Crunching 200 years of stock, bond, currency and commodity data - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-02-07/eternal-market-patience-offers-eternal-rewards <comment><USER3> Coming from a CS/Econ/Finance background....

Efficiency as "the market fully processes all information" is decidedly untrue.

Efficiency as "Its very hard to arb markets without risk better than a passive strategy" is very true.

Most professional money managers don't beat the market once you factor in fees. Many private equity funds produce outsize returns, but it's based on higher risk and taking advantage of tax laws.

Over time, positive performance for mutual funds don't persist. (If you're in the top decile performance one year, you're no more likely to be there next year)

Despite all of this, there are ways people make money. But it's a small subset of professionals. It's high frequency traders who find ways to cut the line on mounds of pennies. It inside information from hedge funds. Or earlier access to non public information. But it's generally not in areas that normal people like you and me can access.

<comment><USER4> I'm a finance professional as well, and I generally agree with you. But every consumer has access to one piece of _very_ vital non-public information, Namely, his or her's _personal_ preference.

For example, say that I own a Tesla car, and think that it's pretty great. That's a very valuable piece of non-public information: I think Tesla cars are good. If one was to act upon this private information 3 or 4 years ago, they would have done very well indeed. Same with Google, or Amazon, or a multitude of other public companies.

I think people overestimate how difficult it is to make money in the public markets as individuals. Hedge funds, and especially mutual funds, are quite constrained in their ability to up size positions and put on profitable trades. They have redemptions, they have to hold assets in cash to liquidate shares (mostly this in a problem for mutual funds, not hedge funds), they might have to hold a long only portfolio (again, a problem with mutual funds, not hedge funds).

Individuals don't really have this problem, since they are managing their own money. If they want to put 50% of their capital into one name, no one is going to stop them. Moreover, they have full transparency into redemptions and inflows.

I have personally have done quite well with my own investments, achieving a better return than the firm that I work at. This has only been possible because I have complete insight into my risk tolerance, and don't have management and performance fees eating into my returns.

Another example. My wife's grandfather's wife in the early 2000s loved books and loved reading. Consequentially, she loved Amazon and what the company could provide for her. She convinced her husband to invest a sizeable chunk of their net worth (while not huge, was substantial, maybe 2 million) in one name, Amazon. They both dead recently, but the estate is very very valuable at this point, all because of that single Amazon investment shortly after they IPO'd.

Just because there are huge players in the market, doesn't mean an individual can't compete. In fact, individuals are probably in the best position to reap the highest returns from the public markets.

<comment><USER5> >I have personally have done quite well with my own investments, achieving a better return than the firm that I work at. This has only been possible because I have complete insight into my risk tolerance, and don't have management and performance fees eating into my returns.

How do you know it isn't just random luck? Same goes for your suggestions to invest in one "good" stock. Some will pick Amazon and profit greatly and some will pick AOL or Yahoo and be destitute. This is the whole point of diversification and the rise of index funds and I'm a little amazed to see a finance professional recommending things like this when studies repeatedly have shown that picking stocks does not work when you get a large enough sample size.

<comment><USER6> If you cite a few of the specific studies you're talking about, I'll be happy to explain why they're either 1) not actually concluding what you think they're concluding, or 2) simply incorrect. I can tell you very confidently that there is no academic consensus claiming alpha does not exist. It's rather the contrary, actually, and it's far more nuanced than your comment implies.

Outside of academic finance you can also find pretty obvious indications that alpna exists. Berkshire Hathaway has averaged about a 20% return between 1964 and 2018. Over the same timespan the S&P 500 averaged about a 7% annual return. Smaller funds have done even better than that.

When you actually do the math on some of these firms' performance, you see that the likelihood of their returns emerging by chance is too small to be explained by the number of hedge funds that has ever existed. There are funds which haven't lost money for 20 - 30 years, and whose returns are multiples of the market over the same time.

<comment><USER7> The question is not only whether alpha exists, though, but whether you can a) identify it, and b) access it.

Berkshire Hathaway's stellar outperformance seems to have declined in recent years, right, and you and I can't invest in Renaissance's Medallion fund.

I'd concur that the individual investor has much more freedom in terms of basic asset allocation than most professional fund managers (except maybe hedge funds), but otherwise the general advice to go for a broad based index fund still stands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Former fund manager here.

Behavioural economics seems like a very fashionable explanation for market behaviour. However, it doesn't seem falsifiable. Just because some factor seems to work, it doesn't have to be because of herd effects. In fact it's never explained exactly which of the many BE effects is at play, or how to know which ones are not active at a given time. I've never seen anyone predict that now, loss aversion is excessive, therefore the market is going to go up or down or whatever. It seems to always be "we found this violation of EMH" -> behavioural econ is true.

Regarding the things mentioned in the article, none of them are new. That doesn't mean that anyone can make money doing them. I like to do restaurant analogies when it comes to hedge funds, maybe because I grew up in one and went on to manage a couple of funds, but also there's certain similarities.

Everyone thinks they can cook. It's just taking the same ingredients that are publicly available and putting them through some process, right? Well unsurprisingly it is indeed possible to make a meal that is better than what you can buy at a restaurant. Can you do it cheaper and with less effort? Not likely. On the investment side though, it really matters a lot whether you can execute cheaply. And you can get lucky with the right combination on either side of this analogy.

Another analogy is recipes. How many restaurants owe their success to having better recipes than everyone else? I struggle to think of any. A restaurant is not merely a collection of recipes. You can stick exactly the same instructions in front of two different teams and the experience will turn out differently. The same goes for these strategies. Plenty of funds do trend following, yet somehow they do not end up with the same returns.

And finally, a recipe is merely a guide. Look in any cookbook, there are loads of questions left over after you read a recipe. Do I peal the potatoes? How long do I cook things? At what temperature? And so on. These strategies are just like that. So, 12-1 momentum. How much of each future? Is there an execution strategy? What you end up doing depends a lot on what exactly the environment is, who your staff are, etc.

<comment><USER9> I'm genuinely curious, where do you invest your money for the next 10+ years?

<comment><USER8> You looking for my advice or what I do? Funnily enough they are different, since I have access to vehicles that others don't.

Plus I'm a particular person with a particular situation, advisees are a general sort of group with an average situation.

<comment><USER10> What he/she is stating here is that they are an accredited investor. They can invest in things that the average joe cannot.

> (5) Any natural person whose individual net worth, or joint net worth with > that person's spouse, exceeds $1,000,000.

[5]"Electronic Code of Federal Regulations" ([https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi- bin/retrieveECFR?gp=&SID=8edfd12967...](https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi- bin/retrieveECFR?gp=&SID=8edfd12967d69c024485029d968ee737&r=SECTION&n=17y126.96.36.199.184.108.40.206))

<comment><USER9> Thanks! I'll make my research on what kind of investments accredited investors have access .

If you have any interesting leads on this, I'm interested!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > the market is not as efficient as it is supposed to be

I have a recent business degree, but not finance or econ. In school we were strictly taught the market is efficient and I fully believed that. But I've seen online and discussed in person a (seemingly) growing idea that markets are not in fact efficient at all.

Are there any economists/finance people that can shed light on this? Are these new ideas gaining traction, or old ideas just sticking around?

<comment><USER12> Check out the book "How Markets Fail" for a discussion on how the efficient market hypothesis gained popularity (part 1) and a discussion of the many ways that real markets do not maintain the preconditions for markets to be efficient.

In particular, the precondition that Adam Smith stated was that increasing production required linearly increased costs. However, this is frequently not the case (utilities, railroads, software, social media networks, etc.). Also, markets require a certain minimum number of producers (and consumers) in order to remain efficient. Consolidation can reduce the number of producers below the level that meets the precondition of efficiency, and then barriers to entry to prevent newcomers from joining the market.

As far as efficient market theory applied to the stock market, I've always thought that efficient market theory was trivially disprovable: did all companies in the US lose 20% of their value all at the same time this past Nov - Dec, in the same season that they are selling all their inventory during the holiday season? And then regain 10% of it all at the same time the next month? Did Apple lose 50% of its value from between July and December, despite the fact that its revenues, costs, dividends, assets, people-capital, know-how, brand, consumer sentiment, etc. remained roughly the same? Compare to, say, PG&E during the same period.

<comment><USER13> I think maybe a better question is not if markets are fully efficient, but if markets are more efficient than the alternatives. I read the Cassidy book years ago, so I might be misremembering, but I don't think that was something he spent much time discussing. I don't think many would argue that markets can't fail and aren't fully efficient - he spent the entire book demonstrating that.

The idea that regulators have the ability to design, implement, and maintain laws that correct or protect from market failures without producing unintended consequences, perverse incentives, significant costs, or market distortions more severe than the original market failure was not sufficiently addressed, from what I remember. Despite their problems, markets tend to be dynamic, adaptive, and innovative, while regulations tend to be rigid, slow, and reactionary. I don't know what the answer to market failure is, but I found the book unsatisfactory in that regard.

<comment><USER14> Cassidy spends plenty of time stating that regulations are often bad for markets, and he spells out clearly which types of markets need to be regulated: specifically markets with negative spillovers, mono/oligopolies, and the financial industry because of its unique ability to impact money supply.

