How did you come up with the name Aquila? Love it. New Testament or the Latin/Roman angle?

<comment><USER4> I love stargazing, and I can name every constellation in the northern sky hemisphere, Aquila looks awesome (and OrionOS would have sounded weird :"D)

<comment><USER3> Love it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow that's a lot of work. What motivates these projects? Just the cool factor?

<comment><USER6> It's make me sad to read this kind of questions in "Hacker" News.

<comment><USER5> It's not a disparagement, just genuine curiosity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> can someone explain ISA Transparent?

<comment><USER4> ISA transparent means that the kernel parts are completely independent of CPU architecture, you still need (minimal) architecture dependent code but it is isolated in "arch/" directory in the kernel source. This is mainly to avoid #ifdef __i386__ /* Code here */ #endif found in Linux. Also it makes porting the kernel easier.

<comment><USER8> Unfortunately it's a bit much to say that it's ISA independent given that it only supports 332bit x86 currently.

<comment><USER4> I do agree that it's a stretch to claim that it's ISA independent without much proof to show it. However, I have reviewed many architectures while designing it and made sure (up to my skill of course) that the design would fit as many architectures as possible. You may check the code base yourself, I'd be happy to be corrected and/or enlightened, after all, that's the beauty of open- source projects</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is Posterous "still" having engineering resources? - <AUTHOR>

After the Twitter acquisition I have no clue if someone over there is still working in maintaining the product. I'm seeing a lot of bugs lately - ex: the blog search engine doesn't work anymore. <comment><USER2> I agree. Posterous needs some love, or they should just shut it down. There are a number of bugs cropping up.</comment>


Ping Tunnel – Send TCP Traffic over ICMP (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://www.cs.uit.no/~daniels/PingTunnel/ <comment> blaser-waffle Neat, but what are the use cases? The one supplied by the author, open wifi that blocks most TCP and UDP, has in my experience blocked pings too.</comment>


SoftBank Owned Patent Troll Sues to Block Covid19 Testing Using Theranos Patents - <AUTHOR> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200316/14584244111/softbank-owned-patent-troll-using-monkey-selfie-law-firm-sues-to-block-covid-19-testing-using-theranos-patents.shtml?f <comment><USER2> See also:

* Firm wielding Theranos patents asks judge to block coronavirus test | [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/firm-uses-theran...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/firm-uses-theranos-patents-to-sue-company-making-coronavirus-test/#p3)

Associated reddit: [https://old.reddit.com/r/news/comments/fk9sfs/firm_wielding_...](https://old.reddit.com/r/news/comments/fk9sfs/firm_wielding_theranos_patents_asks_judge_to/)</comment>


How I Lost Nearly 200 BTC trading this past month - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/7s8umm/how_i_lost_nearly_200_btc_trading_this_past_month/ <comment><USER2> Got to give him credit a lessor man would have probably walked away after the first 150 BTC loss.

</comment><comment><USER3> Knew immediately that leverage and margin calls would be involved.

<comment><USER2> They probably couldn't have gotten to 200 BTC without leverage and margin.</comment></comment>


What If… Arrington Started Blogging for Mashable, AllThingsD or The Next Web - <AUTHOR> http://www.domain.me/blog/michale-arrington-mashable-allthingsd-the-nextweb-2339

<comment><USER2> Too much ego — won't happen...

</comment><comment><USER3> They'd lose credibility. :)</comment>


China Responds to Mark Zuckerberg's Spring Festival Message - <AUTHOR> https://www.techinasia.com/chinas-internet-mark-zuckerbergs-spring-festival-message <comment><USER2> I think my problem with the whole thing is that Zuckerberg isn't about freedom, he's about control.

I want the leader of our greatest social networking site in history to embrace the freedom for all.

He embraces leaders of China that continue to not only take the freedoms of everyday citizens away through mass surveillance, but of billionaires like himself:

[http://www.cnbc.com/2016/01/07/another-chinese- billionaire-g...](http://www.cnbc.com/2016/01/07/another-chinese-billionaire- goes-missing.html)

He absolutely should not be a respected part of the tech industry.

The book that he wanted his employees to read was nothing but Chinese propaganda. He could at least pretend to be an intellectual, instead of a shill for the Chinese government.

Now onto his Mandarin: his intonation is sub-par and he mimics the hard r dialect of Beijing.</comment>


Show HN: Shoelace.io – Visual Bootstrap Grid Builder and Teacher Beta - <AUTHOR> http://shoelace.io/ <comment><USER2> Offset appears to be 'sticky' in that sm-offset-0 is possible by dragging the left most cell offset bar to the right then drag the whole thing left.

Really nice visualization; I'll use this if anyone needs an explanation/sandbox on my team!

<comment><USER3> Is there a way to re-arrange columns? I couldn't get negative pulls to work :(. I think bigger column names, or different column colors would improve the usability once you have push/pull in. Right now if cols are different sizes its a little tricky trying to figure out which one is which.

You could auto-name them with silly generated names or something; like what github does when you create a new repo

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is great! I can't figure out how to nest containers though, is this supported?

<comment><USER5> I like how no one really answered this question, but just pointed out that you asked it incorrectly.

I would like to know this as well...without the ability to create nested rows, I don't really see myself using this tool.

<comment><USER6> +1, nesting would be the killer feature

<comment><AUTHOR> Nesting is the next on the roadmap once we get around to it. The Clojure for this is super complex, it was a ton of work making it "unbreakable" (as if). We're in a good spot to add it.

The nesting will actually "zoom" into the col you're putting it in and give you a new view, then you can zoom back out.

