American's 737 MAX: Not Terrible, But Sad (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://onemileatatime.com/american-airlines-737-max/ <comment><USER2> Whenever I hear a complain about airline experience, I am reminded by the fact that air travel has become cheaper every year. What used to cost $1800 for a flight from USA to New Delhi just 10-15 years ago is now less than $800.

Consumers have shown that price is _the_ most important factor for choosing a flight. Unlike other industries, say buying a piece of furniture, consumers evaluate pros and cons of short term cost savings with long-term reliability and durability. In transportation, consumers are willing to sacrifice comfort for cost to the extent that Airlines are willing to go to extreme measures to cut costs. Consumers are asking for this whilst complaining about lack of comfort - what a insane dichotomy of entitlement and personal choice.

Furthermore, I don't understand the fascination for traveling first/business class as if it is some kind of an absolute luxury. People can't stop talking about "Dude, you gotta fly Singapore Air business class, it is the best thing ever". You know what? My apartment has 900 sq foot of space, a full sized bed, music system, hot shower, balcony and a fully equipped kitchen. I would rather sit in my lounge chair enjoying some Bob Dylan than to sit in that Singapore Air business class seat trapped in a tube full of entitled humans. First or business class is a _relative_ luxury, relative to the economy class. It is not some sort of an absolute experience of ground breaking luxury that leaves me in awe. If I wanted that, I would get a night at the Four Seasons for much less or go eat a fine meal or better yet, go do something that is _truly_ awe- inspiring like stargazing. I am not saying that Business class sucks, I am saying that it has its place - i.e., precisely between take off and landing.

<comment><USER3> Business class is absolutely worth paying for. It's certainly not for the luxurious appeal of it, but if you're going to splurge on one thing, air travel is not a bad one to pick.

I travel between the US, Europe, and Asia a couple times a year to visit close ones. I can pay $800 for a lengthy multi leg journey in a very cramped seat (I am quite tall), which will result in me being utterly miserable for 24-48 hours at the very least.

Or I can pay a few times that (usually 3-5x), and take a single leg trip on a plane that will take less than 12 hours, all in utter comfort. I can lie down with a pillow and a blanket!

Now, as a student I had no choice but to save up for months to afford the cheapest, most inconvenient tickets. But now I am at a stage of my life where I can afford business class a couple times a year, and it is a no brainer. I can't think of any other service where paying more changes the quality of the service this drastically. A $30 meal can feed you just as well as a $150 one. A $20k car will get you to work as safely and efficiently as a $100k one. But a $800 SF-Tokyo will make you hate everything for a day or two, while a $4000 SF-Tokyo will be something you actually look forward to. You typically get to skip through security, get treated better by the staff, get to board faster, you don't have to worry about where to put your bag, etc. So many quality of life improvements.

(Standard disclaimer that I realize how privileged I am to be in the position that I am in - but I don't think it's too out of the norm on HN)

<comment><USER4> I prefer paying extra to book a non-stop flight and then I just don't sleep the night beforehand and enter the plane, squeeze into my garbage economy seat and enter a semi-asleep fugue state for the duration of the flight. After 7 hours I basically lose track of time. 3x the price of a cross-pacific airline ticket to upgrade is a good amount of money that I'd rather just pocket.

I'm 6'4", so I recognize how cramped economy is, and I have also been bumped up to business class once cause of a massive flight delay from Alaska back to the east coast, so I know what I'm missing.

I won't knock anyone for flying in better comfort, but I think the suffering isn't too bad. Jet lag is going to get you anyways.

<comment><USER5> We need a travel service where the night before you need to be at your destination, you get packed, then take some drug that will cause a deep sleep and go to bed.

The service comes to your house, transfers you (still asleep) to a vehicle and takes you and your luggage to the airport. There you are loaded onto a plane (still asleep!) and flown to your destination.

At the destination, they take you to your hotel, and put you (still asleep!) into bed, and optionally even unpack your luggage and set your alarm for you. Then they administer something to counteract the sleeping drug and leave.

From your point of view, you just go to sleep and the next morning you wake up in your hotel, ready to start the day at your destination.

<comment><USER6> > ...you just go to sleep and the next morning you wake up in your hotel...

Or you don't because the plane crashed; still better to die in your sleep anyway.

But what happens if there is an emergency in the air that requires you to put on the oxygen mask, climb out to safety, or something like that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "In addition to removing TVs, they added 12 more seats to these planes."

Am I the only person on earth who thinks those god awful wastes of space _should_ be removed? I've never interacted with one, they don't play anything, and my phone is about as big as those screens anyways and already contains all the content I wish to view?

<comment><USER8> I'm with you. Airplane TVs are a scourge on my sanity. It's one thing when a neighbor is watching a movie I can't stop myself from glancing at. It's worse when they're just letting the promo loop roll endlessly. Every flashy cut pulls my eyes away from what I'm trying to look at, no matter how many times I've seen it, and brings me one step closer to snapping. It doesn't help that the only way to turn it off is to turn the screen brightness down to zero, so AFAICT most people just live with it helplessly. Then it gets turned back on to play the safety demonstration, _and then the promo loop plays again_ , rising from the grave like an evil undead king, forcing me to turn it off again with clumsy buttons designed to withstand baby barf.

I may have some issues to deal with.

<comment><USER9> You don't have any issues to deal with. The idea that advertising even works (in the sense that it changes opinions or fosters a desire to buy, where, previously there was none) is really the root cause of the problem here.

Somehow, somewhere, a person once suggested that repetition was a useful strategy for getting people to buy things, and in a crucial moment, when a millenia of person year misery could have been halted, killed in the womb, whoever heard the suggestion simply shrugged, and now, even though I never drink Gatorade, I still remember that it's actually thirst-ade for that deep down body thirst.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Whenever I can I schedule my flights to avoid 737s. I know it's as much the airline's fault as Boeing's but I find them cramped, rattley and generally uncomfortable.

However I got the impression that American was the most premium of the US airlines when I was last flew with them so I'm surprised at how low cost carrier this fitout looks.

<comment><USER11> Same goes for me and 787s. A sad day was when they started to go 10 abreast on the 777s. Airbus planes (350, 380, and 220) seem to have more seat width than their Boeing counterparts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> FYI: this is the same model that got pulled due to safety concerns. The first comment is from "October 11, 2018 at 12:08 pm" which indicates this review was from well before the current crisis.

I recently flew to Miami on American and on my first two flights there was no TV, but fortunately on my flight from Dallas to Miami there was a TV which I kept tuned to the map the whole time, to see New Orleans, the Gulf of Mexico, and Southwest Florida come into view.

Edit: GPS is now available in Airplane mode. I hadn't realized that. [https://www.macobserver.com/analysis/ios-airplane-mode- gps-n...](https://www.macobserver.com/analysis/ios-airplane-mode-gps-nfc/)

</comment><comment><USER13> The problems listed in this article have a lot more to do with American Airlines than with the 737 MAX. The seats and bathrooms are probably standard features that will be identical on all airlines, but legroom is entirely up to the airline ordering the plane. American chose to configure their planes that way. Same for the TVs.

As a 6'1" somewhat overweight guy, legroom is single most annoying anti- feature on most flights. I used to regularly score exit rows, because they wouldn't sell them in advance, or even let you select them, but now they're considered premium seats that cost up to 50% extra.

American is an awful airline. Their main east coast hub is MIA, which is a gigantic airport with a poor layout and insufficient inter- and intra-terminal transportation options. They always have long layovers. I was stranded overnight in Houston once due to them cancelling a flight, and the only compensation was a $12 meal voucher, which barely covered a soda and stale donut at the shitty motel they stuck us in. They refused to honor my miles from another airline that is part of their mileage sharing program (because they cancelled the arrangement soon after I flew). Their customer service is terrible. Poor meals, if any. Outrageous baggage fees.

Anyway, my point is that the 737 MAX shouldn't be blamed for how American chose to arrange the seats. American chooses to suck at every opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER14> 100% accurate. Passengers hate the AA 737 MAXs. Flight attendants hate them too.

</comment><comment><USER15> There were no multi-passenger america-based airline fatalities in 2018 ( one woman was killed when a jet rotor exploded sending the plate through the window and through her ). Some things about air travel in America are getting better

</comment><comment><USER16> Is it just me getting older, or are these new thinner economy seats much harder/stiffer than the old ones?

</comment><comment><USER17> Violent death is another unattractive feature.

</comment><comment><USER18> This need a (2018) tag.

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't fly much. I spend my carbon footprint on eating meat for every meal, and driving a not very efficient car. I last went on a plane in July 2010.

It stuck in my mind, because it was hell. So this segment really leaped out at me:

> I sat in the seat for a moment ... My takeaway is that the comfort is > roughly comparable.

My takeaway is that the author is full of shit.

Sit in that fucker for 4 hours. Make sure you're over the age of 30 when you do it.

<comment><USER20> When I sit in an economy airline seat I fairly quickly (within 30 minutes) begin to get severe aching in my glutes/upper hamstring area that persists for the duration of the flight. I know everyone complains about commercial airline seats, but what is it about airplane seats that does this?

<comment><USER19> Every fitment will have been space- and weight-optimized, for obvious reasons, so you're already squeezed in that bit tighter than you might be in most other forms of public transport. Air pressure is also lower than normal, and you're going to be sat there for longer than usual... it all adds up, I figure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> If you think this is bleak, just wait until they're no longer grounded. I hear it will be a $20 upsell if you want to guarantee flying on a plane with the fixed software.

<comment><USER22> No way that will happen, the ones without the fix will remain grounded as a safety issue.</comment></comment>


Show HN: www.seeflo.com – see what people do on your site - <AUTHOR> http://www.seeflo.com/

<comment><USER2> It's can be great service - but for now there is some annoying bugs:

i can't rename an account. when i try to - it say: We're sorry, but something went wrong. If you are the application owner check the logs for more information.

