Sublime Text 3 dev build 3128 released - <AUTHOR> http://www.sublimetext.com/3dev <comment><USER3> The creator of Sublime Text tends to go silent for long periods between stretches of activity, which always makes me wonder about the future of the project. It's a shame, since ST is a well-thought-out editor with great attention to detail, and of course the speed argument (compared to Atom and VS Code), while beaten to death, still holds true.

Of course, it's up to the author himself to choose how he communicates, most likely the current method is working out just fine for him :). And the editor works very well, and the updates eventually return. Just saying that some occasional communication regarding the future of the project, or the current development model ("I spend half the year perpetually wasted in Ibiza, radio silence expected"), would be nice!

<comment><USER4> That is exactly the reason why I haven't bought a license yet. I consider the license an investment in Sublime's future. Since I don't _have_ to pay, buying a license is more of a donation in order to show support. But the communication seems a bit too sparse/erratic for me to have much trust in this project. The time spans between updates, blog posts, or even tweets are simply way too long.

I also consider the existence of [http://docs.sublimetext.info](http://docs.sublimetext.info) a bad sign. The way I perceive this: At some point, an enthusiastic user was so fed up with the sub-par documentation that they decided to take matters into their own hands, and create a better documentation. But instead of working with the community, the Sublime project people/person just... did nothing? Was there any communication? I don't know. Why not provide the documentation on github and accept PRs? The Sublime project should push for docs.sublimetext.info to be merged into the official documentation.

Same with [https://github.com/SublimeTextIssues/Core/issues](https://github.com/SublimeTextIssues/Core/issues). Why is the bug tracker "community run"? What does that even mean, considering the "community" can't fix any bugs? I absolutely cannot understand why the author of the software doesn't seem to participate at all in the bug tracker. Here's a quote from [https://github.com/SublimeTextIssues/Core/issues/594](https://github.com/SublimeTextIssues/Core/issues/594) (from 2014, so I don't know whether it is still true) > Unfortunately, the only thing I can say is it'll get fixed if Jon Skinner sees it as a big enough priority. Our intent in creating this unofficial Issues page was to have a curated place where known issues can be collected together and triaged, and he can use it as he sees fit to fix bugs in upcoming releases. Without a more direct feedback mechanism, this is the best we can do, at the moment.

What I'd also like to see is a road map for the future with regular (2-4 weeks) status updates.

<comment><USER5> > I consider the license an investment in Sublime's future.

I'm exactly the opposite. I consider the license as compensation for work already done, I operate under the assumption that the vendor will have made enough to not care to work on it further.

<comment><USER6> Completely agree. What is there today is well worth the license fee even if there's never another update -- though this isn't one of my concerns as Sublime is so much more usable / lightweight / snappy vs Atom. [For it to be sunset, there would have to be a better alternative out there, and for the general case of multiple languages, I don't believe there is.]

Also packages are well separated from the Sublime releases so even in the case that there isn't another update, the ecosystem is still active. That said, I do wish the internal Python for plugins would receive a version bump though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love Sublime Text. I really dislike heavy IDEs, so for me, it's almost the perfect editor.

But... am I the only person who wants a minimal editor like Sublime, plus an inline debugger? Debugging where you edit code is one of those super-features that I really don't understand why people prefer not to have it.

Ideally it would be something generic and lightweight, with the ability to extend via plugins. The debugging plugins I've used so far just don't cut it though - if I can't click on a line number to add a breakpoint, it isn't good enough.

<comment><USER8> You're describing VS Code. Now you may not think it's lightweight, but for anyone not toiling away on a turn of the century machine it's plenty fast and has great debugging facilities.

<comment><USER9> I actually switched to VS Code vs Sublime for most tasks just recently. It has a few quirks (looking at you, files that just close for no reason) and isn't quite as quick, but the language/debugging packages and support are just leagues better.

<comment><USER10> > ... files that just close for no reason)

Do you mean if you select (preview) a file from the tree browser on the left, the file appears, but if you select another one, it goes away ?

Use this setting/preferrence:

"workbench.editor.enablePreviewFromQuickOpen": false,

<comment><USER6> Or double click to fully open them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If Sublime only had definite release! It's wonderful GUI editor! I stopped using it years ago when I switched to Vim and Emacs, but if it gets released I will buy it for sure, at least to have it on my work machine.

I like editing text in it, everything is so smooth and well looking, and it doesn't feel bloated. And I just hate all those Electron based editors, no matter how much incrementally they get better from month to month, they never even came close to Sublime's swiftness and polish. I tried VSCode last month, for few hours and uninstalled.

And people are often relaying on metrics and public opinion of usage of certain tool. Look, on latest StackOverflow Dev Survey Notepad++ was way ahead of everyone, it tells you something.

<comment><USER12> Release or not release is just a name. You shouldn't let that be a factor. In my experience it is absolutely stable and as bug free as software can be.

However, I'm not sure how well maintained it is. I fear all the time that the author, jps, has quit, but then every few months he has a development sprint and releases a new version.

I'd rather have it permanently called "beta" but a minor update every month, than one version declared finished, with rare or no updates afterwards.

<comment><USER13> That's true. I've been using Sublime for years and I've never had a bug or a crash. It pretty much perfect. And it's blazing fast.

I actually even use its fuzzy search to search my harddrive sometimes. Because I haven't found an easy app for Linux that works like Search Everything on Windows.