He goes to GREAT lengths to talk about all of the potential pitfalls and problems with placing regulations on these industries. And he even gives many examples of times in the past where things did and did not work.

Sure, you can get a positive outcome from the wrong approach. But examples are probably the best thing we can look to...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think many people may be surprised how much of quantitative investing is similar to what was done here: finding strategies that are proven to work well over time and in different market conditions. It's not all black boxes and HFT.

Here is a great video of Cliff Assess of AQR, one of the largest quant hedge funds basically saying the same thing [0]. They focus on Value, Momentum, Carry, and Defensive.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqaP3VTKccE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqaP3VTKccE)

</comment><comment><USER16> Commodity futures trader here... this article reminds me why I got into futures: because I don't _have_ patience to hold positions for days, weeks, months, or years. If that's what you are doing, and it's working for you - keep on doing it.

All the bloomberg articles in the world won't help you trade profitably nor consistently. At the end of the day(for me), success is a very repetitive set of tasks that rely on math and probabilities to succeed. Inside information is great(no really, it is _great_ when you have it), but discipline was the most important skill for me to master. Before I began, I was sure I had it - <USER2> was entirely wrong.

<comment><USER17> Holding a position for years is the best bet for me because I don't have the patience to investigate the same reports (with small changes to the numbers) constantly to figure out what is going to change in the near future. I just buy a good index and let it grow. I'm up 3x my money over the last 10 years and I think about that account once a year when I have to put it on my taxes - except for one time when I wanted to make a big purchase: I had plenty of money to spare in that account.

<comment><USER16> That's fantastic! I was never able to hold over long periods myself, but that's an excellent success story you shared.

At times like now(bullish), do you continue to grow your position or wait for dips? I think there is great long term profit to be had in people allowing fortunes to grow in long term index funds, I just wish I was one of the people who could take advantage of it. My niche revolves around VIX futures contracts and their effects on equity index futures - so very short term(intraday).

<comment><USER17> The account I was talking about was created on a one time windfall (see my other responses), and had no other contribution.

Most of my investment is in my 401k, which I max out. As such I'm dollar cost averaging and not otherwise thinking about it (except my last paycheck in December is a mini bonus). My day job is writing computer programs. When I get home every night I have dinner with the family, play a bit and put the kids to bed. This makes it easy to ignore the stock market day to day: I have better things to do than think about it. Once a year I check balances, decide I can't retire yet (won't happen for years) and forget about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The chances of this data being accurate is close to zero. I have seen data looking at factors for major markets outside the US, and it is wildly inaccurate even as recent as the 1970s. Mainly trading costs and liquidity but delistings too.

In addition, I know someone who looked through the paid data offerings for a similar purpose. He ended up employing ten to twenty people year round to build out a proprietary dataset because it was just not accurate.

<comment><USER19> Furthermore, the farther back you go the of an issue you have with survivorship bias. Finding all the companies that went bankrupt or bought out at a discount and correctly accounting for the losses you would have made investing in them is difficult.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> To people saying the market is hopelessly efficient, It's not as bad as it sounds. Working on an S&P500 option strategy that can capture the total return of the S&P500 since 1990 while risking only 4-5% of capital per year (only 2% when one includes a nominal 2% interest rate). There are tons of strategies like this. There are many ways to get excess risk adjusted returns. Index funds though are still the best bet for most people though.

<comment><USER7> You can't get 20x leverage on the upside without 20x leverage on the downside (unless you pay for it).

There are not tons of way to get excess risk adjusted returns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> There is a risk to this sort of long-term analysis - they identify 'following the trend' as a good strategy; but it was a good strategy under different circumstances. The advent of computers is a huge deal that may have changed the game.

Even as recently as 1970, how easy was it to execute a trend following strategy? Gathering and processing the data would have been a mammoth activity requiring several clerks and lots of record keeping. Demonstrating the it was a good strategy would also have been very difficult (more clerks, lots of by- hand calculation). Only a serious trading house could have pulled it off. The ability of actuaries to employ statistical models has also changed completely in the last 10-20 years. The amount of money following a trend-following strategy is also an extremely interesting but unknowable figure.

If the advent of computers makes it trivial even for a roaming programmer to implement a trend following strategy, is it still going to be robust? Now that it can be demonstrated to be a strong strategy, will the market correct for it?

</comment><comment><USER22> The core of the article, for me:

 _Now that quants have discovered them and attempted to profit from them, there's a risk that those effects will be arbitraged away. But the sheer durability of the factors does imply there is something to factor investing._

Can someone who has made money in finance or knows how it works, explain how/why short term gain/loss doesn't translate into long term gain/loss?

It seems like if there was any signal left above the noise, that trading bots would exploit it. But that's obviously not the case, because I could hop on Robinhood today and make a quick 2% riding the daily heartbeat of the stock. My last experience with this was 18 years ago with my dad where we day traded Apple and got up about 40% or $40,000 over 4 months between the dot bomb and 9/11 (which lead to subsequently wiped out all our gains in a week). If things have changed so much that this is no longer possible, then I apologize. But the article suggests that finding correlations still works.

I fundamentally don't understand how people on Wall Street can make hundreds of thousands of dollars per year investing (with other people's money, I guess?), but meanwhile the average return of the stock market is only 10% per year.

What I'm getting at is that either:

1) there is predictability in investing (meaning that we could all profit if we just had the money to trade, which is inherently discriminatory against the poor)

or:

2) there is no predictability in investing (meaning that it is gambling and should perhaps be regulated or banned as such)

I'm getting the feeling that all of this has fingers in issues like wealth inequality and generational wealth. Perhaps this is simply a "because that's the way it is" situation, but that was said about stuff like slavery and child marriage.

<comment><USER23> > (which lead to subsequently wiped out all our gains in a week)

This is the key point. Many strategies that yield above-market returns often do so only because they're taking on large amounts of risk, even if that risk isn't immediately apparent. Think about trading cryptocurrencies, buying penny stocks, selling naked options, etc. You _can_ make a lot of money doing any of these things, but you'll be exposed to quite a bit of downside along the way, and most people who try will end up in the red.

<comment><USER7> Aka "picking up pennies in front of a steamroller" or "selling insurance" or "writing naked options" etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm not surprised by this, these strategies are based on pretty timeless human foibles.

People are always going to prefer to buy something everyone else is buying, (no one was ever fired for buying IBM). Some people will want to buy 'cheap', some investors will just want to receive a dividend cheque every year.

</comment><comment><USER25> Jack Bogle would warn against "fighting the last war".

This means past results have no bearing on future results.

</comment><comment><USER26> What is trend following?

<comment><USER16> Trend following is exactly what it sounds like. Pick a trend(over a time frame you choose, using a set of indicators you choose), then join the market on the side of the trend. To be successful, you must join the trend early, and be vigilant and disciplined enough to cut your losses when your trend fails to gain momentum and/or reverses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Mind if I ask a poll question- Do you believe 'markets grow at 7-13%/yr, over 10 years'

I've been taught this like its a fact.

<comment><USER28> It is a fact in the sense that the average stock market return over the course of the 20th century was ~10%. Of course, as every prospectus tells you, past performance is not a guarantee of future results, but what else are you going to use as a baseline?

<comment><USER29> Disclaimer: I have limited experience with anything finance, my profession is programming.

My understanding is that 10 years ago was a stock market crash(2008), and since then we've been in a historic bull run. My understanding is that it WILL crash again (obviously), we just don't know when. But the stock market has always been like this, cycling between bull/bear runs.

Wouldn't it make more sense to use a larger dataset that isn't just a bull run? Maybe the last 25 years or whatnot?</comment></comment></comment>


Escape from Creek Fire - <AUTHOR> https://www.jmeshe.co/escape-from-creek-fire <comment><USER2> I appreciated this write-up. The line between "mildly interesting story with some great photos" and "we made a wrong turn or wrong decision and died" is a lot thinner than I think this post makes clear.

There are very few roads and people in the High Sierras, and Red Meadows pack station is basically it when it comes to services.

Surrounded by smoke, changing winds, and uncertain information, they had to try and get information through very low bandwidth, high latency satellite text systems (I have an InReach, and it's great, but leaves a lot to be desired).

I'm impressed with their retelling of the story and am glad they made it out safe.

<comment><USER3> I agree. I was hoping for some lessons or takeaways though, but maybe there is so much luck and randomness involved that it's hard to generalize. But was it really the best choice to leave an area with other cars and people and rangers around and hike through the woods, camping overnight so close to a fire? Seems crazy, although maybe the chance of getting trapped would have been higher if they didn't do that. Glad everyone seemed to get out out ok though.

<comment><USER4> You could argue that the 200 people who got themselves stuck at a lake and survived via helicopter rescue didn't exactly make better choices, they largely got lucky.

I don't necessarily think their decisions were terrible, but as far as reading it for lessons/critique goes:

\- I read a lack of knowledge with the roads making decisionmaking harder. More research on their intended route and their possible alternate routes would have made things easier. (And the "downed bridge" is a planned bridge replacement with a published detour. That shouldn't have been a surprise to begin with). Lots of people do tons of research on the trails, alternates, have detailed maps, and so on, but don't do the same amount with their access routes.

