A failed experiment: How LG screwed up its webOS acquisition - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2014/08/28/a-failed-experiment-how-lg-screwed-up-its-webos-acquisition/ <comment><USER2> Money quote, no pun intended:

        LG had a policy in place to reward managers with
        bonuses or even promotions if their features were
        part of the final product. The result was a constant
        feature bloat, as everyone tried to add on one more
        thing.

Incentivizing the right behaviors is incredibly challenging.

<comment><USER3> Incentivizing any behavior is likely to end in ruin: [http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/pbr.htm](http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/pbr.htm)

<comment><USER2> I think avoiding behavioral incentivization is impossible. You have employees. They (hopefully) want to excel in order to get things like promotions, raises, bonuses, praise from the creator of Ruby on Rails, etc.

You're inevitably going to incentivize their behavior _somehow_. I think it ends up simply being a matter of mitigating the worst possible outcomes, while angling for something that seems reasonably decent.

* Incentivize number of bugs fixed, and you'll get shitty code up front

* Incentivize number of features shipped, and you'll get a hodgepodge of features jammed into a product

* Incentivize peer reviews, and maybe you'll end up with a culture of glad-handers and politicians (I don't actually know about this one...I've never been in a corporate culture that embraced this)

<comment><USER4> There are alternatives to a system of individual promotions, raises and bonuses. See Github, Valve, early Google etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I used to work in the "smart device" space at a small company called "Orb Networks" (since acquired by Qualcomm). All the CE makers we talked to were both terrified of being left behind by the pace of change and extremely resistant to changing anything. Everyone we talked to would readily admit that the current streaming media options (DLNA, service-specific "apps" or Airplay) were limiting for them and for customers. DLNA suck, the apps were expensive to develop and would often cover only a few TVs and Airplay was extremely expensive BOM-wise and restricted you on hardware partners. They would also agree that their interface was cumbersome and old-fashioned.

However, when push came to shove, no one was really interested in changing anything. The systems that exist are there due to a complex interaction between the various stakeholders in the product, least of which are the actual customers. There are huge challenges in sourcing components that: run as advertised, are priced competitively and will continue to be available into the future. Software is generally an after-thought, even if it's what the public sees.

The story of the WebOS team fighting tooth and nail to avoid the awful old menu system rings very true. Good luck to the people to stayed.

<comment><USER6> DLNA is everywhere but seems never to have taken off. Anyone want to elaborate on _how_ or _why_ it's so terrible? Has it been tripped up by DRM or is it just bad UI?

<comment><USER5> There are a whole host of issues. DLNA was defined back in 2003 and makes some choices that don't make a lot of sense now. It was designed to be used by set top boxes and computers in a mostly static environment - it doesn't really take mobile use cases into account. For example, the concept of streaming media does not exist in DLNA (it assumes that you'll always have the full file at the start). It also imposes a lot of UI choices (all DLNA devices are presented as a hierarchy of folders).

It's a standard that all DLNA providers implement and everyone does a little bit differently. Between devices from the same company it can work alright, but any time you need to connect up devices between manufacturers it's a crap shoot.

It's not really a bad standard, it's just an old standard, designed for use cases that already have pretty ok solutions (plug your computer into your TV, copy the files to whatever device you want them on, etc). It doesn't address the use cases most people have for their media now (i.e. can I play spotify on my TV).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Classic problems:

Acquire a company, then do everything you can to sabotage it or ignore their expertise

Remind them they are just little guys now in the might corp empire.

Demand they launch a product whilst micromanaging them from a distant location that is already filled with people proven to be incompetent in product design.

Despite all this the WebOS team managed to launch a great product. Why? Probably because they love the product and want to share great work with the world.

<comment><USER8> I agree, except for the part about people being incompetent in product design. My take is that it can be generalized to be...

Acquire a company, then do everything you can to ignore them. Integrate them technically, but not socially leaving them completely unaware of the rest of the company.

Demand they launch a product while decisions are made from a distant location filled with people that don't know anything about what they are doing, and don't care because they have enough of their own work to do.

Next Stage -

Technically the company is integrated with many hiccups, the servers are on the correct domain, and the network moves have happened. Still nothing feels different except that they know they have some decision making that feels almost random.

Next Stage - Product Release

Product is released, and doesn't match any of the assumed standards from big corp. Everything is ripped a part for not meeting unknown and unknownable objectives. It is easy to do because the other development teams HAD to follow the objectives, and they didn't, so it can't even be CONSIDERED!

The remote company also can't defend themselves in discussions as most of them happen without them physically there.

\- Next Stage

Team starts losing people rapidly. They aren't rehired locally, and are instead backfilled at big corp. Since there are fewer people, they can't do the full thing, and are then integrated with other development teams. The ideas together help build a product that can launch and reach acceptance, because the teams from remote know how to do it.

\- Next Stage

The remote teams start going to conferences meeting people, they've had enough meetings with people remote they start to know who to go for. The big corp has just acquired a new even bigger company, so now you start to feel like more a real part of the company than even they are.

Your product was fine, and you start to move through the normal processes, just with everything driven by people who have done it before remotely. Some of the team members even move on to other parts of remote corp because they did particularly well.

Next Step -

Total integration has happened, most of the teams are different people, but there are a few guys that remember the good old days. You're now just another random development unit, you might not even be working on what you initially were acquired for. You're now a remote office, a fully integrated part of remote corp. You're just a development group, and you're more expensive at that. But hey, you still have jobs.

... That sound about right?...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cultural differences might also be in play here. East Asians tend to have a much higher tolerance for complex interfaces and lots of content to be seen on the same screen. I'm still not sure whether complexity is actually _preferred_ over simplicity, but the fact is that people are very much used to it. It might have to do with how their newspapers tend to look like [1]. It's the look of something for the common people, the economical choice, while simple things are being seen as something for the nobility - well thought through but expensive, a luxury item. As an example, have a look at how suntory markets their normal [2] whisky versus their luxury brand [3].

[1] [http://en.kiosko.net/jp/np/asahi_shimbun.html](http://en.kiosko.net/jp/np/asahi_shimbun.html)

[2] [http://www.suntory.co.jp/whisky/?fromid=top_pr](http://www.suntory.co.jp/whisky/?fromid=top_pr)

[3] [http://theyamazaki.jp/](http://theyamazaki.jp/)

<comment><USER10> I think it's more Chinese and Japanese sites, because their words take up far less characters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I developed an app for webOS and was pretty involved in the development community. It really was a pleasure to work with.

The main problem developers had, even up to the HP acquisition was the lack of direct hardware APIs (access to the camera, etc...) and a late arrival for native development.

This seemed to really cripple webOS and I imagine that there was something about the architecture that made it hard to work with and move to new platforms, but I don't know.

It's pretty sad that almost everything about webOS starts with: "webOS was supposed to..." :(

</comment><comment><USER12> I miss my palm pre... Best phone user interface i ever used and it was actually less sluggish than my galaxy running jawah with twice the computing power. But I admit the small screen, bad battery life and lack of apps was kinda shitty too...

After they replaced google- with bing-maps i had to put it down for good :(

<comment><USER13> >>I miss my palm pre...

I don't. Mine had a nifty "feature" whereby one times out of five, sliding it shut would actually turn off the phone itself. As in, it would lose power completely and die.

I went through probably a hundred power-on sequences on that thing during the two weeks I owned it. I finally returned it to the store and bought an iPhone. Haven't looked back since.

<comment><USER14> My iPhone 4 when I received it would constantly shut down at 50% battery. That started two months after I bought it. Granted, I got it repaired, etc. but damn near every consumer electronic product runs into issues for someone. I never owned a Pre, but I always wanted to. Always had a soft-spot for Palm, mainly because of my lovely Sony Clie PDA back in the day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Smart TVs are useless. I want a good screen, and a bunch of HDMI and USB ports. The only "smart" feature I want is a way to name what device the HDMI port is connected to. Let my cable box/chromecast/Blu Ray player/Playstation be smart

<comment><USER16> What is the optimal number of remote controls in your living room?

<comment><USER17> one, and most likely it's made by apple or roku, because they appear to be nearly the only companies that can make a remote with fewer than 20 buttons.

<comment><USER18> I like my LG remote for its simplicity actually. Simply designed, functions sort of like the Wii Remote, and controls my cable box as well. This is the one I have:

[http://static.trustedreviews.com/94/00002a829/6614/LG77EC980...](http://static.trustedreviews.com/94/00002a829/6614/LG77EC9800MagicRemote.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The best UI is no UI, so glad to have Chromecast to just skip the smart TV UI altogether.