<comment><USER14> > I haven't found an easy app for Linux that works like Search Everything on > Windows.

[https://github.com/albertlauncher/albert](https://github.com/albertlauncher/albert)

<comment><USER15> That's not quite like Search Everything, which is just a tool for searching files by name.

In that vein though, see also Synapse: [https://launchpad.net/synapse- project](https://launchpad.net/synapse-project)

<comment><USER14> True, but searching by name it's one of the main features of Albert and it's certainly more convenient than using ST to search your computer.

<comment><USER6> s/Albert/Alfred

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why people cry about sublime not having a "release" yet. I have faced 0 bugs, seriously 0 and I'm using it for more than 3 years. Its way more performant than the rest "cool" editors and honestly...it just works! Maybe you need a little bit more configuration to make it perfect for you but thats just it.

<comment><USER17> On Mac, one bug that bites me about once per week is the editor becomes unresponsive. Not the whole application, I can still focus on windows, use the menus, and scroll the text, but the text editor just goes vegetable. The caret disappears, and I am unable to select text, type, paste, etc. Occasionally it returns after 20-30 seconds, but usually I have to restart Sublime.

It's still a great application in spite of this bug, but it is annoying when it happens.

<comment><USER18> It has never happened to me. By the way something great about sublime text is that I can quit and open ST again in ~2 seconds max. It's that fast.

<comment><USER17> Restarting is indeed quick, but sadly sublime text windows don't re-open on the same desktop they were on when I quit. They all pop up on whatever desktop is up when I re-launch, and I have to arrange 4-5 windows again. It's not a huge deal, but it is an inconvenience.

It's a testament to the quality of the app that the gripes are so minor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> We've got a forum post for the dev build at [https://forum.sublimetext.com/t/dev- build-3127/27213](https://forum.sublimetext.com/t/dev-build-3127/27213) to report bugs and other feedback.

<comment><USER20> Thanks for the awesome work! Can we get an image of that new logo and new theme for the impatient/curious people on mobile :D

<comment><USER19> This thread has the new icon and screenshots of the Default and Adaptive themes: [https://twitter.com/wbond/status/851979232477671424](https://twitter.com/wbond/status/851979232477671424)

<comment><USER21> Is there a way to have the same files icon in the sidebar? I just want to discern from folders and files, I don't care about file extensions

<comment><USER22> I'm pretty sure the icons are up to the theme. You could take your favorite theme, duplicate its directory, and edit the icon definition file.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm just hoping that ST3 will be marked as final soon, so that Skinner may collect the upgrade fees before VSC has completed its take over of the world (of free editors). As a long time fan, I do get - and admire - <USER2> perfectionism, but hopefully there's room for dot releases after the 3.0 final.

<comment><USER24> Sublime fans and VSC fans are almost disjoint sets...

<comment><AUTHOR> You'd be surprised. I'm tempted to go to the VSC side from time to time because of the more polish -- it's the speed that brings me back.

<comment><USER22> You'd t think with their big team and resources, they would have been able to use a more performant cross platform toolkit, say Qt or maybe some of their .Net stuff.

Why did they choose to base their editor on Electron, of all things, especially considering the existing results of Atom (horrible) is beyond me.

<comment><USER25> I think the development of VS Code was kind of an accident. They built Monaco (the editor component) for Visual Studio Online, then made it a standalone text editor as a side project and it ended taking off big time.

<comment><USER26> I'd rather have VSC team have members working on making underlying electron API'S faster. Get it to speed of sublime.

<comment><USER27> If you compare it to the likes of Brackets and Atom, it was significantly faster than the others at release... I'm not sure what can be done to make significant performance gains... I mean being able to even handle large files (disabling any highlighting/autocomplete, and only displaying portion of the file may be necessary)... as it is, for most of what I've used it for vsc is great.

Electron is essentially Node grafted to Chromium... There are a few things that could be done, but would depend on a lot of upstream cooperation to do so.

<comment><USER26> Sublime uses skia as its rendering library, which is what blink (chromium frontend) uses for rendering. May be electron can provide a nicer api to interface directly with skia.

By giving performant lower level access to render, may be VSC can move some of the perf sensitive code directly to compiled optimized binaries.

Sort of like what node native libraries do.

Sublime does some pretty great dark magic. I was impressed to see vscode approach similar speeds to sublime in search. I believe there is plenty that can be done to make rendering fast, reduce memory consumption and make it a bit light weight. But it would require access to metal APIs

<comment><USER27> VSCode's plugin model is pretty impressive and tends to isolate the side effects of poorly performing plugins (including language/autocomplete, etc)... so that the main editor tends to be responsive. There should be room to tweak, but I'm pretty happy overall. Way better experience than any full IDE I've tried... I only hope they keep it that way as features come in.

Also, as an Electron app, there is a node element, so compiled components are already an option.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I am really not at all wealthy (plus i have to provide for my family), but as a developer, i am always completely surprised about the peoples penny-pinching if it comes to paying for good tools. If you use good tools, you can identify with them, and are more likely motivated to learn their functionalities (shortcust,plugins etc..) so you become more productive. So after one or two month this investment will have been more than just payed off.

70$ is _nothing_ for a good tool.

... and then some people wonder why a company can not afford to make marketing etc ...