\- They should have had someone on watch in shifts in the overnight. If it comes that way and you're going to have a chance, it isn't going to be when the first moment you realize something's gotten worse is by waking up choking, in an inferno, or by not waking up at all.

\- They should have gotten moving earlier. A few hours rest to recover isn't entirely ridiculous if they were unable to continue/couldn't follow the trail at night, but you don't need 9 hours of sleep and a leisurely 2 hour morning after waking up. Especially not when when you say "The smoke felt closer than the day before" for conditions.

<comment> et-al Leaving a perfectly fine RAV4 and attempting to hoof 13 miles to another car is a really poor decision.

<comment><USER5> You should actually check a map before being so contemptuously judgemental. This ain't suburbia where you can just always find another route to drive out: [https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Devils+Postpile+National+Mon...](https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Devils+Postpile+National+Monument,+Devils+Postpile+Access+Road,+Mammoth+Lakes,+CA/5S30,+email@example.com,-119.6322285,108796m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x809672fe7d5a369d:0x9a5f7b427fb58dc5!2m2!1d-119.0849506!2d37.6251062!1m5!1m1!1s0x80967a40179ff16f:0x66134500bee5a288!2m2!1d-119.2497242!2d37.5516002!3e0)

The RAV4 was parked at a dead end trailhead. The route out was directly through the area the fire was rapidly overtaking. They got conflicting information about the status of the road. They drove as far as seemed reasonable to them based on the information they had, then changed plans when it appeared to them they were cut off. I'd emphasize they were pretty accurate in that call btw. They left the RAV4 about 8 miles north of where people had to shelter in a freaking lake until chinook helicopters could rescue them.

<comment> et-al They did not know for certain that the route out with the RAV4 was a dead end. And the folks who were going in the opposite direction, with arguably better local information, ended up _not_ having to shelter in a "freaking lake".

> _We then learned many of the people we passed in caravans had made it out > thanks to the National Forest Service and Local Officials guiding them > through the scene._

Admittedly it's easy to armchair-quarterback this in hindset, but going from the known to the unknown is generally a bad idea. And there were plenty of unknown unknowns back to the other car if you wanna pull Rumsfeld into this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Maybe I'm just being harsh, but after reading _several_ times and figuring out what was going on, it's an instagrammer's slight inconvenience and detour being dramatized (or implied, given the photos and hour-by-hour narrative) into a life-or-death hike out, yet with "smoked salmon and mussels accompanied by biryani rice".

They had a weeklong backpacking trip planned, hiked to where they thought they would start it, encountered smoke and potential fire, and had to hike back out. Leisurely. Enough to get a solid 9 hours of sleep. Doesn't quite qualify as the life-in-jeopardy kind of event that the polish and presentation of the blog make you think you're in for.

I'm a little more interested to hear about the folks who were actually in danger and barely escaped.

<comment><USER7> Yes, while complaining about 4000ft of elevation and 13 miles. I wonder what was their program for the rest of the week if that sounds like a lot

<comment><USER8> That is a lot for most people. Obviously the upper bound on what's possible is massively higher, but if you take a mildly fit person off the street and put them through 4k feet & 13 miles w/ a 45 lbs pack, they'll be feeling it. An out-of-shape person would be completely destroyed at that point.

<comment><USER9> Add elevation to this. Reds Meadow is already at 7,500 ft. I believe the 4k ft mentioned is net climb for the hike, not necessarily a peak elevation of 11,500 ft., though passes in the region certainly rise above 10,000 feet, and peaks top 14,000 (Whitney).

With a full pack, unacclimated, making 10+ miles is a pretty good day. 13 miles outrunning a forest fire is respectable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > _One of the best decisions we made that evening was choosing to only > bringing the best snacks and dinner option available. Which happened to be > smoked salmon and mussels accompanied by biryani rice. This ended up being > just the magic we needed to keep morale up as the evening came to an end._

Exactly this. Never underestimate how important a good snack can be to improving morale in a difficult situation.

In many situations just a bit of chocolate can literally be the way to lift the mental fog of war and make it significantly easier to keep plodding through whatever stressful situation you are dealing with.

A good snack really does work magic.

<comment><USER6> Well, by contrast I took it to show how much of a non-event this story really was. At least for the rich folks in this story.

If the person is sleeping 9 hours and dining on smoked salmon and mussels, is it really the "escape" from danger they made it out to be?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I feel pretty dumb for reading this whole thing. I kept waiting for the part of this story where they said "yeah, maybe the first time people told us to turn around, or the second, or the third, we should have actually turned around". At least _hindsight_ is supposed to be 20/20 :D Also, is it an "escape" if you walk toward something dangerous for longer than you should, and then turn around. D- guys. You made it, but BARELY.

<comment><USER12> I don't know what you're talking about. They literally turned around and tried to leave the very first time someone told them to do so. The rest of the trip was them trying various ways to get out that were blocked by fire.

<comment> grey-area Look at the map, they were told early on where to go and went in the opposite direction towards the fire, though the text skips over this without explanation as to why.

<comment><USER13> I was under the impression that they went back to the car, and the road out appeared to go through the fire. The recommendation to go the other way would have meant hiking out, which, even though it was what they ended up doing, was not obviously the best choice early on?

<comment> grey-area They could have driven the other way, the way they finally chose to drive, parked and started to walk to Red's Meadow and the other car. I agree they probably had reasons for the choice like not wanting to lose car 1 in the fire or get stuck up a mountain on foot without the car if the fire reached them. But they did get clear advice to go the other way early on and chose to ignore it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Correct me if I'm wrong, but it was known well ahead of time that there were going to be severe temperatures and a high risk of bushfire, right?

Given that, who in their right mind decides that this is a good time to go hiking in this area?

<comment><USER15> There was a heat wave, yes, but other than that not a particularly high risk of wildfires early this weekend. The wind wasn't terrible and there wasn't a Red Flag Warning issued (that's a fire weather warning). They started their hike on a long weekend, the last long weekend of the summer over here. And late August / early September is one of the best times of year for hiking in the Sierra. The bugs have died off, temperatures remain pleasant, the thunderstorms have usually passed, and after Labor Day (the first Monday in September) the crowds die down. In the high country, wildfire risk is usually low as well, so smoke is really the only thing to worry about. This fire grew remarkably fast, from 0 to 100,000 acres in about 36 hours, and happened to be rather close to the location they chose for their trip. Sure, they should have known that smoke from wildfires was a risk during this trip, but it's pretty reasonable to not expect this kind of impact going into your trip. In general, this time of year is a very good time to head into the mountains.

<comment><USER16> When you say "there was a heat wave" you are referring to a weather pattern that has shattered temp records around the state. After the last heat wave and following lightnight storms which triggered fires across the state, I don't know how folks could assess that a backpacking trip to an isolated mountain area is a good idea at this point in time.

Saying "September is usually a great time" is a pretty moot point. It's usually not well above 100 across the entire state in September.

Edited to say - I am very glad they made it out safely. If you are considering backpacking anywhere in California this summer, please remember that we are having fires in historically unprecedented locations.

<comment><USER15> You're right that we just experienced a heat wave that broke several daily and monthly temperature records. But this was a high pressure ridging event without much accompanying wind or thunderstorm activity. So the wildfire risk wasn't forecasted to be notably extreme, until today when the red flag warning sets in. But before you pick on that, the red flag warning is due to offshore winds, which would blow any fire and smoke away from the area these folks were hiking. The early August heatwave, in contrast, was accompanied by a decaying tropical storm had flung upper-level instability over California, causing the lightning storms you mentioned. On paper, the early August heat wave was much more dangerous. This was just a classic late-season heatwave, which usually makes for very enjoyable conditions in the high country.

On top of that, the area where these folks were planning to hike is in alpine terrain that's relatively light in tree and vegetation cover. The likelihood of the fire consuming them was extremely low. The main hazard would be smoke from a fire nearby, which is what happened. Additionally, wilderness permits for this area are very competitive, so they had to plan this trip 6 months ago and had no ability to change the time or location of the trip.

If it's your goal to assume as little risk as possible, you're right that you probably shouldn't go backpacking (or engage in any other outdoor pursuit). You probably also shouldn't be living in California. But for most people, it's a balancing act of risk versus reward, and there's not really any evidence to suggest that these folks made a foolish or dangerous decision.

Remember, hindsight is always 20/20 and it's very easy to criticize the decisions of others from the comfort of your armchair. If you'd like to do some more of that, there are many hundreds of thousands of Californians (myself included) who also headed up into the Sierra this weekend.

<comment><USER17> > So the wildfire risk wasn't forecasted to be notably extreme, until today > when the red flag warning sets in.

This is absolutely untrue. Sure, the red flag warning set in today, but wildfire risk was considered to be at very high levels for (quite literally) weeks. See Tweets from way before the Creek Fire: [1][2][3] Just mild research would indicate that hiking (for days) deep in the wilderness would be a bad idea. It's just profoundly irresponsible. And, as someone that's done NorCal during this time previously, it's _not_ comparable to prior years (except iirc maybe like 3 years ago when it was also a particularly hot summer).

