Peter Thiel's CS183: Startup - Class 9 Notes Essay - <AUTHOR> http://blakemasters.tumblr.com/post/22405055017/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-9-notes-essay <comment><USER2> Perhaps the best class yet. Fantastic. But one comment:

> Google was the first company that enabled people to figure out whether > advertising actually worked.

Not quite. You know those late night TV commercials for ginsu knives? They've always used a different phone number on each channel so that they know which ad worked. Billboards for lawyers? Same deal.

Google didn't invent performance marketing.

<comment><USER3> > Google didn't invent performance marketing.

They brought it to the masses

<comment><USER4> ... because the masses don't watch TV? Which masses are you talking about?

<comment><USER5> The masses of millions of small businesses selling goods/services not appropriate for late-night infomercials or who didn't even have the funds to produce/air infomercials.

<comment><USER6> I agree. Google provided a medium through which people with limited funds could market. Nothing like it before.

Still, there is a lot of space in this area. The web is currently focused on selling to first time buyers. Very little about follow up sales. My first product focuses on that. Launch soon, but will talk about it in a few days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is an extraordinary overview for any entrepreneur thinking about how to put together a business plan that will appeal to us at AH -- fantastic!

<comment><USER8> Marc Andreessen from AH is on HN. #awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've read every one of these so far. They've all been great!

Blake, if you're on HN, just wanted to say thanks!

(If these were converted into an ebook or paperback, I'd _eagerly_ buy it.)

<comment><USER10> My pleasure! We're figuring out what to do in terms of wrapping them up in an ebook.

<comment><USER11> Totally agree - this material is better than 95% of business books I've read and I think could be a best seller (certainly in terms of quality, not sure about marketing/promoting it). Maybe you could co-author it with Peter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My biggest takeaway from the essay:

> So it's worth thinking really hard about finding the single best > distribution channel.

When thinking about the distribution, I always think about all the possible things we can do and try to do at least 3-4 top ones. The mistake is not to quickly zero down on the one with highest RoI and put all the energies on that one.

</comment><comment><USER13> Interesting piece.. Calculating LTV and user acquisition costs reminds of the Harvard Business Case Study that examines how Virgin Mobile was able to compete in the US with existing mobile companies by reducing their customer acquisition costs. Here's the case study, feel free to apply info from this post towards coming up with the numbers and solution.

[http://www.docstoc.com/docs/24724434/Virgin-mobile-USA--- pri...](http://www.docstoc.com/docs/24724434/Virgin-mobile-USA---pricing-for- the-first-time)

</comment><comment><USER14> How do Peter Thiel knows about this stuff and how do I know if it's true?

<comment><USER15> How do you know anything is true? What would satisfy you in regards to Thiel's presentation? That he was a top student at Stanford? That he founded PayPal? That he was the first outside investor in Facebook? That he invested in distribution monsters like Yammer, Stripe and Zynga? That he's a chess master? That respectable people think he's smart? What would satisfy you?

<comment><USER16> Respectable smart people differ on lots of things - or do all top students at Stanford agree with Thiel? Do all chess masters agree with him? All investors? (And investment is such a random thing anyway...)

<comment><USER15> I'm just throwing stuff out there to try to understand how the poster tries to evaluate the truth of a presenter/presentation.

<comment><USER17> He is just selling _himself_ , conning the audience – even having fun while at it, self ironically quoting Douglas Adams. There is no truth to it – this is what the whole essay is about. It is BS and BD – there is no BS like HBS, as they say.

Go down the rabbit hole: <http://archive.org/details/the.century.of.the.self>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is a good article for "big picture" thinking about how to grow a company. Lots of people get hung up on their specialty, and overly aggrandize their importance, instead of seeing the larger concepts. This is an article that helps bridge those conceptual gaps.

</comment><comment><USER19> In the context of viral marketing, does anyone know how they came up with this formula?

Custs(t) = Custs(0) * (K ^ (t/ct +1) - 1) / (K-1)

where Custs(t) -> Number of customers at time t, K -> viral coefficient, and ct -> cycle time

EDIT : Okay I get it.

Basically the number of cycles that have occured at time t equals (t/ct+1)

</comment><comment><USER20> Somewhat minor point, but I take issue with the CLV calculations. Using average retention rates can significantly undervalue your customers [1].

[1] [http://blog.custora.com/2011/08/why-average-retention- rates-...](http://blog.custora.com/2011/08/why-average-retention-rates-can- lead-to-50-error-in-clv/)

</comment><comment><USER21> So, how did Intuit manage to sell their product? What is their distribution strategy?

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm curious what the course has been like. To someone in it, do you do assignments or anything?</comment>


Jim Mellon and high-profile partners roll the dice on an anti-aging upstart - <AUTHOR> https://endpts.com/british-billionaire-jim-mellon-and-high-profile-partners-roll-the-dice-on-an-anti-aging-upstart/ <comment><USER2> An interesting area investment wise. Really don't know what to make of it as I do see a great deal of risk in these companies personally, that somehow others are happy with.

No real products, no real roadmap. Jim has also made some very bad pharma calls in the past and had some very clueless people running his pharma companies. That said he looks to have done some real research.

> The primary game plan at Juvenescence, explains Bailey, is to come up with > various operations engaged in developing new anti-aging drugs

> Juvenescence Bio will be charged with building the pipeline, says Bailey, in > part with the molecules that will be identified through the AI venture.

To me that's a warning sign. I like the ambition. This is Elon Musk level stuff. But he isn't crazy enough to deal in unproven potential outcomes. He knew rockets can go to space, he knew electric cars can drive, he knew batteries can store energy/money. He knew what he could sell when he solved the issues

Here i'm not sure they know what they will have in the end and that would scare me off.

<comment><USER3> this is the difference between basic and applied research - Musk is doing great work in the applied research space. taking proven models and bringing them to market, bringing down costs, etc.

anti-aging research is still in the basic phase - it might be decades before techniques can be applied with any sort of scale. in that sense you really do need huge institutions (or in this case, billionaires) to fund it all. retail investors like you (assuming) and I really can't get involved at the scale or timelines these sorts of ventures require.

<comment><USER2> Indeed. Very pleased of course someone is willing to take risks.

This is how we ended up with railways, undersea telegraph, commercial commodotised flight and so on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is an interesting case where it's hard to separate rationality from human nature. On the one hand, people don't want to lose their investment. On the other hand, people really, really don't want to die. So as billionaires get older, they are going to feel a lot of psychological pressure to believe life- extension startup stories they might not find as credible in another context.

I think one nice way to solve this is to require a small, objective proof of concept for startups claiming to have a rejuvenating technology.

I propose they solve baldness. It will not only demonstrate the technology, but remove the funding problem entirely.

<comment><USER5> > This is an interesting case where it's hard to separate rationality from > human nature.

The Roman Catholic Church has had this thing sewn up for at least a millennium. Giving large amounts of money to the church on your deathbed is a surefire way to open the gates of heaven, or so I'm told.

<comment><USER6> Maybe in the time of the Medicis. The Roman Catholic Church doesn't give much of a fuck whether you give them a dime today. It's not that kind of organization.

<comment><USER5> Haha. That's so funny. You should have been around when my grandmother died. They took her for a pretty penny. Not that I care because I didn't want any money from her anyway but they sure know who their marks are.