</comment><comment><USER29> For vim users, there's also the ActualVim[1] plugin, which uses neovim's headless mode for processing. I've always been somewhat disappointed by vintage mode / vintageous in ST, and while ActualVim still has some issues, it's definitely promising. (It even works on Windows now! Though I couldn't quite get my plugins running yet)

[1]: [https://github.com/lunixbochs/ActualVim](https://github.com/lunixbochs/ActualVim)

<comment><USER30> Shameless advertising: since the developer of Vintageous stopped maintaining it, @gerardroche and I have started a fork that we will review PRs for and occasionally work on. We've already merged a bunch of outstanding PRs, added some new features and fixed some bugs.

[https://github.com/NeoVintageous/NeoVintageous](https://github.com/NeoVintageous/NeoVintageous)

<comment><USER31> Awesome! Vintageous is nice, but there are outstanding bugs that are annoying and it has had that "it doesn't matter if you write a nice PR I'm going to ignore it" feel about it for some time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Sublime is my favorite editor for LaTeX. I've tried every other editor on the market, TexMaker, TexStudio, OverLeaf, ShareLaTeX.

All LaTeX editors pale in comparison to Sublime + LatexTools Plugin + git. Each tool in this stack is designed to do one thing and they do it perfectly.

<comment><USER33> Absolutely! I've tried so many other tools, but LaTexTools + Skim is so simple. It makes writing LaTex almost comfortable.

(I love LaTex, but it is still one of the most frustrating pieces of software ever conceived.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm an absolute fool for upgrading my text editor whilst I have two major project deadlines due before Easter, but I like to live dangerously. And it was worth it - the new Adaptive theme looks fantastic!

<comment><USER23> Agreed. Just upgraded myself and it looks great. C# syntax highlighting is also looking much better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Hypothetically, what would it take for ST to be released as open source? Money? Could we crowdfund that?

<comment><USER36> That would put a lot of people's minds at ease.

Frankly, I don't care that the dev isn't very loud on the internet, and a new build every 6 months seems perfectly fine. And if it stops being developed, it's a standalone app, it will be many years before it bit-rots. I will be using it for years whatever happens.

But if it were open source, people would know that if it ever got dropped it other people could keep it going longer.

I'm really only concerned with it bit-rotting though. New features? Who cares? It does everything I want it to and I was already using third party syntax definitions to keep up with language changes, it's not like it matters if Sublime doesn't change much. It looks like they'll have high DPI support complete soon if not already, so once that's done I'm really struggling to think what else I want out of it. Not that I have a high DPI monitor, but if we're thinking about things that might make it unusable in the future if it gets dropped.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> _Windows font rendering defaults to DirectWrite unless using Consolas or Courier New_

Anyone knows what this means in practice? What rendering is used instead and does this mean Consolas/Courier have a disadvantage or an advantage?

<comment><USER38> I imagine it uses ClearType, Windows' subpixel font rendering software. Don't know for sure though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Great release!

Is there any way to donate to SublimeText? We already have licenses at work, but would like to donate $10 or so to show support.

<comment><USER21> Buy another license and gift it to someone ;)

<comment><USER40> I would take it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Is there usually a delay in updates being available to the "in-app" updater? Getting "No updates available" when I check.

edit: manual download is very slow. Maybe things are just a bit bogged down at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER42> I know that it's probably just change aversion... but I'm not a huge fan of the new icon.

But I'm happy for the update!

<comment><USER43> Link for the lazy: [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C9LqjoBXYAE-P6k.png](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C9LqjoBXYAE-P6k.png)

I think it's much better than the previous one, but I've always replaced the icon for that with this anyway: [https://dribbble.com/shots/1836652-Final- Round-Sublime-Icon](https://dribbble.com/shots/1836652-Final-Round-Sublime- Icon)

I think I'll leave the new one in place for a while and see whether it grows on me.

<comment><USER44> Much better, more unique and somewhat memorable, says a _little_ something about what it does instead of just communicating "orange S" like the last one.

I wonder how that delicate shadow holds up at small sizes and in monochrome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I love Sublime. It is cross platform and has a great array of plugins from the community. I have used it for years. I know plenty of keyboard shortcuts and I am productive using it.

It never crashes on me, but maybe I am just not an edge case user of it.

Whenever version 3 is released for purchase, I do not anticipate having any problems getting my employer to pay for a license and I don't mind paying out of pocket if necessary.

<comment><USER46> You can already buy Sublime Text 3. [https://www.sublimetext.com/buy?v=3](https://www.sublimetext.com/buy?v=3)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Still no support for ligatures, bummer.

<comment><USER48> Ligatures would be amazing and JPS has said previously that he'd love to implement it, but it's a huge amount of work at the moment when there are other pressing issues.

I hold out hope for it happening one day though!

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Excited to hear news from Sublime team!

I tried the new beta: it kinda breaks fonts in old themes (I use spacegray) but the new Adaptive theme looks pretty (I wish I could reduce tab bar height, though).

Also enjoyed switching UI and syntax themes via palette.

Overall looks great but for now I'll stick to ST3 stable release.

My #1 feature request is Sidebar API, you know, for version control integration.

<comment><USER50> To clarify, this is not a beta, this is a dev build. The Beta channel is 3126, which has been a rock for me (paid user).

<comment><USER49> You are correct, I use 3126 too and it's more stable than Atom ever been :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I'm somewhat bummed that Limetext [1] seems to be dead. I like Sublime, but I don't want to rely on nonfree software for my work. I switched to vim for now.

