Scott Adams on Bad Interfaces - <AUTHOR> http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/bad_interfaces/ <comment><USER2> Bad design is _everywhere_...

My old microwave oven had one control, a dial. Just put the food in and turn it. The whole dial represented 12 minutes, so just estimate how far to turn it. My new microwave has 22 buttons. I forget which is which. I have to turn on the lights and get my glasses.

The previous owner installed vertical blinds on the double hung windows. Think about that. Impossible to have open windows without endless noise and movement.

An office where I work is near an airport. They have a key card system that beeps with a successful swipe. So you can't hear the beep when an airplane is passing overhead (every 5 minutes) and have to wait until it's gone to get into the building.

Another office has "gone green" and installed motion sensors everywhere to turn off lights not being used. Good luck finishing up in the restroom if you've been sitting too long.

Some of my software asks "Save before exit?" _whether I've changed anything or not_. I got so tired of trying to remember if I had updated or only viewed, I just click "Yes" every time. Pointless.

Every time the garbage truck drops the dumpster back down next door, 3 car alarms go off. No one ever responds, because they assume that it's a false alarm. Not that big a deal until the garbage truck shows up at 4:00 a.m. on Saturday.

My TV remote has 33 buttons. So they're so small, you have to stop and look at it to hit "Mute" or "Last Channel", the only 2 buttons I ever use. Who designed this thing, a munchkin?

The airports in Orlando, Philadelphia, San Jose, and Miami put the restaurants (not counting junk food) _outside_ of security. So you have to wonder, "Do I have enough time to eat and then get through the line?" (Pittsburgh, Tampa, and Chicago Midway did it right.)

The trunk release and gas cap release levers in my car are next to each other but not visible. It's hard to pull one without the other. Seems like my gas cap door is always open.

A theater we went to the other night only had aisles on the sides with 50 seats in between. Do your really want that great seat in the center knowing you may have to climb over 25 people if you need the restroom before the movie is over?

Intersections that gridlock because of traffic from the next light. Too many to mention.

Microsoft Windows.

<comment><USER3> Bad design is everywhere. I am typing on an Apple keyboard because the key feel is nice. The machined aluminium and white keys add a touch of quality to my desk. The scruffy A4 notebook it sits on to counter the uncomfortable and unconfigurable propped-up-at-the-back tilt spoils it slightly.

Vista. When I need a new PPTP connection, I open "Network Connections" (where PPTP connections are listed), then go looking for File -> New (which doesn't exist), then File -> Connect which is greyed out and irrelevant, I glance longingly at at the temptress of File -> New Incoming Connection which is available - if only it was for Outgoing connections - then try Right Click -> New..., which also doesn't exist.

After cursing for a bit I remember to go to the Network And Sharing Center (where PPTP connections are _not_ listed) and click "Connect to Network".

Am I the only PuTTY user who opens it, connects to a host, types the wrong username and then gets annoyed when on a failed login it only re-prompts for a password, not for both username and password?

<comment><USER4> PuTTY is just an awful piece of software in general: they take all the SSH options, rename them, and rearrange them into a bizarre menu structure with an obtuse session-saving system that reminds me of the horror of HyperTerm.

Install Cygwin, and use OpenSSH from your shell in MinTTY (which uses the PuTTY's terminal emulator implementation, but doesn't fuck up the UI and adds all the missing options).

<comment><USER3> You can't seriously reply saying "PuTTY is awful, instead install _Cygwin_ "?

PuTTY is almost as good a program can get - no install, basic use case just works, good default colour scheme, proper full screen option available. Fast, simple, minimal fuss until you hit some stupid terminal quirks.

Cygwin is almost as bad as a program can get - massive install, with confusing nonresizable large package choice dialog, masses of files everywhere, services, ugly stuck in a command prompt by default, hacks to bring everything unpleasant about _nix onto Windows.

Get many good things from command line _nix from <http://unxutils.sourceforge.net>, put them in a folder in your PATH and leave the CygWin swamp a long way away.

Maybe I'll try it again with MinTTY, it does look like a good terminal for CygWin. It's not an easy decision though, I predict it wont be at all fun.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Read the following Scott Adams blog quotes:

"I can't get past the fact that it's sitting there wasting energy while its only function is to confuse me up to three dozen times per day."

"Lately I have been wondering whether online reviews should remain legal."

"I can't help seeing world affairs as essentially a bunch of middle managers sitting around a rectangular table coming up with clever ways to convince the masses that turds are diamonds."

"Humans are obsessed with their weight. I think a big part of that obsession is the simple fact that weight is easy to measure."

"What the world needs is software that makes it easy for senior citizens to use e-mail."

Now imagine them being read by an angry Andy Rooney.

I'm just putting that out there.

<comment><USER6> Seeing all of those disparate quites + Andy Rooney made me think of this: <http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1903619>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have one UI pet peeve: mousing over large screens.

I look at it this way: when the Apple Macintosh made the mouse popular in 1984, it was with a 9 inch, 512x324 resolution display. I got started computing on a 17 inch, 640x480 resolution display, so not that much larger in terms of usable screen real estate. Now, I have two 22 inch, 1680x1050 resolution displays, one turned vertically. For comparison, I made this image [http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/thOvKDvamA7iCeQLCdyGIw?...](http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/thOvKDvamA7iCeQLCdyGIw?authkey=Gv1sRgCJqd-72OjOqvxAE&feat=directlink)

The red box in the middle is the old Macintosh display. It looks roughly 5 inches across the diagonal. Mousing interfaces haven't changed in any significant way in the last 30 years, but displays have grown astronomically in that time. If arguments against the mouse over text interfaces were contentious back-in-the-day, it's even worse now. My wrists can't take this anymore.

<comment><USER3> Off topic: What's the panel to the left of your solution explorer in Visual Studio?

<comment><USER7> That would be a plugin, the name of which escapes me, that turns the scrollbar for the code editor into a thumbnail image of the full length of code.

<comment><USER8> sounds a lot like the 'minimap', which I think was first used in the Sublime editor. There's an emacs version at <http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/MiniMap> that I haven't gotten around to trying yet, but keep meaning to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A lot of people seem to think using light switches for anything is a good idea. Popular sins off the top of my head:

\- Light switch used as apartment doorbell. Mine sits right beside the hall lightswitch.

\- Light switch used as door opener. Of course put right beside one of the hall's light switches.

\- Light switch used as control for the office-wide motorized blinds. Of course put right inbetween the other proper light switches used for controlling light.

<comment><USER10> My grandfather's house has light switches for the lights in the garage, the doorbell, and the garage door opener. People have dented their cars, which were parked halfway into the garage, trying to ring the doorbell. There is now a sign posted with very detailed instructions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Were the switches ordered the way I thought they should be, and that was my > memory trick, or were they ordered the opposite of how I would have done it, > and THAT was my memory trick.

I'm glad I'm not the only one that uses this "opposite of normal logic" trick in order to remember how things work sometimes.

<comment><USER12> If it were the way you think they should be, why would you be asking yourself that? Unless your last place was confusing and you're still confused from that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Yup, I've had one of those light switch + disposal switch combo myself. Who thought that was a good idea?