</comment><comment><USER20> It's really weird to call LG's webOS "a failed experiment" considering that everybody loves it (it's universally though of as the best SmartTV interface out there) and that their webOS TVs are selling like hotcakes.

Sure, the road there may not have been pretty at all, but it's the end result that matters.

<comment><USER21> 1/3 webOS team has already quit. webOS as it currently is only the result of the CES deadline forcing LG to go with webOS rather than LG team. Even after success of webOS TV, LG is still going with LG team. webOS team's morale is low. They got lucky with launch. With the way things are, it's only going to get worse.

<comment><USER22> Anyone know more of the story? This sounds fairly one sided.

I know nothing about this and I'm just guessing, but I'd imagine that after Palm sold to HP and then at various times under HP's reign, a lot of people left. Perhaps a few stuck around that were handcuffed, in fact I'm sure some did but I'd guess a lot of high quality probably left.

Then when LG stepped up, it seems like it must have made for a somewhat difficult situation, HP's handcuffs would normally be paid out, right? So it's up to LG to renew as part of the sale, right? So I'd have expected another exodus but I'd also expect maybe some nice reasons for key people to stick around, no idea what these numbers would look like but I'd expect bigger than HP offered. Then as things under LG went on maybe those incentives didn't seem as appealing or something. Perhaps HP paid too much and the new incentives weren't as appealing.

Ironically, I'd think as for putting the product in front of people, the LG situation would be as good as the WebOS team has ever had, LG sells a lot of well made hardware products, they're serious. What I'd really think happened is WebOS's core team was depleted under HP, they sold it to LG, never reloaded and now there are gigantic demands on them that they simply cannot satisfy. That's rough, LG should double down and help them get some new talent that's hungry.

The idea that WebOS was going to "change LG" seems interesting...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> WebOS just can't catch a break, can it?

<comment><USER24> It was far too ahead of its time. It still is.

<comment><USER11> In many ways this is true, and in many ways it wasn't, I think.

webOS as a concept, way ahead, as an implementation, it had lots of prickly bits. Mojo (the UI SDK) was great to work with but only went so far. Palm and then HP tried to move forward with Enyo but came way too late, and they never delivered on promises of hardware access APIs.

Once it started changing hands, it was a lost cause, you just lose a lot of knowledge and passion when entire code bases get handed around to new teams. For a mobile platform to really do something good, it needs to be a few years ahead of the hardware it lands on. webOS was until HP acquired it, they had video recording before the iPhone (just barely) and the gesture area was perfect. The stuff Palm was working on right when HP grabbed them was also really amazing (synergy between devices among other things). But that overhead of transferring ownership made all these projects basically obsolete and in turn the OS :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I also do not feel surprised. LG is known for good hardware. Actually I'm typing this right now on a Nexus 5 from LG and I'm so thankful that the software is controlled by Google. The worst decision is to copy Samsung... really stop that LG. Samsung is not a ideal example how to do it right! Simplicity of usage without too much compromise on features is what the World wants. Samsungs software is also ugly IMHO. I'm guessing LG is not seeing the world market... in Asia people are obsessed by Samsung devices like USA is obsessed with iPhones. LG has much potential but I would never buy a LG product (which is controlled by LG) because of their bad software and bad software support. It seems they even do not support their engineers well. :(

<comment><USER26> Wait, wait, wait. Samsung?

I do own a Samsung 'Smart' TV. I connected it once to the network and won't ever do that again. That leads to

\- a forced software update

\- gazillion 'apps' being forcefully installed

All of these

\- aren't on the machine when you buy it

\- cannot be removed without a firmware reset after a disconnect [1]

\- are SO. CRAPPY. Really. Like the scum of the web. The worst of the worst. Think yellow press newspaper app, but lower

\- are prominently displayed on your TV, even if you choose to install 'other things' (YouTube? Yeah, less important than, say, BILD. A despicable and ugly illusion of a newspaper in Germany). You cannot even _hide_ the crap.

So .. anyone copying Samsung for TVs is a moron in my world. There's no worse way that first 'smart TV' experience could've gone that I could imagine. You cannot, even if you try, make that experience worse.

(Don't buy Samsung Smart TVs, unless you don't plan to use the so-called Smart feature. They suck [2])

1: As confirmed by their customer service. That's "by design" and there's nothing you can do about it. I learned that from the hotline and unfortunately too late to return the TV (I .. didn't connect it for the first 3 weeks due to cable issues/a lack of a wifi adapter)

2: Disclaimer: Lots of the "I force shit down your throat" behavior seems localized. So .. that I can actually enjoy the crappiest content that the German language can offer in this particular case. Maybe it's a little better elsewhere, but the attitude still supports that Samsung, as a TV manufacturer, sucks balls. That is all.

<comment><USER27> I'm on one of these Samsung LED 3D blah blah Smart Apps TV.

Often our kid would ask me: "Daddy when is this (update) going to finish? I'm gonna miss..."

Oh, and I'm still waiting for Netflix / captions on it. For now the workaround for us, either the PS3 (noise & heat) or the ChromeCast (much easier to control from the phone).

....

<comment><USER26> My solution was a Pi with OpenElec. That's all I use right now, connected via HDMI. The TV is unaware that a network exists.

I bought 'Yatse' on Android and I can only recommend it (if you're into xbmc). I can not only remotely control the xbmc stuff, I can stream a lot of content (video, pictures, music) to the xbmc/TV as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Samsung engineer here. This sounds awfully familiar.

As mentioned by mirkules, the waterfall model coming from our hardware divisions is transposed to pretty much everything. And if it were like the old-school 3 year development cycle waterfall model, it could be fine, but it's obviously not. Software and services are just seen as value add to our product line, that is renewed every year (or even every six months).

This why a project like Tizen has been such a disaster so far. You can acquire and hire all the talent you want, in the end decisions are made by VPs who only care about not being fired next year. Building a platform is impossible in such conditions. Add some conflict of interest into the mix and you have a Tizen phone being constantly delayed for no technical reason.

</comment><comment><USER8> Hard to comment, but I'll say that this is fairly common in the world of Global companies. Good decisions vs. Bad ones, or decisions at all can often happen by chance more so than choice. Location, there are many variables that come into it. If you end up having a ton of talent, it all works out no matter what, but if you would have told me that before I had experience in it, I'm not sure I could have believed it.

10 years ago in startups, it seemed a lot like bootstrapping. Paying newish guys to fill in the ranks to not spend money. Now, more and more enterprise PHD guys are being hired by startups draining the talent pool. Will be interesting to see 10 years from now if that continues to play out, or if it corrects itself in some way.

I'd assume that has to do with the influx of capitol in startups. I used to think startups couldn't pay for Enterprise guys, but in the 2 years that's changed. Would be interesting to hear more thoughts from VC perspective if they see this as well.

</comment><comment><USER29> webOS is the #1 reason I am considering LG for future TV purchases. If they screw that up then forget it. They will never be more than a second-bit player. And here I was hoping they would eventually get webOS back on phones. How sadly myopic can corporations be?

<comment><USER23> >>And here I was hoping they would eventually get webOS back on phones.

[http://www.engadget.com/2014/09/02/webos-port-renamed- luneos...](http://www.engadget.com/2014/09/02/webos-port-renamed-luneos/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This article actually makes it sound like webOS is the best thing to happen to LG, at least on the software side, in a long time. And not because of the software, but because the team understands how to build software, and so if they start having success despite LG's culture, some of those models might rub off on the larger LG software organization. Then again, knowing how silo'd and difficult it is to change large companies, it may be that LG destroys webOS instead (in terms of causing such a huge culture shift that the team entirely disbands, or at least those responsible for the culture do).

</comment><comment><USER31> This is a great article and even better timing for me: I just bought one of these tvs last weekend. A power surge fried our living room tv so we went to best buy, looked around, and ended up going with LG.

Had the best picture, best reputation, and their simple and intuitive webOS was the selling point. If the Korean managers would have had their way, I wouldn't have bought an LG.

Side discussion: is this an eastern vs western culture difference? Every Samsung device I try to use seems bloated to me too. Maybe it's just coincidence.

<comment><USER32> Right, so the best picture, best reputation but same crappy interface as every other tv is not enough of a selling point?

<comment><USER31> The webOS part actually stopped working a few days after I bought it and now I have a Samsung.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I am not surprised. I have, never once in my life, felt that a piece of software from a hardware OEM was well written. They tend to be universally highly buggy, heavily bloated, have highly confusing UI, prone to crashes and full of security holes. This includes software from Sony, Asus, HP, Samsung, RealTek, Nvidia, AMD, Logitech etc. I guess software development just not part of their culture and is an afterthought. The worst is that they bundle this software as a value add that the other OEMs don't have, thus wasting money on something that people almost never use instead of just discounting the price with that money.