[1] [http://limetext.org/](http://limetext.org/)

<comment><USER42> I'm curious why you don't want to rely on non-free software for your work.

Usually paying for something helps it not to die, like limetext, for example.

For my work, I'd rather pay for something I rely on to increase the likelihood of it staying alive and keeping up with the work I need to do.

<comment><USER40> Exactly.

It's amazing how people still don't want to pay for software.

<comment><USER52> It's not that we don't want to pay for software, and I don't think that's what OP meant when he used the word "nonfree". It's just that we need the four freedoms in case the software takes a sudden turn in a direction we don't like.

Now you're going to ask: How is it possible to support the four freedoms and still charge for the software?

And my answer is: I have no idea, and I don't care. It's not my job to come up with a business model for you, I'm just stating my requirements.

<comment><USER40> I see. Perhaps I commented too fast.

I don't think it's that big of a deal for a text editor, though.

One thing is if you're a designer and all your files are PSDs and you're locked in with Photoshop, but if Sublime Text dies you still have lots of other editors that will open your plain text files: Atom, Eclipse, etc.

<comment><USER53> Once you have trained your muscle memory on a given editor, switching becomes a very big deal.

<comment><USER54> None of the four freedoms mention it having to be free. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> For those of us that don't own a license, can I use that build without a license?

<comment><USER48> No. The dev builds are only available for users with a license.

> Sublime Text 3 dev builds are currently available to registered users only.

[https://www.sublimetext.com/3dev](https://www.sublimetext.com/3dev)

<comment><USER55> OK, I read that and didn't understand the "registered" (should be "users that have a License"). I understood as "registered on the forum" and figured I could try it. It ended up erasing my non-dev sublime text :'(

<comment><USER56> you can still download the old one, just replace the version on the build url ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I switched to Atom after years using sublime and I love it. Only wish they had syntax highlighting for Swift, something that I have yet to encounter in any text editor.

Edit: Looked around a bit and it's fairly simple to add it to Atom.

<comment><USER58> I jumped ship the atom when all the hype was around. Semantically, they feel almost identical to me. But I missed the performance that came with sublime. I now bounce back and forth between the two, depending on... well I'm not sure why I bounce between the two.

I've still to encounter a bug in sublime. Can't quite say the same about atom. Both great editors though.

Why did you move away from sublime to atom? What was the nail in the coffin that made you move away?

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I've had very buggy experience with the latest release. I had to roll back to 3124. My sidebar file list was always empty and it just had wacky behavior. It is a dev build, afterall.

That changelog is massive (!!!) but I am very disappointed in the fact that support for font ligatures (Fira Code) continues to get pushed out – [https://forum.sublimetext.com/t/support-font- ligatures/17654](https://forum.sublimetext.com/t/support-font-ligatures/17654)

<comment><USER60> Can confirm the sidebar issue. Sometimes the sidebar is empty, sometimes messed up and entries appear multiple times. Also reverted to 3124. Like the new icon though and looking forward to the next release.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> As an emacs user/addict, I'm very jealous of Sublime's amazing performance. But terminal support, extreme customizability, & the awesome integrated shell keep me on emacs...

</comment><comment><USER62> Sublime Text is a great piece of software. My only gripe is that the license I've bought (which was kinda steep IMHO) doesn't carry over from ST2 to ST3.

</comment><comment><USER46> Awesome update, I really enjoy the live theme and scheme switching, it's so fast and fluid.

I also appreciate the improved markdown syntax highlighting. This was bugging me slightly.

I like the new icon and I think the shadow could be a bit more pronounced and the grey corners a bit less pointy.

Sublime Text is one of my favourite computer programs ever.

</comment><comment><USER63> I'm using Sublime for 3 years now ( firstly version 2 ). I have never found anything better. It just works.

</comment><comment><USER64> I love this program. Thank you.

Any chance at a RasPi build? I happen to use these things professionally, and Sublime would complete the picture for me.

And yes, a license that costs more than the computer is fine.

</comment><comment><USER65> I've used build 3126 for a couple of weeks (I think) and the regular, daily crashes of Sublime Text 2 have gone. Recommended.

</comment><comment><USER66> I tried it but I still feel UltraEdit is better. Maybe I am missing something? Can somebody that really used both comment?

</comment><comment><USER67> I dont like the new icon but thats just me

<comment><USER68> Liteicon for apps with ugly icons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> When are you planning to release it?

</comment><comment><USER70> It's actually dev-build 3128 now :)

</comment><comment><USER71> Why is not open source?</comment>


I Peeked into My Node_Modules Directory and You Won't Believe What Happened Next - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/friendship-dot-js/i-peeked-into-my-node-modules-directory-and-you-wont-believe-what-happened-next-b89f63d21558 <comment><USER2> "Imagine (...) if the car you drove to work had 291 parts."

I'm willing to bet a current car has an order of magnitude more - this is not your great-grandfather's Model T. Moreover, I _am_ worried: only a handful of those parts are user-serviceable, not to mention those parts that are but a blackbox for proprietary firmware. The situation is quite similar here.

<comment><USER3> I'm willing to bet no more than one in five of the commenters in this thread, when the dust eventually settles and the reply links disappear, will have managed to get the joke.