There IS a live HTML preview that you can actually see and drag your browser big and small.... but it's broke. Fixing it after work tonight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Really nicely done. I do not really see it in my workflow much because typing is faster than dragging around for me now and I am pretty familiar with grid concepts, but this will be very useful to explain the concepts to people. Very impressed with the dragging and snapping.

Suggestions: There are some bugs. Sometimes I cannot drag to create an offset, sometimes I can. Also, sometimes I can only resize the col from the right. Would be nice to support containers (fluid and non-fluid) and we can better visualize how it impact the behavior in relation to the width of the device. Also, I think you can easily support Zurb Foundation grid too.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> For anyone still reading - I fixed the save/preview feature, its really cool.

Example: [http://shoelace.io/#2aed04bc819c4c7da28a](http://shoelace.io/#2aed04bc819c4c7da28a)

</comment><comment><USER8> I had this exact idea (but didn't think I had the skill to pull it off), how cool for people afraid of code. Well done!

</comment><comment><USER9> This is great! It's always so hard to explain how bootstrap css and html work to non-technical people.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is pretty awesome!

One suggestion: would it be possible to add old browsers as well? I am working on an app that doesn't render well on older versions of Firefox. I'll use Shoelace all the time for the front end part if I can use it to spot rendering problems with all kind of browsers.

</comment><comment><USER11> The site is broken for China, since the prettify js code is hosted on Google Code.

<comment><USER12> Ask your local ISP or local authorities for your local problem.

<comment><USER13> In other words, "screw Chinese users".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This... is awesome. Such a time saver and very nicely designed too!

</comment><comment><USER15> After messing around with this, is there any reason to use any of the other sizes besides xs? With xs it seems like every device is covered, from the phone up to the large desktop.

<comment><USER16> You might want to have something as a grid with three columns on the desktop but as full width boxes on a phone.

Then using another size as xs let's you define the grid for bigger sreens while on small screens the content is just stacked vertically.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Good Work !

Had made something similar before : [http://jaykanakiya.com/bootstrap-grid- builder/](http://jaykanakiya.com/bootstrap-grid-builder/)

</comment><comment><USER18> This was really useful, thank you! I've always had a hard time visualising the grids. Is there anyway I can add text, images and buttons? Mostly for testing layouts.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope. This is all it does and all it is planned to do. There may be more features to extend the way it works, but it's strictly a grid tool and learning tool, not a builder.

I wanted to attack the problem from a different angle than bootply and some of the others that recreate a WYSIWYG like Dreamweaver in the browser. This is JUST for seeing the grid and learning how it works, and seeing how the Less mixins work.

It's a narrow purpose, but I want to focus just on 1 thing and do it better than anyone in the world.

<comment><USER18> Yeah I wanted to say I am not looking for a builder. I just want to visualise how text looks like with those grids.

Grids on their own isn't as important as grids with content.

Still a great tool though, will come in handy.

<comment><AUTHOR> As shaunxcode says, there is an unpushed preview that does let you expand it out with text, images, and then try it out live in a browser that is real HTML you can resize, etc. Really cool.

That should be done tonight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> That's great. Before clicking the link I thought "who the hell needs this"? But after trying it out for ~20 seconds... great - I'll use it.

<comment><AUTHOR> perfect response.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is awesome! I'll definitely start using this. I've seen JetStrap before for building the full UI. But this is great for alot of my uses.

</comment><comment><USER21> Can you change the column type from lg to others like xs?

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you mean? You can change them to any by clicking on the left side different "views" and then change the column width to anything, and when you click back and forth between the responsive sizes you'll see it change live, and you'll see the HTML and Less change.

<comment><USER21> Now I get it. Thanks :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I will look at the UX on that and make some improvements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Thank you! I've been trying to get my head around responsive grids for a while and after using this for 2 minutes I finally "get it".

</comment><comment><USER23> As a backend engineer, this is fantastic. Thank you!

</comment><comment><USER24> This is awesome. love it. Thankyou Erik and Shaun.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're welcome. Saving is broke right now.

Be sure to check out the Less Mixin mode where you can name your rows and columns and use pure Less to make the grids.

Fun fact - it's all clojurescript.

<comment><USER25> As someone who knows Python/JS/some html, but very little css, this is absolutely fantastic. Thank you!

PS: you mentioned Clojurescript, are you using Om?

<comment><AUTHOR> Wrong guy to ask, I'm just the experience and design and bootstrap guy, my partner is the engineering powerhouse behind how it _actually_ works

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Quick nitpick: all the links on the bottom (with the exception of the "Code by Shawn" link) appear to be non-operational.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, an bug from posting this in a hurry and problems deploying it from github to heroku. Fixing it tonight =D

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Hey, quick note, the "About Shoelace" link in the bottom doesn't work for me (Safari 7, OS X). Cheers, good stuff.</comment>


Senators demand answers over Chinese 'spy chip' - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2018/10/10/senators-demand-answers-for-china-spy-chip-claims/ <comment><USER2> When is the last time that someone answering "senators' demands for answers" has resulted in anything remotely punitive or (socially) productive? It seems that it is only productive for fanning political campaign fires and 'news' outlets.. so I'd honestly like to know when, if ever, this has been productive in other ways that actually matter.

</comment><comment><USER3> The worst case would be if it's true, but Blomberg journalists did a bad job and everyone will assume the hack didn't happened

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm still on the fence as to the veracity of this story. ~ 60% true, 40% maybe not so.

<comment><USER4> It's true but there are Chinese that infiltrated this place and are censoring this stuff

<comment><AUTHOR> The reason for the suspicions are the counter stories about Bloomberg having "only one source" (not 17) and a story about Bloomberg's pattern of writing negative stories about Apple. So it introduces some (legit?) FUD: reporter personal beef/s, hate on the megacorp or legit stories stretching the truth.