* The Filters (link?) not working..

Ideas/suggestions for improvement: * Let several users to access the same account - i'm working in a small company and need couple of accounts... * Let me remove sessions - i don't want all of them.. * What about adding an heat map?

Anyway, looks promising!!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'll keep you posted. The teams is technically working, but I haven't created the ui yet, as I assumed it would take some time before someone needs it :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This really needs a video or something. As it is, I can't tell whether the service even actually exists at the moment.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you happen to know someone who can do this for a small fee?

The service is working. Not just collecting email + cc ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Amazing! I've been looking for a tool like this for a very long time now.

</comment><comment><USER5> Great looking service

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Any feedback or suggestion is welcome.

<comment><USER6> I'm intrigued by this, but no demo. Asking for my credit card without a whole lot of explanation about how the service works.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you send me an email to keep you updated?

There's a free plan which doesn't require a creditcard (A lot of articles ay you should ask for this asap, so this is why)

I need more info + a demo on the site yes.. I was thinking about just having a link which takes you to a page which will replay your current session.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Python and the power of 'first class' everything - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/development/76397/python-and-power-first-class-everything <comment><USER2> Of course, not everything is actually first-class in Python.

There's a whole bunch of statements — simple (assert, pass, del, break, continue, import, raise, …) and compound (if, while, for, with, try) — which definitely don't qualify

<comment><USER3> The list is shorter than that, though.

How we'd override "pass" boggles my mind. Same for break and continue, and mostly raise (though you have control over the exception hierarchy).

del can be modified to some extent by changing the "del" double-underscore method of the target. import can be modified in several ways, which is how the zipimport is implemented (not an atomic capability). if, while, and try are effectively atomic, but "for" loops can be redefined by defining an iterator, and with is specified entirely in terms of an interface that allows you to affect what it does too.

Personally, I don't think the right way to phrase it is as "everything is first-class in Python", though. I see it as "when the language designer wants to put a capability into the language, like, say, importing from zip files, instead of hard coding it into the interpreter, an interface is coded into the interpreter that anybody can use", which unfortunately I don't have a snappy word on hand for. Looking over the history of Python you can even see this evolving, with the increasing openness of "import" and metaclasses being the most obvious examples.

"Everything is first class" would lead you to something like Lisp macros, which Python eschews. (For better and for worse.) However, I for one would wish more languages would learn the Python lesson above; it's so frustrating to me when I see a language implement something like "import from a different source" but still give you no way to use this new capability yourself. If it's convenient and powerful to you as a language designer, it'll be even more convenient and powerful in the hands of all your users.

<comment><USER2> > How we'd override "pass" boggles my mind.

An expression that does nothing. Putting `''` in a function is equivalent to `pass` in that it lets the parser do its stuff. `pass` could be a builtin defined as `None` and the behavior would be the same as today, without a keyword.

> Same for break and continue

I'm not saying I know how to replace everything (though I'd probably just remove break and continue, they're nice from time to time but not exactly essential), just that there's a lot of stuff which isn't first-class in Python.

> if, while, and try are effectively atomic, but "for" loops can be redefined > by defining an iterator, and with is specified entirely in terms of an > interface that allows you to affect what it does too.

I don't get what you're trying to say here.

<comment><USER3> For loops aren't as magical as "break" or "continue". They are just a particular client for iterators. C has hard-coded for loops. Python's for loops do almost anything you want or need them to do, and indeed, coming at them from a C point of view is really missing the point. Anything conforming to the iteration protocol can be used in a for loop [1], and indeed, if you're feeling evil, code in the for loop can even manipulate the iterator as it goes. Not recommended, but it would work.

"with" is a special statement, yes, but the specialness is all stuff you can access from a first-class point of view, up to and including dynamically creating a class that implements the "with" behavior you want, then using that with "with". Yes, you can't create your own arbitrary special-purpose statements the way you can in Lisp, but neither is it true that "with" is cast in stone such that you can't do anything with it. Write anything that conforms to the "with" protocol [2] and it'll work.

Also "first class" in the sense that you can program them are . (the attribute retrieval operator) and [] (usually the dict-lookup operator, but it can be rewritten to do anything you like for a given object).

Mind you, I'm not saying that Python is as flexible as Lisp, it clearly isn't. But it does not lead to understanding to say that "with" has no "first-class" aspects to it. It occupies a middle-ground between C and Lisp. Python has chosen this approach with due deliberation. You might still not like it after you understand it, but let us damn it for what it is, not for what it isn't.

[1]: <http://docs.python.org/library/stdtypes.html#typeiter>

[2]: [http://docs.python.org/reference/datamodel.html#with- stateme...](http://docs.python.org/reference/datamodel.html#with-statement- context-managers)

<comment><USER2> You're very cute, but I know what Python is and how it works thank you very much, I've been coding with and in it for years. Doesn't change anything: Python's statements are not first-class objects.

And lisp's got nothing to do with that either.

> You might still not like it after you understand it, but let us damn it for > what it is, not for what it isn't.

You… completely missed the point?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Missing: first-class syntax.

<comment><USER5> and first-class anonymous functions

<comment><USER2> _unrestricted_ first-class anonymous functions.

Python already has first-class anonymous functions (`lambda`), but highly restricted ones.

<comment><USER5> In that case, C has highly restricted first class functions. "restricted first class" is a contradiction, IMO. First class with restrictions is not first class.

<comment><USER2> The restriction in Python is not on the first-classeness but on the anonymity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> People should look at Smalltalk if they want "first class" everything.

<comment><USER2> first-class _almost_ everything. I don't think "^" is a first-class element in Smalltalk (though I might be wrong)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Mh, I have to say, this is far less impressive if you think in interfaces everywhere (or haskells type classes everywhere)... This is just something like:

interface TypeConstructor<T,V> { T buildType(V value); }

List<TypeConstructor<T,V>>;

or something like this.

<comment><USER8> Is this a joke? That's nowhere near as simple.

<comment><USER9> Haskell is making explicit (and inferring - you don't need to type it!) what Python implicitly assumes will probably work, but _checking whether it's actually correct_.

The terminology is math-y to the point of exclusiveness because of Haskell's close association with academia* , but there's a point after which it's simpler to make the compiler check than to rewrite the same kinds of tests over and over and over. Type systems are for expressing your requirements in a way that the compiler can do the tests once, at compile time. Computers are good at automating tedious and repetitive work, y'know?

It's too bad most of the people discussing how these things work seem hell- bent on using Greek letters and other insular terminology for everything. Static typing is kind of a wash for smaller projects (I'd just use Lua or Python for something that will only be a few pages of code), but once you start worrying about maintenance or testing changing interfaces between modules, the immediate feedback from a _good_ static type system really comes in handy.

OCaml is a pretty great language, but has some major usability warts and not that much written about it in English. (And Haskell's "avoid success at all costs" motto is...telling.)

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I understand that, but the examples were supposed to be impressive in their simplicity. You can mix types in an array even in C, but the code you'd need to write to do so makes it unattractive.

If the comment was "But you don't get any type checking" instead of "My language can do this too", then it'd make perfect sense.

<comment><USER7> My point was: Yes, you can cram differently typed values into the same array, but this won't make sense unless all elements in the array share a common interface to access them. If this is not the case, all the dynamicness is useless, because you cannot do anything with the elements inside the array.

And once I arrived at this important realization, all the discussion of 'yay, I am SO dynamic' kind of fell over, because a lot of things reverted to the same principle of interfaces and programming to interfaces.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Propaganda - <AUTHOR> http://www.swaraj.org/shikshantar/propaganda.htm

<comment><USER2> Not sure what to make of his theories, since his "real world examples" are such utter BS:

 _In Korea, the local script was terribly difficult and complicated; so, in North Korea, the Communists created an entirely new alphabet and a simple script in order to teach all the people how to read ... Among the Tibetans, the Mongols, the Ouighbours, the Manchus, the only texts in the new script are Mao's works._

The only group mentioned who actually got a new alphabet were the Uyghurs (not "Ouighbours"), and since the 1980s they've switched back to Perso-Arabic. Hangul was created in the 15th century and became widespread during the Japanese colonial era. Manchu was clearly moribund by 1960, so there was no need to design any "new alphabet" for them. The PRC explicitly rejected script reform for Mongolian due to the Sino-Soviet split (which is why they still use Classical script in Inner Mongolia).</comment>


Ask HN: What comics do you read - <AUTHOR>

Apart from the obvious such as xkcd and Dilbert what popular comics do you read regularly? <comment><USER2> c&h every single day. always gives me a laugh. I also read the oatmeal. Though he doesn't really do comics.</comment>


WatchTower - a non-profit web app - <AUTHOR>

Hey Friends, I'm excited to officially launch the public beta release of WatchTower, which is an online tool to help managers collect feedback from their team.
What makes WatchTower unique, is that it's the first product out of the non-profit company, Coding for Cures. Which means 100% of the money WatchTower makes helps fund disease research.
Please spread the word, and perhaps suggest the tool to your manager at work. :)
http://www.TeamWatchTower.com <comment><USER2> Keep going Brad! It will be interesting to see where code for cures goes, let me know if I can help I am always around. Scott @ Quantified API (Instant API)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Scott!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> this should go as Show HN post.</comment>


Visualizing Wikipedia - <AUTHOR> http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/wikiviz/index.html

<comment><USER2> I'm sure the code to produce these graphs is impressive, but I don't see much value in the visualizations themselves.</comment>


Amazon's Dash Button and the future of invisible, frictionless computers - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@JonathanHillis/amazon-s-dash-button-and-the-future-of-invisible-frictionless-computers-102ebea74b7c

<comment><USER2> I like the idea of the dash button a lot. Even with one click ordering on my phone with the Amazon app that is logged in automatically I still didn't order toilet paper right away when I saw I only had two rolls left this morning. I think if I had had a dash button I would have. And though that sounds silly I think many people operate the same way.