<comment><USER2> Okay, that was all a joke? Ha ha, then. And get off my lawn!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Mehh, I'm glad this got dupe'd. This first time I read the article I found it interesting & the subject extremely valid.

That said, the article would be better if it alluded to real examples. The fictional ones are funny & they did get me to investigate … but I can where some creators or maintainers would be pissed at the notion they did include some of the cruft reported. There should be some mention of this or a link to each scrutized project's repo.

</comment><comment><USER5> Before anyone freaks out and posts a comment after reading the Express and Yummy issue, please keep reading the article.

<comment><USER6> I did read the rest of it and still didn't get the punchline.

<comment><USER3> It's total bullshit of a kind that's funny to Node devs tired of hearing about how their stack is terrible from people who like to deride things without really knowing very much about them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A Twitter API call without authentication?! I call BS

<comment><USER8> My guess would be that like-tweet.js is a trash file left over in the repo from someone's testing.

Still this post does illustrate the alarming nature of software dependency hell and how who-knows-what sort of code might easily be slipped into repositories these days.

<comment><USER3> Or, you know, it's not actually there at all because this is absurdist satire and not meant to be taken literally.

<comment><USER8> I can't tell satire anymore. It's hard to come up with any more absurd than the real world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Repost.</comment>


Amazon FBA Experiment - <AUTHOR> https://fbaexperiment.com/start-amazon-fba-experiment/ <comment><USER2> After the shipment arrives at the FBA warehouse, it may be in a "reserved" status (processing, validation, transshipped, etc.) for at least a few days in a normal part of the year. This is not a normal time of year, so it may take weeks to clear into "available" status.

If you send too much stuff to Amazon and it doesn't sell, you will be liable for long-term storage fees and they can be expensive ([https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/200684750?...](https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/200684750?language=en- US&ref=mpbc_201101150_cont_200684750))

The FBA universe is filled with stories of people having a manufacturer overseas make some low-cost product and encountering problems including low demand, poor quality, too many similar products available, and commingling with pirated or "third shift" inventory.

Protections against piracy and commingling include trademarks and the Amazon Transparency program ([https://brandservices.amazon.com/transparency](https://brandservices.amazon.com/transparency)). Requirements for Transparency described here: [http://leanmedia.org/amazon- transparency-what-is-it-and-how-...](http://leanmedia.org/amazon-transparency- what-is-it-and-how-can-amazon-sellers-and-brands-use-it-to-fight- counterfeits/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think "business" is far too grand a word for what's being described here. This is old school trading - buying something, and selling it for more than you bought it.

But it's being done in a highly competitive environment, where everything is commodified. Alibaba has commodified manufacturing, shipping was always a commodity, and Amazon has commodified the marketing and fulfilment end.

The problem with commodities is that it's very difficult to create a competitive advantage - if you do happen to find one, it'll be transient and fleeting as others cotton on to it.

I hope the author is also keeping track of the time he spends on this. At $7.64 profit per item, assuming he does sell all 200 handbags, that's $1528 in profit. If he's spent 152 hours on this, that's just $10/hour for his effort. If he ends up spending 211 hours, he's earning less than the US minimum wage.

<comment><USER4> A friend of mine is making many thousands of dollars profit per month from FBA. It's real.

<comment><USER5> Is he aware that Trump ended the program that subsidizes shipping cheap products from China? I imagine this will pretty much kill all FBA when it goes into effect

[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/10/trump...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/10/trump- changes-terminal-dues-and-epacket-rates/573337/)

<comment><USER6> That's for direct to consumer mail shipping (USPS) that like DxExtreme, Wish, Aliexpress, etc use. FBA shipments are usually sent directly in bulk to an Amazon warehouse from China thru normal commercial shipping companies and wouldn't be affected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here are my two cents as an Amazon seller.

>Niche is wallets/purses

Purses and wallets are quite competitive. The material cost isn't too high and they typically sell for quite a bit, but marketing is a huge challenge and being able to feel the product is important to buyers.

Another issue is that the factories manufacturing your product are competing directly against you on Amazon, which is sometimes true for any given product, but definitely true for something as fairly undifferentiated as women's purses.

I know many people who have failed here. It seems the only way to succeed in this niche is to either be the manufacturer, middleman, have some unique differentiator either in brand (tough to market such a difference as purses/wallets are infrequent purchases) or in the purse's utility itself, which will require a custom (and expensive) run.

>20% margins

These margins are way too tight for Amazon. You simply cannot stand out from the other 10,000 generic women's purses with such a budget.

Listing products on Amazon is the easy part, getting eyeballs is hard. Advertising is very expensive, and doubly so without a trademark.

>Buying codes off eBay

This is pretty risky. What would work better is if you apply for GTIN exemption. It's very easy to get and you don't even need UPC codes.

>Now i need to come up with a 5 bulleted list and description for my product

This is one of the most important parts of the page. You know your product and the target audience best so it's critical you write this yourself.

>Shipping direct to FBA with no intermediary QA

Yikes, there's no guarantee that what's inside those boxes is going to be anywhere near the same quality as your sample.

>[After shipping] I will use this 1 month period to do some research about marketing.

This likely going to be one of your biggest expenses. Using the advertising tools, you can get a rough idea of your costs before ordering product.

Edit: Removed all caps, substantially toned down/removed needlessly aggressive phrases.