In Poland just about every interaction with the church has a price tag attached to it, ditto in Spain. There's a reason the Vatican is lined with gold and it has precious little to do with the Medicis and everything to do with tithe, real estate, compound interest and outright scams.

<comment><USER4> jacquesm is right, the Polish church is a complete racket. A small example—my father wanted to be buried in the family crypt in Warsaw. This meant having to pay off his parish (he was not a churchgoer, but everyone is assigned a parish), and then pay off the parish the cemetery was in to allow the transfer (in addition to all the regular burial fees).

The most popular conservative priest in Poland drives a Maybach.

Priests in Poland will go door to door once or twice a year basically collecting envelopes. Not paying them complicates your life.

<comment><USER6> That is deeply fucked up.

<comment><USER5> Not as bad as in Romania, but there it is the Orthodox church rather than the Roman Catholic one. They're spending 100 million euros fleeced from some of the poorest people in the EU on a new church right now just to it will be the biggest in a country that could _really_ use that money in better ways.

[https://www.romania-insider.com/romania-peoples-salvation- ca...](https://www.romania-insider.com/romania-peoples-salvation-cathedral/)

Not bad, money straight from the Romanian government to the Church to build more churches.

[http://www.ibtimes.com/why-poverty-stricken-romania- building...](http://www.ibtimes.com/why-poverty-stricken-romania-building-so- many-churches-1375913)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If Juvenescence puts serious effort into senolytics, then this will be useful. The more the merrier in that field to join Unity Biotechnology, Oisin Biotechnologies, SIWA Therapeutics, etc.

Everything else outside the SENS portfolio that can be accomplished via drug discovery to alter the operation of metabolism, focusing on known targets such as mTOR, is most likely a pointless waste of time and energy. It has been a pointless waste of time and energy for the past two decades, and I don't see that changing any time soon. The approach of trying to mimic calorie restriction or upregulate autophagy or mess with growth hormone/insulin metabolism or mimic exercise has very definite upper bounds on effectiveness.

The longevity dividend promise of "spend billions to add a couple of years of life expectancy by 2040" is underwhelming, and anyone out there talking about drug discovery to alter metabolism to slow aging is in that camp.

If billions are to be spent, then use them to follow the SENS approach of damage repair, not tinkering the system to slightly slow down the pace of damage accumulation. Only damage repair, such as via senolytics to clear senescent cell accumulation, can in principle produce rejuvenation of the old and greatly extended healthy life spans, more than just a few years.

It is not a coincidence that senescent cell clearance has in a few short years, just as soon as people started to try it in earnest, proven itself far more effective and reliable and useful than the past 20 years of people trying to mimic calorie restriction or boost autophagy.

<comment><USER8> I think most of this money would be better spent focused on reducing the cost of life extension research, like essential tooling, not spelunking through combinatorial search space for drugs. Granted, this is more of an engineering approach, so I could see why biologists might prefer tinkering with oxidation pathways. If a synthetic genome costs $40 million then how are you going to try out 1,000 low-aging variants of the genome without spending an impossibly large amount of money? The cost centers need to be ruthlessly attacked-- sequencing, synthesis, combinatorial array testing, scale-up of arbitrary biomolecule production, debugging methodologies (optogenetics has been a tremendous success), etc.

<comment><USER9> $40 million times 1000, is forty billion dollars. This is less than half the networth of Bill Gates.

If a single-mans fortune could potentially fund the entire thing, then for sure a coalition of wealth could easily fund it if there was even a mild guarantee for success.

<comment><USER8> Well, low-aging phenotypes (and genotypes) have already been discovered in the population. Doesn't make you invincible, of course. How mild of a guarantee are you looking for, again?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's great how trying to live forever went from being considered impossible to something that Google and many billionaires are investing a lot of money into. I think Aubrey de Grey had a lot to do with this by making the SENS approach which has helped properly characterize the types of cellular damage attributable to aging.

<comment><USER4> There is nothing new about rich people pouring massive resources into promises of immortality.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin_Shi_Huang#Elixir_of_life](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin_Shi_Huang#Elixir_of_life)

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

<comment><USER10> Don't forget Gilgamesh, possibly the oldest work of fiction in existence, has a living forever theme.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've had my immortality rings from Alex Chiu for years now. They should just talk to him.

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

<comment><USER12> :) I forgot about that. Yeah, he needs some serious backing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> tl;dr

British billionaire Jim Mellon wants to launch a company named Juvenescence with plans to make a big splash in anti-aging research.

</comment><comment><USER14> Tier 1 entrepreneur gives the masses what they want. Tier 2 gives the masses what they should want, and makes them want it. Tier 3 saves their lives so they have time to learn to want better things. Med tech is best tech. It also relies on much of the fun tech.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm worried about my brain more than the other parts of my body. I can do something to stay relatively health but my brain will shrink into a raisin no matter what I do.

</comment><comment><USER16> Nothing new here. The rich always fund the search for the fountain of youth, and yet they always die.

Thank goodness.

</comment><comment><USER17> I would spend half a billion and for myself first and foremost, why would I save money for, to be the richest guy in the graveyard.

</comment><comment><USER18> Death will become optional at some point. But it will be only for the rich. Death was always this great equalizer. With that not being the case there will be a revolt on the size and proportion humanity would not have seen. how do we deal with that?

<comment><USER19> Technology is going to force us to deal with some age old questions. There is a line I remember from Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" that goes something like "There is neither art nor skill at arms which will protect one man from one hundred of his fellows." In context, it's referring to the fact that even Roman emperors could be murdered by a relatively small coalition of men. No matter how rich and powerful a person is, a few people working together and willing to sacrifice can kill that rich and powerful person.

Technology seems to imperil this age old truth. What about an immortal billionaire with drones, AI, and a robot army?

The coming elite will have power that no human individual, or even organization, has ever had. We should figure out how to deal with that - but I don't really expect the common folk will. Instead, we may just have to hope that our future billionaire deities are benevolent.

<comment><USER9> Could the rich raise armies and hold off the rest of the world? Yes... but only if the rest of the world has no technology or monies of its own, and additionally none of the 'rich' are in opposition that that single renegades plan.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Anti-aging is for future. For now

ban smokes/alcohol tax fat/sugar

for those causing accidents, make them pay the hospital bills and eliminate unemployment. Law cannot stop injustice, which reduces quality of life, but can make people feel that someone is by their side, which increases quality of life.

<comment><USER21> > ban smokes/alcohol

That didn't even work with a Constitutional amendment. If culture doesn't change, you'll have to live with it - there's no legal remedy.

> tax fat/sugar

Risky, given the track record of nutrition science, but better than outright bans. Why don't we start by not subsidizing sugar.</comment></comment>


John McCarthy - Wikiquote - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_McCarthy <comment><USER2> _Cynicism is a cheap substitute for sophistication. You don't actually have to learn anything._

So true these days. For proof, take a look at the comments on any mainstream social news site. Cynicism up the wazoo, but not much actual intelligence. _sigh_.

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems odd that so few are about programming. Presumably we can fix that...

</comment><comment><USER4> can someone explain this one to me... i just don't get it.