I also want the dash button but have never used Amazon's Subscribe and Save. I think subscription services are advertised as reducing your mental overhead but for me they can increase it as I am worried I will automatically buy something I don't want or forget to cancel the subscription. Plus with things like toilet paper I don't know how often I need to order it, a dash button solves all this.

</comment><comment><USER3> People tend to significantly underestimate how beneficial it is to have your mind cleared of all of the little, nagging things on your to-do list. I started using the GTD [1] methodology to help with that, and it has improved my ability to focus significantly.

I can see how the Dash Button would be similarly useful.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done)</comment>


Linux should rival Apple, urges Ubuntu founder - <AUTHOR> http://www.techworld.com/opsys/news/index.cfm?newsid=102215 <comment><USER2> The point that most Linux users and developers seem to miss is not that a good user interface needs to be pretty -- it needs to be consistent. Sure, the stylish looks of OS X do a lot to woo people to the platform, but the experience is why people stay.

Consistency is the area where Linux fails miserably. Perhaps this is due to the lack of a single visionary who leads the way in Linux desktop development, but I'd say the problem lies more in the 'not built here' mentality of the developers. Which is kind of ironic, because the entire point of free software was that anybody could contribute to improving it.

Consider this: Think of your top ten Linux applications, and the GUI toolkits they use to handle their interaction with X11. I'll wager that, out of those ten applications, you can probably list four or five different GUI toolkits, each of which works _slightly_ differently. Why isn't there just one _really good_ GUI toolkit?

I think the answer lies in pride -- everybody wants to have 'their' project, so they start their own, rather than contributing to an existing codebase. For the same reason, open-source project maintainers often do an awful job of listening to their users and co-developers, because their pride of being at the head of the train is threatened by other people making key decisions.

This pride also extends out into assuming that the user of said application _wants_ to be an expert in its use, which leads to overly complicated preference panes, nonsense confirmation dialogues, and so on.

This is why Linux applications often have the most appallingly inconsistent interfaces, and sadly, I can't think of a good solution to the problem. Frankly, I wish I could, because I would love to run Debian Linux on a Lenovo tablet, and have a GUI that is as useful for me as OS X.

<comment><USER3> One way to start to fix this problem is with marketing. Linux is just the kernel; GNOME is the OS. Ubuntu and Fedora are GNOME distros. You shouldn't expect to run KDE or Motif programs on GNOME; after all, they were written for a different operating system. Of course, this divides the former "Linux" market into even smaller pieces...

<comment><USER2> But this is the exact problem. Why should each window manager be its own platform? This is like having every car produced by GM or Toyota being totally custom-built, with parts that can't be interchanged, without great pain, with anything else in the range.

<comment><USER3> I'm just talking about the current state. It is a fact that interop between GNOME, KDE, and whatever else is so poor that the only way to achieve usability today is to pick one platform and stick with it completely. In some cases the differences between the platforms are arbitrary and they could interop or be merged, but in some cases the differences are philosophical and IMO irreconcilable (you might as well merge the Democratic and Republican parties). Given that situation, I don't see any way to create a single Linux desktop market. But then you probably shouldn't listen to me; I don't even use Linux on the desktop.

<comment><USER4> That is a situation where survival of the fittest eventually sets in. Eventually one will finally win just enough users to start eclipsing the others. My guess it will be gnome since it is the WM of choice for Ubuntu and Red Hat. And as more corporations get involved with development in the Linux- realm, there will be more incentive to standardize things and less incentive to fork.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Desktop" is too broad of a definition. Gnome/Nautilus already kick Finder's ass, but is it enough to recommend Ubuntu over OSX to my parents? No.

What Linux needs, is PC manufacturer's support. I am not talking about drivers here, I'm talking about quality pre-installs done at the factory. Once suppliers see this, they'll provide quality Linux drivers in order to compete. And for users stuff "will just work".

ThinkPad T61 running Ubuntu is in many ways superior to MBP/OSX (and 30% cheaper), but only because I deliberately configured it with only Linux- compatible components and spent a weekend tuning it upon arrival.

<comment><USER6> >What Linux needs, is PC manufacturer's support. I am not talking about drivers here, I'm talking about quality pre-installs done at the factory.

That would be wonderful. Ubuntu is making my laptop search very stressful. It is so much fun to use that I don't want to go back to Windows. However, if I buy a laptop that isn't compatible with Ubuntu then it will be hard or impossible to switch out the components for compatible ones like I did on my desktop. The only hassle-free solution is to buy Ubuntu laptops from Dell, but they currently charge about $150 more for the same hardware with Ubuntu installed compared to Windows (what happened to the "Windows tax"?).

<comment><USER3> The Windows tax is offset by the crapware subsidy.

<comment><USER5> Dell charges $1-2 per crapware install, but sometimes those are free if Dell feels like they add value. Vista Basic, OEM edition, is probably $50 (I am guessing about this one). This requires 20-25 cases of infection with useless shit to offset Microsoft tax.

This still can't explain how come Ubuntu-based machines are more expensive.

I think that Dell simply rides the demand train: they're the only big-name brand that sells Ubuntu-powered machines (very few know that Lenovo sells SUSE) and they're enjoying higher profit margins on them.

<comment><USER7> Maybe it is just the ratio of E="effort to make OS run on Laptop x" to U="units of laptops x sold". Price =~ E/U.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't like apple that much. I like the fact that they are good. Microsoft spoiled us, we thought that just because its open source its automatically better than anything else. Apple showed us that open source is just automatically better than windows, not better than anything else. Its good to finally have good competition.

</comment><comment><USER6> >"The challenge for us is to figure out how to deliver something which is crisp and clean," without sacrificing the community process, he said.

There are multiple architectures for open source projects that run the spectrum from anarchic to authoritarian. If a founder has a particular artistic vision that he feels passionate about, nothing is stopping him from forcing it through and then releasing the source code.

Personally, I love using my Ubuntu desktop. The team has done a great job on meeting the usability challenge. The days and weeks spent troubleshooting hardware problems were ugly, horrible, and frustrating (I would love to have an Ubuntu "Installs for sure" hardware list somewhere), but the Ubuntu user experience is a delight compared to Windows.

A caveat: I've never used a mac for a significant period of time so I can't say how it compares to that competition.

<comment><USER3> _If a founder has a particular artistic vision that he feels passionate about, nothing is stopping him from forcing it through and then releasing the source code._

Except the fact that he'll receive virtually no contributions from the community and thus he'll be limited to whatever can be done by himself and his employees. Also, community-controlled distros have set themselves up as gatekeepers, so most users never even discover software that the distros don't like.

I think Shuttleworth has identified the correct problem: We know how to get a large number of programmers to produce high-quality software (employ them) and we know how to get a large number of programmers to produce a large amount of software for free (the bazaar), but we don't know how to convince a large number of programmers to produce high-quality software for free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been using Ubuntu for over a year now first on a T60p laptop, now on a custom built desktop. The only compatibility issue I've had is the lack of ati support for Linux, other than that smooth sailing. I use linux simply because of how powerful it is, it doesn't stand in your way at all. As far as usability goes I'm a poor judge, everything seems logically placed to me, although it lacks the unity of MacOs and even to some extent of Windows. The open source community seems to finally be concentrating on elegant design, so this might change soon.

</comment><comment><USER10> It _can not_ happen.

Until you can bring in a visionary dictator like Jobs that everyone channels their energy through, it is impossible to bring Linux to the level of Apple.

"The challenge for us is to figure out how to deliver something which is crisp and clean."

Crisp and clean? That's all it takes to match Apple?

A great movie requires a visionary director. Shuttleworth has does some amazing stuff with Ubuntu, but I think attacking directly at the bow of Apple is a misguided battle.

<comment><USER11> Shuttleworth IS the Steve Jobs of Linux. Linus is the poster child for the technical guy, but Shuttleworth needs to lead the style. However I find him lacking in specific vision, he says these things are problems, we need to find solutions, but Ubuntu never provides a revolution. I feel like Ubuntu has found the annoyances of Linux and fixed many of them, but they aren't necessarily visionary changes.

<comment><USER12> Because Linux's problem isn't its bugs, or its glitchiness. Its problems revolve around the design theory that builds it.

That's where Apple wins big-time over the other two. It has a consistent theory of how to reduce clicks to get effects. From not having a lower bar to HAVING an upper menu to Spotlight to its Dock, everything is designed to make things faster for you.

Ubuntu won't ever have this. It can't. Nothing that's designed to be truly open can. You can't tweak things to the same level of control. You can't implement multitouch and make programs that RELY on multitouch. You can't put iTunes controls on the keyboard, or an Eject key. You can't make iChat integrate with Mail and your Address Book when not everybody will have each of those programs. It's not possible.

I've used both thoroughly. The level of polish on the one side is VASTLY superior. Look even at Adium versus Pidgin. They run the same library. But one takes up far less space, has better-designed themes, runs more smoothly... because Apple allows for that. It offers big screen resolutions and superior font support, so you can keep things tiny and out-of-the-way and still readable. It deals with a modern-day theme that means a focus on professionalism still works. It knows it can use Growl and the Dock for notifications, which keeps it much less in-your-face than anything FLASHING ever would.

You can't get keyboard shortcuts that are as good when you don't know the keyboard. You can't get software support when you don't know the hardware. You can't have a superior user interface when people use five hundred different displays and two thousand different methods of input. (Exaggeration.) Ubuntu can not win a battle when it can't control the tools used to fight. It can't control hardware, it can't control software, without betraying its design theories. Apple can, and so Apple will always win in a fight hands-down.