<comment><USER8> I think you may have missed the most important part about failure and learning at the beginning.

I found this article really interesting.

I will add some of my own advice to your own valuable advice above:

After having sold a few thousand products via Amazon, I would recommend trying to ship and fulfill yourself, it's not rocket science. You will save $10 per product. You'll find that spending an hour Packaging and shipping 10 items will quickly pay for your time. Request the supplier to package the goods in untaped individual boxes. This cost adds pennies per product and saves you a lot here when reshipping.

Your points about doing QA in China is very valid, Alibaba even offers reputable QA inspectors as an upsell to your product purchase.

It may be worthwhile to find something that is selling well and list it New below the cost of the "sold by Amazon" version. You'd be surprised how many customers take the cheapest option over the fba variant (as long as shipping is quick and free). This way you do 0 marketing.

Marketing is important, but once you have critical mass and a good product you can relax a bit and coast off the reviews and Amazon algorithm to get some residual traffic.

Put up YouTube videos. These are the first things that come up in the search results when somebody searches for your product, free SEO and marketing. They will show the product in greater detail than Amazon product images and consumers will feel good seeing that it exists outside of Amazon.

Source premium packaging from other manufacturers on Alibaba. This can be very cheap and you can even cheat and send it to your product manufacturer for pre- packaging and ship it all together. The same notes about QA inspection apply. I've done this for complementary products like cables and bags.

Consider registering your trade mark, this is cheap and prevents your supplier or one of their other clients (ie their buddies) from at least copying it straight up and selling it on other marketplaces once you've done the hard work of making a coherent product page and videos.

Now, the hard part - customer service. Making sure you are responsive, that you're messaging properly post-sale and post-delivery and that you are responsive to Amazon's requests as well.

Doing your own fulfillment is a learning curve, and maybe you want to learn the ropes with FBA before jumping in, but really, giving >100% of your margin to Amazon for them to pick-and-ship is a bit heavy. At minimum I would list the product for FBA and new with free shipping at -5% so you can recoup a bit on those "direct" sales.

<comment><USER9> My mom's business sells both ways, seller fulfilled and FBA. You're leaving money on the table, the stark majority of Amazon's users are Prime and want their 2-day shipping. Her volume for any item is 3-20x for the FBA version.

<comment><USER10> Exactly this. I have sold both ways (seller fulfilled and FBA). Not only does FBA end up being basically the same price due to the large discounts Amazon gets, but you also get the 'prime' checkmark on your listing, which can be worth a significant amount.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As an FBA seller with mid 7-figure yearly revenue on the platform, I'd recommend it to no one as of about 6 months ago. I'm likely quitting soon.

Amazon's support for sellers is obscene, it pendulums between non-existent and a knife in the back.

<comment><USER9> How many units do you have in their FC's, that you need to draw down?

<comment><USER11> About 10000 at this point; the biggest problem is that our "home base" comfortably handles about 1000 units at a time and is already at ~500% of capacity (i.e. basically unworkable) due to problems Amazon has been handing us. So drawing down is going to be a nightmare.

<comment><USER9> Best of luck to you. Maybe this will help you feel better. My mom had 50K items. It's been a years long project of selling things at a loss (her stuff is in the $10-20 range) to have it cost less than the disposal fee, running promotions, taking advantage of the periodic disposal promos Amazon offers.

They haven't made it completely unworkable for her yet, but it's bad. Much of her line is unique, and we get these counterfeit cockroaches that sell on her listings (which is against this particular category's guidelines) and ship some piece of crap and gets negative reviews attached to the listing. Every time she opens a case to deal with the counterfeiter or bad review, she has to walk it through various obstacles thrown out by the agent, like it's day one on the job for each of them. It's a total nightmare.

She is working to pivot to a different type of category and sell to brick and mortar department stores. The type of hell they offer is looking pretty good compared to Amazon these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's very cool to see someone trying this out.

Any predictions on the outcomes?

(1) I sold a bunch of product and made money

(2) I sold a bunch of product and lost money

(3) No one wanted my product and I lost money

(4) I sold a bunch of product then Amazon started selling it for less and I lost money ?

Separately, I have been following the Keyboard.io backer updates for years now ( [https://shop.keyboard.io/](https://shop.keyboard.io/) ) which provide fairly thorough slice-of-life pictures of every step involved in creating a consumer electronic product from scratch in collaboration with manufacturers in China. It's not an exhaustive guide to the process but every step of the logistics we do get to read is fascinating. Lately I've been feeling like they could make more money teaching hardware startups to navigate this landscape than they could by selling the keyboards.

Also separately, I used to log 100k+ miles per year butt in seat flying for work and recreation, flying with carryons only but with a 3x 70lb baggage allotment and a modest duty-free allowance I never used, and I always wished I understood how to buy off-the-shelf consumer products that are cheap in one country then resell them in another. It seemed like it would be low risk because consumers can usually return unused merchandise. I figured there must be some way to buy iPads and sell them on Gumtree, meet up in Covent Garden and trade them for cash, then return any iPads I couldn't sell at a profit. I never found good docs of anyone doing this and always wondered whether it was logistically very hard (i.e. issues with customs or reliable resale) or whether it was just an area where people were quietly individually making a killing and didn't want competition. Ended up pretty much only using the free 3x 70 lbs to help move house when we moved overseas & came back.