"A true intellectual is a man who, after reading a book and being convinced by its arguments, will shoot someone or, more likely, order someone shot"

<comment><USER5> My interpretation: a perfectly logical argument may convince you to take actions that harm yourself or others, if all you value is intellect (robot builders, please take note).

"Between the mind that plans and the hands that build there must be a Mediator, and this must be the heart."

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> These are brilliant! "It's possible to program a computer in English. It's also possible to make an airplane controlled by reins and spurs."

</comment><comment><USER7> Those quotes remind me of Eric Hoffer. I mostly agree with the worldview expressed.

</comment><comment><USER8> I like most of these. I don't get this one:

Compassion is contempt with a human face.

<comment><USER9> I think it means that a compassionate person assumes the people he's compassionate towards are incapable of bettering themselves, and thus contemptible.

I'm not sure whether I agree or not, but my first guess is that it's sometimes true and sometimes not. Deep, huh?

<comment><USER5> I think your interpretation is spot-on, but I disagree with the quote.

I suspect the author is defining compassion more like "pity" than "patience and understanding" (sympathy, by definition).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> i like this one:

"Everyone needs computer programming. It will be the way we speak to the servants."

</comment><comment><USER11> McCarthy is clearly a legend and a genius in the domain of computer science. Unfortunately he also has the political imagination of a developmentally disabled love child of G. W. Bush and Ayn Rand. For additional political commentary by JMC, see: <http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/commentary.html>

<comment><USER12> Hold on, you're simply name-calling without supplying any beef. Can't you make a point instead of sending us off to (you assume) have a good laugh at JMC's political naivity?

<comment><USER11> You are very right. And I read pg's essay on how to disagree too. While I (for this audience I will assume-- obviously) agree with jmc's objections to intelligent design on that page, pretty much all of his politically-geared statements would back up my name-calling above.

He supported Bush in 2004 and reasons read like a list of right-wing talk radio talking points. I will not take up space by refuting each one of these points here because they have been dealt with elsewhere, but for starters, why the concern about Iraq's human rights violations in contrast to the many other violators that are allies of the U.S.?

(It is obvious that to refute each of his opinions would introduce a lot of off-topic discussion into this space, so I'll keep this mostly in the abstract, leaving it to you to digest jmc's views further.) To list a few other absurd ideas:

he speaks about "alarmism about the environment", and elsewhere allies himself with deniers of global warming (while avoiding making any direct arguments against it, so he's pulling a type 0 on the pg scale with some of his comments as well).

he uses the term "Moslem fascists" which as far as I know has no direct meaning other than to link yourself with the intellectually sloppy hack writers working to market neoconservatism (and related wars).

There are others, but I'm just making a general observation here, not writing a book. You'll form your own own opinions anyway...

</comment></comment></comment>


Roll Your Own UNIX Clone - <AUTHOR> http://www.jamesmolloy.co.uk/tutorial_html/index.html <comment><USER2> Do it! By all means, really, seriously. You'll learn more about coding complex systems than any other project you've ever done.

It's absolutely doable.

If you want to make your life easier go for a micro kernel with message passing. That will partition the tasks to the point where a single determined person can go all the way from MBR to prompt.

Runner up in the experience category: make a game from scratch that has multiple threads of execution, but use a single threaded process. That's almost the same experience but completely in userland, which should make your debugging life a lot easier.

But if you want to learn all there is to know about memory management, interrupts and interfacing with hardware as well as process scheduling build a kernel.

Older dr. Dobbs issues contain tons of useful information.

Here is some food for thought: <http://ww.com/task.cc.html> and <http://ww.com/task.h.html>

Other sources of inspiration: the early minix kernels and the early work on what is now known as FreeBSD by Bill and Lynne Jolitz (also described in dr Dobbs iirc)

<comment><USER3> _If you want to make your life easier go for a micro kernel with message passing. That will partition the tasks to the point where a single determined person can go all the way from MBR to prompt._

I don't know if I'd say that... For one, unless you are actually going to build vdevs and stuff any kernel you build is going to be a microkernel. In my experience, however, I would not say that message passing makes your life that much easier. In addition, it's probably a good idea to write an ELF compatible OS if you want a prompt. Writing a shell isn't that hard, but I wouldn't want to replicate the basic userland tools if I can just statically compile a busybox library. You should also plan to implement some sort of ramdisk if you want a useable environment (or virtual devs with drivers, but that would probably be harder). Actually, I'd recommend just building off QEMU, since that'll give you rudimentary device framework and keep you from having to debug on physical hardware (like I do).

<comment><USER2> Message passing will make the kernel _dead_ simple, after that it is all userland. This makes it much much harder for one device driver you're writing to crash another (or the kernel) by data corruption. A simple post mortem crash inspection will tell you what went wrong. Instead of doing the same on a whole kernel you'll just have that one little process that goes under, and the rest of the machine is still working.

I don't think I could have ever gotten my little OS to the self hosting stage without that.

It still took more time than I care to remember though :)

A virtual machine is a great tool as well, especially if it gives you access to the cpu contents of the running VM.

That will save you days if not weeks trying to find out why your switch from 'real' to 'protected' mode during the boot didn't work...

<comment><USER3> Yes, that's why I recommended QEMU (which is a fast system emulator). A simple postmortem crash inspection will tell you what went wrong anyway. Simply write a normal micro handler to dump the registers at the end. Since you have the RIP, just objdump your binary and read the assembly from where it took the #GP or #PF. If you blew the stack away, you should automatically know from RSP, etc, etc.

Kitten[1] is the LWK which I work with, although my focus is on the Palacios VMM. It's quite a simple OS that is by no means out of a good programmer's reach.

[1] <https://software.sandia.gov/trac/kitten>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'll just leave these here...

<http://www.intel.com/products/processor/manuals/index.htm>

[disclaimer: I'm an OS/kernel dev]

<comment><USER4> I gotta ask...if I go do this sort of thing on my own, I might produce something that won't segfault or oops()...if I were to walk into a job interview for an os/kernel dev job (the kind that rand say I did write a crappy primitive kernel would that look good or bad?

I've been working for almost 3 years now and this is an area that I would like to move into.

<comment><USER3> I'm not in industry but in academia so I'm hesitant to say anything concerning commercial development. I can't ever see it being a negative thing, but the difference between a toy kernel like he is proposing and a real system is larger than many people think. For example, knowing how to use the GDT and the LDT is definitely required, but knowledge of SMP design and general hardware architecture (think chip design, memory hierarchy, etc) are equally important. If you were looking for a career in systems design, definitely read the Intel Manuals cover to cover -- then go look at the Linux/BSD kernel to see where _things were explained so poorly that they may as well be wrong._ I would also highly encourage you to take part in a systems open source project (since I work on virtual machines, I would of course suggest Xen or QEMU).

If you like, a _much_ simpler version of the Linux kernel, Kitten OS[1], is used to run at Sandia and in sequence with the Palacios academic virtual machine[2], which is what I'm working on. It may be worth looking at, although I still highly recommend that you look into actual production code.

[1] <https://software.sandia.gov/trac/kitten>

[2] <http://v3vee.org/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd think that Tanenbaum's book _Operating Systems: Design and Implementation_ (OSDI) and the included MINIX3 source would be high on the list of reading for any kernel-curious developers.