<comment><USER14> Why can't you just label the switches, though? A couple strips of paper and tape are all you need. (Of course, the fact that such a fix is necessary does confirm that something is wrong with the design.)

<comment><USER15> Tangential anecdote - someone in my office went label mad mid last year. I made the observation that anybody who needed a label to know that the _only_ light switch in the meeting room was, indeed, the light switch _for_ the meeting room, was too dumb to benefit from meeting with us anyway.

<comment><USER16> My kitchen has a switch on a little stub of a wall, the other side of which is part of the living room. The living-room-side switch controls the kitchen lights, and vice-versa. It makes sense when you realize that you can use them to do a sort of "airlock" process, turning on the light in the room ahead of you, entering it, then turning around and switching off the lights in the room behind you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> As a counter anecdote, I have installed USB 3G mobile connection things.

A few years ago, the software was so fussy that we broke a Windows install past our ability to fix it merely by installing in the wrong order. After install it needed to be run as an administrator then as a user, then configured with custom profiles choosing which kinds of devices you might have. It was a mess.

Today I had to install the latest version and wasn't looking forward to it. Plugged the device in, it appeared as a USB stick with an installer. Ran the installer, ran the program - on first launch it quietly detected and installed some drivers and presented with a 'connect' button which ... worked.

I wish there was some standard way I could give feedback to the development team for their excellent work and to the company management for encouraging (or at least, permitting and subsequently getting out of the way of) such improvement and customer focus.

<comment><USER17> Such "pretend to be a USB stick but not really" devices really suck everywhere except Windows, though. (They typically use fairly standard drivers in the end, but unless there is a specific entry to tell the kernel "this is really a ...", they are going to be seen as USB sticks instead.)

In short, I'm not sure they deserve that much praise.

<comment><USER3> The bit I'm praising is nothing to do with how open the device or drivers are, it's how much the design of the interface and end user experience has improved (and the team who made that a priority and then worked on it). So much software gets changed or more cluttered as time progresses and it's really pleased me that this hasn't.

If they could be open and still be like that, even better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder if Adams has ever read Donald A. Norman's classic _The Design of Everyday Things._ He'd probably love it; this kind of critique is exactly what the book explores so well.

</comment><comment><USER19> My personal peeve is door handles.

You know what I mean, you come to a door and you don't know if you should push or pull. It happens to me almost everyday at work when I'm deep in thought.

"The Design of Everyday Things" by Donald Norman, nicely sums up a lot of design problems. Even tho the book was written in 1990 or earlier, we're still facing many of the same design problems.

Everything2 sums up the book nicely: <http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=140365>

</comment><comment><USER20> My personal UI peeve is alarm clocks. When I want the sound to stop, I hit the off button as often as I hit snooze, often because the snooze button is smallish and stiff, and I still have to hunt for it amidst the other buttons.

What I'd like:

When the alarm is going off, _any_ button should snooze. A later "off" button press (ie, a minute or so) should be what turns off the alarm. This way, a literal "whack" would silence the alarm, without fear of falling asleep after turning it off.

</comment><comment><USER21> Product idea: A little plastic boot that slides onto a light switch to represent its true function. Like a Japanese eraser garbage can.

</comment><comment><USER22> Scott Adams turned into Andy Rooney.</comment>


This sapphire smartphone screen is strong, strong, strong - <AUTHOR> http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13970_7-57571618-78/this-sapphire-smartphone-screen-is-strong-strong-strong/

<comment><USER2> hmm, so my battery will be fucked up in no time, the back of my phone which is (usually) made of plastic will get scratched or broken, but, thank you oh lord, my screen will live forever.

Seriously, this industry needs to reshift their focus.

<comment><USER3> ... what? You think the industry should focus on the back of phones being scratched rather than the screen? How is this related to battery tech?

<comment><USER2> wow.... that was just to emphasize that modern smartphones/mobiles are not built to last. Should i trace the other wires for you as well?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> hard, hard, hard; not strong.

Gorilla glass is not as hard, but is much stronger.</comment>


Mobile or web? - <AUTHOR> I am trying to decide whether to build on mobile or web to test my hypotheses for a goals app. Mobile makes more sense to me for this kind of app but I am much more experienced in web development and hence could get it done faster on web. <comment><USER2> So, basically, you're asking for opinions on what is very likely an extremely important decision for the future of your app, yet you are intentionally vague and can't provide even the most minimal of details?

Yeah, good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, I do apologise for being vague and it was certainly not my intention. I am not too familiar with the culture of Hacker News. I chose to be succinct with my question thinking it would be more agreeable with other users. And you are right, this is an extremely important decision. I would appreciate your opinion. The app will be similar to Coach.me ([https://www.coach.me/](https://www.coach.me/)) but with more emphasis on support from friends.

<comment><USER3> What are your rationales for and against mobile?

What are your rationales for and against web?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why not both?

On mobile you can do a hybrid app using Apache Cordova/PhoneGap and if you find that you don't need a lot Cordova features you can also publish it on the web.</comment>


N.B.A. Draft Lottery Fates Are Sealed in Secret Before Envelopes Are Opened - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/18/sports/basketball/before-envelopes-are-opened-draft-fates-are-sealed-in-secrecy.html?_r=0

<comment><AUTHOR> Similar to the "simulate a fair coin from a weighted coin" algorithm:

> The number of Ping-Pong balls was chosen because there are exactly 1,001 > ways that four numbers can be drawn from a set of 14. Each of those > combinations is assigned to a team. [...] The 1,001st and final combination > — 11, 12, 13, 14 — is unassigned; if it is drawn, the balls will be put back > and drawn again.</comment>


Hans Rosling's 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes - The Joy of Stats - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo A discussion came up on one "local" forum and one guy was saying that captalism "forced millions of people into poverty in the last 100 years". This link was given as a counterargument and I think it's a pretty awesome visualisation. <comment><USER2> <http://searchyc.com/submissions/rosling?sort=by_date>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2073553>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2048229>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2040859>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2021752>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1973202>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1957024>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1954315>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1906265>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1774797>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1774186></comment>


Skateboard, Bike, Car: Building Products the MetaLab Way - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@awilkinson/skateboard-bike-car-6bec841ed96e#.m1j53zuu2 <comment><USER2> Q: Should we use Henrik Kniberg's original illustrations, and credit him for this product development meme or whatever?

A: Nah, let's just recreate his visuals and call the whole idea our own.

(for reference: [https://blog.deming.org/2014/11/minimal-viable- product/](https://blog.deming.org/2014/11/minimal-viable-product/))

<comment><USER3> Great artists steal!

<comment><USER4> Actually great artist evolve it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As someone at in an agency still working in a "waterfall style that was popular in the 90s", how do we convince clients with a fixed budget and a list of "must haves" to go agile? We have PMs with agile experience, all the developers are onboard, but when every other agency is promising to deliver what the client needs for a fixed cost, why would they take the risk?

We've had some small successes starting agile projects with existing clients who trust us, but articles like this make it seem like we're incompetent for even engaging in a waterfall project in 2016. When you're pitching for new work with a client who doesn't know the difference between waterfall and agile, one seems like a promise and the other seems like a risk. As software engineers, we know the opposite is true, but why should they trust us?

<comment><USER6> When you say "go agile", what do you mean? Why does the client care how the project is delivered?