<comment><USER13> > You can't implement multitouch and make programs that RELY on multitouch.

Yes you can. Make the canvas widget support multitouch - bang, all apps support multitouch.

> You can't put iTunes controls on the keyboard, or an Eject key.

Multimedia keys and eject both work fine out of the box today.

> You can't make iChat integrate with Mail and your Address Book when not > everybody will have each of those programs. It's not possible.

Yes it is, and it's used today. Pidgin uses the Evo address book, as do all Gnome programs. Ubuntu ensures that every desktop indeed has these programs, __because it controls the platform__.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, it has that, but at the same time this isn't a matter of pure functionality. This is a matter of getting a consistent polish. And having a hodge-podge set of applications doesn't do it.

I'm sorry if I misspoke earlier. I know that Gnome uses Evo to tie things together. It's just that it doesn't GIVE that impression when you use it. Evo seems, when you turn on the computer, to be a random program thrown in because it's free. Ditto Pidgin. Ditto OpenOffice and Firefox. It's because Linux has never had a consistent set of do-everything apps written by one person. And users notice this. I did. With iChat, I immediately understood the connection. I did because Address Book is a well-known application. Ditto iChat. Evo isn't. Pidgin is, but its integration with Evo isn't.

The eject key is supported, yes. But it's not the same as having a key on the keyboard that does it and NOT a button next to the CD slot. The Mac hardware is tight. And... no other hardware is. Linux can't copy that, because that introduces a matter of PAY into things.

You can implement multitouch, but you can't RELY on its being there. And for me, that's what made Leopard the OS that it is: powerful and tight multitouch.

<comment><USER7> "And having a hodge-podge set of applications doesn't do it."

Nowhere is it written in stone that a Linux Distribution needs to ship with a hodge-podge of applications.

<comment><USER12> No, but that means there's at LEAST a two-step program to beating Apple. First, you need to MAKE a set of applications that aren't hodge-podge; then, those apps have to be better than Apple's. And call me a fanboy (for some definitions that would be true), but Apple apps are top-notch and Apple is never stagnant.

<comment><USER7> There are already people preferring Linux over Apple, so at the most, it is a matter of taste. Not that some Linux apps could not be improved, but some Apple software sucks, too (what is up with the FileManager???).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why does open source work better for code than for design (or does it)? I thought the reason for the good quality of many open source projects is that people fix the flaws for themselves, and all the fixes accumulate.

Why does it not work the same for design (or does it). Are designers less prone to fixing flaws in products? Are they just lazy and use Apple stuff?

Personally I can't really see a fundamental difference between an ugly widget (looks) and an ugly piece of code, they are both bugs?

</comment><comment><USER14> As War Nerd said, the enemy of your enemy is usually also your enemy. It's fine to hate the occupiers, but the real enemy is the rival militia.

</comment><comment><USER15> "Linux, Shuttleworth said, must link up with Windows. He stressed his belief that 'Linux is the platform of the future. But I think it's essential that we learn how to work with Windows'."

I'm sure Linux developers would be more than willing to link up more with Windows if it didn't keep getting out of its way to prevent it.

</comment><comment><USER16> it's hard when ubuntu role model is windows, implicitly by promoting it to convert windows user to linux, explicitly by making some apps look and feel similar to windows

the role model should be osx ... i'll wait the day when i see tutorials about 'how changing my osx desktop to feel & look like Ubuntu'</comment>


My dad taught me cashflow with a soda machine - <AUTHOR> http://blog.thestartuptoolkit.com/2011/10/my-dad-taught-me-cashflow-with-a-soda-machine/ <comment><USER3> My 11-year-old daughter for Christmas last year asked for a bubble-gum vending machine. She got the idea from hearing stories about a family member who had over a hundred machines placed at one time.

I thought it was a great idea. She placed one machine, then another. Now she has four machines, but she has only placed 2 of them. Each machine makes about a buck a day gross, 70 cents or so net.

I'm purposely not doing any of the stuff this guy's dad did -- charge for gas, insist on doing the math, etc. For now all she has to do is buy the inventory. Once a month or so to pick up the "haul."

I think if you push these things then you lose track of the point. Right now it's something she enjoys -- who wouldn't want to take a trip each month and come back with tens of dollars? If we were to get into marketing, sales, cash flow, or any of that? I think it would turn it into a chore. After all, geesh, the kid is only 11. The only thing I've told her is that she has to save up if she wants another machine, and the more machines she has placed in good spots the more money she will make.

Looking back over the previous year, I think this Christmas gift might turn out to be one of the best presents we've ever given. It has the potential to teach so many lessons. The coolest part is that it is all driven by motivation on her side -- she was the one asking for the machine, she is the one picking out the product, she is the one saving up for new machines, she is the one responsible for scouting out new locations and making the pitch to store owners, etc. If she pushes a lot, she could make some real cash. If not, then she knows more about how these things work. It's a win either way.

<comment><USER4> What was the initial investment?

<comment><USER3> As I remember, $160 covered the first machine and bag of gumballs. We don't spend a lot on Christmas, so this was her "big" present that year. It was interesting listening to her telling her friends about what she got!

It took her about six months of operating to save up enough for the second machine. Once that machine was operational, it took another 4 months for the third machine, and so on. (I think the fourth was a birthday present). It's been a great applied lesson in exponential growth.

To answer the other commenter's question, she placed the machines in places she visited once a month anyway. Civic groups, local hairstylists, etc. A couple of these spots didn't work out, so she had to find new places.

I would be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed that these two are sitting at home (even though she _still_ manages to weasel 1 or 2 sales a day from the family, the little rascal) and I've wanted to talk to her about placing her machines where there is lots of foot traffic, but I've been biting my tongue. Mostly. I figure you can't motivate somebody from the outside. Every month when she comes back home with her and mom holding a big bag of quarters, I feel like that should be feedback enough.

<comment><USER4> Whoa. $160 initial investment for seventy cents a day profit? Your kid is investing at 160%!

If I spent $50K on these, I could retire! (Except I wouldn't be retired, I'd be driving around all the damn time taking care of my three hundred and twelve gumball machines. But still!)

<comment><USER3> Don't forget it's all cash income -- no waiting on invoices to post or people to write checks. You crack open the machine, and it's like Christmas.

I think if you did this with a higher-margin item, say DVDs or electronics, you could retire. But the trick is, as you note, scaling all the footwork and overhead. It's not like you can farm out the collection and restocking, not unless you really, really trust somebody. And chasing around 100-300 machines, the people that manage the site, and the product that works? It's not a trivial thing to do at all.

Not only maintenance, there's also always moving the machines around, and pitching store owners to put a machine onsite. Some of them look at it like competition. A couple guys refused to place them unless they got a piece of the action! After she finished pitching, they decided they would go out and buy their own machines. All for 20 bucks a month. Dang cheapskates. And don't forget there are big, serious players out there who wouldn't think twice of using dirty tricks (and the know them all) to quash you like a bug. She's lucky she's under the radar. Somebody dropping a couple hundred thousand for a few dozen high-end machines would not go unnoticed.

I actually like the business model a lot. It encourages direct selling, there's lots of business math, and there aren't a lot of tricky issues involved.

So yes! Kinda. If you could retire on 400-1200 bucks a month, I think it would work. Past that point, though, it gets ugly. Small scale? It rocks. Large scale? It looks much better on TV than it actually is.

<comment><USER5> _A couple guys refused to place them unless they got a piece of the action! After she finished pitching, they decided they would go out and buy their own machines. All for 20 bucks a month. Dang cheapskates._

This one part of your comment baffles me. Exactly why should they share their business traffic rent-free with your daughter? Sure, she's young and presumably cute and it's just a gum machine, but it seems to me that she should be splitting the take with them or at least offering them a few bucks as a nominal rental payment. This is, after all, the situation that most business owners are in with regard to a commercial landlord. Sure, for such small sums it seems silly, but the marginal profit on most retail purchases is tiny. If the machines cost $160, the retailer sensibly sees that the capital expenditure is covered after 8 months.

I think you missed an opportunity here. If you had encouraged her to negotiate and hit on a business with more than one branch, the vending machines could be in multiple locations; if not, a quid pro quo still generates a lot of good will. My local corner store owner has a kid of 8 or 9; I suspect that his response to a proposal of this sort would be to buy his own kid his own vending machine, rather than hand 100% of the profits to your daughter. Maybe I'm missing some part of your story?

On a side note, I wish you would consider vending some other product besides gum, which isn't much good for kids' teeth. You wouldn't have bought her a cigarette vending machine if those were still popular, or at least so I assume. On a small scale, it's a classic example of externalizing the cost of the product you sell.

<comment><USER6> > On a side note, I wish you would consider vending some other product besides > gum, which isn't much good for kids' teeth.

It's unfortunate but the highest margin food products with a long shelf-life, thereby making them more suited to vending machines, tend to be full of sugar and very unhealthy.

<comment><USER7> Not to mention the impulse-buy angle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anyone else here think that kids should be allowed to spend their childhoods being, well, kids?

A lot of people seem to spend their time as parents trying to teach the things they think their kids should know, but too often these seem to be things that kids need to know to fulfil their parents aspirations for them. Sure cash flow is a useful lesson (though one that I'd suggest could be taught more efficiently) but this feels a bit like a parent pushing someone down a particular line.

Now I'm not saying that this is a bad story, and certainly not a bad parent, just that IMHO the absolute best bit of this story - by a country mile - <USER2> that it's something they did together, parent and child spending time with each other. If he learned about cash flow then that's great, but it's not nearly as great as him learning about his dad and his dad learning about him.

<comment><USER9> No.