My favorite UI gripe is having to get the idea to click on the folder icon on this screen to disable the front panel audio detection for a RealTek sound chip.

[http://cdn.windows7themes.net/pics/enable_front_audio_jack_w...](http://cdn.windows7themes.net/pics/enable_front_audio_jack_windows7_2.jpg)

<comment><USER34> Does this include Apple?

<comment><USER33> It doesn't include Apple or Microsoft(which is a Surface OEM I guess).

<comment><USER35> or HTC.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Could the US Government's Objection to Glyphosate Verdict Be a Turning Point? - <AUTHOR> https://www.croplife.com/crop-inputs/could-the-u-s-governments-objection-to-glyphosate-verdict-be-a-turning-point-for-agriculture <comment><USER2> Like any headline with an open ended question in it, this one can be answered "No".

In any case, the US Government is not presently making decisions based on science, only political influence (and therefore money from Bayer) so this is really just more corporate welfare in disguise.

</comment><comment><USER3> Finally some rationality on the horizon!

<comment><USER4> How does a rational person distinguish the situation with glyphosate from the one previously with leaded gasoline?

Well, I guess the answer is pretty obvious - look for large scale experiments that have already been done - compare countries that introduced it at different times or that have banned it. So why don't I read about such an analysis?</comment></comment>


Science is the activity which defines humans as human. - <AUTHOR> http://globalpioneering.com/wp02/freedom-of-science/

<comment><USER2> The writing reminds me of Timecube:

"Therefore narrow minded petty European Scholastic Doctors with inflated national egos tried to make British Newton their own. The French created Laplace who wrote giant tomes with megalomaniacal titles causing serious damage to European forests. Laplace's monumental books made British Newton's cosmogonic speculations palatable to French Scholastic Doctors."</comment>


Is Bitcoin a Form of Hacktivist Protest Software? - <AUTHOR> http://thenerfherder.blogspot.com/2013/11/is-bitcoin-form-of-hacktivist-protest.html

<comment><USER2> no, it's a ponzi scheme that feeds on general ignorance.</comment>


Interactive Numerical Optimization Tutorial - <AUTHOR> http://www.benfrederickson.com/numerical-optimization/ <comment><USER2> Author here! This post is really just me messing around with Javascript, and trying to make some pretty graphs with D3. All the code is up on my github account, [http://github.com/benfred/fmin](http://github.com/benfred/fmin) if you want to check it out.

While these algorithms aren't maybe the most useful thing to have in JS, I am using both the nelder-mead and CG code to calculate area proportional venn diagrams in my venn.js project (which is why I originally wrote all this code in the first place).

<comment><USER3> > CG code to calculate area proportional venn diagrams

Is the matrix in this case guaranteed to be positive definite? I would expect a non-trivial nullspace, and hence semi-definite matrix.

<comment><USER2> For the venn code, I wrote up the approach here : [http://www.benfrederickson.com/better-venn- diagrams/](http://www.benfrederickson.com/better-venn-diagrams/)

Basically though, I'm using the non-linear CG method - so it doesn't require a positive definite matrix. The loss function is a little funky with handling the disjoint set/ subset relationships in the euler diagrams appropriately (defines the loss/gradient to be 0 if these constraints are satisfied), but this approach still works pretty well.

That venn diagram post has a couple interactive demos of how this works, and also a randomized test showing overall performance.

I actually believe its the best known algorithm for laying out area proportional venn diagrams. I benchmarked against the code from the venneuler paper here: [http://benfred.github.io/venn.js/tests/venneuler_comparison/](http://benfred.github.io/venn.js/tests/venneuler_comparison/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is an excellent post and I love the interactive demos.

> gradient descent ... ball rolling down a hill

Gradient descent is similar to a ball with no mass falling down a hill. Other methods (heavy-ball and Nesterov acceleration) are similar to a heavier ball rolling down a hill. I've written a post [0] on this with a visualization.

Given a quadratic model (most examples in post) there are some strong theory on convergence rates. Nesterov acceleration has at least linear convergence (which really means exponential). More detail can be found in Noecdal and Wright.

(I'm currently in Steve Wrights Nonlinear Optimization I)

[0]:[http://scottsievert.com/blog/2016/01/30/inverse-3/](http://scottsievert.com/blog/2016/01/30/inverse-3/)

<comment><USER3> > Gradient descent is similar to a ball with no mass falling down a hill. > Other methods (heavy-ball and Nesterov acceleration) are similar to a > heavier ball rolling down a hill. I've written a post [0] on this with a > visualization.

I don't think mass is the right analogy -- if you non-dimensionalize a ball on a hill the mass shouldn't even appear. Maybe critical vs under damped (gradient descent isn't allowed to overshoot, Nestersov methods are)?

Edit: OK, with a viscous drag force the analogy sort of works, a heavier sliding particle will overshoot. A massless particle will not move at all, however...

<comment><USER5> I think the best way to think of it is a heavy, rolling ball.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice visualization!

You should add L-BFGS, in my experience a very efficient and versatile algorithm. It is a jewel of optimization.</comment>


One K-9 sniffed out hidden SD cards in a sealed gun safe - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/05/us/police-dog-sniffs-out-flash-drives-in-porn-cases/index.html <comment><USER2> I'm going to call bullshit. There's nothing special about the scent of a storage device, vs the scent of a PCI card, vs the scent of any other piece of consumer electronics. The very thought that "porn" makes some storage smell different is just complete magical thinking. Also, define "porn".

I believe this is a repost of a Salt Lake City Tribune article from June 21, 2016 ([http://www.sltrib.com/news/4031044-155/utah-k-9-sniffs- out-p...](http://www.sltrib.com/news/4031044-155/utah-k-9-sniffs-out-porn-))

It was fucking stupid propaganda then, and it's beyond belief now. All URL does is alert on subconcious cues from the officer handling him. He's going to find a lot of tee vee remotes, lost toys and cheese and sausage. There will be even more fishy evidence introduced into the US prosecutorial system, and general contempt for law enforcement will grow.</comment>


Show HN: Should You Start a Startup Decision Tree - <AUTHOR> Find out if you should start a startup! We're building a simple decision making engine as a school project at Harvard as a proof of concept for a more powerful, ML based tool. Let me know what you think -> firstname.lastname@example.com<p>This decision tree is meant to be simple, but effective, and is based on Paul Graham's startup advice! <comment><AUTHOR> [https://zingtree.com/host.php?style=buttons&tree_id=65056476...](https://zingtree.com/host.php?style=buttons&tree_id=650564766&persist_names=Restart&persist_node_ids=1)

</comment><comment><USER2> I think someone forgot to link it.

Or it's very holistic and the answer is always what you think it should be: "Hmmm. Should I start a startup? My brain says no, but to heck with him cos' my gut says yes! LETS DO THIS THING!"

</comment><comment><USER3> Where is it?</comment>


How we achieved 51% efficiency in button loading speed - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/reactjs/comments/8fx78w/how_we_achieved_51_efficiency_in_button_loading/?ref=share&ref_source=link <comment><USER2> Maybe there's a reason to put all that effort in to make a single, generic component but it leads to a list of 'if statements' to build up a set of styles where a lot of them are mutually exclusive - a button can't be both a Google style button _and_ a Facebook style button - and the code doesn't have any checks for that.

It'd be a lot easier (not to mention likely faster) to build the styles in SCSS and just pass in a list of what's needed directly to the button's className prop as a string, eg className={"link lined google large"} with CSS rules for .link, .google, .lined, and .large that override styles from the previous class as necessary.

<comment><USER3> Hi,

This is part of a project where the entire app code is shared across native and web apps. The app uses React Native for iOS and android, and react-native- web for the web app. All three apps run from the same code.

Due to this constraint, the only way to define styles that can be reused across web and native is to use react native's `StyleSheet` api.

About this:

> a button can't be both a Google style button and a Facebook style button - > and the code doesn't have any checks for that.