If the client wants to pay a fixed bid then bake that added risk into your estimate.

For clients - if they're asking for something new/unique, what they have in their minds at the beginning is just a theory and needs to be tested -- working in iterations and focusing on "how do we help you prove your hypothesis in the most time/cost effective manner". Agile is about incremental, demonstrable progress to provide clarity and reduce risk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> To me the analogy doesn't work.

The skateboard has unlimited possibilities. I've never seen anyone pull of a 360 degree kickflip in a car.

To suggest a scooter is an evolution of the skateboard is just crazy. Anyone who has ever turned up to a skatepark on a scooter knows the shame of finding out instantly that scooters are just not cool.

Perhaps they should apply the same thinking in their consultancy.

</comment><comment><USER8> They didn't set the proper client expectations, which is why their strategy engagement failed. Shouldn't they have figured out the client wanted them to just start designing stuff before they went away for a few weeks and built a strategy deck? They failed to understand what their client needed and then they blame strategy for it!

</comment><comment><USER9> I've never understood this. How do you turn a skateboard into a car without starting again completely? Seems like instead of building one thing in considered stages you've built four things and resolutely refused to plan any of them properly</comment>


State Dept cables warned: safety issues at Wuhan lab studying bat coronaviruses - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state-department-cables-warned-safety-issues-wuhan-lab-studying-bat-coronaviruses <comment><USER2> > As many have pointed out, there is no evidence that the virus now plaguing > the world was engineered; scientists largely agree it came from animals. But > that is not the same as saying it didn't come from the lab, which spent > years testing bat coronaviruses in animals, said Xiao Qiang, a research > scientist at the School of Information at the University of California at > Berkeley.

This is a point many people seem to miss when discussing the origin of the current pandemic. It's not a "conspiracy theory" to suggest the virus escaped from a lab, and given the details in this article it seems pretty likely.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://beta.trimread.com/articles/11492](https://beta.trimread.com/articles/11492)

<comment><USER2> Thank you.

Off-topic, but:

> Reduced by 99%

> Reduced page load from original size of 2.4 MB to 26.7 kB.

This is absolutely incredible. The web is really a disaster these days.</comment></comment>


MonoGame.Js - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/SamuelEnglard/MonoGame.Js <comment><USER2> Also, if you like Lua, the LOVE library is excellent for writing games, and someone has recently started porting it to the browser - pretty impressive I think:

"An attempt to replicate the LÖVE API in the browser using moonshine." [https://github.com/TannerRogalsky/punchdrunk](https://github.com/TannerRogalsky/punchdrunk)

<comment><USER3> Looks like a big effort. It is interesting that they are trying to port by hand instead of using emscripten.

I used emscripten to port the MOAI engine (lua 2.5d engine) to HTML/JS, and it runs pretty smoothly (needs webGL).

you can see an older version of the player working here: [http://moaijs.moaiforge.com/progrocket/index.html](http://moaijs.moaiforge.com/progrocket/index.html)

I also created a jsfiddle style interface for it so you can play with it in the browser. [http://moaifiddle.com](http://moaifiddle.com)

<comment><USER4> Oh, wow, that's very cool! How did you deal with the 3rd party dependencies? Is that open-source anywhere? I would love to see what you had to do in order to get that working.

I'm the author of the above-mentioned punchdrunk, by the way. There were three reasons that I decided to do the port by hand: 1) I wanted to preserve mobile support by falling back to 2d-canvas when necessary. 2) I wanted to really cut my teeth on some graphics programming because I'd never really had the chance before. 3) I just couldn't get the damn thing to compile with emscripten (which I why I'd be very interested in your process).

We are considering emscripten for other modules like love.physics: [https://github.com/TannerRogalsky/punchdrunk/issues/38](https://github.com/TannerRogalsky/punchdrunk/issues/38)

<comment><USER3> Moai is opensource and the html host has been merged. [http://github.com/moai/moai-dev](http://github.com/moai/moai-dev) , (moaifiddle is also opensource but doesn't actually build the moaijs.js file (it just uses a prebuilt one. [http://github.com/halfnelson/moaifiddle](http://github.com/halfnelson/moaifiddle))

Third party dependencies are all statically linked and compiled by emscripten too, so the moaijs.js includes box2d, lua, libpng, libjpg, tinyxml all compiled in from their sources.

Best of luck!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This repo needs some TLC and the Visual Studio stuff removed. The concept is interesting, but it doesn't give any real reason to use it over things that are firmly planted in the JS consciousness (i.e. Phaser)

<comment><USER6> Hey It's Shmueli, the creator. I've since removed the VS stuff and have been trying to give it more of the TLC it needs. I fully admit that if you're in the JS world it might not be the best (haven't personally used other JS game frameworks) but as CmonDev it's more for those coming from C# and XNA or those looking to port an XNA game.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> From the repo:

«JavaScript game libary that is based on the XNA/MonoGame API

The only ""dependancies" on modern browsers the API takes is the HTML canvas object and the addEventListener function. Otherwise the code is valid ECMAScript 3 code and should work if those two are pollyfilled.»

</comment><comment><USER3> would be interesting to know how it performs compared to the code generated by il2js which is seen here running an xna 3.1 platformer exampler in html5 [http://hildr.luminance.org/Platformer/Platformer.html](http://hildr.luminance.org/Platformer/Platformer.html)

I know that the asmjs box2d outperforms the hand coded port, wondering if this holds true here

<comment><USER7> 1\. That's JSIL not il2js (separate projects, similar goals)

2\. That's using JSIL's custom JS xna reimplementation - not necessarily comparable. If you want to compare with real monogame, you want [http://hildr.luminance.org/MonoGame/Platformer2D/](http://hildr.luminance.org/MonoGame/Platformer2D/) which is Actual MonoGame compiled to JS. (Not that it's fast - MonoGame does things that are fast in desktop GL but _very bad ideas_ in WebGL)

3\. JSIL output is currently slower than hand-written JS in most cases because VMs are really bad at optimizing .NET-style static types. A future version of the ASM.js spec will enable using it for managed languages like C#, at which point a compiler like JSIL will be much faster than hand-written JS.

P.S. Unity's IL2CPP compiler provides asm.js-level performance for a subset of C# right now; they use it for the HTML5 version of Unity. It's pretty awesome and well-engineered, so I'm hoping they open-source it. (I worked on it in the past, albeit briefly.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why do people write their libraries in ONE single unmaintainable file?! I don't get it.

<comment><USER7> Having written numerous large .js files in my time, a contributing factor is that it's an enormous pain in the ass to split javascript up into smaller files. You have to update a bunch of <script> tags everywhere, or depend on a specific module loader (which means all the libraries and existing code have to be updated to support that module loader, in some cases including third party code), or...

I eventually wrote a stripped-down loader for JSIL to address this problem (so I wouldn't have to force end-users to adopt something specific like require.js or something), but there are still real usability issues for maintaining a codebase full of small .js files (like the near-fixed overhead per-request for javascript). Ideally ES6 module loading will address some of this, and for the rest, I guess everyone will have to adopt a build process for javascript (ICK) and give up on instant reloads after file changes.</comment></comment>


Introducing Posterous for the iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://blog.posterous.com/introducing-posterous-for-the-iphone-the-only <comment><USER2> I'm not very partial to all these single-use apps. Did we build the web and all these great, standards-compliant web browsers so we can have an app for each platform for each site we want to visit? I understand that browsers can't do everything native apps can, but wouldn't it be easier to extend the browsers to do these few things than have each company reinvent the wheel?