Not if the definition of "letting kids be kids" is to let them do what everyone else's kids are doing these days, mollycoddling their every whim and when not acting as chauffeur or butler, letting them babysit themselves with TV and video games.

Or, yes...

If the definition of letting them be kids is shutting off the TV, on sunny days pushing them out the door to go play in the dirt, and on rainy days taking them to the library, coupled with spending time to encourage and support them in the interests they develop and express. The key is engagement.

I don't see any indication in this story that the boy didn't enjoy it. Sounds as though he found it an engaging challenge, and that it didn't take too much of his time. If he wasn't doing that, he could have been playing Lemonade Stand on a Commodore 64 or Apple II. If the story was about Lemonade Stand, nobody would say "let kids be kids", so what's the problem here? Is it that this sounds like "work"?

Work, even real work, can be fun, and figuring out how to enjoy something that returns financial gain may be the lesson with the most payoff a parent could provide, given the ratio of time most adults have to spend in work versus leisure.

<comment><USER8> The definition is either of those or something different altogether. The point is that it should depend on the kids and the parents involved and revolve around something mutually enjoyable (rather than "improving").

I agree work can be fun and so can learning, and I agree that Rob probably had a great time and certainly had a great dad. My point is that he had a great time because he had a dad who was interested in him and engaged with him, not because he had a dad who tried to teach him cash flow.

<comment><USER10> '(rather than "improving")'

Are you raising a child, or raising an adult?

You seem horrified by the idea that we might try to "improve" kids; I'm horrified by the idea that I might turn my kids loose in the world without any "improvement". My mind can not even express the theory of parenting you are operating under in which improvement is some sort of anathema.

<comment><USER8> I'm horrified by the idea that we might improve a child at the expense of everything else. Clearly I'm not against children learning.

<comment><USER11> You seem to be against them doing any work though. That is part of learning how to survive in this world. Look at OWS. They must have all had "great" parents who let them be kids. They still are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Reminds me of a story of a similar family, posted on everything2.com a while ago after a long discussion of how to rip off soda machines by using coins stuck to fishing line or pouring salt water through them:

[http://everything2.com/user/Trilateral+Chairman/writeups/Rip...](http://everything2.com/user/Trilateral+Chairman/writeups/Ripping+off+soda+machines)

Lots of life lessons there.

</comment><comment><USER13> A beautiful story. I myself was raised by two academics in safe middle class public sector jobs their whole life. Only at my 30th year did I consider starting my own business. Looking back on friends who started on their own, I do not doubt that either being an entrepreneur is 1) in the bloodline (nature) and in the upbringing (nurture).

I had a wonderful childhood - but I think I would have started my own business much earlier, had I had a father like yours. And it just goes to show, that valuable life lessons does not need to be boring chores and stern rants from the elderly.

Thanks for an inspiring read.

</comment><comment><USER14> When I was 9 or 10 we'd go to Costco and purchase the big flats of large muffins. We'd sit around the dinner table and wrap them in cellophane and then send them with my dad to put in his office's kitchen. We sold those things for $50/each on the honor system and made a tidy profit. I hadn't thought of that in a while, but it definitely was a fun adventure.

<comment><USER15> LOL - I assume you meant $0.50 each?

<comment><USER14> Whoops! Yes, $0.50!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The simplest lessons are often the most difficult to learn and internalize to the limit of it becoming second nature ( or intuition ). Brilliant dad. What a great story. Thank you kindly.

Fathers are so, so, so important.. here's an interesting excerpt from the recent Steve Jobs bio :

" It was important, his father said, to craft the backs of cabinets and fences properly, even though they were hidden. He loved doing things right. He even cared about the look of the parts you couldn't see. "[1]

Connect the above with the speech Johnny Ive gave at the recent memorial :

" we shared a giddy excitement spending months and months on a part of a product that nobody would ever see, well not with their eyes. "[2]

[1] - [http://www.amazon.com/Steve-Jobs-Exclusive-Biography- ebook/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Steve-Jobs-Exclusive-Biography- ebook/dp/B005J3IEZQ/)

[2] - [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPUsuY8JZJI&t=2905](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPUsuY8JZJI&t=2905)

</comment><comment><USER17> This is amazing. Usually parents try to teach kinds about mature life by making them do chores or get higher marks in school. And yet what do you learn this way?

That life doesn't reward you for this no matter how many chores you do and how good marks you get.

</comment><comment><USER18> Empowering people to figure stuff out on their own is the best way to teach. My Dad handed me the reins to out a small stock account with my own, my siblings and some of his money when I was 11. Man, can that motivate you to learn. I'd read 20 investing books by the time I got into high school. And fundamentally the most important thing it taught me was how to think about money. And its was so effortless on his part.

On a similar note, Warren Buffet made around $50,000 by the time he graduated high school by owning several vending machines, among other things.

</comment><comment><USER19> Great story. I'm always looking for new ideas on how to teach these concepts to my own children and I love this approach. Now, I just need to find a good place for a vending machine...

<comment><AUTHOR> I looked into this a bit (I wanted to take the same ideas and package them for elementary schools to teach to students).

Vending machines are far from ideal, although they're still plausible if you have a friend who owns a car repair shop or something similar with a few steady workers plus customer traffic.

If I was doing it today, I would take one of the single-serving coffee machines. Some of them have coin slots, pricing controls, and protected inventory. They're a bit expensive to buy individually (a couple grand) but might make sense to share the responsibilities and decisions among a class or a group of family friends.

Because of the smaller footprint, also easy to add to a teacher's lounge, office, etc and it's possible the manufacturer would cut you a break for doing something so PR-able, especially if you turn it into a repeatable school program.

Drop me a note if anyone decides to pursue something like this -- I'd be happy to help where I can: developing the curriculum, yelling at suppliers, or coming up with new lower-cost hardware.

<comment><USER20> My father leases/finances equipment and occasionally gets the used machines back after the term expires. Was thinking that a website positioning the vending machines as a great learning tool for kids would be an interesting way to sell them. Depending on the popularity, I imagine you might even be able to build some web applications that would help the kids manage and find locations for the machines (a sort of marketplace for machine owners and location owners). There's the possibility of upgrading the machines and even adding NFC support to older ones too.

Am looking into how many machines I can get my hands on now...

<comment><USER20> It turns out that they don't lease vending machines, but he does have connections with manufacturers. Feel free to reach out if anyone is interested.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> That is a great story. Shorter and simpler after mowing the lawn one dad. I told my dad I wanted to invest in stocks. He thought this was a great opportunity to teach me about money. So he loaned me money to invest in the stock market. Help me pick and buy stocks, track their values. Eventually to sell them and pay back the loan keeping profits for myself...

The only real issue was it was the start of tech bubble and I was a computer nerd. I bought all tech stocks which soared, my older brother buy shoe companies and the like...

I nearly tripled my investment while my brother lost 30ish% of his. Not sure it was quite as real world learning opportunity as he was hoping.

<comment><USER7> I think the stock market is a lousy way to teach kids about investing. In fact, I'm not even convinced that interest-bearing accounts are of much use to kids.

The time value of money is significant to a kid. Consider a kid with, say, $500 from babysitting or lawn-mowing. This could buy the kid, say, a really nice bicycle (+ helmet, lock, rack, basket, chain lubricant, etc. Assume they're old enough that they won't outgrow it for a while.) Alternatively, the kid could wait a year and expect to have an extra $20 (given the 4% annualized inflation-adjusted return on the market - what, you're investing, right? not gambling? then you get 4%. :P)

Which would you choose: about $20, or a year with a bicycle? Opportunity cost! And the $20 will just about cover the commission on trading. Ouch. Transaction fees.

The reason that the stock market is attractive to _adults_ is that we generally have an adequate supply of Things that we need to make use of our time. There isn't another object we can spend $500 that will make that sort of an impact on our lives. Diminishing returns!

(Also, we have tens of thousands of dollars, so we can invest without being slaughtered with fees.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> "I get the impression kids are a bit slippery in that regard."

True. Come to think of it, I'm middle-aged and I'm still like that.

</comment><comment><USER23> I can't say my parents had lessons this cool, but I did spend some of my time in my teenage years working at my cousins' vending machine warehouse, doing various tasks: counting the take (and filling out the spreadsheet), filing refill slips for the drivers, putting new inventory in the right place, trips to purchase new inventory, and even refilling a machine once. It's a pretty interesting business, and it's interesting to me to see how one can scale up the "levels of responsibility".

</comment><comment><USER24> Brilliant story. This model is much better than giving allowance.

</comment><comment><USER25> this is great- good thing your dad didn't pick up a slot machine, you could've ended up in politics :)

</comment><comment><USER26> Great Story. I think one thing I am realizing with my little daughter is that kids - even at 1.5 years old - are curious and resourceful. My job as a parent is not to make her happy... but to help equip her to fullfil her purpose and passions to the fullest - that's when she'll be happiest.

That's perhaps why my parents stopped giving us an allowance early on.

My dad loves woodworking, and I remember at 5 years old, taking scraps, nailing parts together to make a very crude looking airplane and actually sold (yes, someone actually bought it) it to raise money for something - can't remember what it was. But I do remember the work, I remember getting paid, and I remember the satisfaction and fulfillment in a happy customer (even if he did buy it out of compassion).

If I wanted a toy (birthday/Christmas aside), I had to work for it (not the regular chores). It encouraged me to think... be creative... buy low, sell high. Robert Kiyosaki had similar experiences as a kid in his book "Rich Dad, Poor Dad". - As an aside the Cashflow game is really good and although it may be expensive, it is totally worth it. There is a kids version too.

I did the lemonade... I tried selling baseball cards... As I got older, so grew the ideas. In highschool video games were expensive. I started reviewing them through a couple of companies (now owned by IGN) and got my games for free to review them and write an HTML review page.