Button receives a single string prop that defines the button style, from there the bool values are calculated:

``` const isDefault = imStyle === 'default'; const isPrimary = imStyle === 'primary'; const isFacebook = imStyle === 'facebook'; const isGoogle = imStyle === 'google'; ```

This assures that a button can't be both Facebook and Google button at the same time. But I agree that it probably makes sense to move Facebook and google buttons to separate components since they have fixed icons that are always meant to appear on the left side. Right now, you'll manually have to enter the icon name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> direct URL [https://medium.com/the-inkmonk/how-we- achieved-51-efficiency...](https://medium.com/the-inkmonk/how-we- achieved-51-efficiency-in-button-loading-speed-86c786ef8e6d)</comment>


Why Google Employees Quit - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2009/01/18/why-google-employees-quit/

<comment><USER2> It's funny, but reading through them you start to develop a common thread that it started for many of them at the hiring process, almost as if the quieting started at the hiring process and built from there. Also correct me if I am wrong, but didn't Google pretty much fix the compensation problem. Are these emails a little old? It seems to be the other common thread among the complains, but I was under the impression that they where competitive now, given the talent war.

<comment><USER3> It's a post from almost 3 years ago, so yeah I think this is very old...

<comment><USER2> Thanks, I figured so, but I did not look closely for dates while I was reading it and only thought about the date after the fact. I wish we would come up with a convention on HN for historical material like a (HISTORY) flag in the title.</comment></comment></comment>


Ash HN: Why apple ads are so creative? - <AUTHOR> I am watching 'Holiday — Share Your Gifts — Apple' ads on YouTube and pop up in my mind. Why apple ads are so creative? People behind those ads are so creative? Why and how can we become creative like them? <comment><USER2> In Apple's early days it established a precedent of extraordinary ads. No one wants to violate that standard because they want to feel a part of that tradition and a part of a group of peers that maintains that tradition. Elsewhere that dynamic often does not exist. In the absence of that tradition and other's expectations, good enough seems ok.</comment>


Show HN: WordsAPI - <AUTHOR> https://www.wordsapi.com/ <comment><USER2> Nice project.

I've created SDKs (REST API wrappers) in Python, PHP, Ruby, Java, C#, Android for the WordsAPI:

[http://restunited.com/releases/424223873313015558/wrappers](http://restunited.com/releases/424223873313015558/wrappers)

(Objective C, Scala, ActionScript SDKs still in beta)

Hope these SDKs make it easier for developers to consume the API.

<comment><USER3> In how many hours did you do that?!

<comment><USER2> Definitely less than an hour (around 30 minutes if I recall correctly) as the SDKs, documentation, sample codes are automatically generated after entering the endpoint definition. Please give it a try at [http://restunited.com](http://restunited.com).

<comment><USER3> Oh good to know!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looking forward to seeing further development!

For a more comprehensive word API, check out the excellent Wordnik API: [http://developer.wordnik.com/docs.html#!/word](http://developer.wordnik.com/docs.html#!/word)

<comment><USER5> You can get Wordnet through the Wordnik API too ... as well as from the American Heritage Dictionary, The Century Dictionary, Wiktionary, and the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English

And Wordnik is becoming a not-for-profit, if that makes a difference to you. :-)

Disclaimer: I am the founder of Wordnik. (You might like my TED talk: [http://www.ted.com/talks/erin_mckean_redefines_the_dictionar...](http://www.ted.com/talks/erin_mckean_redefines_the_dictionary.html))

That said, I know the guy behind WordsAPI and he's good people. :-)

<comment><USER6> I absolutely love your TED talk.

<comment><USER5> aw, thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Slightly disappointed that it doesn't have syllables. Should be easy to add, I have a list here: [https://github.com/SomeKittens/Haiku- Generator](https://github.com/SomeKittens/Haiku-Generator)

<comment><USER8> Out of curiosity, how did you generate that list? I looked into doing something similar a couple months back, but i couldn't find nearly as complete of a source for syllable count.

<comment><USER7> I started with the list from this question [0] and then wrote a one-off script to convert it to the form linked above.

[http://stackoverflow.com/q/10414957/1216976](http://stackoverflow.com/q/10414957/1216976)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Thank you. I was looking for an API only yesterday, and didn't find any that is as good as this one. Even the Princeton University one didn't fit into my workflow, because it is overly complex.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's pretty much why I built this. It's a great resource, but geared towards lexicographers vs developers.

<comment><USER10> This is awesome! I'd love to hear more about how this was created (node/express, etc.)!

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a Node/express app. The word data is in Postgres (hosted by heroku), user/metric data is in mongo (via mongolab.com). Hosting is from heroku fronted by cloudflare.

<comment><USER10> Thank you! Impressive. How do you limit anonymous web user's queries?

<comment><AUTHOR> Requests made for the demo don't have an access token. On the back end I look for this case, and then see if the request has "when" and "encrypted" parameters. "when" is just a date/time stamp, and "encrypted" is the same thing..encrypted. If I see both those params, I decrypt the "encrypted" and make sure it matches the "when" to validate the server created it, and make sure the "when" is less than one hour.

Otherwise, all requests require an access token.

<comment><USER11> What do you use to cache requests?

<comment><AUTHOR> Redis & cloudflare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is this a thin wrapper over [http://wordnet.princeton.edu/wordnet/](http://wordnet.princeton.edu/wordnet/) or does it/will it go beyond that?

<comment><AUTHOR> For now, that's the source of most data. I'll be adding more as time goes on. First up is pronunciation.

<comment><USER13> Then I'd suggest you properly attribute them for the data, especially if you're going to charge people for access (in my opinion, IANAL). See their site on the matter:

[http://wordnet.princeton.edu/wordnet/citing- wordnet/](http://wordnet.princeton.edu/wordnet/citing-wordnet/)

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, of course. I turned the "about" page on. Was holding off until I could spruce it up a bit, but I guess it's ok for now. Wasn't expecting hackernews to really jump on this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hmm, what about word stemming? I looked up "windmills" and got an empty result set.

<comment><USER15> Same with "walked". I've used the Porter Stemming Algorithm in the past, and it works well.

[http://tartarus.org/martin/PorterStemmer/](http://tartarus.org/martin/PorterStemmer/)

<comment><USER16> The data is stored in postgres, so it should be simple enough to use the Snowball dictionary/stemmer and the tsvector/tsquery functions to sort this out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It is blazing fast for me. I see from another response that this is a Node.js app but perhaps caching might also explain how fast this is. Also, today I have learned that jazz also means "have sexual intercourse with".

<comment><AUTHOR> Got a great speedup when I added Redis. When a word is first requested, the JSON is put together from the Postgres database tables, then just stuff it in Redis for subsequent requests.

Since there have been so many requests, most common words are in Redis at this point.

<comment><USER17> I have stumbled upon Redis a lot in really cool projects so I definitely need to take a deeper look into it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Nice work. Is the order of definitions supposed to be correct? The word "fast" has a first definition of "unrestrained by convention or morality", yet I would expect that to be lower down the list.

<comment><AUTHOR> The order doesn't convey any meaning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I would love to see this made available in an editor. When writing, if I could pull synonyms and definitions up instantly with a single keypress, I suspect my prose would be better. I like to think I have a good vocabulary, but this great blog post (which I found through HN) has had me thinking I could always, and _should_ try to, do better: [http://jsomers.net/blog/dictionary](http://jsomers.net/blog/dictionary)

Imagine something akin to tab completion for writing prose.

<comment><USER20> Please don't. Thesaurus prose is some of the worst writing out there. You can always tell when a writer tries to go [too far] out of their natural active vocabulary.

Basic rule of thumb for writing prose: synonyms are a myth. No two words have exactly the same meaning.

<comment><USER19> Did you read the article I mentioned? I believe that context is important.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The results for _thesaurus_ , _action_ (second word to pop into my head), and _everything_ are interesting: Short set, long, long set, empty set.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is really cool!

One issue I found is that it provides alternative spellings as distinct items. Is there a workaround for this?

{ "typeOf": [ "chromatic color", "chromatic colour", "spectral colour", "spectral color", "citrus", "citrus tree", "pigment", "citrous fruit", "citrus fruit" ] }

</comment><comment><USER23> Very nice work. Interesting what can be done with this.

One question though, does anyone have any idea what the copyright for this would be? If you happen to use X dictionary (one for each implemented language for example, or even maybe as a selectable source), would say, the Oxford Dictionary could sue because you are using their data? AFAIK, facts are not copyrightable, are they? where would this stand?

</comment><comment><USER24> I wish synonyms were sorted according to usage frequency instead of alphabetically... maybe its not possible with the data source though?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not possible currently. I'd like to find a source of "how common is this word" and add some kind of quantifiable number to each word. Perhaps I can scan existing open source text and just figure it out. On the backlog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Would love to see something like this but that would expand abbreviations. E.g., corp -> corporation (and the reverse).