<comment><USER3> Good question. The original iPhone was web-only for a year and developers _clamored_ for access to native development. There is a long way to go until browsers plus the web development stack can provide the same experience as native code, and until then "apps" are here to stay.

Personally, I'm excited about it. People are making great applications for mobile devices that are not really possible in a web-only environment. Having to re-write them for different platform/device combinations is the price we pay for being able to build things that were not possible three years ago.

What makes this so different from the mess of incompatible platforms twenty years ago is that today we have the web as a common denominator. As long as you can convert your data into html, you can share it with anyone regardless of what type of device they have. The whole "well, we are not both running Word on windows 95 on pc's with floppy drives, so we can't possibly collaborate" problem is essentially gone.

Posterous has made a better mobile interface here than they could have on the web, but their web offering still exists. Anyone on any browser (or with an email account) can post to posterous, but if you have an iPhone, it is better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm the developer behind the app. Feedback from HN community is greatly appreciated.

</comment><comment><USER5> Posterous introduced this with the blog post and two kinds of communications materials. Hope it helps!

Use Case - Developer <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nX-zLP4F020>

Video Tour - Founder <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0S-L_8K_zNc>

</comment><comment><USER6> The ideal solution would be an improved email application that allowed multiple file attachments, better layout, etc. In lieu of that posterous is doing the right thing. Bringing an improved user experience to it's iphone users.

I've installed it and will use it if my post is complex enough. Still, it's unfortunate that the root cause can't be fixed - improved email creation on the iphone.

</comment><comment><USER7> Hyperlinking text and being able to read your subscriptions in an RSS-like reader fashion would make this the perfect mobile Posterous app!

</comment><comment><USER8> Just used it. Got good feedback from blog readers on how the app post compared to a web post.

Only problem is that I can't see a way of hyperlinking text?

</comment><comment><USER9> The app looks nice, but it is kind of strange to see an iPhone app come from the company whose big selling point is allowing you to post by email.

</comment><comment><USER10> I just installed it... it makes me use Posterous from now on. Dead simple killing app!</comment>


Guess Who Lost Big on the Zappos Deal?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/22/guess-who-lost-big-on-the-zappos-deal/ <comment><USER2> This article is lame.

So, had Draper Richards converted their $250,000 loan to shares, they would have made out big on this deal.

OR, the whole outcome could have been totally different. If they would have been a major shareholder, it stands to reason they would have also had major influence, both on this deal and everything leading up to it.

It's quite possible that this deal would have never even existed had they not demanded loan repayment instead of shares.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is the same kind of 'loss' that the RIAA claims every time somebody downloads an mp3, money that you didn't earn is not a 'loss', it's a missed opportunity.

<comment><USER4> The title isn't claiming they suffered a loss, more that they lost out. Those are different senses of the word.

And they did lose out, if they had convertible debt and asked for the money back instead of converting it. That is an exceptionally rare outcome. No VC does a convertible debt deal expecting it to actually be a loan.

Everyone seems to hate this article, but I found it useful. It is an interesting data point that a fairly highly regarded VC thought so little of Zappos that they opted not to convert a convertible round. It's up there with Battery turning down Facebook.

<comment><USER3> The title says 'lost big', not 'lost out'.

It is my understanding of the use of convertible debt that the industry uses this as a means of recouping part or all of the money in case an investment doesn't fly but doesn't tank either.

If it flies convert otherwise demand your cash back and treat the investment as a regular loan.

Wait too long with converting the debt and you'll find out that the knife cuts both ways.

What I really don't get in all this is why after such a spectacular exit this founder would go and pick up such a small investment on a convertible loan basis.

<comment><USER5> If you use 'winning' and 'losing', the usage 'lost big' works well for the situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I know there are a lot of founders, and therefore businesspeople, on this site—but I still find it a little weird that this kind of fratty business talk has so thoroughly permeated hacker culture. This article has absolutely 0 technical content; it's entirely about a business deal, and it could be about _any_ business deal.

I am not of course suggesting that this should be of less concern to hackers, or to the population of this website (or of the Web 2.0 penumbrua in general), so please don't view this as another 'Uh, should this really be on Hacker News?' post. I just am sometimes struck by the tone and focus of much of the chatter on the 'technical' web---by how thoroughly, apparently, so many of its denizens have been totally consumed by concern with how well any given fund made out on a business deal, and bodies of shares; and by the obnoxious Wall Street tone that can be taken, more or less indistinguishable from the smug chatter of the talking heads on cable TV or any of the obnoxious businessmen that I know.

</comment><comment><USER7> But what did Draper Richards end up using that cash for? What other company was it invested in? Perhaps this loss isn't really as bad as it seems.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think I speak for everyone when I say: "hindsight is 20/20"

</comment><comment><USER9> Unless Draper Richards was under huge liquidity crunch, probably any investment at the bottom of a bubble would have paid out. Just a case of poor timing and judgment. And Techcrunch being smug.

<comment><USER10> When the dot-bust occurred, the going rule with VCs was to rein in their investments, getting cash where they could and deploying their liquidation preferences to cash out where possible.

It was not panic so much as it was an exercise of common sense by the VCs at the time. A lot of startups had been riding on fluff and, when the fluff went away, it was time to cut investment losses.

A crude, but key, indicator is that the liquidation preference in the relatively few fundings that did occur went from a former standard of 1x out to a new one of 3x to 5x. Few deals were done, and those that were done were on terms perceived by founders to be onerous.

In such a climate, it likely would have been deemed reckless conduct by the VC's managing partners _not_ to cash in on the convertible note and to opt instead for an alternative outcome that was highly speculative at best. We can't really know without being privy to inside details, which we are not. In any case, that decision shouldn't be second-guessed by outsiders today.

<comment><USER11> True. At the end of the day, Zappos is/was really just an online shop. Amazon at least were the first/biggest online shop in a field where infinite shelf space means a lot. Shoe stores on the other hand, could easily have been bigger if bigger meant better. What strong reason was there at the time to believe that Zappos would grow so much more then the many other online retailers with similar numbers.

Growth: <http://i.zdnet.com/blogs/zappos-revenue.png>

YC's 'How to Apply' recommends against saying you will win because your app will be _well-designed and easy to use_ because presumably that is what everyone tries to achieve. Zappos eventually succeeded because they made the online shop equivalent: efficient back-end, excellent customer service, lots of products that people want to buy, low prices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a terrible article: it is completely without substance and a great example of why I try not to click on tc links when they come up on here. Pure linkbait.

Burned again.

Summary: somebody lent Zappos some money a while ago and demanded repayment instead of stock. So they got repaid.

How this translates into "losing big" befuddles me.

</comment><comment><USER13> Hey, I would rather have cash in hand than a lottery ticket. Especially if I'm not in the business of big dreaming.