Either way, I hope some definitive, well-sourced, highly-documented stories come out from The Intercept or similar to clear up the dis/misinformation.</comment></comment></comment>


Amazon fires two UX designers critical of warehouse working conditions - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-amazon-com-warehou/amazon-fires-two-employees-critical-of-warehouse-working-conditions-idUSKCN21W0UI <comment><USER2> > "We support every employee's right to criticize their employer's working > conditions," a spokesperson said, "but that does not come with blanket > immunity against any and all internal policies."

What a strange statement. "We support their right to criticize their working conditions, only actually we don't at all"

<comment><USER3> _> What a strange statement. "We support their right to criticize their working conditions, only actually we don't at all"_

Without seeing the actual policy, my guess is that "criticizing" is something employees can do _internally_ within the company. However, you can't post _public_ tweets about it.

In other words, _" don't air dirty laundry"_.

This type of distinction is very common in typical employee policies. Likewise, it's common for a CEO for VP to say to the employees _" I have an open door policy so if you see something wrong, tell me."_ \-- but common sense should tell you that the CEO does not mean for the employee to post an "open letter to the CEO" on Twitter or NYTimes for the public read as well.

I know of no well-known company that _encourages_ employees to _publicly_ criticize their workplace.

<comment><USER4> Uh great... yeah just walk right into the CEO's office and tell them what's wrong... 0% chance of that coming back to affect your career....

<comment><USER5> Did exactly this! Just it wasn't CEO, only a Vice President. I mentioned bugs and lack of testing in a polite way, also offered how test system could be designed to automate testing. There was a committee created to do inspection of my code and to analyze, why I do so many bugs. I'll never tell anybody, how to operate better after this "incident". The months were hell and I am pretty sure, I'll be fired during next downsizing round.

<comment><USER6> First, good on you for trying to make a difference. Second, without painting with too broad of a brush here I would say that depending on the size of your organization this is the exact wrong layer to complain to. The VPs can be in the spot where they want to be perceived as running the show so the C levels can take care of the vision. If there was a CTO at your company that _may_ have been the better move.

Either way, Im sorry to hear that things went south after complaining and it sounds like it just got bruised egos involved.

<comment><USER7> It's almost never the right move. The CTO doesn't know you, but he does know the people who report to him.

<comment><USER8> > It's almost never the right move. The CTO doesn't know you, but he does know > the people who report to him.

And they will come down on those people HARD! "Why is your employee complaining to me? Why aren't you doing your job?"

And down the line it comes crashing down. And meteor lands on your face.

<comment><USER9> Come down hard on his people? Probably come down hard on your manager.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > "We support every employee's right to criticize their employer's working > conditions, but that does not come with blanket immunity against any and all > internal policies," Herdener said.

> Amazon's external communications policy prohibits employees from commenting > publicly on its business without corporate justification and approval from > executives. Herdener previously said the policy did not allow employees to > "publicly disparage or misrepresent the company."

Amazon is straight up firing these people for expressing their personal opinions. Amazon isn't even claiming they lied, or pretend to speak officially, or any other reason.

<comment><USER11> Uhh, I don't want to be Amazon defender, but in US most of the employment is at will. In practical terms, they can fire you for any or no reason at all. There are practicalities that come into play that have to do with unemployment insurance and whatnot, but company policy violation is a defensible 'cause' for firing.

I am not a lawyer nor am I condoning this, but them is the facts.

edit: added play

<comment><USER4> I think people are outraged not because it's illegal, but because it's unconscionable. I think the general understanding is people shouldn't have outside-work activities be held against them, maybe it's time for the law to catch up.

It's pretty easy to come up with a lot of absurd and "legal" at-will policies (e.g. we'll fire anybody who watches porn)

<comment><USER12> The employee should negotiate "fireable offenses" into his contract. There's no reason to increase state involvement with new laws.

<comment><USER13> >There's no reason to increase state involvement with new laws.

Well, not unless you consider the significant disparity in negotiating power between the employer and prospective employee when forming that contract. Very few people are in a position to negotiate something like that, and the ones that are aren't likely to be explicitly fired for speaking their mind.

<comment><USER12> Is the labor market free from cartels? If so, then employees can negotiate.

Obviously they won't get everything they want, but that's the nature of negotiation.

<comment><USER13> You can indeed attempt to negotiate, and the prospective employer can (and likely will) just pass you up in favor of someone less troublesome.

This really only works for a handful of people applying for high level jobs where they are significantly more desirable than anyone else who applied for the position.

<comment><USER12> That's exactly what should happen in a free market. Company makes offer, laborer counters, then company counters or holds. If the company holds, the laborer should seek work at a different company.

Just because the "value" of a man's labor is low (in some sense), doesn't mean the government should intervene.

<comment><USER13> So your argument has shifted from "if people want something they should negotiate for it instead of involving the government" to "even though the vast majority of people can't actually participate in meaningful negotiations the government still shouldn't intervene?"

You're essentially arguing that only the few people at the top should be able to do well. Just because anyone can rise to the top of their class and do well if they work hard enough doesn't mean everyone can, it's a race to the bottom of who can give up free time or family time to be more valuable to their employer. While in the short term employers might prefer that, I really don't think it's good for society long term.

<comment><USER12> "meaningful negotiation" doesn't mean anything to me. Either men with guns coerce the market participant or they don't.

Freemen should rationally allocate free time, family time and work time. A man isn't guaranteed everything he wants, only the opportunity to rationally pursue his interests.