</comment><comment><USER26> "An API for for the English language."

For For!

<comment><AUTHOR> Omg that's embarrassing. Fixing it now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> What is the minimum set of atoms needed to construct the rest of the English language?

<comment><USER28> The alphabet?

<comment><USER27> I meant words.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Is [https://www.wordsapi.com](https://www.wordsapi.com) down for maintenance? I'm getting error responses. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER30> I was wondering which is your market. I mean, who is going to use a service like this? Or which are typical use cases of it?

<comment><USER31> Might be useful for search. (not necessarily just web search, but ecommerce as well)

For example, instances of "aqua" should probably match the search query "blue". Google seems like it may already be that advanced, but other search engines perhaps not. Large-scale search engines probably would keep this in their own DB, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Hi,

Nice project! What about adding example of sentences?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea - I'll add that to my todo list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> How did you build the is_a relationships (eg, Person is_a Animal)?

Ontology engine? If so, what's your source?

</comment><comment><USER34> Nice! It seems to be quite useful.

</comment><comment><USER35> Not receiving verification emails.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that. Using sendgrid, which seems to delay emails from new accounts for a bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> How does it know that finger is part of hand?

</comment><comment><USER37> This is wordnet++ Good going.

</comment><comment><USER38> Can anyone compare the pros and cons of this to princeton's wordnet?

</comment><comment><USER39> Could this be used in some way for robot AI to learn to speak?

</comment><comment><USER40> Looks great!

</comment><comment><USER41> Great service

</comment><comment><USER42> What? It has no mode for finding anagrams? Useless.</comment>


Google Maps accused of deleting Palestine - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/10/google-maps-accused-remove-palestine <comment><USER2> Now imagine what happens when they remove Israel from the Google Maps. What the hell is going on Google?

<comment><USER3> For some perspective:

1\. Read the article, it doesn't support the accusation. 2\. Be aware that the article is 3 years old anyway.</comment></comment>


Mozilla's low-overhead open source replay debugger - <AUTHOR> http://robert.ocallahan.org/2014/03/introducing-rr.html <comment><USER2> Another gem from Mozilla - I am astounded at how much good stuff is coming out of Mozilla in such a short timespan. Keep it up folks. Between this, rust, servo, asm.js and emscripten - you have my attention.

<comment><USER3> I don't know about the author but not all of us oppose Gay marriage.

<comment><USER4> Please don't confuse the personal views of the CEO outside of work with the views of the entire organization. There are a lot of genuinely good people at Mozilla doing good work, and I would bet that the overwhelming majority working there do not share the same views as the CEO. You're comment not only does a disservice to yourself and the HN community, but everyone else at Mozilla working to make the world a better place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Was submitted yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7458554](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7458554)

It seems to me that a large portion of cool stuff doesn't make it out from /new any more (not just this case, many others lately)

<comment><USER6> I was tracking a few of my own submissions - I think it's random. _IF_ you happen to arrive on the frontpage and stay there for a few minutes, a reasonable amount of people will vote that up. However, if you stay on the front page for too short or not at all, the random fluctuation might kick you down. This is e.g. raspberry pi foundation linking to pypy blog vs submission of the pypy blog itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> [http://rr-project.org/rr.html](http://rr-project.org/rr.html) is a presentation titled "How rr works" from Mozilla Research, with more details on the implementation.

<comment><USER8> ...but that's great.

Wow, this is a wonderful thing.

I would go as far as to say it is the tool every developer wanted and most thought was impossible (the low overhead part at least).

Only recording the nondeterministic parts and replaying the rest is so obvious, once someone else has thought of it.

<comment><USER8> except me of course cos I don't write bugs

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been very interested in that topic for the past years.

We've implemented an in-kernel linux multicore record/replay engine. See for more: [http://velvetpulse.com/2012/11/27/scribe-the- deterministic-t...](http://velvetpulse.com/2012/11/27/scribe-the- deterministic-transparent-record-replay-engine/)

We also did a mutable replay engine, to replay on modified program (e.g. replay a bug that happened in a production environment, but this time with the logging verbosity turned into debug mode). Check out Dora: [http://viennot.biz/asplos2013_dora.pdf](http://viennot.biz/asplos2013_dora.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER10> This is just a bit too awesome, yet simple.

Think of it as the "git" for debugging. Take a snapshot, keep going etc ... and then backtrack back to the point where it all started going wrong.

Just very hard to automate easily, yet this uses gdb and all the other macro/command goodness (well, for power users) that gdb comes with.

</comment><comment><USER11> An amazing project. Would it be possible to get to a certain point in a trace, then switch the process back into "live mode" so that further inputs could be made into the program? This could open up all sorts of interesting things, like recording interactions with web applications and then allowing a developer to open up high-level JS/DOM debugging tools to see exactly what went wrong without needing to worry about replicating the exact input sequence that led up to the bug.

It's unfortunate that the no-shared-memory limitation is so hard-baked in, so it would seem that things like Chrome rendering processes wouldn't play nicely with rr (I'm assuming they communicate with shared memory, correctly if I'm wrong!).

<comment><USER7> As I understand, you can't "go live" with the current architecture. In replay, _no system call is executed_. Write is no-op. Read is done from the trace. This is how PTRACE_SYSEMU works. To "go live", you would need to actually execute system calls.

[http://sysemu.sourceforge.net/](http://sysemu.sourceforge.net/)

Re: Chromium IPC. "Channels are implemented using named pipes on Windows, and socket pairs (or in some special cases unix domain sockets) on POSIX."

[http://src.chromium.org/svn/trunk/src/ipc/ipc_channel.h](http://src.chromium.org/svn/trunk/src/ipc/ipc_channel.h)

<comment><USER11> Hmm, was afraid of that re: SYSEMU. Still, I'm sure people will find ways to do higher-level debugging in rr with the current architecture!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This looks very cool, and will undoubtedly help with most run of the mill crashes. Unfortunately the machine model it uses is single-core, so you're not going to necessarily catch the really subtle concurrency bugs. Good multicore record and replay is _hard_ , and has been the subject of tons of papers in the past 10 years. It would be cool to see some of that research make it out into practice.

</comment><comment><USER13> This looks really interesting. I hope it doesn't get buried in the Facebook buys Oculus news tsunami.

I can't wait to try rr out.

</comment><comment><USER14> "rr currently only supports x86 32-bit processes."

While the idea of a replay debugger is really nice, I don't understand where this limitation comes from. I thought, that since years we practically live in a 64 bit world.

<comment><USER15> Yes. This. This sounds like a great project and I would love to integrate this into our debugging workflow but this one limitation basically kills that prospect.

<comment><USER16> Well, it is version 1.0. If it is that important, maybe you could port it and issues some pull requests.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The latest gdb also contains a reversible mode. Anybody can comment on how does it compare with rr?

I have only tried myself the reversible debugger in ocaml, and it was an eye opening experience.

<comment><USER7> The critical word is "low-overhead". gdb's implementation is orders of magnitude slower.

On the other hand, rr can't do reverse debugging.

<comment><USER12> The lack of reverse debugging isn't an inherent limitation. One could index the replay and take micro-checkpoints along the way; then when you want to step backward, you rewind to the last checkpoint and play forward until you hit the previous instruction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Very cool! This looks a lot like something Michael Chastain was working on in the late 90s: [http://lwn.net/1999/0121/a/mec.html](http://lwn.net/1999/0121/a/mec.html)

It also is similar to GDB's record-and-reply functionality, except that I believe GDB is limited to a single process. I suspect that GDB's approach is much higher overhead also, because I think it actually records state changes for every instruction: [http://sourceware.org/gdb/onlinedocs/gdb/Process- Record-and-...](http://sourceware.org/gdb/onlinedocs/gdb/Process-Record-and- Replay.html)

Unlike the GDB functionality, this doesn't seem to support reverse-stepping. Hopefully this can be added -- it makes a huge difference when you can reverse-step backwards from the failure to find out where things went wrong: [https://sourceware.org/gdb/onlinedocs/gdb/Reverse- Execution....](https://sourceware.org/gdb/onlinedocs/gdb/Reverse- Execution.html#Reverse-Execution)

<comment><USER19> In theory, the replayer could be made to rerecord a full memory trace. Running the replayer in gdb would be enough for a single process.

<comment><USER18> > In theory, the replayer could be made to rerecord a full memory trace.

Yes exactly, or if it's cheaper, create periodic compressed snapshots and replay from the previous one to recreate intermediate states. In my experience GDB's recording is very expensive and very rapidly runs into resource limits. Hopefully a snapshot-based approach would be more scalable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> Dorian-Marie Link to the project: [http://rr-project.org/](http://rr-project.org/)