<comment><USER13> Solid 3. The absolute arrogance of walking into a market as a complete amateur with low margins, admitting that he will "learn about marketing" while the product gets set up in the store is honestly laughable.

There are hundreds of thousands of people thinking about what the next niche to attack in online sales is. The work is on that end, not this silly, already done, repeatable, novel process of drop shipping.

<comment><USER14> Some people learn by preparing and some people learn by doing. It might be expensive but I bet this person will learn a ton for the next iteration. This guy is a hacker in my mind and I appreciate his approach.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So is the value proposition simply to buy items on Alibaba and resell on Amazon?

Very interesting. I await the conclusion. How long do you think it'll take to sell the lot?

<comment><USER16> He's spent over $2500 and his main batch of products from China haven't even arrived in the US yet. They still need to clear customs as well, which could further delay the items if any problems come up. That puts a lot of holiday selling in jeopardy.

This seems pretty risky. --Plus he still needs to store the items, sell them, ship them, and deal with the customer service aspect.-- (Clarification: He doesn't actually have to do these things, but pay the FBA fees for Amazon to do them: [https://services.amazon.com/fulfillment-by- amazon/pricing.ht...](https://services.amazon.com/fulfillment-by- amazon/pricing.html))

If his items happen to catch on and his supplier in China notices, there's also no real barrier to stop the suppliers (or friends of suppliers) from just cutting him out and creating duplicate product pages with slightly lower prices (which overseas suppliers have already succeeded at).

This is an experiment afterall, so it would still be interesting to see the results of a random person reselling items that aren't particularly unique and in a market with plenty of alternatives (handbags/accessories) with over sellers probably doing about the same thing.

<comment><USER17> Winners in this scenario: Amazon, Chinese factory owners, consumers.

Losers in this scenario: Chinese laborers, American "wantrepreneurs", and the environment.

<comment><USER18> Speaking as the frequent victim of flipped AliExpress knock off items purchased on Amazon (at 100% markup over the AliExpress price) -- I think you should put consumers in the losers column.

<comment><USER17> The quality is unacceptable/not as advertised? Then you most definitely are in the losers column, I agree.

It's rare that consumers win but most of my chinese made shit is way better than american, especially for the price.

<comment><USER16> Is the American stuff actually Made in USA, or is it American company that outsources manufacturing so it's still Made in China?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm an FBA seller doing mid 7 figures, it's certainly possible to be successful here and I have a lot of peers that are also pulling in multi 7 figures. The problem I see most beginners entering the business is that they're reading too many forums and watching too many Youtube videos thinking that there's a get rich quick scheme here. Let me tell you that there isn't.

Here's the secret, treat FBA like you would any other business - that means focusing on competitive advantages, barriers to entry, customer acquisition strategy, and other general business model type stuff.

For example, one of our best selling products took 2 years to develop, over $150k in R&D expenses, multiple patents and thousands in marketing to build the brand. It's currently making millions, but the road to get there certainly wasn't easy and it certainly wasn't "Off the shelf". No one talks about that stuff though because it's not sexy, it's just like any other business, you really have to put in the effort and think about what you're doing to get anywhere - or else like multiple comments have already said, the Chinese sellers will just totally crowd you out. And why shouldn't they? You have nothing special going on.

</comment><comment><USER20> Selling existing products would be the smarter way to go at the beginning. Less risk that your unique product doesn't catch on, and just focus on procurement and sale pricing (as well as learning the process and policy expectations).

I did just a bit over $1 million in sales over two years of my Amazon business and it was 99% existing major brand lines. Some I bought direct from manufacturer, some from other suppliers.

<comment><USER21> Do you pick a niche or just look for any products which has good margin? Also, do you use any tools to identify products or categories which are top selling? Appreciate any information

<comment><USER20> I did have a very specific niche in the industrial categories. It was a business that I used to work for a supplier for, so I was familiar with products and manufacturers and distributors.

For me, it wasn't so much identifying top selling products, but rather ones that I could compete on price. I did use a good many tools for all aspects of the business, but couldn't really share them now as I've basically shut all that out of memory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > _Buying UPC codes from GS1. This requires filling out a registration form on > GS1 and it costs 250$!_

> _Buying UPC codes from eBay or other websites. This is the easiest way and > it costs only 2$ for a UPC code! I did little bit research and found out > that many people are buying from eBay-like sites. So i decided to go with > the second option._

DO NOT DO THIS. You will get banned from Amazon and the codes you bought will be worthless -- not just the money but the codes printed on the products that will have to be redone.

Registering with GS1 is the way to go if you're serious; the cost is usually much less than $250, depending on where you are and the size of your business; and then with the registration you can generate as many codes as you want.

Or you can register a brand with FBA, and then apply to have no codes; if you only sell on Amazon it's a good option. Your products will only need an FNSKU number than Amazon generates for you.

See for example (many articles on the subject exist, just Google it)

[https://amzadvisers.com/amazon-gs1-barcode-requirements- are-...](https://amzadvisers.com/amazon-gs1-barcode-requirements-are-now- being-enforced/)

<comment><USER23> According to this[0] it costs 250 USD for 1-10 codes in the US. Where can you get them for cheaper?

[0]: [https://www.gs1us.org/upcs-barcodes-prefixes/get-started- gui...](https://www.gs1us.org/upcs-barcodes-prefixes/get-started-guide/get- your-upc-barcodes-from-gs1-us)

<comment><USER22> In France for a company with a turnover of up to EUR 500,000 it only costs EUR 85/year, for what I think is up to 1 million codes (you get a root number and can generate the codes yourself).