<comment><USER13> >"meaningful negotiation" doesn't mean anything to me.

You've already defined it with "The employee should negotiate "fireable offenses" into his contract." I don't know of a single employer that would be interested in hiring someone who insisted on including a list of nonfirable offenses which included making public statements which paint the company in a bad light. That specific item we're talking about is completely unviable for most employees to negotiate, i.e. they have no meaningful/material/real/significant ability to negotiate it.

>Either men with guns coerce the market participant or they don't.

There are many more forms of coercion than just "men with guns," and if coercion specifically by men with guns is worth acting on then why shouldn't other forms be?

In this case there technically _is_ coercion by men with guns, albeit a degree or two removed. People need money to keep a roof over their head, and they need jobs to receive that money. If they're not able to work then your men with guns will come and remove them from their living space, and once on the street they'll likely have many more unpleasant encounters with more men with guns.

>Freemen should rationally allocate free time, family time and work time. A man isn't guaranteed everything he wants, only the opportunity to rationally pursue his interests.

Nothing I've argued goes against that. My point here is that there are certain things which the invisible hand of the free market is unable to touch due to the dynamics of the market. That is, in my and many other people's opinion, where the government needs to step in and force the market to make decisions it would be otherwise unwilling to do. This has already been necessary many times before in American history, such as with the ending of slavery, child labor, and the introduction of minimum wage laws. In all of these cases government intervention was necessary to reduce human suffering and raise people's quality of life. Yes, some "market value" was lost in the process but to people with empathy that was a completely worthwhile trade.

<comment><USER12> > I don't know of a single employer that would be interested in hiring someone > who insisted on including a list of nonfirable offenses which included > making public statements which paint the company in a bad light.

1\. Work for a company that you don't feel the need to publicly criticize.

2\. Start your own company.

3\. Increase your market value thru hard work to improve your negotiating position.

> There are many more forms of coercion than just "men with guns"

I don't want to make assumptions. Please describe forms of coercion other than (threats of) physical violence.

> In this case there technically _is_ coercion by men with guns, albeit a > degree or two removed. People need money to keep a roof over their head, and > they need jobs to receive that money.

A man's need for food does not override my natural property rights. He must use his mind to productively participate in commerce. If he does not, he will perish.

> My point here is that there are certain things which the invisible hand of > the free market is unable to touch due to the dynamics of the market. That > is, in my and many other people's opinion, where the government needs to > step in and force the market to make decisions it would be otherwise > unwilling to do.

From a consequentialist framework: I suspect the government's cure will be worse than the disease.

<comment><USER14> For the roof though, at least in the US, the property it's on is based on men taking it with guns from the natives. Everything since then where you're keeping people off "your" property is a continuation of that coercion.

<comment><USER12> Assume the land was stolen.

The people who stole the land are dead. The people who were stolen from are dead.

The point is moot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In general, trash talking one's employer in public is usually inversely proportional to the longevity of one's employment with said employer.

<comment><USER16> I've reread this comment a few times and I'm still not sure what to make of it. It's obviously true, but why post something with such a smug and gloating tone? Are you happy about how Amazon warehouse workers are treated and pleased to see people speaking out being fired in the midst of a pandemic?

<comment><USER17> Not to engage in ageism, but speaking from the benefit of having the benefit of being younger, and older, I can say that when I was younger, I was blissfully unaware of the huge list of things that would result in a person's employment ending, that I thought was absolutely reasonable for one to do. And maybe it _was_ reasonable for one to do. But it also ended one's employment. I think the GP was mostly just trying to surface one of the laws of reality - you shit talk your employer - you will likely no longer be employed. And unless you were reporting some illegal activity, (in which case whistle blower laws may afford some level of protection, check with your lawyer first though) - there isn't much you can do about it. Just kind of a law of nature.

<comment><USER18> I think all of us learned these lessons the hard way, what's amazing is how much _resistance_ I've encountered when I try to share this wisdom with folks in their early 20's. I guess the old adage is true, people like to learn their own lessons.

<comment><USER19> The resistance you're finding is not people disbelieving you, it's them trying to get you to understand that this is a Bad Thing we should want to change, even though it is true right now.

<comment><USER20> Well, hold on: do you think it's really a "Bad Thing", and by your capitalisation I'm guessing you mean universally a bad thing to experience negative consequences for publicly trash-talking about your employer?

Sure, if you're whistleblowing something systemically unethical - as may well be the case here - then you should be able to do the right thing without fear of negative consequence. I.e., your employer, Amazon in this case, can't fire you.

However, speaking in more general terms, some people just love to whine and complain about things that simply aren't that important: I've worked with plenty (none at the moment, I hasten to add).

For example, and flipping it around: is it a Good Thing for you to trash talk your employer just because you don't happen to like your boss very much? No, I don't think it is, and I think it's entirely reasonable for you to get into trouble if you do.

Is it a Good Thing to trash talk a potential employer because you didn't like their hiring process? No. If other potential employers read what you've said they might choose not to interview you even if your concerns are legitimate. You can stand on principle if you want but of all the issues in the world you could stand on principle about, is this one really worth it? I'd say not but you may disagree.

Getting more serious: what about if your boss is a bully? Should you publicly trash talk them? No! Are you out of your mind?!?? You should do some research and find out how to deal with it _effectively_ and in a way that doesn't damage your future career prospects, either at your current company (which may be a lost cause) or elsewhere, which may include getting _and following_ legal advice.