In university (ah, the advent of eBay), I started going to garage sales/thrift stores/pawn shops and buying selective items. I'd clean and test the items, put them up for sale. All my "toys" (games, computer parts, my Metcal Station, DVDs, etc) were bought through the sale of items on eBay.

Of course, this is all besides running a Computer Consulting/VAR company, creating applications, websites, and study/work.

Ah, the good old days. Forgive me for rambling... I got caught in the nostalgia.

</comment><comment><USER27> I had a huge smile on my face while reading this.

This has got to be one of the best stories I've read in a while, and a fantastic idea if I ever have kids. I love it. Especially the idea that the dad would slowly start introducing charges to the kid. It's actually a brilliant idea, and more real-world than giving a kid chores and allowance.

</comment><comment><USER28> Thanks for writing this article. I really enjoyed it. When I was growing up, I was terrible with cash management. My parents continuously subsidized my various entrepreneurial endeavors (building and selling skateboard ramps, selling people's stuff on eBay, manual labor...). So, I grew up really excited about the upside potential of entrepreneurship, but learned little about what it takes to manage the extraordinarily limited resources that you have when you are building businesses in the real world.

Now I help invest in and build companies and work on projects of my own. Learning the trade offs between pricing/volume, technology/cost, etc., is so valuable and I'm only starting to understand them deeply now. I think I'll do something like this when I have kids, whenever that may be....

</comment><comment><USER29> I love this story. Awesome awesome

I made plush South Park characters and sold them to my mom's fitness/spinning clients. Learned a lot about pricing, investing, selling, creating at 10.

Highly encouraged to give children opportunities like this and not just have them do soccer

<comment><USER30> Of course, there are many worse things to spend your time on as a kid than a combination of physical exercise and teamwork.

Do you see something wrong with playing soccer? Or was the key word in that sentence the "just"?

<comment><USER29> key word was 'just'. I played soccer and it was great, my point was to diversify opportunities so kids can learn on their own what motivates them

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Great story. I did a similar thing with Pokemon cards - I lived in one school region but actually attended school in another, so had access to two markets. I kept track of inconsistencies in demand and used it to my advantage, taking a plentiful card type from one area to the other and vice versa. Being a kid is serious biznuz!

Reminds me of Barry Silbert (of Second Market)'s introduction to trading - <http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2699>

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm curious if this kind of youthful money making is still possible. It tends to be much rarer in the UK anyway, but I'm pretty sure there are a gajillion petty bureaucracies that would stop it - working age laws; minimum wage laws; tax / benefit laws; insurance; health and safety; etc etc etc.

But, see also "The inexplicable war on lemonade stands" which is also happening in the US.

([http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/08/03/the- inexplic...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/08/03/the-inexplicable- war-on-lemonade-stands/))

</comment><comment><USER33> Brings to mind two ideas.

Could a parent do all of this without actually renting a machine? Not ideal and a bit of a white lie, but would remove that cost. A father/mother could come home each night or report back at the end of the week. A bit like playing lemonade stand by proxy.

Could a simple app assist a parent in doing this and getting imaginative/realistic situations to keep the child interested? Or even a service renting physical vending machines specifically for parents and children to try this?

<comment><USER34> ... Because lying to your kids is a good idea?

From OP, part of the joy was using the key to open the machine and get a drink when others were watching.

Removing the tangibility of the project (and the heavy lifting——are you teaching your kids that you'll buy and move their inventory?) seems like it might not be the best approach.

<comment><USER33> I acknowledged that it wasn't ideal and was merely wondering if it might be an option for those without the means or imagination to arrange an actual vending machine themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is great. By the time I was 9 or 10, I was frustrated that for all my playing with tools, reading, tinkering, etc., none of it was towards a practical goal. Finding a way to give kids real-life responsibilities in such an engaging way is awesome.

I wonder if script kiddies, for example, lean towards the nefarious because there are no industrious outlets nor mentors for them to work with.

<comment><USER36> Regarding your comment about script kiddies - absolutely. So many of them have no legitimate outlet for their curiosity and skill that they end up "learning to hack" because they think it's cool. It's a really sad thing, and something I wish there was a solution for...

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Very interesting idea. I need to figure out a way to teach my kids about money and cashflow using something like this method. However, as cool as this story is, I swear I read it in one of Rich Dad Poor Dad books. Maybe this is the source of the books story. I'm not sure.

<comment><AUTHOR> From my perspective, it doesn't make a huge difference whether the idea was independently discovered by my dad or inspired by something he read--what matters is the effect it had on me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Rob - how old were you when this started and how long did this venture last?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd have to ask my mom to be totally sure, but I'd estimate I ran the machine for roughly 4 years beginning when I was 7 or 8.

<comment><USER38> That's awesome. I have a 9 year old son right now (4 kids total ranging from ages 16 to 4 years old) and think this is a great story. Thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Great story Rob. Your Dad was an amazing person. He taught not only the 8 year old boy but the 20 something girl the same principles. He was truly an amazing man and I miss him every day.

</comment><comment><USER40> How did the $0.55 price turn out? Did you keep it?

</comment><comment><USER41> Awesome and delightful!

</comment><comment><USER42> Great example of why entrepreneurs don't need an MBA:)

</comment><comment><USER43> Now I see the downside of having a socialist father.</comment>


The Game: Using Linkedin to Land that Job - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtern.com/thesavvyintern/index.php/2011/03/29/the-game-using-linkedin-to-land-that-job/

<comment><USER2> I think, now this is my opinion on the article that this would be more relavent if the 'jobs' were high profile or 'hacker friendly' jobs. Say for x,y,z high profile startup, or Google/Twitter etc... You wouldn't necessarily need to try very hard on getting a job at Generic Skilled Inc or Joe Blow Sys.</comment>


Godaddy scam could cost you $900/year for a vanity TLD - <AUTHOR> http://blog.stephenkiers.com/post/98150026683

<comment><AUTHOR> With pictures as proof!</comment>


Ask HN: Can we build Ironman's Jarvis with 2019 tech? - <AUTHOR> I was rewatching movies in preparation for the new Marvel movie, and I felt some nostalgia and childhood fascination when I saw the depiction of Jarvis in the Ironman movies.
I work in ML research and am currently in graduate school, and I know we're nowhere near real intelligence. But some of those features, question generation, voice commands, object detection, image reconstruction, and others are certainly doable.
Do you think we could build something starting to approach Jarvis in 2019, at least in function i.e. helping your everyday work? <comment><USER2> I'm pretty much doing that very thing. I'm quadriplegic, so every single action I want to take in the world has to be mediated through a third party. That said party is anything from another person to one of the digital assistants.

As another poster mentioned I think, I control pretty much everything in my house including but not limited to unlocking doors, windows, climate control, the lights, posting to Twitter and on and on and on with a cobbled together solution of many different components from different companies.

It's done with a combination of all three of the digital assistants, various scripts and the very wonderful Home Assistant[^1] mostly gluing it altogether. It is by no means a single complete solution, but when I'm controlling the house using just my voice and somebody sees me doing it they react as though I'm some sort of dark wizard.

I love having an automated house and I think Home Assistant is probably one of the best solutions for making all of the different IoT devices communicate at the moment, I think the further down this road we go the more a single solution will probably evolve.

I would have to say though that the home automation stuff that enables me to call for help in an emergency is the most important thing that it does, I can flash the lights different colours when I need help depending on the level of assistance I need. Or if my Fitbit notices that my heart rate has gone below 40 BPM for more than 10 seconds I get a notification, as it is almost indicative of an attack of Autonomic Dysreflexia. I can honestly say that this home automation system has actually saved my life without an ounce of hyperbole.

[^1]: [https://Home-assistant.io/](https://Home-assistant.io/)

<comment><USER3> And if you want to add a 100% offline and private-by-design Voice AI which can run on a Raspberry Pi 3 (and iOS, Android, Linux), take a look at what we are building at [https://snips.ai](https://snips.ai) (it also integrates to Home Assistant)

It works for english, german, french, japanese, spanish, italian, and more coming soon!

<comment><USER4> Looks awesome! Any plans for FreeRTOS?

<comment><USER5> Snips.Ai runs as docker container in home assistant. I'm sure you can docker stuff on FreeRTOS

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Siri is still half deaf and tries to send me to the chip shop when I ask it to send a message and they have a ridiculous amount of budget behind that so probably not.

At the moment our technology is like Zorg's desk in Fifth Element. Stuffed full of toys but ultimately will let you down too often to be relied upon.

<comment><USER7> "send me to the chip shop"

Do you have an accent by any chance - pretty much all voice recognition technology (Android, Apple, cars...) appears to be utterly flummoxed by my fairly mild Scottish accent.

[Edit: to be fair, my accent is probably fairly mild by _Scottish_ standards, not compared to RP].

<comment><USER8> Must be it, a golden oldy about Scottish speech recognition (2010): [https://youtu.be/NMS2VnDveP8](https://youtu.be/NMS2VnDveP8)

<comment><USER7> I have to stop myself posting that every time the subject comes up (I know what it is without opening the link) :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You could probably get 90% of the utility with a janky collection of shell scripts fronted by a voice recognition engine. Think Alexa/Google Assistant/Siri/etc with a bunch of company- or task- specific scripts. I purposefully ignore the robot-arm in an open universe capability, because that's still too far away, AFAIK.

Jarvis in the movie was Hollywood smooth: made to look _great_ in a movie. Even the goofs were great, and it behaved like a puppy, to be likable to the audience. You don't need that in a work assistant. But if you remove that, plus the robot-arm, you're left with a voice controlled Outlook assistant, which is useful, but not sexy.

<comment><USER10> Actually you could've built Alexa/Siri etc back in 1997 with DragonDictate and a whole bunch of scripting.