<comment><USER14> I think that preference is exactly why you're not a venture capital firm.</comment></comment>


Casino Screwup Royale: A tale of "ethical hacking" gone awry - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/03/50-shades-of-greyhat-a-study-in-how-not-to-handle-security-disclosures/ <comment><USER2> Let's get this straight:

Someone goes house to house trying to open windows, finds your is open. Then incredibly, they call the FBI and gets an agent to accompany them for a personal visit. You, the stunned homeowner, are now presented with the FBI telling you that they've discovered your house is extremely insecure...meanwhile this same shady person with a criminal past is now hitting you up for a $60K "consulting bill" to teach you how to lock your windows.

While all this is going on you are actively trying to sell your house and you worry this whole FBI-shake down artist saga will torpedo the sale. You happen to be holding an open house this to invite prospective buyers. Coincidentally, the "security expert" suddenly appears at that exact moment to discuss "your houses security issues and his unpaid bill"

Does that about cover it?

The entire "lets search shodan and become a security disclosure company" is shady...</comment>


Ask HN: File format for declarative language? - <AUTHOR> I'm in the process of developing a pure declarative language. The source consists of simple JS-like data structures that would be at home in a JSON file.  I have two questions ...<p>- I'm naturally considering using JSON, but I don't think it is great for writing original code. It has too much visual clutter like quotes. My next thought was YAML but it seems kind of obtuse and overly-complex.  Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.  Am I overlooking any?<p>- Assuming I have a format chosen, can I use a new custom file suffix matching my language or must it be `.yml`, `.json`, etc.?  One could argue that the suffix should match the syntax (`.json`) or one could argue it should match the semantics (my language).  There are languages than match C syntax but don't have the `.C` suffix (if I'm not mistaken). <comment><USER2> If you opt for making your declarative language a subset of JSON or YAML, presumably it will be a proper subset, with some further expectations and constraints. It makes total sense to use a custom file extension — say, `.mdl`, "my declarative language", for the sake of discussion. Users will be able to easily find their files written in your language without having to wade through all possible files of the superset format. A `.mdl` file really is its own thing, it's not just a .json or .yml file. It may be the case that a `.mdl` file is a just `.json` or `.yml` file, but the converse will not be true.

The only advantage I can think of that accrues from using the more common extension is editor support: a user's favorite editor may well provide syntax highlighting and checking, auto-indenting, etc. for `.json` or `.yml` files, but not for `.mdl` files out of the box. You might want to develop `.mdl` profiles (sic) for popular editors.

Any decent parser for the 'true' format will accept either a string or a full filename (including extension) and shouldn't expect a fixed file extension.

Regrettably I can't think of a single example right now, but I know I've encountered many programs that use custom file extensions which have turned out to be just some familiar format after all.

That said, it's another question whether either JSON or YAML is a great choice. I agree with your reservations about both. In fact I've had the very same problem in a couple of development projects, one recently. JSON is friendlier than XML, true, but it's not really a language to think in, even declaratively — too much clutter. YAML is certainly versatile enough, but it provides probably more than you need, and it is... yes, obtuse. Of course, it depends on your intended users; I found it was too "programmerly" for mine. I ended up developing a custom parser for a language with more syntactic sugar than YAML, which has its advantages and disadvantages.

</comment><comment><USER3> One way to look at it is as a domain specific language and the choice as between an embedded DSL or a stand alone DSL. The advantage of an embedded DSL is that a lot of existing tooling can be leveraged and the entire host language can be leveraged. On the other hand, debugging in the new language may wind up requiring deep knowledge of the host. JVM languages often have that drawback.

But at a higher level, the new language should be designed around it's use case. If it's always used in a JavaScript context, the JSON might make more sense. If it's for *nix hackers then YAML might be better. If it's for phlembotomists then perhaps something altogether new.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks everyone. You've given me more to think about. Unfortunately I'm still on the fence. Usually I'm a lot more decisive. I guess it shouldn't matter in the long run. But you know how it is, I want my new language to be perfect.

<comment><USER4> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-expression](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-expression) and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xupl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xupl) are available and have many language bindings

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> 1)There are a couple alternatives. There's TOML, axon.

2)It can be whatever you want. It's your language. If you are reusing a current format it will be easier for devs and sysadmins to keep the current syntax

</comment><comment><USER6> If you don't mind I'd like to ask what the language is about?</comment>


Can't connect to Google or GMail at 3:09 EST, anybody else? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Fine here, I'm not connecting to Facebook from several locations.</comment>


Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook Home, Money, and the Future of Communication - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/magazine/2013/04/facebookqa/

<comment><USER2> Great interview.</comment>


Visualizing the Bechdel test - <AUTHOR> http://tenchocolatesundaes.blogspot.com.br/2013/06/visualizing-bechdel-test.html

<comment><USER2> I've always heard about the "test" but people tend to paint too broad a brush with this and lump everything in. I'm not saying that the movie industry isn't swayed one way or another, but it bothers me that there's such a lack of critical thinking when it comes to this "test". It seems to be used as a "sexist barometer" when it's anything but.

For example, a WWII movie will probably not have many scenes with women, especially if the movie concentrates on the battlefield. On the other end, some rom-com might pass the test but be an atrociously stereotypical and offensive movie.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is definitely more of a heuristic than a test. I think the author tries to get around this by providing more breakdowns based on category.

I think an interesting challenge would be training a sentiment analysis algorithm for detecting sexism but I'm not sure how feasible it is for this test.</comment></comment>


Kayak Prices $100 Million IPO at $25 a Share - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20120709/kayak-prices-long-delayed-100-million-ipo-at-25-a-share/

<comment><USER2> Headline is wrong. They are _raising_ $100 million with an initial offering that values the company at about $1 billion

<comment><USER3> The headline isn't -wrong-, but it seems misguided. Journalists have a bizarre habit of focusing on the amount to be raised and completely omitting the projected market cap from the story. I'm on my phone and that's the last place I want to be reviewing S-1's to find out that most crucial number. Thanks for doing that

Maybe this is because they talk to bankers. Bankers only care about the amount raised because that determines their fee. Anyone else that I can think of is more interested in the market cap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> They raised $196 million round in 2007 from Sequoia Capital, General Catalyst Partners and Accel Partners.

That stake is now worth $254 million for General Catalyst. Sequoia Capital's stake is $150 million. Accel's investment is now worth $120 million.

... that's $524 million on a $196 million investment, after 5 years. Hardly spectacular.

<comment><USER5> It's about 25% annualized returns for 5 years. Spectacular if it were risk- free. Depending on how much risk you think they were taking on at that stage (probably not much, given how proven out the model was) it's still very good returns.

Late stage venture capital does not seek the kind of 1000x returns that early stage does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Perhaps I'm misreading things, but it says Sequoia pumped in 196 million, but its stock value of equity at launch will only be worth 150 million. Does that mean they will be 'losing' money on the investment, until the stock goes up?

<comment><USER7> I read it as meaning the 196 million came from a combination of Sequoia Capital, General Catalyst Partners and Accel Partners, so I think they are still making money.

<comment><USER6> That made much more sense, I saw it as 196mm from Sequoia (of the 223mm raised total) with the rest coming from the other VC's.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Good to see an IPO with a value I can kind of fathom and believe instead of, you know, $X BILLION! or something.

<comment><USER9> That's just the value of the shares being sold, which is a small part of the overall number of shares. The valuation is around $1 BILLION.