> there are many hundreds of thousands of Californians (myself included) who > also headed up into the Sierra this weekend.

There's a difference between doing some light camping or a day trip to the Sierras as opposed to hiking for several days deep in the wilderness during a heatwave.

> ...there's not really any evidence to suggest that these folks made a > foolish or dangerous decision

This is the kind of shit that gets people killed. It was _most definitely_ foolish and dangerous. Sometimes bad things happen to extremely experienced adventurers: flash floods, avalanches, etc. This was _not_ that. It was a bunch of Instagrammers that wanted to "get away" without having any kind of respect for mother nature or what she can throw at you.

[1] [https://twitter.com/R5_Fire_News/status/1302311140815298560/...](https://twitter.com/R5_Fire_News/status/1302311140815298560/photo/1)

[2] [https://twitter.com/NWSSacramento/status/1301932248313200640](https://twitter.com/NWSSacramento/status/1301932248313200640)

[3] [https://twitter.com/NWSLosAngeles/status/1301255674655956992...](https://twitter.com/NWSLosAngeles/status/1301255674655956992/photo/1)

<comment><USER15> All of the points in my previous post still stand. This was not a notably risky fire-weather watch (which is part of why this fires behavior is so concerning), and the area where these folks were headed did not put them at particularly elevated risk. It's fine if you would have chosen not to go, but I probably would have made the same decision as these folks.

I'm not aware of any wilderness backpacker fatalities caused by wildfires in California. The hazards here are very different than those of avalanches or flash floods, which are actually usually easier to predict. Any experienced outdoors-person knows that. You can pick a bone with them for taking photographs, but I think their decision to continue with their hike (which started before the fire had even ignited!) was much more nuanced than "there was a heat wave." If you cancelled your trip any time there was an increased risk of something, you wouldn't get outdoors very often.

Also, there's only one 's' in the plural of "Sierra." The word "Sierras" is equivalent to "mountainses." ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Definitely a very risky time to be out in the wilderness, anywhere west of the Rocky Mountains. And that's probably understating it.

It's really something to see the entire west coast on fire right now. We live up in a forested valley in northwest Oregon, and got blanketed with smoke yesterday. Happened quickly and was the worst smoke I've experienced since the Camp Fire blew into Los Altos, CA, a while back. Our area of Oregon hit the top of the wildfire risk chart yesterday for the entire west coast, at "critical" — hot and dry with gusts of winds reaching 65MPH.

Happily woke up to relatively calm, clear-ish skies today.

We've spent a decent amount of money getting rid of brush, and trees, to create a "defensible zone" around the home. That's one of the most impactful things that can be done to mitigate the risk — make sure flammable plants and trees are far from the house, use hardscaping (stone, gravel) around the foundation, and keep anything within 30-100' well irrigated. Also, don't allow leaves etc to gather under porches, gutters. Make sure vents are well screened.

The forest becomes more wilderness but we've been doing a bunch there as well: limbing trees up to reduce the risk of "ladder fires", getting rid of brush, cleaning up old access trails in case a fire crew needs to come through.

Fires are pretty awesome events — experiencing them first-hand gives you a sense of scale that's impossible to convey through pictures alone. The people in this story had quite an experience, and it's fortunate how many people escaped that fire.

But fires are both natural, and increasing in destructiveness due to a combination of factors (including climate change). Definitely stay aware, and if you live in a wildfire zone, get moving on preparations and preventative measures.

This is the future, folks.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, the air in Portland last night took a nosedive pretty fast. It wasn't quite as bad as during the eagle creek fire, but pretty close.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This looks harrowing and I appreciate the person taking the time to share their experience and their lessons.

Total technical aside: is this a submarine for a new version of exposure?

<comment><USER20> How harrowing can it be when they were comfortable enough to stop and camp for the night?

<comment><USER21> Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> With @kepler1 on this one. This is an overly-dramatized Instagrammer's take on a pretty low-stakes situation with plenty of leeway. I'm not even particularly outdoorsy and I've got crazier stories (involving bears, pulling people out of overturned cars, etc.). I was out kayaking this weekend, and even though we were just barely 2 hours out of LA, we were acutely aware and tracking smoke/fires in the San Bernardino Mountains.

With that said, hiking _into_ a high-risk area with _already_ a few known fires nearby is just stupid and it could've been really bad. I'd like to hope they learned their lesson.

<comment><USER15> There are several other subthreads about this already, but there's not really any evidence to suggest these folks made a bad or risky decision. The area they were hiking too was above treeline, so not really at any risk of burning in a wildfire. And the "known" wildfires nearby were either nearly completely contained, or hundreds of miles away.

You can complain about their photography all you want, but I suspect most experienced hikers would agree that these people didn't make any bad decisions here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> If you are interested in stories like this, and how people make life or death decisions in difficult situations, I recommend Laurence Gonzales's book Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why.

<comment><USER21> Yes! Also American Alpine Journal accident reports.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> As beautiful as the smoke haze can make things, you don't mess around with bushfire. Glad they got out. t. Australian

</comment><comment><USER24> props for exposure -- the platform this was published on. this was a beautifully presented story.

</comment><comment><USER25> Reminded me of a (granted, much more dramatic) August Tale in Neil Gaiman's Calendar of Tales.

</comment><comment><USER26> If you know someone who is about to leave on a backpacking trip in California, please slash their tires.</comment>


Floppy autoloader takes the pain out of archiving 5000 Amiga disks - <AUTHOR> http://hackaday.com/2012/03/31/floppy-autoloader-takes-the-pain-out-of-archiving-5000-amiga-disks/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+hackaday%2FLgoM+%28Hack+a+Day%29 <comment><USER2> Fantastic! I love the way they just get dumped on the floor at the end of the process!</comment>


The NSA's SIM heist could have given it the power to plant spyware on any phone - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/24/8101585/the-nsas-sim-heist-could-have-given-it-the-power-to-plant-spyware-on?

<comment><USER2> Been doing this on 'Person of Interest' for some time now.</comment>


Ask YC: Your Opinion on this startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.httpfuse.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a friend's startup. Just wondering what do you people think of this. From their website, Fuse on a topic contains a collection of bookmarks formed by groups of people interested in that topic. These bookmarks are maintained across different areas of the topic, which form the sections of the fuse. In addition, these bookmarks are also being rated to promote quality bookmarks (or links). HttpFuse contains collection of fuses on a variety of subjects.

<comment><USER2> I really like the concept. Would be good to have a better way to browse the sections though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's a good idea, but the url, the logo with the man in the boat, and the whole 'fuse' part threw me off a bit. They won't stick and remind a user of the site's function.

<comment><USER4> The boat has its meaning. Ocean == web, sailor = surfer, finding diamond = finding important resources, means with the help of a fuse a surfer can find important resources of the Web for a particular topic. \---- Name also has its meaning 1)Fuse == Fusion == which means getting things together at one place we used this term as we are putting up all the important bookmarks of topic at a commonplace. 2)http is usually associated with the URL. because of which we named it as httpfuse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> looks like mahalo but with fewer features

to make a site like mahalo work you need

1\. PR

2\. SEO

<comment><USER2> No no, step 2 is PRICE. Haven't you been keeping up with the hype of the week?</comment></comment>


Facebook Checks-In On Loopt - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/24/facebook-loopt-talks/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><USER2> "There is no indication that Facebook has made an actual offer to buy Loopt at this time, and in fact we don't even have direct information that negotiations are taking place. But it's clear that Facebook is at least considering acquiring Loopt, and/or others in this space."

You just have to love the writing on TC.

<comment><USER3> I know it's easy to comment on how oddly (or poorly) written some TC articles can be, but this is taken out of context.

Right before the quote you posted, TechCrunch says, "Facebook has been doing background checks, known as due diligence...."

There aren't too many reasons for one private company to do due diligence on another private company besides acquiring it. When reading the actual article, the logical leap makes more sense than taking that quote out of context.

<comment><USER4> _"There aren't too many reasons for one private company to do due diligence on another private company besides acquiring it"_

That is an often repeated but mistaken myth.

There aren't many reasons for a company to agree going through a due-diligence except for the chance to being bought, unfortunately some companies use due- diligence as a research tool into markets they think they might be interested in with no real intention of actually purchasing the inspected company, sometimes even developing a competing product at the SAME time.

<comment><USER3> True, that's why I worded it as "aren't too many reasons". Perhaps I'm naive, but I'd like to think that this isn't more than (made up percentage ahead) 10% of private company due diligence investigations.

Although where you are more likely correct, and what I didn't think through well enough before my initial comment, is that in the case of Facebook/Loopt, it is possible that Facebook is building a Loopt competitor, rather than buying Loopt.

ALTHOUGH, you would think Loopt would know this and wouldn't open itself to Facebook's scrutiny. Perhaps Facebook is making the case to Loopt that they're interested in purchasing them, but actually have much more sinister ideas?

Ah, the politics of M&A. I love it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't like to see this kind of story reported. If Facebook doesn't now buy Loopt it will look like something bad came up in due diligence, making Loopt less attractive to other potential acquirers, at least for a while. Further, Facebook will be tempted to use that fact for leverage.

But maybe reporting on it makes no difference because enough people in the industry would know about it anyway. I don't know.