And in many areas it would've been just as good as what we have today.

<comment><USER11> I had a better UX around playing music with WinAMP, Microsoft Speech API, and a little program I wrote to glue the two together via Win32 API WM_ messages, in 2007, than I have today with Google Now.

Today the problem is a) the voice recognition part, which happens on-line though it shouldn't (introducing large latency and unnecessary Internet dependency), and b) scriptability, which is something none of the voice assistant vendors want to give to you, for business reasons. A better reality would have voice parsed on-device (possibly with models from on-line service providers), and available as a voice-to-text API that could be easily accessed by local scripts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm guessing this is where the Dragon Helmet [1] is headed - it has software (open source) that hopes to fulfil the responses and command execution. And of course mycroft [2] et al.

I think the real problem is getting the computer to do things that you haven't programmed it to do. If you imagine an Alexa / Google home where you have a conversation like:

"Hey Homexa, do a web search for an image of a piece of cheese, enlarge it to 2000x1500 pixels and email it to me please"

If it then came back with "Ok, please tell me how to enlarge an image" and you could give it step by step instructions, that would be amazing. But I don't think the comprehension required is quite there yet. But when we do, and especially if we can crowdsource the learned commands, things could get very, very interesting.

[1] [http://dragon.computer/](http://dragon.computer/)

[2] [https://mycroft.ai/](https://mycroft.ai/)

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't think we are anywhere close to Jarvis which is general AI ( aka real AI aka "conscious" AI ) no more than we are anywhere close to building Ironman's nanotech suit. But we are improving on "dumb/unconscious" AI like Alexa, Siri, etc that could help with day to day life whilest spying on you 24/7.

</comment><comment><USER14> I think before we talk about capabilities we should talk about UX.

Even the first version of Jarvis shown in Iron Man 1 was way ahead in terms of understanding speech and context compared to the cutting edge we have now that is Google Assistant.

At least Google Duplex sounds super natural now. I think when digital assistants can really understand us, adding all those capabilities is just a piece of cake. But I have a feeling we are just probably at most a decade away from something that vaguely resembles that, and I'm super excited about it.

</comment><comment><USER15> The movies (and the major real-life assistants) tend to focus on the idea that you're talking to your computer as if it were a person, but this makes the problem an order of magnitude more difficult than it needs to be. What if we looked at it more like a vocal command prompt? What if we applied the Unix philosophy of composing programs and data transformations into more complex use-cases? You'd have to memorize the commands (though there could be vocal "man pages" too), but could finally do more than toggling lights and asking what the weather is like.

There's some precedent for this; in Avengers Endgame (I'll keep it vague), Tony gives some very precise and technical commands to the system when running a scientific simulation. He's not conversing and quipping, he's basically calling parameterized functions with his voice. I think that would be very doable today.

</comment><comment><USER4> Ha, this is how we've been advertising our wearable, personal assistant (aidlab.com) during the launch on Facebook (such a copyright infringement!). We've been facing the hardware limitation to add the NLP directly on the MCU, as we wanted to omit the 3rd parties. Secondly, adding 'reasonable' voice commands like setting appointments, wiki search or alarms is nothing we could have done alone, so we've discontinued this idea for now.

If we define J.A.R.V.I.S. as a pseudo-intelligent assistant, with a basic understanding of voice commands and biosignal tracker then it's certainly doable, as there are some commercial implementations. Otherwise (like real- time voice chat, or even accurate suggestions based on every-day habits), it is still too soon IMO.

</comment><comment><USER16> I think we are closer than we think.

The problem is that all voice control up until now is a closed app with simplified intents.

In my opinion what we need is a programming language whose REPL UX is voice- oriented, that eases the separation between using and extending the system. Prolog or a lisp could be quite near but we would require some changes such as: syntax easily read (:- in prolog is not very good), the ability to manage ums and ahhhs, the ability to "play" or "test" with functions through voice, etc.

<comment><USER17> We need some type of Structured Query Language, call it SEQUEL, or maybe abbreviated SQL for short. /s

Jokes aside, maybe a LISP-like Sentence Processing Language might be the future of this type of HCI.

<comment><USER16> Look into Attempto Controlled English for an alternative closer to what I was thinking about :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wrote a little shell script that lets you move the mouse around with your voice, ask what time it is, etc. My thinking for future applications is that specific appliances should take specific commands, so there would be little intelligence needed. Oven: preheat to 350 degrees. Lights: on. Music: off. Etc.

</comment><comment><USER19> Sure you can. Services like Alexa are just glorified paperweights and aren't reflective of real world capabilities.

If you want to build your own Jarvis, don't listen to anyone else just get stuck in. You'll be surprised just how far you can get with it.

<comment><USER20> You could also build on top of one of the open source versions, eg Mycroft.

[https://mycroft.ai/](https://mycroft.ai/)

<comment><USER21> That's interesting. Basically the only reason I don't use Alexa or something like this is that I don't want 3rd party listening to me 24/7, so an open source alternative would be of great use. But I don't understand: it says it's open-source, yet the first thing I have to do is to create an account on _their_ platform. So, what's that "open source" thing I ought to download and install, is it just a client? Can I use the thing completely self-hosted?

Also, how does it compare in terms of usability to Alexa/Siri? In fact, I'm not even sure I've seen a good open-source TTS at this point, nothing comparable to proprietary stuff. Is this mycroft thing better?

<comment><USER22> I've recently started playing with a Home Assistant set up and came across Snips ([https://snips.ai/](https://snips.ai/)). A bunch of Raspberry Pis with microphones running Snips is what I'm looking to try next. IMO, the offline/on-device processing is a key differentiator.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Well, for the speech detection part, I think, there are some projects that look promising.

I recently found [https://github.com/gooofy/zamia- speech](https://github.com/gooofy/zamia-speech), which works for english and german. German is pretty bad atm, but english should work fine.

Nice part: You only have to spin up a docker container and a python script and can perform offline speech to text :-) Microphone input is also supported.

</comment><comment><USER24> If you are really asking for it to be like Jarvis, where "like" implies some reasonably similar approximation, then:

No. Absolutely not. Not even close.

</comment><comment><USER25> Surprised that nobody mentioned this

[http://jasperproject.github.io/](http://jasperproject.github.io/)

<comment><USER26> Shameless plug: [https://github.com/synesthesiam/rhasspy](https://github.com/synesthesiam/rhasspy)

Rhasspy is inspired by Jasper, but works by having you specify intents/voice commands via a grammar (rather than via Python). It then trains a speech and intent recognition system together to recognize those commands. Recognized commands are published over MQTT or POST-ed directly into Home Assistant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> You would be able to integrate Hal ([http://halisback.com](http://halisback.com)) that's is the best assistant out there to all the different components from different companies and make him do basically everything

</comment><comment><USER28> If we could, we would have. But we haven't, so we can't.

<comment><USER29> Without context, this statement means nothing new should ever be done. It's a terrible axiom. Even within the context of this question, if we used this reasoning for the next 500 years we would surely never solve it.

<comment><USER28> Oh sure, but that's why you have the context. My point is that the time gap between a tool like this becoming technically possible and someone executing it successfully will be incredibly small. So the chances of the current moment in time being in that gap is tiny.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Everyone here is focusing on the voice assistant and IoT piece, but the thing that's really missing is the idea of a contextually rich personal API and some POSSE mechanism to selectively share that API with others and vice versa.

Quantified Self movement is maybe 30% of the way.

Until this space matures we're kind of a standstill. Commercial options have to be generic or face the wraith of GDPR, data breaches, and privacy advocates.

The only way to square the circle is let people own their data completely and then incentivize them to share with your service for the benefits you provide.

I think the killer app is an Alexa/JARVIS clone that "spies on you 24/7" but keeps your digital twin 100% offline and owned by you. It's the learning and the "personal schema" that's compelling.

When it knows _why_ you want to turn on the lights we're getting somewhere.</comment>


How to Stop Sucking and Be Awesome Instead - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/05/how-to-stop-sucking-and-be-awesome-instead.html

<comment><USER2> Zeitgeisty at the moment: "being awesome"

See also: This blog post by Julien Smith "The Short and Sweet Guide to Being Fucking Awesome" (2011) [http://inoveryourhead.net/the-short-and-sweet-guide- to-being...](http://inoveryourhead.net/the-short-and-sweet-guide-to-being- fucking-awesome/) and also the free kindle book "The Flinch" (late 2011) [http://www.amazon.com/The-Flinch- ebook/dp/B0062Q7S3S/ref=sr_...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Flinch- ebook/dp/B0062Q7S3S/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1338549997&sr=1-1)

I do think its good to overcome the shortcomings hamstringing your happiness.

Still; There is a striking similarity between Atwood's and Smith's blog-post, besides the central message. Both refer to a big success in their own field (Stackoverflow / Best selling book). I'm wondering if they would've reached their "serenity of awesomeness", if it wasn't for this ...

</comment><comment><USER3> When being awesome means being at the top of one's game and being best in one's field, it's a positional good, a zero-sum game. We can't all be number one.

While we might find personal fulfillment, we are still just a bunch of animals around the watering hole, suspiciously eyeing the beast next to us while we take a sip.

</comment><comment><USER4> Am I the only who who likes of Jeff as someone to start an inserting discussion, not someone who has the best grasp on things?

His podcast discussions with Joel... geez!

His first attempts are often... bad. When he wrote about the MVC pattern countless people quickly started correcting him.

Any time he writes anything about crytpo or security it quickly ends up with red lines through it, and a correction, and then correction gets stricken out and there's a second correction, but to his credit he does not de-publish any of that. He keeps it all out there.

He is 100% correct only on fundamental issues. Have tests, have a build server, use source control, but not visual source safe. Those topics all have value to novices.