Certainly for these serious issues: bullying, sexual harassment, discrimination, and so on, if the issues are with a specific individual, rather than a systemic or cultural problem, whistleblowing is probably not the way to go. Note that for certain safety issues, or breaches relating to personally identifiable information, you may have a legal obligation to notify even for isolated incidents, depending on your jurisdiction (IANAL).

The problem with trash-talking your employer, or even former employers, is that you risk sending a signal to potential future employers that you are a troublemaker. In some cases this is not an illegitimate concern, and because of this employers tend to be cautious, which can harm your prospects.

Let me reiterate that I'm talking about trash talking in general, not the specific case of these Amazon employees, and very much not whistleblower activities involving systemic ethical failings by an employer or organisation.

<comment><USER19> > you mean universally a bad thing to experience negative consequences for > publicly trash-talking about your employer?

That is not what I mean. This conversation is about the accepted "law of nature" that if you say bad things about your employer you will probably be fired. As you point out, sometimes there are good reasons to publicly say bad things about your employer. Therefore, it is bad that firing is the accepted consequence regardless of the situation, and we should seek to change this status quo.

<comment><USER20> Cool. I think we might be in violent agreement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I wonder what their recruiting team thinks about these moves by the company. I know I will not work for Amazon seeing how the manage dissent at the company and I'm sure there are many other people who feel the same.

<comment><USER22> The cynic in me thinks that for any number of potential candidates who feel the same, there are exponentially more candidates that just want to work there regardless, and the recruiting team knows this.

<comment><USER23> Literally anyone at Uber, Palantir, or Facebook has got to be on their short list of people to recruit.

<comment><USER24> Sorry to break it to you, but anyone who is still at Facebook at this point thinks they are at the top of the heap and a lateral move to maybe Google, Apple, or Microsoft would be worth considering if it included a bump in grade. Amazon is a place Facebook recruits from, it does not go in the other direction. [FB and Amazon have the same moral issues if you work there but the environment at FB is an order of magnitude better, particularly for mid-level engineers.]

<comment><USER25> Can confirm, Amazon in Seattle is literally just a testing ground for people who couldn't get into Google/Apple/FB/Microsoft/etc. on the first try.

Amazon becomes their best available option, and once they work there for a year or two, improve their skills, get some experience, and get tired of dealing with hell that is working at Amazon, they get hired at all those companies they couldn't initially get into. No one says Amazon is incompetent at tech, quite the opposite. There is a lot people can learn while working there, and all those other competing tech giants know it.

I've heard of very few moves the other way around, and in every single such scenario I personally witnessed, there was a lot of very specific circumstances for the person that lead them to that point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The UX designers never worked in a warehouse, they had no first hand experience. I would find the complaint more valuable from an actual Amazon warehouse workers.

The UX designer probably work in a cushy Amazon corporate office with free snacks and drinks, but amazon warehouse roles are probably under more spartan and strict conditions. How does Amazon warehouse work conditions compare to other warehouse work conditions. That's the better comparable.

If any programmer was thrown into a construction or blue collar work environment they probably won't like the work conditions. But for cost reasons they can't extend the same benefits for people who sort packages the same as people who write code or design screens.

The best way to protest an employer is to not work for them. As UX designers who made it into Amazon they probably have other choices.

<comment><USER27> The 2 UX designers retweeted complaints from the warehouse workers and offered a little monetary support; it's hardly like they were trying to lead a revolt.

And then this is besides the point, but Amazon doesn't give out free food and drink like Google does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> It is worth noting that the two individuals were engaging in protected labour organizing activity including the Amazon Walk Out for Climate.

I guess AMZN must be feeling like they are vital infrastructure right now and won't get called on this sort of thing. And under the management of the current President the NLRB may not be able to prosecute such cases as vigorously as they have been known to do.

Whether we realize it or not we've been moving towards a neofeudal world where a large employer will effectively be the government and where individual workers will not have meaningful rights in their employment; and this will be as true of software engineers as it is of warehouse workers.

</comment><comment><USER29> A few months ago I was in the job market and got a call from a recruiter at Amazon. I flatly told them that I wasn't interested in working for Amazon on ethical grounds.

At the time it was purely out of principle, but apparently it was a good decision for my self-interest as well.

I wonder how long they can keep this stuff up before they start seriously damaging their desirability as a workplace, the way Facebook has?

<comment><USER30> Props to you.

I am incredibly far away from the world of SV/FAANG, so tell me, is FB really becoming a less desirable place to work? It seems to me like it's a pretty small minority of people that would refuse a $1XX,000 paycheck on grounds of being a ethically dubious snowflake in the avalanche that is Facebook.

<comment><USER31> Don't gauge the real.world based on Hacker News. 99% of keyboard warriors will sign 250k USD+ total comp offers in a jiffy.

<comment><USER29> The way I see it, in the right city somebody with our skillset can step outside and trip over an offer with a very comfortable salary. In that context, I don't think there's much excuse for going out and choosing to make the world a worse place, even if you'd get paid 2x that very comfortable salary.

<comment><USER31> People always want more.

<comment><USER29> I'm not saying you're wrong, just saying it's morally unjustifiable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> They were fired in response to putting on an internal event getting warehouse workers to speak directly with tech workers, then Amazon then deleted all emails and invites to the event.

[https://twitter.com/AMZNforClimate/status/125013592573822566...](https://twitter.com/AMZNforClimate/status/1250135925738225664)

</comment><comment><USER33> If you plan to speak out publicly regarding your employer, I would suggest you try to stay anonymous.

1\. get a burner phone 2\. get a cheap laptop and put linux on it 3\. setup a non-domestic vpn on the device 4\. don't use this equipment with any accounts tied to use 5\. use the burner phone via vpn in order to establish social media accounts. 6\. use these social media accounts over vpn to make your statements...