<comment><USER10> Which, interestingly, is 1/6th the market cap of Expedia. Perhaps they've done an actually valid valuation?

<comment><USER9> Expedia should have little to do with it. Kayak's growth, revenue and profits are what matter.

<comment><USER10> Yes; however, this is an existing business in the same market. If they're reasonable competitiors and are getting about the same amount of business (or are gradually growing in their business), then you could expect them to be worth something similar. At least that's my thoughts on their entry into the market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why do these articles alway hide the cap table?

</comment><comment><USER12> What Kayak is really good in: If you have flexible dates. It shows you best fares found for each day.

Otherwise I don't see why Sites like <http://www.vayama.com/> or not the same. Besides the brand, what is their unique selling point? ebay, AirBnB has high entry levels. But a site to compare flights?

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm interested in everyone's thoughts about Kayak.

My feeling is that slowly but surely, the travel sellers who buying leads from Kayak will start paying less. So while I see it as a successful business, I'm not really sure where they're planning to go from here.

<comment><USER14> As a user (a pretty hardcore travel optimizer, buying either absolute cheapest complex fare, or "value" premium fares), Kayak is one of the few travel sites I actually like.

Someone from there (CEO? CTO) has posted on hn and/or quora and seemed really smart, too. Obviously they're in quiet period now so won't be commenting.

They seem pretty flight-optimized, at least for me, which is a much lower source of revenue than hotels. If they can grow their standalone hotel res business, or add hotels to flight purchases, they'll be worth a lot more than even being totally successful on flights. (I book all my hotels direct with starwood or with the property on negotiated rates, though, or use airbnb or a few specialty negotiated-rate networks like Tablet).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> "four million million shares"? daaamn!

</comment><comment><USER16> While I have traveled a lot for work the past few years, I have never used a single travel service like kayak, hipmunk, priceline, etc...

I go to one place for my tickets typically - the airline. My airline of choice is Virgin which has fantastic prices anyway.

When I had a client in Nome alaska, and I was there one week per month, I used virgin to go to SEA then alaska airlines from SEA on.

I know I am in a weird bracket, but i just never felt comfortable with any of the third party ticket services.

It reminds me of whenever i go to a farmers market. I never remember the prices at whole foods/safeway and I feel like I am not getting a deal, but am being fooled by the illusion of a farmers market.

</comment><comment><USER17> Hipmunk > Kayak</comment>


SLIME for TextMate (sorta, Clojure) - <AUTHOR> http://blip.tv/file/4160578

<comment><USER2> That's really neat. Bravo!

I've hit a roadblock in my attempt to install the proper Clojure SLIME environment in Emacs. I've got clojure-mode, SLIME, swank-clojure, and leiningen installed, and I get as far as the _slime-repl_ showing up properly, but my Clojure forms seemingly get ignored by the swank-clojure process. It's frustrating. From my readings of various Google Groups, people often seem to have trouble getting this whole machinery up and running. While the developers have done their best to set up ways to install the whole shebang automatically, that tends to make it more difficult for those of us who like to download systems piece by piece and put it together ourselves.

For that reason, a new way to interact with Clojure excites me. However, I may not take the leap of installing this project immediately. The main thing I like about the SLIME environment is that you get the full power of your text editor even in the REPL, which is invaluable for playing around with complex forms. With this system, it seems that you can either evaluate expressions in Textmate (which is not a REPL and forces you to context-switch to another window) or connect to cake in a terminal (which doesn't give you the flexibility of a text editor).

Perhaps a special Textmate buffer that automatically pastes the output of the eval'd form after the cursor would give me what I want. I will clone the project repo and start looking into what I can do. Thanks for the work you've done.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! Feel free to fork and try things out. I think you'll find that the project is quite small and manageable and each command is pretty self contained. We would love to hear about alternate interaction models.

One exciting possibility is nREPL, <http://github.com/cemerick/nREPL>. Since WebKit now supports WebSockets I have a feeling we could add many interesting behaviors into the Bundle w/o descending into Objective-C.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Acknowledgements:

      Aria Haghighi, did much of the heavy lifting on this project!
      Stephen Roller, created the first version of the bundle in 2008
      Mark McGranaghan, expanded Stephen Roller's version
      Justin Balthrop & Lance Bradley, core developers of Cake
        http://github.com/ninjudd/cake - if they weren't   constantly adding
        features just for this project, this would have never gotten off the
        ground
      Allan Odgaard, for being the creator of TextMate and listening to my
        Bundle dev noob questions

      A screencast: http://blip.tv/file/4160578
      The project repo: http://github.com/swannodette/textmate-clojure
      The Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/textmate-clojure

</comment><comment><USER3> For those of you who always wanted to try clojure but never got around to it, swannodette's enlive tutorial is very good.

<http://github.com/swannodette/enlive-tutorial>

</comment><comment><USER4> Wow, this TextMate must really be cool if people can easily clone a rich environment like SLIME. Unfortunately I work on Linux.

<comment><USER5> Fortunately for you, you can use Emacs. Which is where SLIME comes from.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for your tip. Well, I'm using Emacs already, however, as I've outlined in another comment of mine, when using Emacs I've always the impression of using a thrown-together environment, and wished it was a more structured one. I'm talking about the environment, not the editor itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Bravo! TextMate really needed a modern and definitive clojure bundle.</comment>


Luck Programming Language - <AUTHOR> http://luck.subarctic.org/

<comment><USER2> wonderful to see the "ML-like features in a C-level language" space being explored so enthusiastically these days.</comment>


At Work, Expertise Is Falling Out of Favor - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/future-of-work-expertise-navy/590647/ <comment><USER2> It's falling out of favor with our politicians too. People care more about a person's gender and sexuality than if they can actually do the job.</comment>


The Origin of Spacewar! (1981) - <AUTHOR> http://www.masswerk.at/spacewar/SpacewarOrigin.html

<comment><USER2> If you want to play Spacewar on a real PDP-1, the Computer History Museum in Mountain View has a restored PDP-1 with Spacewar on it: [http://pdp-1.computerhistory.org/pdp-1/](http://pdp-1.computerhistory.org/pdp-1/)

Steve Russell works at the museum these days, so you might even run into him if your timing is right!

<comment><AUTHOR> The next best thing (but without Steve Russell himself, sorry) can be found here: [http://www.masswerk.at/spacewar](http://www.masswerk.at/spacewar) (a JS-emulation of a PDP-1 running various versions of Spacewar! – the version closest to the program described in the article is "Spacewar 2B", but the version seen in the photos is probably a bit later and more advanced.)

But of course we ought to visit the CHM, in case we would have a chance to do so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's pretty amazing that the display had 1024x1024 and up to 4096x4096 resolution on 5 inch screens in the 60s.