I guess I'm trying to say that's Jeff's work has made him more notorious than awesome in my mind.

<comment><USER3> He passes the beer test.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I never get much out of these slide shares. Obviously nothing beats being there in person, but am I missing some obvious 'presenter notes' section or something that provides more details?

<comment><USER6> Yes, there are additional notes. Look for the "download the full presentation" link (requires slideshare login) right after the "It's better to be safe than sorry..." quote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Shooting for the moon" and "jumping the shark" involves working without a safety net. Phrased differently:

 _Making a backup plan takes away effort from your goals and makes you more likely to fail and need your backup plan._

I don't remember if this is from a famous quote, a blog post, HN discussion, or a video. I've found it to be true in some situations.

<comment><USER8> _I've found it to be true in some situations._

Yes, and false in others. We don't hear as much from the people that shoot for the moon and fail because they tend to keep quiet about it and slink back to their boring jobs and lives, if they still can.

Personally I'd like to hear more about the failures around here because the relentless cheerleading sounds phony and you can learn at least as much from the failures as the successes.

<comment><USER9> I bet that people who fail, while shooting for the moon, still learn a whole lot. The experience and knowledge should pay off and count for something, even when slinking back to a boring job.

But I agree that it'd be nice to hear of lessons learned from more of the failures. Something is wrong when the majority of startups fail, but the majority of the popular blog posts are about success, or are from those who have succeeded.

And now time for a shameless plug. To avoid the survivor bias, I started my blog when I quit my job: <http://alexshye.wordpress.com/>. If I flame out, it will be documented on the inter webs :)

<comment><USER8> Good luck!

I did the same thing myself a year ago. I've already got a long list of things I'd do differently if I started again today.

<comment><USER9> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> How to be awesome, step 1: Stop using slideshare.net, it sucks.</comment>


Show HN: DataRake – Search and download datasets - <AUTHOR> http://www.datarake.com

<comment><AUTHOR> We have been indexing datasets from Data.gov. We are looking to index more public datasets, lets us know any dataset you would like to search.

<comment><USER2> This seems interesting. Are you consuming data directly through CKAN APIs or what? I work a lot with both CKAN and Socrata APIs. I'm curious what niche you're trying to fill: is it a one-stop-shop for open data?

PS - I'm also in the Washington, DC area.

<comment><AUTHOR> We found the APIs a bit slow when dataset is large, so for now we download the file in any format and upload it with our tool. We have another service that sells business listing (bizrake.com), regular folks have hard time dealing with large dataset, so we are building a service where people can search and download specific data.

Since you are in DC lets meet for coffee.</comment></comment></comment>


STF - Use commodity hardware to build your own scalable storage system - <AUTHOR> http://stf-storage.github.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Daisuke Maki gave a talk on using STF at livedoor.com - _Serve Billions Of User Uploaded Media On PSGI and Commodity Hardware_ | <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SR4xAY7eno></comment>


AngelConf 2010: Learn about Angel Investing from the Experts - <AUTHOR> http://angelconf.org/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the second AngelConf we've organized. When you put on an event, it's hard to predict in advance how good it will be. AngelConf 2009 turned out to be really good. So for HN users who've made some money through their own startups or e.g. Google and have thought of one day trying angel investing, I feel safe saying this will be worth the time. You'll learn everything you need except the stuff you can only learn from experience.

</comment><comment><USER2> Will this be Justintelevised like Work at a Startup was?

<comment><AUTHOR> Probably. It was last time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Aside from having money to invest, are there any other expectations for attendees? Is the assumption that the money came from a past startup, which implies they have some connections within the startup ecosystem?

<comment><AUTHOR> The main thing we care about is that they're willing and able to invest in startups. We don't require any particular experience, though if we get a lot more people wanting to come than we have room for, we might decide that way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'll stream it this year, probably will be a while before I can check "yes" on the accredited investor box. Last years was great.

Is there going to be a Startup School 2010 or did you decide 18 months between Startup Schools works well?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, there will be Startup School this year. We'll announce soon in fact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm already stressing about what to talk about.

<comment><USER6> One thing I'm curious about is what it's like for a hacker to become an angel investor. I get the impression that being a VC is not that much fun (from a hacker's point of view), and in many respects being an Angel seems closer to a VC than a hacker (you're "just" a source of money, you're less hands-on and more advisory, etc).

Doesn't the urge to actually "do" stuff cause you to exert more pressure on your investees? How do you feel if you see them doing stupid stuff (technically)? Do you get inspired to try hacking something related yourself?

And less related questions: do you try to consciously find "complementary" startups to invest in and then try to get them to talk to each other (e.g., an ice cream company + chocalate company = super delicious!)? What do you do about competitors to your investees? Do you "wish them the best" or do you try to give your company a leg-up somehow? Is angel investing "something to do", "a way to get rich", "a way to help the world", all of the above, or something else? Why should people become Angel investors rather than donate to charities, or build schools in Laos, or buy cameras for orphans, or micro- invest using Kiva, or buy a giant island shaped like a skull and a matching super-villain boat?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> is Sam Altman an angel investor?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, actually. Quite a lot of YC alumni have become investors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Will this be a yearly event? Would like to make it for AngelConf 2011.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the plan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So is Cordellia gonna be there? Oh, it's Angel Investing, not Angel Investigation. My bad.</comment>


A-10s and F-35s Working Together to Save Downed Pilots - <AUTHOR> https://warisboring.com/a-10s-and-f-35s-working-together-to-save-downed-pilots-9efc7f7dc576#.3epu6scp9 <comment><USER3> Really what the A10 needs is newer engines and sensors. The engines are an old design, and parts are expensive. If they could use something from a newer plane, that would be a huge lifespan extension.

A10s do have glass cockpits now, but the main thing they lack is FLIR. The apache longbow is a deadly night hunter for this reason. If the a10 could be fitted with decent thermal, hyperspectral, or camera systems it would be the deadliest ground attack aircraft in the US Arsenal.

Everyone likes the dog on the F-35, but it is important aircraft. The thing that sets it apart is it sensor array. There is no other attack fighter like it, even the F-22.

My final thought is that the Air Force should hand off close air support to another branch of the military, or create a separate branch altogether. They hate the job, and it's not sexy in the Air Force to be a close air support pilot.

<comment><USER4> Umm, A-10s have flown for a long time with FLIR. They don't have it natively, but they always use their targeting pods. See SNIPER or LITENING pod. My pilots did night missions all the damn time. The trouble with the A-10s isn't just the engines, its the airframes themselves are getting old. They are heavily stressed through years of use, their hydraulic systems are a nightmare to maintain, and so on.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sniper_Advanced_Targeting_Pod](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sniper_Advanced_Targeting_Pod) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LITENING](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LITENING)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> the role of F-35 in those missions as described - staying high, coordinating the mission, can be done by stealth drone like X-47B and similar. After reading the article i got the impression that they aren't able to replace A-10 in those CSAR missions too. Mentioned some limited success with F-15/16 instead of A-10 reminds about attempts in recent Russia/Ukraine war on Donbass to use MiG-29 fighters (same gen as F-15/16) for ground attacks when Ukraine's fleet of Su-25 ground attack planes got depleted. The MiG-s, while being a good fighter plane, were easily shot down in ground attack missions - <USER2> can run high speed at low altitudes and not having armor is a strong weakness when low&slow - while also not being very effective because they lack good powerful auto-cannon (attempts to use intensively even moderate 20mm actually bends the frame :).

<comment><USER6> I wouldn't presume to know all the details of what is required for CSAR missions to make a blanket statement like "an unarmed drone" can do it. If the evaluators think the F-35 does it well then so be it. We can't fly a-10s forever.

<comment><USER3> In non-contested airspace, its spotting individual enemy troops, their positions, and where the good guys are. You have to relay all of that to the rescue helicopter and guide them around enemy fire or call them off if individual troops approach yhe landing zone.

It doesn't surprise me to see the F-35 do so well with its extremely advanced sensor systems. A10 pilots do the same thing with their eyes and getting low to the ground.

<comment><USER6> The advantage for the F-35 is it's a multi-role aircraft. There's likely one to be around capable of performing a CSAR without waiting for an CSAR specific plane to be on station. With it's stealth capabilities, advanced sensors and ability to drop bombs and launch missiles it's seems to be the logical replacement for the aging a-10.

<comment><USER3> You don't need stealth to do CAS. Nor radar. Nor A2A missiles. A simple gun will do just fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Combine them, at twice the cost!

</comment><comment><USER8> War is boring? Is this some propaganda arm of the Pentagon?

<comment><USER9> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Axe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Axe)</comment></comment>


Show HN: First personalised stock, crypto and finance real time news platform - <AUTHOR> https://www.cityfalcon.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> CityFALCON is built to provide personalised & real-time financial news (We cover stocks, commodities, foreign exchange, indices, private companies, bonds, funds, cryptocurrencies, property, financial topics, and the coverage grows every day). We have just taken our first major steps in artificial intelligence. You can already try CityFALCON on Amazon Echo and you'll soon be able to access services through Google Home and Microsoft Cortana.

</comment><comment><USER2> This is really amazing!

Thank you for building it. What would be the pricing model after the main release? How realtime is your data/analysis?

Whats the best way to contact you?</comment>


AI Recognizes Cats the Same Way Physicists Calculate the Cosmos - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/12/deep-learning-renormalization/

<comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8699422](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8699422)</comment>


Intel MIC processor architecture at Hotchips '12 - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/IntelXeon/under-the-armor-of-knights-corner-intel-mic-architecture-at-hotchips-2012

<comment> daniel-cussen Looks fantastic, but unfortunately I've already committed to the GA144 chip, and the amount of learning I put into it makes switching or developing on two parallelized chips at once pretty prohibitive.

But again, looks fantastic.</comment>