<comment><USER3> Good, but a little outdated. For general systems overview, as well as introduction to UNIX architecture, I'd actually recommend my textbook, which is the CMU intro systems book, Computer Systems: A Programmer's Perspective[1]. For OS theory, our OS/advanced OS textbooks are fine, but for actual implementation my coworkers recommended The Design of the UNIX Operating System[2], Linux System Programming[3], and Understanding the Linux Kernel[4].

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Systems-Programmers-Randal- Br...](http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Systems-Programmers-Randal- Bryant/dp/013034074X)

[2] [http://www.amazon.com/Design-Operating-System-Prentice- Softw...](http://www.amazon.com/Design-Operating-System-Prentice- Software/dp/0132017997)

[3] <http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596009588/>

[4] <http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596005658/>

<comment><USER5> Outdated? I thought the Linux Kernel was outdated in comparison. The Minix kernel was rewritten from scratch in 2006 for version 3.

<comment><USER3> OSDI (2nd) was written in 1997, perhaps you were thinking of this? [http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Operating-Systems-3rd- GOAL/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Operating-Systems-3rd- GOAL/dp/0136006639/ref=pd_sim_b_1)

Minix 3 is a whole different ball game though. It's an interesting kernel with some interesting ideas, but I still recommend Linux as it's both more popular and reflects the majority of UNIX design decisions today. Even the OSs with praise for microkernel design tend to incorporate a number of monolithic features.

EDIT: Sorry! I had no idea there was a Third Edition of OSDI out [http://www.pearsonhighered.com/educator/academic/product/0,,...](http://www.pearsonhighered.com/educator/academic/product/0,,0131429388,00%2ben- USS_01DBC.html). However, I should mention that I meant those Linux books to be read in conjunction with the kernel code -- the book is still valid today despite the additions to the kernel in the past couple years.

<comment><USER5> The 3rd edition of OSDI is definitely worth reading. The MINIX3 kernel is only 4000 lines of code; very clean, and easy to wrap your head around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Writing a kernel is fun... I started writing one a few weeks ago. It's not a real one, just something to play with. But it's very interesting, probably because I'd never worked at such a low level before.

Great resource: <http://www.osdev.org/>

<comment><USER7> OSDev and OSDever ( <http://osdever.net/> ) are both great resources in general, but I can't help but mention #osdev on Freenode. Incredibly useful resource if you're in need of assistance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Please don't! Build something _original_. It really is possible!

Once you've built a UNIX clone, you have polluted your mind as an OS designer. I did so (as a standard college homework assignment) and it took me years to shake the crud out of my head.

As for the tutorial, it is very well written, but x86-32-centric and therefore worthless. There are nontrivial differences between x86-32 and x86-64 from the standpoint of an OS author who wants to make full use of the latter's capabilities.

<comment><USER7> Building an 'original' OS when you don't know how to build an OS is like asking a kindergartener to design a car.

As for the x86/x64 differences, they're by no means insurmountable once you have the concepts down, which is exactly what this tutorial provides.

<comment><USER8> What makes you assume that blindly copying Unix is necessarily the easiest way to learn OS building?

<comment><USER7> It very well could not be, but what's important here isn't what's built, but how it's built. The concepts are important, not the end result. Compared to the vast majority of intro to OS tutorials out there, this is great.

As I said, you can't expect someone to create something _original_ unless they understand the mistakes of the past. I started off implementing toy kernels with no structure, moved on to Unix-like kernels, and eventually ended up in a realm entirely different. Just because someone starts out copying Unix doesn't mean they're going to be blind to other competing designs or completely unique ones.

Expecting someone to build something new without any basis is just foolish.

<comment><USER8> > Expecting someone to build something new without any basis is just foolish

Base it on your mental model of how your CPU's internals ought to be used, as inferred from the latter's manuals - like 1980s microcomputer users did.

Creativity _exists_.

<comment><USER7> I want to become a musician. If I listen to existing music, my creativity will be limited by what I've learned. Does that mean that listening to music is a bad thing if you want to become a musician?

<comment><USER8> Music is a poor example: a field with unusually rigid cultural norms, where true originality is punished far more often than it is rewarded. So, taming one's creativity by exposure to current norms is exactly how you become a successful (permissibly mildly creative) musician.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Thats great and all, but hes forgetting two very important aspects of a real OS: drivers and software.

Ok, hes not building a real OS, but rather a toy OS (presumably for the learning experience), so these things are not so much of an issue. Its actually a good article, IMHO, and I wish it had been available a few years back when I tinkered with writing my own toy kernel. The "Roll your own unix clone" title given here is pretty misleading though.

<comment><USER10> I wouldn't say it was misleading - the front page of the article clearly states that a _kernel_ is being developed. Drivers and software belong in the rest of the operating system. Given the availability of GNU software, a UNIX userspace is fairly easy given a smallish set of system calls.

Yes, I'm the article's author. Yes, I'm biased.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Whenever I think about doing something like this, I always get stuck up on x86 ASM. There don't seem to be many books on ASM out there, and the ones I could find in the bookstores were all written around MASM which, of course, does not work on Mac OS X.

Any ideas?

<comment><USER2> Here's a trick to help get you started:

Write a relatively simple C program that does something useful that you understand thoroughly, then generate intermediate assembly code from your C compiler, with optimization turned off.

That way you get a problem that you already know how to solve in a .s listing that you can inspect and modify to your hearts content.

Then try to optimize it, make it run quicker by rearranging stuff.

You'll learn lots that way and the barrier to entry is low.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://www.ipdatacorp.com/mmurtl.html>

This is a neat book. I read the first six chapters a while ago and it seemed interesting.</comment>


Facebook vs. the rest of the world - <AUTHOR> http://www.flickr.com/photos/57029495@N05/5261467662/ <comment><USER2> Duplicate:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2011060>

No comments (yet)</comment>


China drops U.S. credit rating - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2011/BUSINESS/08/02/china.us.rating/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

<comment><USER2> _People are used to credit ratings issued by the 'big three,' but the financial crisis has clearly proved them wrong," Guan said. "They can no longer shoulder the responsibility of rating the world."_

 _"That's the role we are striving to play," he added._

There goes Guan Jianzhong of Dagong Global Credit Rating Co., shouldering the responsibility of rating the world.

???

<comment><USER3> That is indeed a ridiculous quote.

Before you re-iterated it here I had interpreted it as "the big three can no longer rate the world on their own" and "DGCR will add a fresh 4th voice to the rating industry".

I'm wondering if anything has been misquoted because the literal interpretation doesn't make sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The title of the HN post is clearly wrong and inflammatory. China hasn't done anything -- a Chinese company has changed their rating. Likely done as a publicity stunt to differentiate themselves from the big three and gain business. It's good marketing; I won't comment on if it accurate as I don't know.</comment>


Show HN: DrumUp – News tracking and social sharing app - <AUTHOR> http://drumup.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys, would be great to get your feedback</comment>


Ask PG: Does Y Combinator blacklist applicants? - <AUTHOR>

Does Ycombinator black list certain applicants who they won't consider in the future for whatever reason? <comment><USER2> We all know people we wouldn't want to fund, but there is not currently any software for it.