They say the 4096x4096 was for photographic recordings, I wonder if there is any data saved that was displayed at this resolution from the 60s, it seems like each photo would have been huge compared to the size of storage available back then.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's really hard to say, but some of the high-res scans of DEC promotional material for the Type 30 CRT (1024 x 1024) at bitsavers.org are showing screenshots with a pretty good quality: [http://bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/pdp1/JPEGs/](http://bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/pdp1/JPEGs/)

On the other hand the 1024 x 1024 of the standard display was rather a technical resolution, the visual resolution would have been – according to DEC – about the half (since the bleeding phosphor of the activated blips on the screen would overlap and merge). A closeup of the Type 30 CRT displaying an early version of Spacewar! can be seen here: [http://www.masswerk.at/spacewar/decus1962/spacewar- decus1962...](http://www.masswerk.at/spacewar/decus1962/spacewar- decus1962-figure1-large.jpg)

On the storage capacity: Please mind that these weren't bitmap driven displays, all the images had to be composed and refreshed algorithmically. On the up-side, this meant that even a small program could display effective graphics, like Snowflake (see: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1ioLo2I_5Y](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1ioLo2I_5Y)) which would only use about 190 instructions or memory locations. Also, consider that these were 18-bit words holding op-codes (6-bit) and addresses (12-bit) in the same instruction word. This was quite more densely packed, like say, in a 8-bit microprocessor computer. For example, I would doubt that (the original) Spacewar! could have been ported to a C64, both for speed and storage, left aside the graphics. (But I could be proven wrong here ... :-))

<comment><USER4> The screenshots are here (so you don't have to click all 25 images looking for them):

[http://bitsavers.trailing- edge.com/pdf/dec/pdp1/JPEGs/Type30...](http://bitsavers.trailing- edge.com/pdf/dec/pdp1/JPEGs/Type30CRT_Jun64_3.jpg)

[http://bitsavers.trailing- edge.com/pdf/dec/pdp1/JPEGs/Type30...](http://bitsavers.trailing- edge.com/pdf/dec/pdp1/JPEGs/Type30CRT_Jun64_4.jpg)

<comment><AUTHOR> A display similar to the Type 30 CRT can be seen in action in this video of a Bell-Labs educational film: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwVu2BWLZqA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwVu2BWLZqA) ("The Incredible Machine", 1968).

The video shows later equipment, a PDP-5 and a display that looks like a member of the 330/340-family, but the technology is the same. (Interactive graphics technology like in TX-2 and the PDPs was actually amazing, but apparently got lost over time-sharing ...)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Gigampz, Recycle 12 Volt Server Power Supplies for Bitcoin Mining - <AUTHOR> http://gigampz.com

<comment><AUTHOR> This is my side project, happy to answer any questions people have. Also any feedback people have would be excellent as well.

</comment><comment><USER2> good</comment>


How 37 Banks Became 4 In Just 2 Decades, All In One Astonishing Chart - <AUTHOR> http://www.exposingtruth.com/37-banks-became-4-just-2-decades-one-astonishing-chart/

<comment><USER2> The Sherman Antitrust Act used to be a thing in the US.

What happened?

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't need no chemical blow to pull the ho. All I need is Chemical Bank to pay her off.

Is it real, son? Let me know it's real, son. If it's really real, son, let me know it's real.

</comment><comment><USER4> Now even too 'bigger-to-fail'</comment>


AI Is Making It Extremely Easy for Students to Cheat - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/ai-is-making-it-extremely-easy-for-students-to-cheat?mbid=social_fb <comment><USER2> Duplicate of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14718559](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14718559)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> TL;DR: Wolfram Alpha is very useful and kids are using if for homework. That doesn't matter, says Wolfram: be a computational thinker instead.</comment>


The new Ford, a Silicon Valley software company - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/7/11333288/ford-ceo-mark-fields-interview-electric-self-driving-car-software <comment><USER2> "We want to become a tech company" is the new management fad. Culture change is incredibly hard and requires really great leadership. Capital One wanted to become a software company just like Ford says, the difference, Capital One already had great leaders. Is Ford full of great leaders?

Sure Ford can throw some money at a few labs and occasionally turn something into a product. Spending money on R&D doesn't make you a software company.

I wish them the best.

<comment><USER3> I wonder if its a fad so much as recognizing the threat from 200k+ people reserving a car before they've ever seen it with their own eyeballs. I know if I ran a car company I would be deathly afraid of becoming another nokia in an iPhone world. They are extremely far behind on these fronts.

<comment><USER4> 1\. The Tesla is a status symbol for people.

2\. It's a 1k deposit. I just purchased a car last year, otherwise I probably would have put down 1k on the chance I do decide to buy a Tesla.

<comment><USER5> Point #2 - exactly. If the car was available now - in production - I think a lot more people would of put the 1k down. I myself, my lease runs out March 2017 - I can't not have a car waiting on the Model 3 to come out. I'll have to wait for the next round.

<comment><USER6> You can't extend your lease?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In the same vein of startup-like enclave within a large institutions but in the Boston area, Shell has a startup/incubator space in Cambridge that do innovation on drilling and exploration.

[http://www.shell.com/energy-and-innovation/innovating- togeth...](http://www.shell.com/energy-and-innovation/innovating- together/shell-techworks.html)

Also lots of major hospitals also have "innovation centers" that try to innovate on in-patient and out-patient care and IoT in a clinical setting setting.

[http://www.beckershospitalreview.com/healthcare- information-...](http://www.beckershospitalreview.com/healthcare-information- technology/25-hospitals-with-innovation-centers.html)

Also finally, also very curious if GE's move to Boston will be just for tax breaks or if they are planning to open up an tech incubator of their own in the area:

[http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/blog/techflash/2016/03/ge-...](http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/blog/techflash/2016/03/ge- execs-planning-announcement-about.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> Total spin. No basis in reality.

I know the person who got permission from Ford leadership to open and lead their Silicon Valley lab in 2012. They gave him funding to select a building, and select furniture, but somehow neglected to authorize any meaningful hiring for over a year, except a few interns. He sat in a virtually empty office.

When he finally left this situation behind, Ford didn't hire a new lab head for nearly a year after that.

Press coverage for Ford's new presence in Silicon Valley continued unabated during this entire period. When you read these articles, you should picture very expensive office space in Palo Alto, sitting empty.

</comment><comment><USER9> Some of what the guy says is generic business speak. But then he says this:

 _" We're a brand that's recognized around the world consistently. We don't have different brands in different parts of the world."_

Well, you have Lincoln (and for much of history, Mercury) in the US. They sell your cars under different names, but don't really exist much outside of North America. Then you have Mazda, your activities with which I cannot summarize better than to quote Wikipedia:

 _" The Mazda B-Series and Ford Ranger models sold in North America were developed by Ford, whereas models sold elsewhere under the same badge were engineered by Mazda."_

So no. You aren't a single brand everywhere. It's hard to see how you could claim this with a straight face.

<comment><USER10> The article is certainly generic business speak I think he's probably referring to the practice of using different brands in different countries. In Australia general motors is known as Holden. Ford is Ford.

<comment><USER9> Even if we restrict the discussion to Australia, Ford is not the only Ford. Witness the Mazda BT-50, which is actually a Ford Ranger in disguise. In Southeast Asia, Mazda light trucks are probably the most popular Ford vehicles on the road.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazda_BT-50](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazda_BT-50)

Ford and Mazda vehicles are manufactured in Thailand by a single company:

[https://www.autoalliance.co.th/en/about_product.php](https://www.autoalliance.co.th/en/about_product.php)

<comment><USER11> Mazda selling vehicles produced under a joint venture with Ford is not the same thing as Ford having another brand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As aside, I watched "A faster horse" documentary on Netflix a couple of months ago. It is a documentary on the evolution and the design of the 2015 Ford Mustang. The passion of getting a car from concept through to Job1 is infectious.