<comment><USER34> > 5\. use the burner phone via vpn in order to establish social media > accounts.

This often doesn't work or is much more difficult than it sounds.

Many social networks don't allow anonymity and they detect attempts to stay anonymous.

In an extreme case your account might be blocked soon after creation and you might be asked to upload a photo or ID scan.

<comment><USER33> If you're in a larger city, you may be able to use the phone as a hotspot to create an account... just do it in a busier area (down town cafe, etc), which is more difficult right now than typically.

Even then, as long as you aren't working for the social network in question, it's less of a risk... highest risk is using the devices you have signed on with your work accounts, or using your real name.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Welcome to the post-corona era of (even more blatant) corporate empowerment.

With the oncoming onslaught of unemployment, they will only get more brazen in the reduction of workers rights and baseline dignity.

</comment><comment><USER36> This is likely an unpopular opinion among the tech crowd here but I find it very hypocritical to publicly criticize your employer for their practices while expecting to continue enjoying cushy paychecks directly fueled by them. You cannot simultaneously be an activist and a cog in the wheel. Pick a side, and then accept the consequences.

<comment><USER37> Who does that approach ultimately favour? Isn't it a good thing that people can speak out about things they think their company is doing wrong and try to improve it?

I have some sympathy with your view but doesn't that end up marginalising people who stand up for things?

<comment><USER36> It's great to have opinions about how things are/should be done, but the right place to express them isn't a public press conference.

<comment><USER38> If it needs to be said the right place to express it is where it will be heard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> > (This story corrects second paragraph to say Christian Smalls was fired for > violating paid quarantine, not for raising health and safety concerns.)

I'm I misremembering or was that story "fired for violating paid quarantine" proven to be iffy at best? I'm looking for confirmation.

Edit: Found what I think I was looking for [0]

> Here is the key point Amazon claims he was exposed to the worker on March > 11th. Over the weekened he said he is organizing a strike, so over the > weekend they order him and only him into quarantine. A full 18 days after > his 5 min exposure. From my reading of it, this almost certainly looks like > retaliatory action due to the strike, and a company using the excuse of > quarantine to cover it up. Key excerpts from a much clearer article. And yet > again, why you never 100% believe a company's PR response when they're > trying to cover themselves. They tell just enough truth, but use it to > intentionally mislead.

> [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/31/amazon- > strik...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/31/amazon-strik..).

>> According to the company's previous statements, the infected co-worker in question last reported for work on 11 March. Had Smalls been exposed that day, a 14-day mandatory quarantine would have made him eligible to return as soon as 25 March.

>> Smalls said Amazon did not send him home until 28 March, three weeks after the exposure.

>> "No one else was put on quarantine," he said, even as the infected person worked alongside "associates for 10-plus hours a week".

>> "You put me on quarantine for coming into contact with somebody, but I was around [that person] for less than five minutes," he told Vice.

>> According to Amazon, no one else was fired. Smalls said he was considering legal action, calling it "a no-brainer".

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22739059](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22739059)

</comment><comment><USER40> No details on what those employees actually did? Lacking that, this is just clickbait.

<comment><USER11> WP reported Amazon stated they violated company policies. That is probably true too ( talking to media or some such ).

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/04/13/amazon-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/04/13/amazon- workers-fired/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Amazon employed UX designers?

<comment><USER42> Assuming this is sarcasm, you think Amazon hasn't optimized its UX? They base everything on sales and test rigorously.

As much as we criticize them for what we see as poor UI and UX they have data supporting their decisions. So long as it drives more revenue they consider it positive.

<comment><USER41> What you describe sounds more like someone that exploits usability and not someone whom enhances it.

The data might also settle on local maximums.

I mean consider a simple sort by rating. It's an explicitly exposed, well test feature. It may behave as designed, and may behave in a way that maximizes profits, but it does NOT behave the way a user expects it to behave nor would prefer it behave.

User experience designers should be ethically bound to do no harm to the user like doctors are bound by the Hippocratic Oath.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Additional context/reporting here:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/04/13/amazon-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/04/13/amazon- workers-fired/)

<comment><USER43> Note that WaPo is owned by Jeff Bezos.

edit: This is mentioned half way through the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> It's about time for unions to make a comeback.

</comment><comment><USER45> The U.S. was founded on the principle of freedom of speech, yet if you are an employee you don't have freedom of speech.

This is disturbing, and the only solution is for the government to step in and make it illegal to fire someone without just cause.

I believe in many European countries employers aren't allowed to fire their employees unless there is proof of underperformance. It seems that we need to adopt something similar. It's already illegal to discriminate against someone based on their race, I don't see the problem with making it illegal to fire someone over their opinions on working conditions and politics. Corporations should not be running the country.

<comment><USER46> That's only half true. Even in a country with strong worker protection laws such as Germany you can get fired for a lot more things than just poor performance. Damaging your employer's reputation can actually be part of it. I don't know enough about the laws to be able to determine whether this would get you in trouble over here, but I certainly would be very cautious doing something like that. I even read that the US has better whistleblowing protection than much of Europe.

It's however true that you can't fire without cause and that courts usually demand strong evidence for such cause. So people would be more likely to sue.

That said, I still find Amazon's behaviour totally shameful, legal or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> It will never cease to amaze me that people (outside the media, politics, etc.) use their real name to post controversial things on social media, especially about their own employer.

<comment><USER48> I admire them. They're braver than me.