<comment><USER3> Do these people know that you wouldn't fund them anyway?</comment></comment>


My postmortem after hunting for a data science job - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/951117788835278848 <comment><USER2> Key to making data science work in corporate is Management vision and literacy in this area. Most F500 type companies have massive gap and blindness about this point. They think an " accenture" or "Deloitte" can be hired to provide the services which is pathetic. DS and data driven decision making is a culture, mindset, a way of work.

The mammals will overtake these dinos soon</comment>


IT giants 'ripping off Whitehall', say MPs - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-14314935 Government departments have been ripped off by a "cartel" of big IT firms, a damning report by a committee of MPs has found. <comment><USER2> "In its report, the public administration committee recommends that departments across Whitehall use more small and medium-sized IT suppliers to increase competition and bring down prices."

This is exactly what already happens, not that I think MPs know about it. I've personally worked on and even in some cases BUILT government websites, yet you won't find my name or my employer's (at the time) name on their books. They contract stuff out to the same companies again and again, ostensibly because they trust them / rely on them / any number of obviously not true reasons, and I don't think they realise that when they pay a big company £300,000 to make a website, they just turn around and sell it on to a small company who does it for £40,000.

I won't name websites or companies for obvious reasons, but those are quite close to actual numbers.

<comment><USER3> The big company probably eats the risk of the small company stuffing up, or the government changing requirements halfway through the project.

They also do all the unexciting tender work, certifications, negotiations, rainmaking, etc.

If a government employee asked a savvy web dev to scope out and implement a solution, it would be cheap. But they can't work that way. The project has to be specified upfront, in advance, because otherwise the government might get cheated by an unscrupulous developer. They would rather be _sure_ they are getting cheated, that way there's no way they can be accused of favoritism.

<comment><USER4> > _But they can't work that way. The project has to be specified upfront, in > advance, because otherwise the government might get cheated by an > unscrupulous developer_

I don't understand what you're saying here. Are you saying the risk of losing a few £10k is worth paying a few £100k over the odds to avoid?

Surely the gov should be using their own web devs and having a consistent CMS used across all gov online estates. Yes there will be db integrations and things but a single shop of web dev working for the gov would surely save money.

They could get 3 whole websites and employ a 4th body to choose the best and still do it cheaper than hiring the big firm in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I know of instances where personal data is "password protected" in an Excel file, saved to a memory stick and then _couriered_ to the destination.

The lack of technical knowledge prevents people from seeing it as problem.

</comment><comment><USER3> Government contracts - fixed price, big upfront design, and ever-shifting acceptance standards (which the contractor will not have any input into). A contractor has to charge 3-10X the price, just for the brain damaged way decisions are made.

<comment><USER6> Having done a bit of work for a state agency here, I have to say the "fixed price" aspect is the most frustrating. Having to estimate the needs/demands of a system 1-2 years ago, and budget for it _today_ , then earmark all that money ahead of time... argh. It's a recipe for wasteful spending. Compared to "just in time" philosophies of only paying for what you need when you need it, current procurement and budgeting strategies almost _demand_ wastefulness be an integral part of the process.

Combine this with a culture of "if you don't spend as much this year as you did last year, you won't get all of the money you request" and we're in a never-ending cycle of bad decisions.

<comment><USER7> The U.S. uses pay-as-you-incur-costs type billing for some large projects, exactly for that reason (hard to estimate up front, would have to overprice it due to the risk), but I'm not sure it reduces waste overall. It provides a different kind of incentive, since now companies like Lockheed have a monetary incentive to drag projects on for years, overstaff them, etc. At least with fixed-price billing they have an incentive to finish the project, since they aren't going to get more money by dragging it out longer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I honestly don't know who is worse, the companies who manage to fleece the taxpayer this way or the idiots in the upper levels of the civil service who don't really care because "it's just taxpayers money".

<comment><USER2> Or the people that deliberately organised purchasing things in a convoluted manner that channels taxpayer's money to a few preferred companies, in a manner that while increasing our actual debt, puts it on different books, so we don't look quite as in debt as we are.

<comment><USER9> In the UK, that would be PFI or PPP (Private Finance Initiative and Public- Private Partnership)? These are indeed a dog's dinner... for which we can blame only the people some of us elected.

<comment><USER10> Here in Australia the latest version is to form a corporation wholly owned by the government, to take on massive debts through that corporation, but then a) refuse to release details of what it's up to, citing "commercial-in- confidence" and b) leaving it off the government's balance sheet, even though _everyone_ knows who the debt really belongs to.

The first example I saw was in the Northern Territory in 2000 when the Power and Water Authority was "corporatised". Something similar is happening with NBN Co, which while representing The Greatest Infrastructure Investment Evar, will also apparently Cost Nothing, Honest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Windfall tax on Accenture, EDS, IBM Global Services and all the rest. Claw back the _tens_ of billions of British taxpayer's money they've squirreled away. Go after their shareholders too.

<comment><USER8> How's this for a completely crazy idea - sack a few civil servents who have been responsible for creating and managing such spectacularly awful contracts?

I know that traditionally amateurism and incompetence haven't been seen as a barrier to a splendid career in the civil service, but maybe that should change?

<comment><USER11> That too! Accountability for decisions is anathema to the unions however. They will need to be broken first.

<comment><USER8> Maybe the FDA (AKA First Division Association) should be outlawed then? Or perhaps broken in the same way as the NUM....

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FDA_%28trade_union%29></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Miami's tech start-up scene is heating up - <AUTHOR> http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/talkingtech/2013/11/17/tech-scene-thriving-in-miami/3499005/

<comment><USER2> You can say the same things for Orlando and Tallahassee. :-)</comment>


The H-1B Fraud Rate: Over 20%, Says USCIS - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/the-h-1b-fraud-rate-over-20-says-uscis-2009-2

<comment><USER2> " 1. H-1Bs can only be hired for jobs where 'no qualified American can be found' and

" 2. H-1Bs must be paid market rates so as not to depress tech salaries.

"Critics argue neither provision ever gets enforced, and in practice H-1Bs compete directly against American citizens at cut-rate prices, making life miserable for IT workers."

As an immigration lawyer (not actively practicing immigration law at the moment) this sounds very plausible. The law of most immigration categories has never been very vigorously enforced. Before, during, and after when I was actively engaged in immigration law practice I saw some very dubious cases win visas because no one really challenged the visa application. If I remember correctly, at least a few of the terrorists who crashed airline planes into buildings on September 11th, 2001 didn't have valid visa status to be in the United States on the day they made those attacks.

</comment><comment><USER3> The linked Seattle Times article, while still brief, has more specifics.</comment>


Kevin Smith Film Builds Buzz with Medical Marijuana Tie-In - <AUTHOR> http://variety.com/2014/film/news/kevin-smith-film-builds-buzz-with-medical-marijuana-tie-in-1201299132/

<comment><USER2> Nothing like a good tie-in to sell your product. Might just be genius. There's a growth hack right there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for helping with the sweet bee syrup!</comment></comment>


Something to Write Holmes About - <AUTHOR> http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/something-write-holmes-about <comment><USER2> A rather good perspective on how the stories came to be.

I recently came across The Autobiography of Sherlock Holmes, by Don Libey, which was also pleasant reading.