And the github: [https://github.com/mozilla/rr](https://github.com/mozilla/rr)

(On a side note, I think the gradient background is worse than a plain white background, when removing it, it become a lot more readable)

</comment><comment><USER20> This has some similarities with a project I worked on that provided very advanced analysis and debugging capabilities including instruction-level "bidirectional execution". I can't say much more about that, other than the fact that it was for a _whole-machine_ environment, and was a combination of special hardware support, but it's good to see some of the techniques becoming more widely available to the public.

</comment><comment><USER21> This reminds me of a similar idea I'd like to see. A smart tracer that keeps track of function call args and results and possibly local variables in a cache. Then when your program crashes, it can show you not just the backtrace but also recently called functions that may have influenced the crash. With such a tool you may be able to debug some crashes without a debugger at all.

</comment><comment><USER22> Replay tool is also for Java. It is called Chronon, is Eclipse plugin and was recently integrated into Idea Ultimate.

</comment><comment><USER23> Is this something similar to Intellitrace in Visual Studio?

<comment><USER7> No. IntelliTrace records, but does not replay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> No one's going to rag on the post's author for labeling himself "Christian" right at the top? He might have donated to Prop. 8 after all.

Edit: That's sarcasm, people.

<comment><USER25> Sarcasm fully understood. So, to address the point you're making underneath the snark:

No one (that I've seen, anyway) is ragging on Brendan Eich _for being a Christian_. I don't even know whether he is, although it's a fair guess given his decision to support Proposition 8.

Many people are saying that _Eich 's support of Proposition 8_ is a bad thing, makes him a bad choice for CEO of Mozilla, discourages them from using Mozilla's products, etc.

Attacking someone for being a Christian: religious bigotry based on disapproving of someone simply on the basis of their identity. Generally a bad thing.

Attacking someone for supporting Proposition 8: disapproval based on what the person has _actually done_ and its likely consequences. No reason why it shouldn't be a reasonable thing.

This doesn't seem to me to be a very subtle distinction.

(Aside: I do find it curious that of the four people who first come to mind when I think of Mozilla -- Mitchell Baker, Gervaise Markham, Robert O'Callahan, Brendan Eich -- two are rather vocally Christian (gerv's blog is called "Hacking for Christ"!) and a third has become infamous for an action that's probably the result of a similar religious position. Just coincidence?)

<comment><USER24> I'm confused, are you saying there's a link between people's beliefs and actions or not?

<comment><USER25> Of course there's a link. But criticizing an action someone has taken that happens to have been religiously motivated is not the same thing as objecting on principle to their religion.

An example more extreme than Brendan Eich's: Suppose someone is a devout Christian but also rather deranged, and believes that the Bible is full of coded messages telling him to kill (say) school biology teachers. So he goes and kills a bunch of school biology teachers. If I say "That was a terrible thing to do and he shouldn't have done it", that doesn't mean that I am going to hate on everyone else who is a devout Christian -- because, as it happens, plenty of people manage to be devout Christians without murdering biology teachers.

Perhaps (so far as I know this is pure speculation) Brendan Eich is a Christian and the particular variety of Christianity he adheres to tells him to try to stop same-sex couples' relationships being legally recognized. If so, then I think the particular variety of Christianity he adheres to is leading him to do harmful things and I wish he would stop. But that doesn't require me to object on principle to everyone who is a Christian, not least because plenty of people manage to be Christians without trying to stop same- sex couples' relationships being legally recognized.

Now, let us suppose there is a Christian denomination that has opposition to same-sex marriage as a central part of its teaching, and that does not permit anyone to belong to it unless they work to oppose same-sex marriage, including making financial contributions to campaigns like the one for Proposition 8. And suppose it turns out that some particular person is a member in good standing of that denomination. Then I'm quite happy following the following line of thought: This person belongs to that denomination; belonging to it means being a fervent opponent of same-sex marriage and contributing to campaigns against same-sex marriage; therefore this person has almost certainly done things I consider harmful and antisocial; so much the worse for this person. You may, if you please, consider this anti-religious bigotry. If so, I invite you to consider the following two questions. (1) Is it possible for a religion (or some particular version of a religion) to be morally harmful to its practitioners? (2) If you learned that someone was a member in good standing of an Islamic sect that had glorification of terrorism as a central doctrine, would you think worse of them as a result?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Awesome-indie – Resources for independent developers to make money - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mezod/awesome-indie <comment><AUTHOR> I also wrote this super short post on how the repository got to #1 on github :)

[https://medium.com/@mezood/making-money-from-your-own- code-h...](https://medium.com/@mezood/making-money-from-your-own-code-has- never-been-easier-but-its-still-hard-2242ddaae6a1)</comment>


Drinking Ernest Shackleton's Whisky (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/magazine/drinking-ernest-shackletons-whisky.html <comment><USER2> "As a prophylactic measure, they were drinking their Scotch mixed with Irn- Bru"

...and they asked these barbarians about whisky?!

I have never heard of anybody here in Scotland drinking whisky mixed with Irn- Bru, except as a dare. Expensive whisky is drunk neat, or with a bit of water; never with ice. Increasingly, nowadays, you get whisky cocktails. Cheap blended whisky is also drunk neat, or with beer (either side-by-side or as a boilermaker, with the shotglass of whisky dropped into a pint of beer), or with soda water or lemonade.

Irn-Bru is usually drunk with vodka.

<comment><USER3> Pretty sure Bells and Irn Bru collaborated on an 'alcopop' a few years back.

Edit: by a few years I mean the late 90s. Getting old.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have a bottle of this replica whisky. Got it as a gift last year. I'm not enough of an enthusiast to say much more than "yes, this does taste very good" but I do very much enjoy the story around it.</comment>


VW's $50B Bet on an Electric Hatchback - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-23/vw-s-50-billion-moonshot-bet-on-an-electric-hatchback-the-id-3 <comment><USER2> WHY do these vehicles always have to look so freaking dorky? This is one of the things that Tesla nailed. Their vehicles are beautiful, and look like first-class products.

This, the "ID-3" looks like a prius. I'm sure it's a fine car, and I really do love EVs, but man oh man I wish the designers would take a page from Tesla's book.

edit: to be clear, my current car (that my wife and I share) is a chrysler pacifica minivan, which I believe to be one of the best cars I've ever owned. I have no problem with "dorky" vehicles, I am a dork. It's just that if you want to break out of enthusiasts buying your cars for the novelty, you have to make them appealing.

<comment><USER3> My sense is that automakers believe that low-emissions cars will not sell well unless people can acquire them as a means of signalling virtue and wealth. In other words, unless the car is instantly identifiable as a fancy new EV, a large subset of potential buyers will lack interest.

I suspect this is mostly myth propped up by apocryphal assertions that Prius sold well due to its distinct look. But I am just a long-time curious observer, not an expert.

<comment><USER4> > _I suspect this is mostly myth propped up by apocryphal assertions that > Prius sold well due to its distinct look_

What I read was that the sales of Toyota's hybrid versions of their "normal- looking cars" (Camry Hybrid, etc) were disappointing in comparison to the Prius (especially if the theory is that people were avoiding the Prius due to design and would prefer a less-radical car that still got great gas mileage). I don't know if there's any truth to that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's worth noting that VW's 2018 target for EV's was 300,000 units. They fell 217,000 units short:

[https://www.wired.com/2010/07/vw-300k-evs- annually-2018/](https://www.wired.com/2010/07/vw-300k-evs-annually-2018/)

I want the company to succeed at EV's more than anyone but if the rollout of the e-tron is any indication it is not going to be smooth sailing:

[https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/19/18508066/audi-etron- delay...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/19/18508066/audi-etron-delay- batteries-lg-chem)

<comment><USER6> Is that why VW was doing very aggressive discounts on the eGolfs a couple months ago? I got mine, a 2019, for dirt cheap, little over 12k new before the tax credits.

<comment><USER7> Just curious what region you're in? I'm in the Southeast US and haven't been able to find anything too far below MSRP for them.

<comment><USER6> PNW. They were knocking them down pretty far.

[https://slickdeals.net/f/13163326-21-000-off- msrp-2019-volks...](https://slickdeals.net/f/13163326-21-000-off- msrp-2019-volkswagen-egolf-w-driver-s-assistance-package-125-mile-epa-range- final-price-10-000-13-500)

<comment><USER7> Whoa! That's incredible, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> VW is betting hard on EV cars - I guess that German goverment will cooperate and will invest heavily into EV infrastructure ...otherwise it will be huge failure.

VW will finally solve problem with other brands within VW group - Skoda and Seat are sucessful brands and often cannibalize VW models (Skoda Kodiaq vs VW Tiguan, VW Passat vs. Skoda Superb etc...). VW presented recently strategy for next few years where they said that Skoda will become 'low-cost' brand and Seat will be more 'luxurious'.

Skoda is allowed to have only 2 EV models in next few years - minicar Citigo and Octavia (midsize sedan/combi), nothing else will be allowed (except few hybrid models) so it will be easier for VW brand to become EV leader in EU in next few years.