<comment><USER6> Heh, when I read the story I assumed that MG's source was an executive at Loopt.

If Facebook is truly doing due diligence on Loopt, MG's article will get the attention of others who may come and take a look and create a competitive bidding environment. Anonymously slipping TechCrunch a tidbit is the easiest way to do this without being caught shopping the company and irritating Facebook.

<comment><USER5> Very good point. Perhaps we'll know someday what happened.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As the blog post points out, Facebook has one of the most popular iPhone apps in the world (and Blackberry, and Android) but despite that big mobile user base hasn't made a play in the geo space, so this makes sense on that front.

However, one of Loopt's biggest use-cases is location-based dating. I think trying to get into the dating business would be a terrible mistake for Facebook.

<comment><USER8> > However, one of Loopt's biggest use-cases is location-based dating.

How so? They're not doing anything in that direction as far as I know. Is this just your _suggestion_ that it would be a good use case for them to pursue?

> I think trying to get into the dating business would be a terrible mistake > for Facebook.

Why? Facebook could do it a _lot_ better than any of the existing dating-only sites with the info they have on everyone's social graph and their high penetration. They probably wouldn't want to come out and blatantly add a "dating" feature, but instead just add features that "happen" to facilitate dating use-cases. A lot more people would be willing to do internet dating if it wasn't explicitly "internet dating", but instead just happened as an organic process on a site they were already a part of for other reasons.

<comment><USER9> Facebook is already a daters delight. It has facilitated more hookups to date than Match.com.

You can browse your social graph, find out who is single, check out their pics, their profiles, and the minutia of what they ate for breakfast last Tuesday. If you like what you see, you can send them all manner of messages through platform features (would you like to "poke" Jennifer? "Poke"? Really?). And if you wind up in a relationship with this person, you both can mark that on your profiles (and later, so can you mark your Bukowskian divorce).

Facebook Connect, Farmville, and the fact that your Grandmother signed up for an account has not changed the fact that Facebook's roots are in helping college kids hook up for date.

<comment><USER10> This is my first time ever seeing the term "Bukowskian", but moments after reading this comment, I saw it again here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1149682>

I suppose I will have to look this one up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >> "Jupiter Research recently stated that location based services could generate nearly $13 billion in revenue by 2014."

Location based! It's gonna be big I tell ya! What BS. Where do they pluck these numbers from?

<comment><USER9> "Well, there's a billion people in China. If I can just gain 1% of that market, and sell one soda per year to each of them ..."</comment></comment>


Ask/Tell HN: What's with all the spam lately? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a frequent F5'er of /new, today I've noticed a huge increase in spam posts from new users, is this some new spam bot or have I just not noticed till now?
Examples;
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2941195
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2940981
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2940973
(and a few others I ether CBA to find or look like they've been deleted, including weight loss, hotels, weird looking drugs and lots of other stuff) <comment><USER2> I haven't seen a huge increase in spammy _submissions_ per se recently (though I don't have data, and do think there's definitely one compared to 6 months ago), but it does seem like they stay undead longer. I'm not sure if the flagging threshold went up, or if not enough people are flagging spam. It'd be cool if more people did. The New page is already pretty noisy when it comes to finding interesting new stuff (it seems most people just read the front page, so the first 2-3 votes are very luck-based), and having it be spammy just makes it less likely that people will read it and/or find the interesting stuff on it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been hounding /newest pretty regularly for the past couple weeks as well, and it seems fairly steady..

I don't understand why people keep bothering, as there's no way it's showing results. I'd assume HN is wrapped into some brilliant-auto marketing package somewhere.

Last I heard, the magic number was 5 flags within an hour, so I think we just need more people actively flagging.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure, but my submissions are being marked as dead automatically now.. So I guess HN thinks I'm a spammer. What's interested is one submission that got 10 upvotes before getting dead'ed</comment>


Show HN: Better reading retention via spaced repetition of your highlights - <AUTHOR> https://readwise.io/1.0?ref=hn <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN, happy, but also a bit nervous, to be launching 1.0 of our reading product: Readwise.

We were first on HN about a year ago, when Readwise was a simple tool to organize Kindle highlights. Since then, we've completely overhauled Readwise into a full product which uses the power of spaced repetition to help you retain any type of book/article reading.

The way it works is fairly simple: we import all of your highlights (from Kindle, Instapaper, iBooks, Highly, etc.) and then carefully select a small batch of them each day to send to you. You easily review those highlights through email or our webapp, and the result is that you're constantly rereading (and thus better retaining) what you read.

There's obviously a lot more (tagging, search, recommendations, etc.) and we wrote a bit more about it all here:

[https://www.producthunt.com/posts/readwise](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/readwise)

Curious if HN has any feedback, or qs on how the technical side works!</comment>


Query your JSON by SQL - <AUTHOR> http://dev.socrata.com/docs/queries.html

<comment><USER2> Here is a simple implementation to use SQL to query JSON. [http://trentrichardson.com/jsonsql/](http://trentrichardson.com/jsonsql/)</comment>


JSHint, A JavaScript Code Quality Tool - <AUTHOR> http://www.jshint.com/ <comment><USER2> I'm a bit of an evangelical when it comes to static code analysis like this. I insist your code should work to a spec-- not necessarily Crockford's JSLint spec, but _a_ spec, which is why I really like JSHint.

But I find I can't really convince anyone of it being useful, I remember being in an interview for a startup I read about on here and started talking about this as a tool I use (they asked "What tools do you use"). They basically brushed it off as "yeah, I don't think this is super useful, we probably have bigger problems than a missing semicolon".

As I understand it, general perception of people seems to be it's a tool for finding missing semicolons. I don't know how to give this a decent elevator pitch so other people can see the light.

<comment><USER3> John Carmack wrote a great blog post a while back about Static Code Analysis.

<http://altdevblogaday.com/2011/12/24/static-code-analysis/>

While not all of this is immediately applicable to JSHint and the like, it provides some insight into why static code analysis can be seen as helpful.

As you also mention, it's really helpful for code within a codebase to be consistently written. JSHint can help enforce some of that consistency. This is where JSHint really shines.

If your JS is tied to some sort of "build" process (even a short 1-2 second one), catching errors before running the build is incredibly helpful. If you intend to minify your JS code (as you should) before distribution, finding missing semicolons can be very important, indeed. I find the most helpful JSHint errors to be about mistyped variable names. It's so much easier to see that in my editor, fix it, and THEN run it in the browser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have been using the jshint vim plugin

<http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=3576>

<https://github.com/walm/jshint.vim>

This has really helped catch some dumb errors and even make some nice recommendations.

<comment><USER3> You might check out Syntastic. It supports JSHint if you have it installed and also supports other languages. I switched to it after using the JSHint plugin for a while.

<https://github.com/scrooloose/syntastic>

<comment><USER4> Very nice. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In an ideal world, I'd put every piece of JS I write first through jslint and then through jshint -- maybe even using git hooks

</comment><comment><USER6> TextMate bundle is quite nice as well: <http://fgnass.posterous.com/jslint-in- textmate>

</comment><comment><USER7> Would be really nice if I didn't have to scroll down to see errors.

<comment><USER8> Ideally, you won't be using the web interface, but running the command line utility version.

My company recently implemented this as part of a git pre-commit hook so that we're less likely to have a silly syntax mistake cause problems.

</comment></comment><comment> eric-hu If anyone has integrated this into a Coffeescript development cycle, I'd love to hear about how you've done it.</comment>


Why the "Self-Made" Success Story Is a Myth - <AUTHOR> https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/a26091060/money-millennials-parents-career-success/ <comment><AUTHOR> > Pierson admits, however, that there are multiple factors in anyone's > success: Her parents paid for her college tuition, and she was able to stay > on their health insurance while building her business.

Does this mean that nobody outside the US -- or at least in Europe -- can ever be self made?

<comment><USER2> It's not an impossibility just an anomaly to be self-made and requires a lot more luck than just gumption and hard work. The far-greater majority of wealth is inherited. Technically you could argue El Chapo was self-made, so its possible but the less resources you have available the less probable. I recommend reading the book Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Piketty, it's an amazingly well researched and multidisciplinary work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Piketty is a Kool-Aid salesman.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What about accounting software? - <AUTHOR> Hello,
It seems I am a finance/controller guy with passion for programming. In my job, we deal with a huge amount of data coming from many different places, usually in excel spreadsheets. It is painful and it leads to error (in a field where errors kill your reputation).
The mainstream software used is called "Hyperion". While this is good for submitting to corporate, still most of the calculation and consolidation (imagine consolidating numbers in excel from 30 entities around the globe) happen in excel. Which, I think, is an outdated tool for this kind of things.
This problem (handling and consolidating data in finance) is HUGE. It leads to big productivity problems and it is one of the main reasons people have to work late. Solving this, would improve quality of life and make some money..
And so my question, do you know of any people/group or project in the area of accounting/finance in order to improve data handling and consolidating? I have a lot of 'field' knowledge and ideas I'd like to discuss. This could be a lot of fun. <comment><USER3> While I don't know of any specific projects, I have dealt with the problem myself. I can't tell you how many operations applications tried to integrate with BMS, or mapping data from disparate subsidiary systems during an SAP implementation.