(Not particularly addicted to Holmes, my re-readings tend to be Rex Stout's mysteries, Jack Vance's picaresque fantasies and P.G.Wodehouse's dessert products ;-)</comment>


Shell Corp in 1980s: Climate Change Dangerous, Fossil Fuel Industry Responsible - <AUTHOR> https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/shell-predicted-climate-change-fossil-fuel-industry-1980s-global-warming-oil-a8294636.html <comment><USER2> ... And the people responsible for the last 30 years of (and ongoing) denial will never be held to account. Devastating that these people have sold the world.</comment>


Frankenimage – Reconstructing images with pieces from an image database - <AUTHOR> http://gimlids.github.io/frankenimage/

<comment><USER2> Is the mosaic of The Creation of Adam generated by Frankenimage? Judging by the results in the videos, it doesn't seem capable of making that.

Edit: I did a Tineye search and it is used all over the web, so it wasn't created by Frankenimage.

<comment><USER3> "The following image represents a series of 20 oil on canvas paintings by contemporary artist Lewis Lavoie, each depicting an individual, in tandem depicting the head of Adam from Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam."

<comment><USER4> "The following image represents a series of 20 oil on canvas paintings by contemporary artist Lewis Lavoie"

Does that not read "a series of 20 oil on canvas paintings by contemporary artist Lewis Lavoie"?

ie. Lewis Lavoie had painted the 20 oil on canvas paintings.

That's how I read it, but searching his name reveals otherwise

[https://www.google.ca/search?q=Lewis+Lavoie&safe=off&source=...](https://www.google.ca/search?q=Lewis+Lavoie&safe=off&source=lnms&tbm=isch)

So I understand the parents confusion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very cool. (1) Have you thought about using HOG templates for the matching step? Seems like you might get some interesting structural encoding similarities there. (2) When generating image patches, could they be different sizes? Or is the idea to make a simple grid?

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not the one behind this, I just shared it here. I just tweeted to him though: [https://twitter.com/davidstolarsky](https://twitter.com/davidstolarsky)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "In contrast with a photomosaic," ehhh.. it's just a photomosaic.</comment>


24h Business Camp - 90 people, 52 startups, 24 hours - <AUTHOR> http://www.24hourbusinesscamp.com/2009/01/vote-for-your-favourite-start-up.html

<comment><USER2> My friend participated. Most people had prepared their work a long time ahead and used these 24 hours to socialize and work on launch marketing since old media reported.

<comment><AUTHOR> Some people did, yes. There were still quite a few people working when I went to bed at 6ish, though, and some of them were still there when I got back 3 hours later to finish up the last pieces.

And if they did: so what? It wasn't a competition and if it was it would be impossible to decide what level of preparation would be "too much".

I'm hoping for a sequel next year.</comment></comment>


KiCad: A commitment to freedom - <AUTHOR> https://giving.web.cern.ch/content/kicad-development-1 <comment><USER2> > _Today, KiCad is considered a mature tool for the design of Printed Circuit > Boards, featuring some capabilities that match or exceed those of costly > proprietary alternatives._

Two weeks ago, we evaluated whether we ditch our current proprietary EDA tools in favor of KiCad (my company designs and builds satellite electronics). We liked the user interface (it's not good, but better than the "professional" alternatives), the gradual learning curve, and the plain-text project files. Plus, we're big fans of OSS.

But KiCad has a lot of conceptual baggage: The way tracks, vias and copper zones are handled requires work-arounds and band-aids even for routine tasks (this has been known for two years at least), with not simple fix in sight.

The PCB editor has three display modes: Legacy, OpenGL, and Cairo, with different features (unrelated to graphical representation) available in different modes, so you have to switch between them from time to time (this also hints at a lack of separation between graphics and program logic).

There's a bug that prevents laying tracks closer than 0.2mm to each other (only in OpenGL mode – Legacy mode doesn't care). The "Clean-up tracks and vias" function deleted some definitely non-redundant tracks, which I only noticed thanks to the DRC (though a DRC cannot and will not catch everything).

Our conclusion was that for hobby projects and very simple professional PCBs, KiCad is a great tool, but it's just not enough for even slightly demanding projects (and I'm not even talking about high-frequency design, EMI analysis, and multi-person projects).

The developers seem to prefer working on interesting new features like the push-and-shove router, instead of fixing the basics. Which is fine – it's an open-source project and they're entitled to work on whatever they feel like. But unfortunately, this is not how you get to a "mature tool". I wish them all the best, and we'll take a look at KiCad again from time to time.

Preemptive reply to "why don't you contribute to it?": We thought about donating to the project, but the amount of money we spend on professional EDA tools per year would only buy us about 10 day of KiCad developer time (or in- house developer time) – by far not enough to fix all show-stoppers.

<comment><USER3> Most of your post is Greek: tracks, vias, copper zones. I'm not sure how anyone can make an abstract design for an entire circuit board from scratch, it how to put one together.

<comment><USER2> > _Most of your post is Greek: tracks, vias, copper zones. I 'm not sure how > anyone can make an abstract design for an entire circuit board from scratch, > it how to put one together._

I do not understand what you're trying to say.

<comment><USER4> (Comment moved up in tree as requested.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As someone who has been in the PCB industry for the past decade, it has been fascinating to watch how quickly KiCad came out of nowhere and quickly gained adoption as soon as CERN started contributing. After spending years in the software development of capture/simulation/layout tools for PCBs, I have come to see that these tools are not easy to create and maintain. Most products in the market are the product of decades of work.

We added KiCad support for our libraries on SnapEDA about a year ago, and now it's the 4th most popular tool on there with about 10% using it (after Altium, Eagle, and OrCAD/Allegro). When we talk to KiCad users, many are startups. However, I recently spoke with an engineer at a major defense contractor who uses Mentor Expedition at work and KiCad outside of his job. This is a sophisticated engineer who has chosen KiCad over the many free options available in the market. I had the same experience with another engineer at a medical device company using Allegro at work, and KiCad on the side. KiCad may not be as fully featured as the others, but it's being chosen as the next best alternative to these high-cost tools.

I agree that the UX is very quirky but EDA tools in general (other than Altium) traditionally have quirky interfaces.

<comment> TD-Linux Thank you for adding KiCad! I was really excited when I saw that SnapEDA added support. Doing manual parts is always tedious in any tool, and KiCad is lacking automated generators for some of these - previously, I had been using an online PHP(?) tool to generate large pin count parts. The SnapEDA license is also OSHW compatible, so it makes it a no-brainer.

I also first tried KiCad when I no longer had access to an Altium license for personal projects, and it's been pretty smooth sailing. I imagine the choice would be even more obvious for users coming from any of the other, worse tools. One other advantage is that I don't need to run a Windows VM for it. I even did a PCB design on a Novena, which I suppose made it second-generation OSHW.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you live in Brazil (or is willing to come), and want to contribute to Kicad, São Paulo will host a Kicad hackaton as part of an Open Hardware Summit:

[http://www.e-hal.org.br/](http://www.e-hal.org.br/) (english version: [http://www.e-hal.org.br/en](http://www.e-hal.org.br/en))

Javier Serrano, the author of this post, will be there, as will Thomas and Maciej, two Kicad developers from CERN. The Kicad Hackaton will not be the only activity, there are lots of open hardware activities through the three days of summit. And lots of fun!