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3762974/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3762974/)

</comment><comment><USER13> does anyone else want to talk about the elephant in the room? the eMate 300 sitting next to a HTC Vive VR Headset?

<comment><USER14> If you see one of those these days, it's quite likely attached to someone who thinks pretty carefully about their tools.

If that doesn't make a lot of sense, consider this: it's a general purpose computing device with a suite of acceptable productivity software (and third party ecosystem) that gets over 24 hours of battery life off of 4 AAs. Very useful for head-down writing/thinking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> >Patel: Are you going to want them to design cars? Fields: No

Not sure how they're going to focus on software without integrating that with car design, maybe it's the whole "FordPay" allusion that was made later but this just seems not integrated or solution-driven enough to compete with Telsa, Google, Apple or Uber.

Just seems like Ford wants it's finger in all pies.

</comment><comment><USER16> Honda is doing something somewhat similar: [https://www.hondasvl.com/](https://www.hondasvl.com/)

</comment><comment><USER17> The new Ford: Tesla.

<comment><USER15> 'cept they're not going to design cars.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, I meant Tesla is the new Ford.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's very hard to believe that Ford will be able to compete for talent with the hottest startups in Silicon Valley. Would someone really take a position there over a similar one at Google, Apple or Uber? Or a smaller startup?

<comment><USER19> Absolutely. Working on auto-related stuff would be far more interesting to me than any of those three you mentioned.

<comment><USER20> _Absolutely. Working on auto-related stuff would be far more interesting to me than any of those three you mentioned._

Sure, but the question here is would you rather work on auto-related stuff at Ford or Apple? Admittedly I have no idea what Apple is up to, but I do know from a couple of acquaintances working in the car industry that they've recently interviewed a ton of automotive engineers.

<comment><USER21> > Sure, but the question here is would you rather work on auto-related stuff > at Ford or Apple?

Ford, of course. Where my manager and my manager's manager and so on know about the technical aspects of automobile development, facilities for automobile-specific testing (engine test cells, turbocharger test cells, wind tunnels, anechoic chambers, etc.) are available, experienced technicians can advise me...

<comment><USER20> _Ford, of course._

Given how many engineers I know of whom have left traditional car companies to go work for automotive 'startups' it seems that they have a real problem holding on to talent despite the advantages you mentioned.

<comment><USER21> Well, automotive engineering is a very big field involving lots of disciplines (mechanics, combustion, modelling, NVH, design, aerodynamics, etc.) so I assume it heavily depends on what you like to do :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Sun: "We want to become a software company". It didn't go well

</comment><comment><USER23> I can barely contain my excitement. MyFord Touch is a masterpiece.

</comment><comment><USER24> If they really wanted to affect change within the company, they'd make bolder decisions with upper management to change the core of the company from within and up top.

</comment><comment><USER25> So, perhaps a silly question...but if Ford is going to be competing for the best talent Silicon Valley has to offer, will they establish a stronger presence in the region?

I am not trying to knock Detroit or Dearborn, but it seems like they would need to do this. Maybe I missed it in the article. I think it would be kind of hard (even given the cost of living) to get top talent to migrate from, say Cupertino, to Dearborn en masse.

<comment><USER26> They have a presence in Palo Alto, and it's expanding.

<comment><USER25> Really? I did not even realize this, and I spend time in the region. Do you know how much expansion they are planning on?

edit: aside from the Innovation Center/Lab.</comment></comment></comment>


Prospects for a Green Mathematics - <AUTHOR> http://mpe2013.org/2013/02/12/prospects-for-a-green-mathematics/

<comment><USER2> I find the expression "green mathematics" more than a bit misleading. Mathematics that's designed to support a particular political outlook can be swiftly contradicted by similar mathematics meant to demonstrate the opposite conclusion. The reason? Mathematics doesn't have a political or ethical dimension or coloring -- it's the most value-neutral discipline imaginable.

The above isn't true about scientific evidence, which often unambiguously supports a particular outlook. But mathematics isn't tendentious in the way that scientific evidence sometimes is. Mathematics is a pure activity -- it doesn't care how we use it:

<http://xkcd.com/435/></comment>


The State of Cheating in Android Benchmarks - <AUTHOR> http://www.anandtech.com/show/7384/state-of-cheating-in-android-benchmarks

<comment><USER2> Some have made the objection that phone benchmarks should test the CPU and removing the underclocking is entirely appropriate.

Isn't this somewhat intellectually dishonest though? A phone is a system, and how fast the CPU can run given the constraints of the system is a testament to the manufacturer's hardware and software engineering abilities: the software's power management, the hardware and ID's thermals. OEMs shouldn't give themselves a free pass on this. We know how fast a snapdragon can go. Now let's see how fast you can make it go _in your handset_.

</comment><comment><USER3> Note that its not just about coming out on top of benchs.

its also making you believe you gotta change phone because the new ones are _so_ much faster.

I wouldn't be surprised if next time we see 20% improvement "due to cheating" instead of "just 10%".

<comment><USER4> Or just switch what tests you're using. You could keep alternating between 2 tests and have 20% performance improvements year over year on the exact same hardware.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is rather important from a moral standpoint! I'm surprised no one is talking about this!

</comment><comment><USER6> Android is a failure. I know this comment might be offending for someone.</comment>


Bill Gates' Nuclear Reactor Hits a Roadblock - <AUTHOR> https://www.engineering.com/DesignerEdge/DesignerEdgeArticles/ArticleID/19610/Bill-Gates-Nuclear-Reactor-Hits-a-Roadblock.aspx <comment><USER2> > One major problem with a TWR power plant is the price. It will cost about $3 > billion to build a demonstration reactor. Even Bill Gates isn't rich enough > to fund it himself.

Why not? Isn't his net worth something like $90 billion!</comment>


Ask HN: Is there anything I can do to get severance? Please help - <AUTHOR> I'm a temp employee for Cisco.
My verbally abusive and ageist manager does not like me at all, because she's a control freak and wants a yes-woman. I'm not a yes-woman. I care too much about the work I do.
Now, my firm has let me know she's letting me go at the end of the week, with only two weeks pay (no severance), during the worst time of year to find another job.
I don't have a savings.
It kills me how little Cisco cares about its "blue badges," yet boasts about being the best place to work.
I hate corporate BS.
Is there anything I can do to get severance? <comment><USER2> In short, no.

Severance is built in to contractual employment agreements up front. Being a temp employee limits your options.

You have a great opportunity if you choose to see it that way. Experience at Cisco ( no matter your quality of experience at Cisco ) will likely have changed your prospects. You might be surprised to find hiring managers and recruiters who would say that this is a hard time of year to find people to hire.

So, What type of work are you looking for?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your response!

I'm looking for marketing positions, preferably at a startup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Do file for Unemployment Insurance. It might not apply to your role or circumstances, but it's worth exploring if you don't have savings. (NB: Some employers reject legitimate unemployment claims as a matter of course. It often may be successfully appealed even without a lawyer, but the appeals process can take months.)</comment>