Also in the case there will be crisis VW will throw it's cheaper brands 'under the train' in order to survive :/

<comment><USER9> I am really sad about Skoda. Their current Superb is a wonderful car with great design. Design of current Passat is ugly as hell. If one cannot afford Audi A6, Skoda Superb is the only choice. After defeat device story VW group is anyway dead to me. I don't want to finance these criminals. And I don't believe in their EV initiative. They do it only to make people forget the story with defeat device.

<comment><USER10> > If one cannot afford Audi A6, Skoda Superb is the only choice.

I completely agree with this. In fact, in my country many people are buying Škoda Superb even if they can afford Audi A6, because they don't see Audi A6 as being worth 2x the price.

> After defeat device story VW group is anyway dead to me.

I noticed that all Volkswagen and smaller Audi cars released after 2015 came with much lower interior quality (more scratchy plastics), but the quality of Škoda and Seat cars has noticeably increased.

> And I don't believe in their EV initiative. They do it only to make people > forget the story with defeat device.

No, they do it in order not to become the Nokia of automotive industry after iPhone's release. Because that's where the entire European market is heading after the introduction of stricter emission standards.

<comment><USER11> The GP is right about infrastructure though. If EU states do not offer incentives for charging stations, the EVs will be worthless and they'll just shoot themselves and the auto industry in the foot with all the stricter emissions standards. Especially the Germans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Reminds me of a quote I read about the gap between what the electric car market wants and what legacy carmakers produce -

"Carmakers keep designing these cars thinking we want to buy their new electric cars, they don't realize we just want to buy their regular cars, in electric"

<comment><USER13> It reminds me of software firms using rewrites to try out all the things they have been wanting to do.

<comment><USER14> It's easy to ignoring the thousand small tweaks you've made over the years in response to user feedback or bugs or the little details that came up after- the-fact.

You think it's just the base feature you need to recreate, then a few months in you're stuck in the weeds recreating the hundred details you didn't factor into the redesign.

(this is my life, I rebuild rails/jquery features into far better designed Vue.js ones with powerful flexibility added on top and constantly get hung up on the details)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is good news, but VW is ultimately motivated by the threat of Dieselgate litigation and fines.

Let's hope this isn't some flash in the pan, Tesla has shown the feasibility, but an EV future really needs one of the big conglomerates onboard as well.

Multiple companies competing will drive batteries well under ICE drivetrains economically in short order.

<comment><USER16> I don't know how much Dieselgate has affected VW's bottom line but what I do know is that as a consequence of the scandal:

\- new cars now come with 6 years warranty which is more than anything anywhere in that price range

\- their second hand car program is great, includes 2 years of manufacturer warranty. Last time I wanted to buy a compact I very seriously considered getting a 2015 VW Golf diesel, it includes all future required updates to reduce harmful emissions and it has all the nice advantages of a diesel (high torque, low RPM, nicer IMO engine noise). I ended up deciding against it because the newest VW diesel is 2015 and they started supporting Apple Car/Android Auto in 2016 models.

All in all like I said I don't know if Dieselgate hit their bottom line but around here it seems the streets have a lot more VW cars (a lot of e-Golfs too) since the scandal. No wonder since their cars are now such a great deal.

<comment><USER17> > \- new cars now come with 6 years warranty which is more than anything > anywhere in that price range

As someone who took advantage of this deal, this no longer applies starting in 2020.

[https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2019/08/01/volkswa...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2019/08/01/volkswagen-6-year- warranty-gone-4-year-warranty-in-what-means/1885042001/)

Also it's fairly well known that 2019 GTIs (a pretty popular car) has a _serious_ defect that has already started the process to begin a formal recall. It's believed that VW modified the car to meet emissions standards, and essentially broke the car in the process so badly they can't fix it. Most dealerships just buy back the car if you mention the problem.

[https://www.golfmk7.com/forums/showpost.php?p=835026&postcou...](https://www.golfmk7.com/forums/showpost.php?p=835026&postcount=1441)

So I feel like VW is still doing some shady shit regarding dieselgate.

<comment><USER18> I just paid around $3000 to replace pistons on a golf 7 with 73000km. Supposedly they know it's a fault but no local support aside from reducing the parts price. Initial quote was around $4000. Not loving VW. Never buying another until it's electric.

<comment><USER17> Was it under warranty? Old cars being unreliable may make VW a questionable choice for some, but what I'm talking about are brand new cars with a factory defect that makes them unsafe to drive. It's roughly equivalent to the ignition key fiasco GM faced a few years ago (or at least that is my take based on the limited information I have).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> VW's electrification efforts are primarily not about competing with Tesla in the US, but about not losing its 24% market share in Europe, where it has multiple non-premium brands, such as Seat and Škoda.

<comment><USER19> A lot of their electrification efforts are penance for dieselgate.

<comment><USER10> Electrification is a huge thing in the European market after stricter emission standards and additional taxes for car buyers were introduced, and has nothing to do with dieselgate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is an interesting video that talks about the issues facing the German car industry with the move to EV. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcXjVxaKzv4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcXjVxaKzv4)

One of the things they talk about that I find interesting is how different EVs are from ICE cars.

I think we all assume that the companies that have gotten good at making cars, should be able to adapt to EVs, but it's a fundamentally different problem space. EVs and ICE may look alike on the outside, but are very different on the inside. I can't think of a good analogy, but if someone has one please share.

<comment><USER21> Typewriters and word processors.

<comment><USER20> That's a good one, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm planning to buy a new car in two years, and I'm really excited about the possibilities of electric cars then. What I really want is a mid-sized hatchback, with interior form similar to my current Subaru Forester (and a zillion other similar light-duty quasi-SUVs). It's such a popular form factor, and Tesla isn't there on it.

<comment><USER23> The unfortunately truth is many of the Electric Vehicles centered sites in US are Tesla fan sites more or less.

If EVs have to truly succeed they have to be coming from more than one brand.

\- Mitsubishi Outland PHEV \- Hyundai Ionic series \- Chevy BoltEV

Lincoln Aviator PHEV, Prosche Cayenne Hybrid covering luxury SUV segment.

There are tons of EVs and PHEVs out there which pretty much cover a large swath of vehicle size already.

The problem is these sites that are supposed to promote Electric Drive train jerk-off weeks on Tesla rumors and Elons tweets.

<comment><USER24> Hybrids are 'meh' to me. A ton of EV advantages are dismissed or tossed out the window once you mix in a gas engine.

<comment><USER25> I went from two BEVs to a BEV and a PHEV. One day while I was waiting for the 6th time that day at a glacial refueling rate of "20 miles of range in 5 minutes" with my BEV on a road trip from Seattle to Salt Lake City, I realized that what I value from a plug-in battery is the "full tank" every morning when I pull out of my garage. What I value from gas is the "400 miles of range in 5 minutes" when on a road trip. Suddenly it became abundantly clear that a PHEV was the only thing that made sense for me for a car I use on occasional road trips.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Is it just me or does that seem low? How many ICE factories do they have currently? How many are they adding or renovating in these next couple years?

<comment><USER27> Tesla has 2, so that's 4x in just three years.

There is no reason for VW to not build more, if the demand is there. If the demand is not there, then it can become a financial disaster.

<comment><USER28> > There is no reason for VW to not build more, if the demand is there. If the > demand is not there, then it can become a financial disaster.

The problem is that EVs are going to cannibalize the legacy auto industry. It takes far less people [1], far less parts (typical combustion engine has ~2k moving parts, a Tesla powertrain has ~17), just a much smaller supply chain overall [2] to deliver EVs. And these EVs will last much, much longer than your traditional combustion vehicles.

Legacy automakers are fighting over the smaller pie that will be left over, hence the handwringing. Innovator's Dilemma [3]. Governments should be looking at the auto industry the same way they look at coal: upskill those who will stay, transition out those who a redundant. It's quite worse than coal, actually. Coal only employs ~50k people in the US. The auto industry employs over 7 million.

[1] [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/30/gm-strike-highlights-how- shi...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/30/gm-strike-highlights-how-shift-to- electric-cars-puts-future-auto-jobs-at-risk.html)

[2] [https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/IF11101.pdf](https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/IF11101.pdf)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma)

<comment><USER29> Most of those factors are actually beneficial for the corporations however; less parts and people means less logistical overhead eating away at profits. The increase in reliability is a questionable loss too as most consumers dump their current car every 6 years regardless if it still works or not in their effort to keep up with the Joneses. Beside battery wear will put a hard limit on car lifespan anyway since those giant things are going to be the labor equivalent of an engine swap in order to replace.