<comment><USER7> Any similar events planned at CERN? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Everyone who doesn't do PCB design will probably find this a great idea.

People who design PCBs will probably wonder when KiCad is going to fix the horrific UX bugs, and go back to using Altium or Eagle in the meantime.

KiCad is the StarOffice of the PCB design world. I want to use it, but I can't justify the time working around KiCad's UX issues.

<comment><USER6> I do PCB design, mostly in Altium, and I'll even add that some of my designs are of relatively high complexity.

Saying that Kicad interface is horrendous compared with Eagle is, to say the least, disingenuous. Eagle has a terrible interface, lots of limitations, and a very strange mental model for design.

Kicad is still far from perfection, and I do believe that the UX must improve. But even the best tool in this aspect - IMO, Altium - suffers from a lot of other issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Have been using KiCad for PCB development for my hardware startup and overall happy with the choice.

Yes, they have made questionable UX decisions in development but then I've not tried an EDA tool that got the UX right. For those considering KiCad, but struggling to do it by themselves, I suggest you either take a Udemy course to show you the user flow. Or better yet, buy some tuition (with beer or whatnot) from someone at the local hackspace or similar.

<comment><USER10> I think "decisions" is too strong a word. The UI is heinously inconsistent, and feels like a bunch of similar tools were crowbarred into a box and called an application. It's usable once you pick a semi-coherent subset of features and then ignore the rest, but it takes a lot of trial and error to figure that out.

Available features and even hotkeys change depending on what 'rendering engine' you choose? What? Not to mention that the interface conventions between parts editor, schematic editor, footprint editor, and layout editor vary significantly for no good reason.

<comment><USER2> I agree 100%. That said, have you used Orcad? When I use it, it also "feels like a bunch of similar tools were crowbarred into a box and called an application". From what I heard, the reason for that is that different tools where actually bought up and bundled together.

EDA tools are terrible across the board; I wonder why that is the case.

<comment><USER10> I think the problem is that it's rare to find skilled software developers who are also skilled hardware designers (at the professional level, a lot of hobbyists do both). So you don't get much quality dogfooding going on. Either the tools are developed by hardware engineers, and the workflow is efficient but the software is slow and buggy and the UI is inconsistent, or they're developed by software engineers, and so it technically does what you need but the workflow is terrible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For those interested, here's an interesting open hardware@cern from javier serrano, the head of development for kikad in cern.

[https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/goshcommunity/open- hardwar...](https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/goshcommunity/open-hardware-at- cern-a-quick-introduction-by-javier-serrano)

</comment><comment><USER12> Honest question that might come off as stupid but, doesn't CERN have a huge budget? I imagine supporting this project can be a reasonable budget entry, why are they asking for donations?

<comment><USER13> CERN's budget is ~1B USD, which is 5% of NASA's, 25% of ESA's. And I won't even get started with Silicon Valley big corps.

Considering you have to pay for an electricity bill equivalent to 1/3 of Geneva and the salaries of >3000 people in one of Europe's most expensive urban areas, I wouldn't say there's a lot of money left to invest in pretty much anything.

Source: * [https://press.cern/facts-and-figures/budget- overview](https://press.cern/facts-and-figures/budget-overview) * [https://home.cern/about/engineering/powering- cern](https://home.cern/about/engineering/powering-cern)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Just used KiCad to design a guitar amplifier, really happy with it.

Now I'm designing a PCB, and what's lacking is good part placing and trace routing. I feel like there should be a an algorithmic way to do what I'm doing by hand. It sort of reminds me of the traveling salesman problem.

<comment><USER15> These are called autoplace and autoroute.

They exist, but NONE of the PCB designers I have worked with, all of who have worked at multiple big name tech companies and still do, use these tools.

Do the work. Even something as simple at a guitar amplifier needs attention to detail, to route ground currents away from where they can cause noise. Even something as simple as a guitar amplifier needs attention to the current handling needs of individual traces. Even something as simple as a guitar amplifier needs attention to the detail of proper component placement to minimize inductance where necessary between bypass caps and their associated IC's. DO THE WORK!

<comment><USER14> :) Thank you for the encouragement. That's good information to know. I've got a hand wired prototype, and it seems to work ok, so my PCB is going to be similar.

That's one nice about (tube) guitar amplifiers: max current is at the power supply pin, about 72ma, despite transferring 27w or so. So your voltages are pretty high , but your traces can be pretty thin. The big thing is leaving plenty of space to prevent arcs.

<comment><USER16> You also need to allow for failure conditions. If a power tube fails as a short or low impedance, which will vaporise first: your thin tracks, or your fuse?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I visited the donation page and it costs about $500 for 1 developer to work on KiCad for 1 day.

I do appreciate the transparency, but honestly I think my —small— donation would be used better in other free software projects unless I had some kind of vested interest in KiCad.

<comment><USER18> $500 a day is quite inexpensive for a competent developer. Perhaps you overestimate how far your donation will go.

<comment><USER19> 10k/month is inexpensive? That's a SV engineer salary. With open source software you can have extremely competent developers from _anywhere_ in the world. Someone in Brazil for example would be thrilled to be paid US$50-100/day, or even less, to work on OSS.

<comment><USER20> Not really. As a rule of thumb, a person at a moderately lean company costs two times their salary. A person working for the government costs around three times. The rest of that money goes to overhead, benefits, and taxes.

More specifically, say that $10k a month went directly to someone working at home who files their taxes as a sole-proprietor. That income puts the high end of their income in the 28% tax bracket, but most of it is in the 25% bracket. Payroll tax (FICA) will take 15.3% off the top. State income tax varies, but I live in one that's about 5%. Then, depending where you are, there's gross receipts tax, which is about 7% where I live. Add that all together, that's 52% of that money lost. We'll round that to 50%, so now we're at $5k/month, or $60k a year. Not bad, except we don't have insurance. Health insurance premiums depend on a lot of factors, but I was seeing about $500/month or $6000/year. Then, the out of pocket max was $3000, so we need to budget that number. Note premimums are not tax deductible. That brings us down to $51k. Also, we haven't saved for retirement. Reasonable companies contribute to 401k at 10%, which would be $12k for our developer. Most people should probably put in more, but that looks fine, so now we're at $39k. Yes, there's a tax deduction for a 401k or IRA, which I ignored, but it doesn't affect these numbers by a huge amount.

Now, let's take the person working for the company at that salary level. Income tax still applies, but half the payroll tax goes to the company, so we're at 25+15.3/2+5=38% rounding up, or $74.4k. We still pay health insurance premiums, but the last place I worked had them at $100/month, that puts us at $73,200, or $70,200 if we cover our out of pocket max. Also, the company pays that portion of the retirement.

In total, $39k vs $73.2k, or almost half. That's a steal for a developer.

And, yes, this is overkill for a response, but I don't think many people realize how much money independent contractors lose to expenses and overhead. Yes, there are lifestyle perks and the potential to make more money. Most of the time, you make far, far less even though your hourly rate makes it look like you make far more.

tldr; Hiring a KiCAD developer for that amount is cheap and an amazing deal if they know what they're doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Fantastic initiative. It's amazing how much CERN has contributed back to society over the years...