At first glance, I think there is probably something to the idea of modular mapping between popular systems. The idea of disrupting the service providers that "assist" with software transitions for huge dollars is compelling. However, if I understand what you are saying, GL mapping is a tedious process that requires both extensive understanding of financial statements (generally) and specific knowledge of the company's current practices (especially if they are public).

Methinks the real value is in automating the mapping, but there is just no way that could happen, without spending just as much time double checking the logic...which means they could have done it manually. IDK...

Best of luck. Go make a 100 million on the idea and prove me wrong :)

<comment><AUTHOR> First, I am not thinking money right now, I am much more interested in solving my issue. Yesterday I spent the whole day loading a bunch of filed in hyperion. With a good script that takes 10 seconds.

Second, accounting does have a logic (GAAP...). In fact, hyperion does make money, even being a horrible tool (not web based, it is used with citrix, you can imagine...).

Third, the main problem of all this software that 'assists', as you say, is that it invents csv formats and standards every time. Leaving you no choice but using GUIs that when it comes to generate a lot of reports slow you down a lot (think of SAP that doesn't have an easy way to script things).

Fourth, Excel is not a database. And not being a database, you lose all the SQL operations. No group by, sum, order, where, and stuff. Yes you have pivot tables, but you can't perform a join and you can't use big datasets with them.

Fifth, in accounting working vertically on the dataset is not enough. You need to perform various 'shaping' operations. You can do this with excel, yes, but again, it is painful.

Sixth, there are for sure better ways of consolidating data from different files. In excel you 'link' different workbooks in a master file. I am even going to tell you why that is a bad practice, I think it speaks for itself.

So, no, it's really not about the mapping. It's about serious technical issues that nobody is taking care of. And I am pretty sure this is because programmers don't dare to think like an accountant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In another life, I was a specialized type of accountant, for a while. I used to -- unofficially, at my own initiative -- save my pure accounting co-workers days of time and effort by e.g. taking 15 minutes two write up a quick bit of Excel formulation and/or scripting.

(Lest this sound dangerously hackish, I was a stickler for accuracy and often greatly decreased their error rate in the process including through describing how to better manage their task and errors.)

These were the front line workers; the people who actually "do stuff".

I was appreciated by management, to a point. Above that point, though, it became a matter of politics and connections.

At that level, people "bought what they had connections to". Which was subsequently foisted onto those "front line" workers. I remember, for example, interfacing an SAP system radically different from its predecessor, into our own systems. No one asked my opinion; the "new way" just came "thrown over the wall".

That's what you're up against. A great degree of not "what you have" but "who you know".

Those coworkers of mine lucked out, in a small way, because they knew me. The corporation was happy to leave them toiling at their "digital loom piece work", until it shipped their jobs off wholesale to elsewhere, because that looked better on the quarterly bottom line.

A lot of the "big" financial software I saw was similar. "The professionals" came up with "the way" (often rather bastardized, due to their own internal process) one should do things, and sold packages that purported to more or less do that. And you were stuck with that. There was great pressure to adapt your process to the purchased system, rather than vise versa.

On the "front end", people had to come up with work-arounds to make that system do enough to let them manage the reality on their desks.

A lot of accountants make a glorious, tragic mess of Excel. I've seen it -- over and over and over, again. But the big systems are seldom a solution, in good part because rather than looking at those people's problems, they impose a top-down methodology that nobody really wants and that makes a lot of work in and of its own nature. Feed the beast, rather than taming it.

<comment><AUTHOR> === A lot of accountants make a glorious, tragic mess of Excel. I've seen it -- over and over and over, again. But the big systems are seldom a solution, in good part because rather than looking at those people's problems, they impose a top-down methodology that nobody really wants and that makes a lot of work in and of its own nature. Feed the beast, rather than taming it. ===

And in fact the point is more on a substitution/integration of spreadsheets, than a shiny new system.

To be fair, I understand all what you say. I just disagree a bit on the new systems. I use SAP, cognos and hyperion and they suck not because they are new or badly implemented, but because they are closed and the csv they output is amazingly horrible. Also, those tools don't seem to have a decent api accessible from decent programming languages, so welcome clicking hell and goodbye automation.

If those tools where open source, at least you could hope in some kind of improvement or at least integration with your own way of working.

\---

On the carrier side. Let's just say I don't do this for the carrier (I would like to consult on this things and leave corporate job). But automating, even at a simple level, tends to improve my output and reduce error, which is a huge advantage over the other employees that have to stay late because their look ups formulas are too heavy and files take 10 min to save or 'calculate' stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've done quite a bit of work with Hyperion - mostly by building a replacement reporting engine (which, I have to say, is wildly better than Hyperion's own report generator).

I've done a fair amount of thinking about building a "better Hyperion" - <USER2> as I don't have an accounting background I've never progressed it very far.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you have some code of the report engine? I'd love to see it.

For the accounting knowledge. I don't think that is the point. The point is more what accounting people need and how they think. Most of the accounting could be done with R or numpy or things like that, but that would scare the hell out of any 'normal' finance guy...

<comment><USER5> The code is owned my employer!

My point about not personally having the relevant accounting expertise was more about having the credibility to sell such a tool - not building it.

<comment><AUTHOR> About the credibility. Hyperion (especially mixed with citrix) is not that reliable and still is a reference in the field. I wouldn't think credibility is the main issue, at least not as much as usability and productivity (which I think are quite difficult to match).

<comment><USER5> I meant my own personal credibility! :-)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Taos Operating System (1991) - <AUTHOR> http://www.dickpountain.co.uk/home/computing/byte-articles/the-taos-operating-system-1991 <comment><USER2> Around 1999-2000 the Tao operating system was licensed by Amiga Inc. and distributed as "Amiga Anywhere".

This recent Ars Technica article has more details and screenshots:

[https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/03/a-history-of-the- ami...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/03/a-history-of-the-amiga- part-12-red-vs-blue/)

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9806607](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9806607)

</comment><comment><USER4> I remember reading (and marvelling) about TaOS and Transputers when I read an article about it in UK's _Edge_ gaming magazine (I am not nor ever was a gamer, but somehow the technology fascinated me) back in 1992 or 1993. I still have the complete first year of that magazine (which began by reviewing the technology of the then-upcoming 3DO). Great memories.

</comment><comment><USER5> [https://github.com/vygr](https://github.com/vygr)

</comment><comment><USER6> Previously discussed here in 2015: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9806607](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9806607)

The top comment is from an ex-employee, with great background: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9808159](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9808159)

Reading about nodes bootstrapped over serial connections, transparently running JVMs, makes me happy and sorta wish it were a more popular paradigm.

</comment><comment><USER7> Related:

[http://www.amigahistory.plus.com/amigade.html](http://www.amigahistory.plus.com/amigade.html)

Decent idea, but didn't come to much.

</comment><comment><USER8> Am I the only one who sees the similarity between the Apple requirements of shipping bitcode, the LLVM intermediate representation of your app, and the Taos method of having the VP2 code turned into the VP1 native code, as a way of having portability?

</comment><comment><USER9> It's amazing how many alternative computing platforms started and died in the 90s.

<comment><USER10> Strong parallels with JS frameworks recently</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Who are you. Please give hubris, examples from me below; - <AUTHOR> 1. Im the guy who, when working in DRG (developer relations group) proved out Celeron processors, SIMD, APG, and the multi core could be a thing (i was taking a piss next to andy grove in 1997 in SC5 and i said why cant we just stack cores on top of another.(later in 2004 on a hike with a researcher to learn we had 64 cores, stacked.
I teied to work with the primary MIPS dev to do (some things) and it later became what we think of as a cabinet.
I was the prime designer of the the presidio lucas film project.
Sf "zuckerberg" stupid fucking hospital - zuck actually paid to pit his name on the fucking hospital i designed then wh i workekef on helping with his open concept menlo campus, rio office and the sydney office they fired me for and i am being very specic and accurate and direct "being too social" — to fucking social for facebook?!
I have a tone of war stories, what ate yours? <comment><USER2> I enjoy writing typescript. I work at a really big bank. I am a part time soldier whose has spent two years in Afghanistan and is entering his 5th deployment. I have proven solutions to real problems in programming that nobody cares about.

I too have war stories both literal and figurative. Too many for hubris.

</comment><comment><USER3> dont drink and type

</comment><comment><USER4> I killed Steven Hawking.

It had to be done. He knew too much.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I know i made some typos, because mobile. But i will let stand; as what i have stated is truth.</comment>


Looking for DIY ideas for home security (cameras) - <AUTHOR> Looking to put up cameras around my house long term, and in the short term use my webcam.<p>Anyone have ideas for software? or a hardware system thats cheap? <comment><USER2> Used or super cheap (obsolete) android phones connected via wifi is probably that cheapest you'll get.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thats a pretty good idea, any ideas for apps?</comment></comment>


Learn and Share Clojure on Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.facebook.com/pages/Clojure/182846995098761

<comment><AUTHOR> Do drop by to like the page and contribute wall posts to it hence promoting Clojure to others on Facebook.