Whether you agree with their stance or not, I think it's admirable that they stand up for others who are presumably lower on the employment pole, at the risk of their own jobs, especially given the current economic situation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> These individuals spoke at a news conference apparently

</comment><comment><USER50> I think the real story here is not so much whether or not it's OK to fire troublemakers, but how Amazon got itself into an unrecoverably antagonistic relationship with its own workforce.

The flip side to being a general union buster and hard-nosed employer advocate during "peacetime" is that you lose the moral high ground in crisis and have no where to turn to but more employee-alienating policies. I mean, let's be honest: Amazon's warehouse workers look like heroes right now. And they need stuff, that they don't need under normal circumstances. And the public, on the whole, wants to give it to them. Yet without an existing healthy relationship, the only tool in the union's box is to threaten work stoppage. And the only tool Bezos has is to fire people trying to keep a lid on the thing.

And now we've seen that it's metastasized, and he's having to fire tech workers now too. Needless to say, this isn't where Amazon management would have wanted to be.

So folks: the next time a union calls up and wants to sort out a deal, talk with them and work something out. In the current world, it's hard to see anything but good guys and bad guys. And the workers are the good guys.

<comment><USER51> Amazon has nearly a million employees. The gist of your comment is valid, but firing two people (or even two hundred people) out of a million doesn't even come close to meaning that they have an antagonistic relationship with its workforce in general.

<comment><USER50> Normally tech employers don't fire people for complaining about company policies, and it's almost always news when they do. A general sense of shared cause and cameraderie is part of the way the industry is "supposed" to work, and part of that is a culture of reasonably open discussion of this stuff.

But Amazon can't have that now, because the only resolution that they can see here is either victory or complete capitulation to a hostile union. And in the process their alienating their engineering class too.

<comment><USER51> You're speaking broadly about how a lot of stuff _should_ be while ignoring how stuff actually is.

>Normally tech employers don't fire people for complaining about company policies

I've worked in tech for a long time, at a lot of different companies, and consulted for many more. Tech employers fire people all the time for complaining about company policies. You just don't hear about it because...

>and it's almost always news when they do

No, it's really not. When some 20 person startup lets someone go because of a disagreement, it doesn't appear in WaPo. It does happen whenever Amazon or FB or Google are involved because those are big names. But just because you don't see it in the news when every other tech company does it, does not mean it isn't happening.

>A general sense of shared cause and cameraderie is part of the way the industry is "supposed" to work, and part of that is a culture of reasonably open discussion of this stuff.

This sounds wonderful and ideal, but I've never experienced this at any of the tech companies I've worked at, even the big name Silicon Valley ones.

>But Amazon can't have that now, because the only resolution that they can see here is either victory or complete capitulation to a hostile union.

The world isn't this black and white. I assure you from talking with my friends at Amazon that there is plenty of open discussion about the working environment, while also plenty of satisfaction and happiness with their job. And a couple of particularly outspoken people being fired hasn't changed that in the past, and I strongly doubt will change it now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Amazon's product selection can be quite hypocritical.

[https://www.amazon.com/UNITED-BARGAIN-DIVIDED-BUMPER- STICKER...](https://www.amazon.com/UNITED-BARGAIN-DIVIDED-BUMPER- STICKER/dp/B00NTDEBRS)

</comment><comment><USER53> I'd totally support the employees if they got fired or even cautioned for exercising their free speech rights. Amazon needs to get penalized if that's the case. Where it gets into the gray zone is when employees misuse company property and time to engage in activism. Like the Google Employee who used her access privileges to distribute messages supporting her position.

Personally I think we should draw a clear line between these two types of actions. When we don't do that, we weaken legitimate free speech.

<comment><USER54> You are in confusion, there is no free speech issue; the First Amendment protects the free speech from the government, nothing else.

Just to be very clear: I am in no way agreeing with Amazon, just correcting a confusion about the applicability of the US Constitution and amendments.

<comment><USER55> That sort of conflation is defensible when someone actually says "First Amendment", but the parent was clearly talking about the fundumental human right to free speech that that first amendment imperfectly protects, not about a particular legal establishment of it.

<comment><USER12> Amazon isn't threatening the men with guns, so their natural right to free speech isn't violated.

<comment><USER55> So if someone criticizes the government, and it responds by saying "We're no longer going to enforce laws protecting this person; anyone who wants to burglarize their home, or rob or kill them, feel free to do so.", that doesn't qualify as violation of free speech as long as the government is not actively initiating or assisting such attacks?

(Genuine question; I obviously don't agree, but I'm curious as to what moral principles you're applying here.)

<comment><USER12> Government ought to have a force monopoly.

Government ought to be "small" (functionally and structurally limited).

Government ought to defend the natural rights of its citizens from physical force initiated by criminals and international aggressors.

A government that does not fulfill these duties is evil. The Constitution clearly prevents the government from using guns to break my free speech. Does it also require the government to use its guns to protect my free speech from criminals? Ethically, this is the government's duty. If the government isn't doing this, it lacks a legitimate purpose.

Private entities do not have a duty to protect man's natural rights. But, it is immoral for them to violate a man's natural rights. Amazon didn't violate anyone's natural rights by cancelling a private contract because of public comments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> IANAL, but this sure looks like illegal (and immoral) retaliation to me. At- will employment isn't a magic spell. "Because company policy" is not a good enough reason to fire someone if that company policy violates the law.

From the NLRB's page defining protected concerted action[1] (emphasis mine):

"A single employee may also engage in protected concerted activity if he or she is...trying to induce group action, or seeking to prepare for group action. However, you can lose protection by saying or doing something egregiously offensive or knowingly and maliciously false, or by publicly disparaging your employer's __products or services __without relating your complaints to any labor controversy. "

So, let's say an Amazon employee were to simply tweet "Amazon is shit. Don't buy from them." and got fired for it. Then they couldn't defend themselves by coming back and saying "Well, actually, I was talking about working conditions for Amazon's warehouse employees." Fair enough.