<comment><USER30> The original model S could do a 90 second battery swap. Not sure about other Tesla models, but I sure hope they are still designed for easy battery replacement. I would guess they are as Elon Musk is hoping for the cars to eventually last a million miles.

<comment><USER28> They are no longer designed for replacement at that speed. That was designed to capture the full value of California ZEV credits, and is no longer necessary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Just a reminder, ID.3 will not be coming to the US.

2022 seems to be the bellwether year of EVs as many manufacturers are predicted to have models by then and more than one in general.

<comment><USER32> 2 years ago everyone was saying 2020 would be the year Tesla gets serious competition. VW sure shared a lot about their designs, but so far no way to purchase them in the US.

Maybe they're waiting for legislative support to promote EVs?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Personally, I can't wait for the VW ID Buzz (EV remake of the old VW Microbus), supposedly due in 2022:

[https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a20733943/2022-volkswa...](https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a20733943/2022-volkswagen- microbus-the-electric-resurrection-of-an-icon/)

</comment><comment><USER34> > The ID.3, scheduled to hit the streets by midyear, is the first of at least > 70 electric cars in VW's pipeline.

This whole article is weird. Are we supposed to pretend the e-Golf hasn't existed for years?

> While the ID.3, priced from around $30,000 with a range of 200 miles or > more, is aimed at countering the threat from Tesla's Model 3, its stiffest > competition will come from gasoline-powered cars such as VW's own Golf > hatchback.

I mean... yeah? The Model 3 isn't a hatchback. Americans still have reservations against hatchbacks for some silly reason. And the real competition against a VW hatchback is going to be the Prius. Tesla is a tech gadget. The VW is a car. You really can't discount the fact that many people buy Tesla because of the coolness of the gadgets.

<comment><USER35> The "first car in the pipeline" part is referring to the new generation of vehicles built on purpose built EV platforms shared across many models, whereas the e-Golf is an electric drivetrain retrofitted into a combustion car and the e-Tron is a one off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is vaporware. VW are stuck. They are not able to innovate. VW EVs are always tomorrow, whereas actual manufacturers do deliver EVs now : Nissan and Renault besides Tesla.

<comment><USER37> Porsche (a division of VW) is not vaporware in the EV space.

<comment><USER9> Porsche isn't mainstream car. It's a toy for riches, not for salaried employees.

Edit: I was wrong. I could lease Macan for ~700€/month.

<comment><USER38> Porsche is in the same market segment as Tesla is.

<comment><USER32> Let's see when deliveries actually happen in the US. That is next year. Also numbers are unclear on how many will be delivered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This article might suggest to some that this is VW's first electric car. The fleet of all shared car services in my city consist of electric e-UPs or electric Golfs, which are simply amazing.

The article seems biased and politically charged (US vs EU car manufacturing).

</comment><comment><USER40> If they need $50B to make space and then place themselves in the electric car market, then I suppose that explains Tesla's difficult task.

</comment><comment><USER41> Infiniti goes all electric starting 2021-2022. I bet pretty much all of these car manufacturers are doing more or less the same shift.

<comment><USER32> That's a surprisingly misleading phrase. Maybe "Infinity's first full electric starts in 2021-2022".

<comment><USER41> Ehem.

> Infiniti, the luxury brand of Japanese automaker Nissan, will start phasing > out gas-powered vehicles in 2021 and switch to "all electrified" models, the > maker's new CEO Hiroto Saikawa said Tuesday afternoon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> how reliable are these projections? Replace VW with TSLA and the Tesla naysayers / TSLAQ will claim the company is doomed...

<comment><USER43> You're curious whether or not it's realistic for an 82-year-old automotive company with 122 worldwide production plants who produced 11.1M cars last year compared to Tesla's 254k can have just 8 facilities producing electric cars in ~2 years from now?

That seems like a fairly reasonable goal to me.

<comment><USER44> Inertia is a pain in the ass. VW has a lot of inertia...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> "Tesla Killer"

</comment><comment><USER46> Shifting to hybrid or full EVs was laudable five or ten years ago, increasingly less so since then. Neither producers nor consumers in the auto market care about LCA's that look at REMs and battery impact. Plus you're only as clean as your electric grid.

The only solution to the climate catastrophe was a massive change in the economy, supply chain, and western consumer culture. Hybrid car technology was a viable wedge or mitigating factor five or ten years ago. Now our only option is to adapt

<comment><USER47> > Plus you're only as clean as your electric grid.

"The Zwickau plant is supplied with electricity by Volkswagen Kraftwerks GmbH. For a few years now, this company has been offering pure green electricity sourced from hydroelectric power plants, wind farms, and solar parks. This green electricity is TÜV-certified. Even though it costs a little more, Volkswagen Sachsen (with the Zwickau, Dresden, and Chemnitz sites) has been using this green electricity since April 2017. "It is completely CO2-neutral""

[https://electrek.co/2019/07/22/vw-zwickau-factory- electric-c...](https://electrek.co/2019/07/22/vw-zwickau-factory-electric- cars/)

<comment><USER48> That doesn't account for the energy used to charge the cars during their lifetime, though.

Thankfully, in general the United States energy grid is getting less CO2-intensive.

<comment><USER47> That's outside the car makers' control.

The public charging stations in my town (in Germany) are powered (hooked up to our common electricity network, but in terms of energy bought for them) using hydro power from a nearby river.

Any car owner could use their own generator using coal or oil to power their private charging point though. Generally speaking the only remedy to that is to make CO2 intensive power cost prohibitive. Our government decided just today to attach a CO2 tax to sales of energy sources with CO2 residues, so let's see how that develops.

<comment><USER49> Car makers don't need to control it. Market forces are making the grid cleaner with options that blow dirty power away financially.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Only one text field allowed on the webapp  - <AUTHOR>

Looking closely what I see is Google, twitter and friendfeed have just a one point of interface between the user and application.  What do you think is possible if we are if you are allowed only one input box for your idea.<p>* Google Search: One input field   (Rank 1)<p>* Twitter: One text area           (Rank 11)<p>* Friendfeed: one text area        (Rank 735) <comment><USER2> If you have more than one feature and only one field, you will inevitably end up with conventions for smuggling extra data into it, which users will then have to learn. E.g., Twitter has @user and #tag, and Google has site:, inurl:, and cache:.

<comment><USER3> This way we can have our cake and eat it too. New users see only one input, making it very clear what they're supposed to do, and advanced users can still do advanced things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well, technically they all have other 'stuff' to help you do whatever it is with that single box. Google is the only one that doesn't require you to signup before using it. Digg and HN kind of only have 1 input box.

It definitely is an interesting trend. I've even tried to come up with startup ideas restricting myself to simple inputs like a single textbox. Sometimes adding some constraint helps you be more creative.

</comment><comment><USER5> I would focus less on the input box and more on the task. Each app focuses on a single task presented with as few options as possible. it's hard to use any service wrong because there is not much to mess up as a user.

</comment><comment><USER6> Try to make a calendar app with only one text field. There is no way "one text field only" can be applied as a general rule, but just thinking about how you could apply it will (IMO) make your app better.

What the apps listed above have done is simplified the interface to the _bare_ minimum needed to accomplish the task. Sometimes, that requires 5 text fields, sometimes 1.

The biggest value of a good user experience designer is in figuring out the minimal functionality for each step in the application and stringing those together in ways that make sense.

<comment><USER7> While not a calendar app, I used the "one text field only" methodology on Weekis - <http://weekis.com> which is a simple week planning tool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting...I originally had a more complicated interface on <http://buyersvote.com/> where people could add/remove items on a list which would pop out a new text field for each item.

I eventually just made it one big text area and let them do "one per line".

There is a still a sparate field for the title. I don't have any hard data on whether this change improved engagement or not. But I think as a general rule, the simpler you can make the UI the more engagement you'll get from first time users.

</comment><comment><USER9> Not to mention the page we're on now.

</comment><comment><USER10> Questioning user interface dogma in your field can have interesting results. I'm building a DNS service at the moment and having experimented with a few user interfaces, have found the one I like the most has a single page for viewing and editing the zone, fixed record names and types, no class or TTL (at all), and a field for each unit in a records data, rather than the traditional one data field per record data. It's more limited than other interfaces but it's also more powerful; have to wait and see whether the market agrees.

</comment><comment><USER11> When you think about it, the command line is the ultimate "single text field" app.

</comment><comment><USER12> xterm

</comment><comment><USER13> It all depends on the nature of your web app. Single-text-field UI doesn't really make sense for, say, an email composition app.

</comment><comment><USER14> Friendfeed and Twitter each have two. One for search and one for posting.</comment>