Thanks in advance to all who liked and contributed wall post(s) to the page :)

Hope the page will grow as it serves all Clojurians and future Clojurians.</comment>


Early Symptoms That a Startup Is Going to Fail - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-early-symptoms-that-a-startup-is-going-to-fail?share=1

<comment><USER2> Also a very early symptom; millions of dollars spent on building a (software) product that could be easily developed by a competent guy over a weekend.</comment>


Ask HN: Should I switch from software eng if I want to be an entrepreneur? - <AUTHOR> Hi everyone. I'm a software engineer with 2.5 years of experience. I've built a lot of frontends, backends, and I can take care of DevOps/infrastructure stuff.
I'm wondering if I should switch careers (maybe to sales/marketing) in order to learn new skills. I don't want to be good only in software development. The cons of switching careers would be that right now I work remotely (so I have time to spend on side projects) and I earn good money (so I can save).
What do you think? <comment><USER2> My advice: If you want to be an entrepreneur, then be an entrepreneur. Don't "switch careers", just be an entrepreneur.

Find and talk to people that have a problem, and come up with the simplest way possible of offering a solution in exchange for money. Ideally the v1 solution doesn't involve creating any software.

Regardless of what you do you need to be able to cover food, rent etc. Whether that is living with your parents, working as a software dev etc you need some way to survive as you work on your business. Make sure you have that covered.

Find mentors for the areas you are lacking, get their feedback if you can, and learn as you go.

Optimise and prioritise your life for spending as much time as you can on your business. Only work as much as you need to survive, cut out Netflix and other less important things (yes even if it means limiting socialising), and work on your business. Don't worry about automation or scale until you've started making money in your business.

Make progress every day no matter how small, and if you're serious make adjustments when you need to but never give up.

Good luck!

<comment><USER3> Great summary.

What are your ways to find people that have a problem?

How do you avoid potential burnout if you spend as much time as you can on your business.

<comment><USER2> Great questions.

> What are your ways to find people that have a problem?

Below are some very generic ideas around how to find people. These same ways of finding people are going to help when it comes to actually marketing and selling products, so if you can't figure things out at this stage, it's going to be potentially difficult later down the track.

The key idea is to go through a problem solving process asking questions such as:

Are there places these people hang out? Forums / Facebook Groups / Events / Subreddits etc

What complementary products or services are these people using? Can you partner with them in order to reach your potential future clients?

When people have this problem, what do they do to try to solve it? Are there things they might do that can identify them as potentially having this problem?

When you can answer these questions it should become clear on how you could potentially reach out and get in touch with these people.

> How do you avoid potential burnout?

It pays to probably emphasise "as much time _as you can_ ". _As you can_ without going insane, _as you can_ while maintaining your mental and physical health. _As you can_ while being able to survive and pay your bills.

It pays to solve a problem that resonates with you personally so that you will still have drive when times get tough.

Something I've been working on is cutting out as much unnecessary stuff as I can, dropping email subscriptions, dropping commitments to things I don't care so much about. You can tell when you're pushing your limits, you just need to keep an eye on it and manage yourself as is appropriate for you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I personally feel, entrepreneurship is learning on the way as it demands. You never know everything or your acuired skillsets may never be sufficient to be successful entrepreneur. As you build your product, keep updating your knowledge in other fields like marketing and sales. If you build really useful product you definitely get succeed even with no prior experience on marketing because people buy it.

Coming to making some money, you can use your strength so you don't spend too much time or energy in making money and use rest of time on your project

<comment><USER5> Completely agree. I've been in engineering and engineering management for years, but starting my own company has forced me into a whole new skill set, particularly around getting distribution for a SaaS product. It's all hands on a deck when you're trying to get the word out about your startup

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I moved to partime work as my software job was getting boring and mind numbing.

Yes I ended up working remotely from a suburb where I could buy more land for my experiments and hobbies.

Now I am selling 3d printer filament that I manufacture in my garage lab:

[https://medium.com/endless-filament/make-your-filament-at- ho...](https://medium.com/endless-filament/make-your-filament-at-home-for- cheap-6c908bb09922)

I don't know about you but I like experimenting with processes and turning them into something that could be sold and something which people will pay for.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm not a great software engineer, but I find engineering a great tool to learn new subjects. For example I built a sheet music analyzer in the browser to learn music theory and it forced me to really understand the subject matter. I would suggest you use your talent in engineering to tackle a project related to sales/marketing and trust me you will on a path to becoming an expert. Maybe a product will come out of it?

</comment><comment><USER8> You could look for a job as a 'sales engineer' or similar. You would work with the sales team to make sales by giving demos and answering technical questions. This would be a good way to watch sales techniques being applied and decide on how to transition. Making friends on the sales team could build your sales network too.

</comment><comment><USER9> In the end you have to play to your strengths and do what you enjoy. If you think you would like a sales role and a sales driven company, then go for it. If not, you are spinning your wheels for a chance to glean something. If it's an avenue you would take anyway, then you have more possible positive outcomes.

</comment><comment><USER10> You can learn sales and marketing when you have a product. In mean time, read books on these topics.

<comment><USER11> I would argue the opposite, you can have the best product in the world but if you don't know how to get it in front of people who need it, who cares.

Make an MVP and try your best to sell it, if you cant sell the MVP its probably not worth it to continue to work on the product.

It's important to validate your ideas before going head first into something that nobody really needs/wants

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> After being where you are a few years ago, I'm 3-6 months into entrepreneurship journey and can share thoughts.

Incoherent Mind dump incoming

Some people want to jump from job to product/own startup.

Personally my risk appetite is low. So I went down the job -> consultant/freelancer -> agency route.

Next step is product but not sure when.

I read many books, watched quite some YouTube channels etc. Tried to improve soft skills.

Conferences travel, trade show advice is correct.

Trying to be closer to customers advice from others is also correct.

Most advice works. But nothing beats real experience.. you can only prep so much.

What I wish I had done better before taking the jump

\- build LinkedIn/Twitter/any following audience. \- throw myself out there with a blog or something.

The above are two you can do right now.

Find me on LinkedIn. Zubair Lutfullah Kakakhel. Happy to connect and share more thoughts.

Thanks

<comment><USER13> >I read many books, watched quite some YouTube channels etc. Tried to improve soft skills.

Since you're doing a mind dump; do you mind sharing some of the books that stuck with you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Stay in tech role but figure out how to get closer to customers. Find a position that allows you to go to a few tradeshows (whenever those happen again). Trade shows are a great way to get some experience learning about how to learn about customer needs.

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't have much entrepreneurship experience but I'd suggest, find a problem. Narrow it down. Find the MVP(Minimum Viable Product) and MVA (for Minimum Viable Audience, reminds me of 1000 true fans), and start charging... Iterate and iterate, keep track of what's working and what's not... It's like finding an answer to a equation in MCQ, exam, where the faster way is to just put the values in the equation to get the results instead of solving the equation from scratch.

</comment><comment><USER16> Almost always, the best entrepreneurs end up being people in a particular profession that identify a problem and build the solution. They dont choose entrepreneurship.

</comment><comment><USER17> There is something called "TME" i.e. Technical Marketing Engineer. Some big companies have these roles that are a go-between the technical teams and the prospective customers. Try to find these type of roles. Another option, as suggested by other here, is to collaborate with the sales team to help them in understanding technical details of the project.

<comment><USER9> I've done this job. Sure you do learn some sales, but you don't really practice it. Nor does it necessarily expose you to market needs that aren't going to be covered by your bigco.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Sales is something you will learn while being in the trenches. You'll learn something new on each call/meeting which will help you on your next sale.

I am an engineer with no sales training and I've learned how to sell (good enough) to get us to the point where we can bring in a real sales team member.

</comment><comment><USER19> IMHO there aren't that many concepts to learn in sales and marketing that it's worth switching careers. Eric Sink used to (still does) had an excellent blog series about marketing for engineers. Great place to start if it's still out there.

<comment><USER20> The value of marketing degrees is mostly understand de fundamentals human/society behavior, as well as communication processes. It's boiled into sociology, psychology, anthropology, semiotics/semiology, etc.

Technical marketing (narrowing it down to digital) is pretty dumbed down these days, specially with setup wizards. So execution wise, any tutorial can get you up and running.

What you're executing on, that's a different subject, and I dare to say most people do it because it's "what marketing people do".

I tell you this as someone who was on CS and switched down the line to Marketing and Advertising degree - was painful coming from a sciences background, because of social sciences, yet I found both experiences great and such path gave me quite a unique understanding/perspective of the how the world, and how we, function/work/interact.

Plus a lot of things became extremely easier for me, while others struggled.

But I agree with you, I think OP should maybe try to find someone with marketing background to work together with and pick his brain/learn from him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Don't switch. Having a skillset like software development will help any other endeavor when the time comes. If you are good enough at coding, and you like business, sooner or later you'll learn what you need to learn.

</comment><comment><USER22> In general, I would say no.

You're 100% right that sales/marketing/growth skills are necessary for building a startup, but I'd offer up two key points:

\- Your product is everything, and having a gifted engineer fully bought in to developing the product from the jump is a huge advantage for any startup.

\- Running growth for an early stage, 0-to-1 startup is not the same as doing it at a larger company, where you're likely to get a sales/marketing job.