</comment><comment><USER22> gEDA the GNU EDA tools have bern around a lot longer and I use that. It is worth checking out.

<comment><USER23> A long time ago, I used the GNU PCB tool to design a flex circuit. I ended up having to hand edit the gerber files to get the project done because it didn't support changing soldermask opening. I think they've changed it since then, but it was rough for awhile.

<comment><USER24> I've used GNU PCB and gschem extensively. While there's a definite learning curve, I've found them very usable and produced many boards with great success. Like you say, maybe you hit some issues that have since been fixed, but this is another datapoint. As for kicad, it came into existence after I was relatively proficient with gEDA, and it there never were any compelling reasons to switch.

<comment><USER22> I'm pretty much in the same place. I have gEDA symbol and footprint libraries that I like, and the cost of redoing those and climbing the learning curve for KiCAD isn't justified. Many of my friends use KiCAD, and it seems both have issues, just in different places. I've looked at the KiCAD footprint library format, and it is a sad mess. Of course, gEDA's footprint library format also has limitations of probably equal measure.

In any case, I've done many rigid PCBs and one flex PCB with gEDA and never had to resort to hand-editing files. That said, I have written my own footprint creation tools to get exactly what I want. That up-front cost is part of getting either KiCAD or gEDA to yield the desired results.

As in many things about EDA, libraries are the speed bump that repeatedly jars your brain case.

<comment><USER23> This was over 10 years ago.

<comment><USER22> Yes, thungs have changed a lot in 10 years. Not enough, though. But it is definately possible to do good work in either gEDA or KiCAD.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mercedes-Benz Digital Challenge - <AUTHOR> http://www.mercedes-benz-challenge.com/?utm_source=hm&utm_medium=website&utm_content=&utm_campaign=mercedesbenzdigitalchallenge <comment><AUTHOR> The Mercedes-Benz Digital Challenge gives you the chance to be one of the first to play around with 80+ APIs that might be opened to 3rd party developers in the future.

It's our joint effort at High Mobility(startup in Berlin) with Mercedes-Benz to allow developers to access to Car APIs.

You can develop and test your ideas with the emulators.</comment>


Teams Can't Innovate If They're Too Comfortable - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/08/teams-cant-innovate-if-theyre-too-comfortable

<comment><AUTHOR> How do you do this internally, without sending team members off to "camp"?</comment>


Quirky, yet accurate, Peter Theil on Tech Innovation Stagnation - <AUTHOR> http://brajeshwar.com/2011/quirky-yet-accurate-self-made-billionaire-entrepreneur-predicts-tech-innovation-stagnation/ <comment><USER2> Looking forward to "The Blueprint", from Peter, PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, and interestingly, chess master Garry Kasparov (Peter also plays chess). <http://books.wwnorton.com/books/The-Blueprint/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Thiel.</comment>


Tesla Is Decades Away from Full Self-Driving Cars - <AUTHOR> https://www.thestreet.com/investing/tesla-is-decades-away-from-full-self-driving-cars-14853271 <comment><USER2> > If you are at 98% accuracy for autonomous driving right now, you are > practically nowhere. In 100 seconds of driving, you will crash and possibly > die, twice.

98% accuracy, 100 seconds, crash twice. Take that, (data) scientists!

</comment><comment><USER3> The author has absolutely no idea what he is talking about. In 100ms of driving you'd also die twice, apparently.

See the disclaimer at the bottom: 'sell-side analyst', TSLA short.

<comment><USER4> Clearly. Not only bad at statistics, and creating a straw man argument from an off handed comment from Musk, but motivated to trash Tesla. The short TLSA disclaimer should be at the top, or better yet in the headline: "Guy that profits from Tesla stock dropping says Tesla is not doing well..."

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a poor article. It's arguing about Musk's use of "98% good" as a metric for how far along Tesla's tech is. This was an off-hand comment, certainly not a solid metric. The article claims a car would crash in 100 seconds at "98% good". But the truth about autonomous driving tech is it's very reliable in 98% of driving conditions. It's the edge cases, extreme weather conditions, etc that need more training and development.

<comment><USER6> I agree that the 98% comment is meaningless, 98% of what? 98% of a journey is as good as 0 if the 2% is every junction on your route. But let's not pretend its extreme weather conditions we're battling with. The Google cars are still struggling to merge onto highways. We're not that close.

<comment><USER5> I've seen some pretty impressive footage of Cruise AI's navigation through the crowded, narrow streets of San Francisco. I think autonomous tech will first be geo-fenced to specific, well-tested routes. That's the move that makes the most sense to me. Would still be incredibly useful if say, all interstate driving is automated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the author is actually making a very decent point: when you're looking at how close we are to solving a problem 100% it's not relevant to say "We're at 98%" because 98% of the problem could well be 1% of the work and the last 0.01% is 98% of the work. Having said that, Musk seems to be saying they've done 98% of the work which frankly I would find laughable - because if that were true then Musk owes his share holders a proper update on self-driving. The key for me is the caveat - we'll have it done by EOY but _regulators_. Let's all look forward to Elon Musk calling the regulators pedofiles and cucks because we know how that story ends.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think 99.999%+ trustworthy/reliable self-driving cars are a long, long away for both technical and socioeconomic reasons. I am not an autonomous robotics expert; however, I do have some background in control systems engineering & system verification (i.e. how do you know your system will operate correctly).

Technical reason(s): \- neural networks are not even the right way to model decision making for controlling a complex system in a complex environment. The NN to adequately cover the system dimensionality will be so unpredictably non- linear so as to make it inherently untrustworthy (i.e. you can't predict behavior over the entire range of possible scenarios the system may/will encounter); this applies to sensing / computer-vision aspects and decision making aspects of the control problem. Actually controlling the vehicle by comparison is easy and is already a solved problem using good ole mechanics/dynamics and classical system control theory.

\- Adequate sensors for cars to 'see' as well as humans in all conditions are really expensive and will be for some time... as the level of economically tractable sensors improves, the expense of maintaining them will still be high.

\- the embedded systems languages being used for CV and system control (mainly C/C++) are not amenable to formal verification. Even if all embedded sys programming is done in SPARK or Rust... there are hardware level bugs as well.

Socioeconomic reasons: \- our legal system is set up to reap maximum punitive damage from car owners/manufacturers for "their" mistakes. All a jury has to hear is "that autonomous car did something a human wouldn't do... and caused the accident." and the car owner (and the car co. in the event of a bug) is on the hook for the liability... possibly massive liability.

\- electric cars and autonomous cars are probably not even the right solution to the problems they are trying to solve ("the environment", "too much traffic", "I don't like driving" etc.). Shuttling around one or two people in a 3000-4000 pound car is much, much less resource and energy efficient that things like electric bikes: building a car has a huge, upfront environmental/carbon impact that, imo, is not negated by the facts that is it electric or autonomous. Quick example: for a 40k USD car; 15k-25k USD is direct/indirect energy cost for material sourcing, manufacture and car assembly and delivery. Even a really nice electric-bike, by comparison, is easily well under 1k.

For this reason, I think we are going to see increased activity in cost effective single person transport and local municipal change [not allowing cars on some/many city streets] to help make things like bikes, trikes, and scooters safer to use.

I could write a lot more on this... but that is all for now.</comment>