With that in mind, here's what allegedly got them fired:

Emily Cunningham tweeted a thread[2] that begins:

"I'm matching donations up to $500 to support my Amazon warehouse worker colleagues. "The lack of safe and sanitary working conditions" puts them and the public at risk.

It's bad ya'll...".

The thread then goes into detail on that point. It could not be more clearly about working conditions.

Maren Costa tweeted[3]:

"I am matching donations to $500 to support my Amazon warehouse colleagues and their communities, while they struggle to get consistent, sufficient protections and procedures from our employer. DM or comment for match. [https://chuffed.org/project/help-amazon-warehouse-workers- ex...](https://chuffed.org/project/help-amazon-warehouse-workers-exposed-to- covid-19) # via @Chuffed"

...and that's it. Again, it's very clearly about working conditions.

Amazon doesn't get to make a policy against employees criticizing the way they treat their workers. That's how protections for labor organization work.

[1] [https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the- law/em...](https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the- law/employees/concerted-activity?page=8)

[2] [https://twitter.com/emahlee/status/1243441985173651456](https://twitter.com/emahlee/status/1243441985173651456)

[3] [https://twitter.com/marencosta/status/1243585580736237568](https://twitter.com/marencosta/status/1243585580736237568)

</comment><comment><USER57> Well, we all know what Amazon is. It's not like next time you'll need something you'll stop yourself from buying it on Amazon for ethical reasons, right? Alexa, who is online on Twitch?..

</comment><comment><USER58> employment is at-will, Amazon can fire people for many different reasons and you have no right to free speech whatsoever

</comment><comment><USER59> Can they file unlawful termination claims?

</comment><comment><USER60> A sharp reminder that "free speech" under capitalism effectually doesn't apply to your job, ie the thing that you spend nearly half your waking hours on and your primary way of contributing to the functioning of society. Some employers might be more lenient but Amazon is big and successful because it is ruthless in this and all other things. This is yet another reason I think we desperately need to democratically plan our economy; which is another way of saying we need to extend democracy into the workplace and the sphere of production.

</comment><comment><USER61> Don't bite the hand that feeds you. If you must talk against your employer in public, better go anonymous, if you have the courage to reveal your real identity, great! but be ready to bear the consequences. It's unfortunate, but most companies will do the same.

<comment><USER62> Imagine framing your employer as "the hand that feeds you", as if it is generously giving you a gift by paying you your salary in exchange for your labor.

Here is a different view: don't expose your most vulnerable and precarious employees to a deadly virus by failing to take the necessary precautions to protect them while they keep your company running.

<comment><USER63> I'm looking at your first sentence in isolation.

> Imagine framing your employer as "the hand that feeds you", as if it is > generously giving you a gift by paying you your salary in exchange for your > labor.

What is your perspective on this? Are you self employed, providing some sort of raw material/product? How is your food, housing, and fun paid for? Have you ever been laid off or otherwise without work? If so, where did your income come from?

I don't have any side-gigs, so 100% of my income comes from my career. I can't imagine my situation is that rare. If I stopped working or were fired, I would have to immediately find a new job, otherwise my family would become dependent on the government programs (other peoples money/taxes from their hard work) and my own savings.

Every bit of money, and everything I've bought from it, has been from my employers, from pizza delivery to robotics.

Where should we be getting our money from?

<comment><USER62> I'm not denying the unfortunate reality that in many/most cases in the US today, the employer holds outsize power relative to employees. If you are precarious - you don't have emergency savings or the ability to quickly find another job - then it is not bad advice in a strictly pragmatic sense to be careful when it comes to criticizing your employer publicly.

I was taking issue with the specific idiom used. "Biting the hand that feeds you" often carries with it a moral dimension, and is usually used in cases where you repay kindness or generosity with some kind of bad behavior. If your employer hires you in exchange for a compensation package, they typically do so because they calculated that your labor would provide them value above and beyond what they are paying you. It's not kindness, it's not a gift, it's not to be compared to a master feeding his/her pet dog because of love.

edit:

I'd again suggest another perspective in response to this sentence:

> Every bit of money, and everything I've bought from it, has been from my > employers, from pizza delivery to robotics.

Your skills, your time and your (presumably) hard work were the source of value that you provided to your employer in exchange for money and benefits such as health insurance. I don't know your specific situation, but maybe it's possible that you could choose to provide them to a different employer, maybe for even more money.

<comment><USER14> > What is your perspective on this? Are you self employed, providing some sort > of raw material/product? How is your food, housing, and fun paid for? Have > you ever been laid off or otherwise without work? If so, where did your > income come from?

Notably absent: an answer to these.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> What exactly does a UX designer know about the working conditions of an Amazon warehouse that they haven't simply read online like the rest of us anyway?

<comment><USER54> Imagine they can be UX designers for internally used apps, for example in the warehouses; they go there and do user research, guess what they know after that.

<comment><USER64> Could be. I find it more likely that bored tech workers in a cushy desk job are looking for somewhere to direct their indignation.</comment></comment></comment>


Gridmanager.js – jQuery plugin to manage bootstrap grids with editable regions - <AUTHOR> http://neokoenig.github.io/jQuery-gridmanager/demo/index.html My 1st plugin - thoughts please! <comment><USER2> Nice! This is perfect. So many other grid generators seem clunky by comparison

<comment><AUTHOR> Thankyou!</comment></comment>