All of this is just my experience, but I think the only way to learn how to grow a new startup is to do it. The biggest advantage you can have in that situation isn't previous experience with sales cycles or PPC advertising, it's the ability to build a great product.

TLDR: Continue to develop as an engineer, learn the business side when you decide to start a business.

I should also add, however, that if you're unhappy as an engineer and that sales/marketing seems attractive, that's a different situation altogether.

</comment><comment><USER23> > ...and I earn good money (so I can save).

This is the first safety net you will be sacrificing if you do the switch. Make sure your decisions are informed enough to make it worth the risk. Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER24> I would suggest joining a very small startup that will let you learn/observe from watching others tackle those challenges.

There is a a lot to learn and it can shift greatly as a company grows.

</comment><comment><USER25> Easier to teach an engineer sales/marketing, than a salesman/marketer to build. Don't switch, just learn.

</comment><comment><USER26> No</comment>


Apple iPhone SDK beta 2 now includes Interface Builder - <AUTHOR>

No link because iPhone doesn't have copy paste. <comment><USER2> I've been messing around with the SDK over the last few weeks and the lack of a standard interface building tool was annoying but easy enough to work without. Its really the mental switch from Java to Obj-C that kills me when I leave work.

Considering that I spend my days at work using the Matisse builder for Java Swing GUIs, it should be an interesting comparison.

</comment><comment><USER3> Only 1.36 GB this time around.

Download link (requires ADC login)

[http://developer.apple.com/iphone/download.action?path=/ipho...](http://developer.apple.com/iphone/download.action?path=/iphone/iphone_sdk_9a2151/iphone_sdk_9a2151.dmg)

</comment><comment><USER4> here you go: <http://developer.apple.com/iphone/program/></comment>


How to do great research - <AUTHOR> http://paulgraham.com/hamming.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Richard Hamming was quite a brilliant guy. He designed the earliest effective error correcting code and ended up getting awarded a Turing for his work.</comment>


What you should know before starting node-webkit - <AUTHOR> http://yedingding.com/2014/08/01/node-webkit-intro-en.html

<comment><USER2> I like node-webkit.

One of the ironies about the "Write once, Run many" mantra for HTML5 is that it's mostly applied to phones, where the runtime presents numerous challenges. On the desktop, however, HTML5 runtimes are faster and more feature-rich, so this is really where the portable aspect of HTML5 can excel. Adding Node to the mix makes it powerful too, going beyond regular browser capabilities.

<comment><USER3> Conversely I've been a little unimpressed by some of the standout node-webkit applications. LightTable in particular just doesn't seem very smooth or easy to use when I actually sit down and use it.

<comment><USER4> As smooth and easy to use compared to what?

 _cough_ lags-and-stops-responsonding-if-you-sneeze-too-hard-on-a-24GB-ram- machine-visual-studio-2013? _cough_

 _cough_ spazzes-out-randomly-when-you-type-characters-xcode? _cough_

sublime text? (which to be fair, is pretty amazing)

It's all relative. I've used plenty of really _shit_ 'native graphics' applications (especially cross platform ones); on the other hand, plenty of stuff in the list ([https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit/wiki/List-of- apps-a...](https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit/wiki/List-of-apps-and- companies-using-node-webkit)) work just great for me.

 _shrug_

I don't think you can discount the entire run time just one the basis of one app.

<comment><USER5> Light Table and Atom both run on node and they're pretty slow/jerky for me. Slow enough where I'd rather use IntelliJ for general purpose editing, intellij has a decent startup time compared to those two but it's way faster after that. Plus I always have it open when I'm working anyway so another tab doesn't really make a difference.

<comment><USER6> I run LightTable and PyCharm both side by side throughout the day as of a almost a year ago and I definitely feel the opposite. LightTable is much more responsive for me.

Although switching to an SSD made PyCharm a lot faster.

<comment><USER5> That may be the case honestly, I tried LightTable for a few weeks about a year ago and it was somewhat slow, it may well have gotten better.

I tried atom a week ago and it was extremely slow, much slower than LightTable. Almost 30s startup times and it was extremely slow at opening large files and even slower when trying to scroll through them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We used node-webkit with a portable launcher (to contain registry entries and keep settings with the app on Windows) to make 2048 Portable over at PortableApps.com: [http://portableapps.com/apps/games/2048-portable](http://portableapps.com/apps/games/2048-portable)

It was a bit of an experiment to see how well it worked... and IF it worked. We compressed some of node-webkit with UPX to shrink it down without compressing all of it and sacrificing performance. It works pretty well though is a bit buggy. We already have a couple web games that are planning to use it to reach a wider audience (since we have a few millions users).

<comment><USER8> Can you elaborate on compressing node-webkit with UPX? I've got a nw app which feels somewhat fat at ~70mb and shaving some of that down would be of interest to me.

<comment><USER7> Sure. Our release of 2048 Portable 2.1 has node-webkit 0.9.2 slimmed down from about 59MB to about 23MB. We'd originally tried packing it to maximum using brute since it's so large for the purpose but found that nrv2e worked best with everything. It's not surprising as we usually recommend that for most purposes. It's the best balance of size, speed, and decreased false positives in antivirus apps (LZMA seems to increase false positives).

You can use our PortableApps.com AppCompactor to compress all DLLs and EXEs in a directory and sub-directories with your choice of UPX levels easily without needing to use the command line on them all. As a bonus, it runs UPX with -t after each compression to test it and ensure it works properly. As always, you'll need to double check that it runs properly as some DLLs don't like being UPX compressed. But node-webkit seems to run quite happily. Grab AppCompactor here: [http://portableapps.com/apps/utilities/portableapps.com_appc...](http://portableapps.com/apps/utilities/portableapps.com_appcompactor)

We also experimented a bit with compression level of the .nw file but I can't recall exactly what compression level in 7-Zip we wound up settling on at the moment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've built a few apps using node-webkit for myself and, being a web developer, found it pretty awesome. One of the challenges that I think atom-shell handles better is background tasks/jobs. In node-webkit, my understanding is if you want to be able to background tasks using a node worker (not a webworker), then you have to bundle another node runtime with your app and use node's execute/spawn. This works OK, but bundling another version of node is kind of a pain. atom-shell works this way out of the box which is awesome if you need it.

Both projects are great ways of developing apps using web technologies though.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've tried migrating a pair of fairly lightweight desktop applications to node-webkit from Realbasic/Xojo (which is essentially a cross-platform Visual Basic, only nicer) with some success (in once case the new application is far faster, while I haven't finished the second, but so far so good).

This is the first (simpler) application (really of interest only to Cheetah 3D users).

[http://loewald.com/c3dbook/Misc- Resources/C3D-Buddy/](http://loewald.com/c3dbook/Misc-Resources/C3D-Buddy/)

There's no attempt to produce a "native" UI (indeed, it's not using any frameworks) but it works very well.

I'd like to see a node-webkit-based IDE for creating node-webkit applications (I've considered trying to write one, but I do NOT have the time).

<comment><USER11> Isn't that what Intel's XDK does?

<comment><USER10> Oh right, I forgot about that. Maybe it's the "Intel" part :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is node-webkit going to be renamed to node-blink at some point? It seems misleading to continue using WebKit in the name when it's not been based on WebKit for quite some time.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've done a bit of node-webkit but I what I really didn't like was the speed at which a node-webkit app launches itself. It's pretty slow.

<comment><USER8> You can mitigate some of the perceived speed issues by defaulting to show: false in package.json and manually opening your first window after the full runtime environment loads. More info here: [https://github.com/rogerwang/node- webkit/issues/1962#issueco...](https://github.com/rogerwang/node- webkit/issues/1962#issuecomment-46753240)</comment></comment>


Parallel Machine Learning with Hogwild - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dato.com/parallel-ml-with-hogwild/ <comment><AUTHOR> Is this really a good strategy? I'm sure it works in a lots of cases, but reading the paper ([https://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~brecht/papers/hogwildTR.pdf](https://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~brecht/papers/hogwildTR.pdf)) I wonder if they wouldn't often be better served by a faster locking scheme.

If the collisions truly are rare, an optimized optimistic CAS nonblocking locking scheme seems like it shouldn't add much overhead. At least in the relatively common case of a single CPU with a shared L3, I'm surprised that locking would be the bottleneck.</comment>


Apple Releases Detailed Apple Watch Drawings to Public [PDF] - <AUTHOR> https://developer.apple.com/watch/bands/Band-Design-Guidelines-for-Apple-Watch.pdf?did=516BB018-4790-40EE-B253-B1EFF71A504E

<comment><AUTHOR> This seems like a surprising level of openness for Apple. This document is targeted at custom band/case manufacturers. I'm fairly certain that similar iPhone/iPad specs have previously only been available through very closed programs.

I'm unclear though, on whether you can make your own lugs. Historically, Apple has allowed 3rd party accessories, but has effectively charged a licensing fee by requiring the purchase of enabling hardware (30-pin connector, Lightning connector, Authentication Co-processor). I'd assume Apple wants you to buy Apple lugs, but it's unclear on whether Apple's lugs are a requirement or a convenience.</comment>