[https://www.gs1.fr/Obtenir-un-code-a-barres/Consultez-nos- ta...](https://www.gs1.fr/Obtenir-un-code-a-barres/Consultez-nos-tarifs-et- CGA)

<comment><USER23> Would Amazon accept those for FBA in the US? If not, then it may be tedious to register a legal entity abroad just to get cheaper UPCs that you can't even use. If they do, then it would be worthwhile building a list of countries with cheap/easy UPCs and cheap/easy legal entity registration.

<comment><USER22> UPC are international by nature. But the point is to have products registered with the right entity, so (I think) you should be able to demonstrate that the company who owns the codes is somehow affiliated with the company that sells the products.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Great deal for Amazon. 50% of the sales goes to them with 0 risk.

I wonder if after the monthly seller fee, the returns and any unsold merchandise, if they will make any profit at all.

<comment><USER25> To be fair, 15% is what they take as fees, and the rest is the shipping cost, which are likely realistic to expedite shipping a bag in the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> What strikes me the most here and there in this interesting blog is how the OP found immediate solutions to some of his problems just looking outside his door, instead of the internet. Why do not go with the full local route then, next time? Less adventorous than moving threads globally but hopefully more rewarding economically (time vs hassle vs ROI)?

<comment><USER27> Because most of the cheap production is in China / Indonesia / Vietnam. I doubt you can find many local products that you can sell with high margins, justifying all the Amazon fees and your time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've done this and continue to run a couple products on Amazon. I funnel all of my profits back into bizdev, including trademarks & patents, trying different advertising platforms, new product development, qa tools for my products, etc. I've done strictly private label so far, but there are some wholesaler price lists that I have which are intriguing.

If nothing else it's been a good way to teach myself marketing, imports, and more about IP law...I hope to do a hardware startup in future, which would likely involve Shenzhen manufacturing, so learning to find and interact with Chinese factories has also been valuable.

</comment><comment><USER29> In many ways this is an interesting business model - the author is largely acting as the financial backer and publisher, whereas everything from product design to manufacturing happens in China.

I wish the author tracked their time spent on this. The labor cost might be a killer overhead. Being very lean on process is probably a major factor in making it pay off.

</comment><comment><USER30> This reads like a guide released by amazon themselves. They've burned so many bridges with existing sellers they may be trying to lure in all new unsuspecting would be entrepreneurs that haven't been given multiple black eyes by them already. "Hey look, amazon was really a gentleman, maybe I should go out on a date too"

<comment><USER31> > They've burned so many bridges with existing sellers

Details for people not familiar with the Amz horror stories, please?

<comment><USER32> They raise fees with little notice, they lose inventory and make it difficult to get reimbursed, they charge double fees on returns even if the item doesn't get returned (and on some categories triple fees, in other categories they refund the customer without requiring a return and deduct that from our payments), they suspend accounts with a Kafkaesque appeal procedure with Indians deciding whether 7 figure sellers should be allowed to sell with only a few minutes to decide each case. I'm personally familiar with several suspensions, including one where they just stole over a million dollars worth of inventory/funds and then stopped replying.

They ask for invoices from sellers to "prove authenticity", claiming that's the only purpose, then mysteriously the vendor named in the invoice gets a call from Amazon the next week trying to source the product.

They make their own private label products and put links to them on other sellers' product pages, giving themselves free advertising.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I stumbled about that on YouTube, searched around and than accepted that it is probably something like Bitcoin.

Super risky and not worth it.

I keep working normally in my normal job.

Ah yeah BTW. This topic feels like a 'everyone is doing it because a few people use this topic to upsell there videos and referrals etc.'

<comment><USER32> Private label like OP is doing is the high risk high reward version. Wholesale is much less risk, but there tends to be lower margin. A lot of people recommend starting with wholesale or even retail arbitrage to get the hang of it.

Per Amazon figures, there are 20,000 sellers who sell over a million dollars a year. I know a lot of people in that range, but it does take capital to get there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I bought a huge course about this topic once.

I found the whole thing really interesting.

The troubles with Amazon accounts.

Designing your own products based on white label products.

etc.

I really wanted to do this, but I then learned that I had to send the products to my home first, so I can check if it's okay and _then_ send them to Amazon for fulfillment.

It sounded like a virtual business, I'd think about markets, design products, find factories in China who create stuff for me and then let them deliver to Amazon so they would sell it for me.

But suddenly I would have to sit with hundreds of products at home, checking them, putting new barcodes on them and driving them to the post office.

<comment><USER9> You can ship straight from factory to Amazon Fulfillment. But you better be sure your production is golden or you'll get killed by refunds, return handling fees and poor reviews.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> > However i figured out how to solve crash problem without upgrading my plan. > I just simply created a cron job which restart my server automatically every > 2 hours.

My favourite part!

</comment><comment><USER36> Amazon seller here, around a decade of experience, doing low eight digits on mostly exclusive products (trademark+IP on products).

Out of curiosity, but to the layperson, does the Amazon third-party marketplace seem like an exciting place to be? I feel like in 2016-2017 all the pickaxe sellers were popping up, and by 2018 all I see are a ton of burnout in my circle of vendor friends as they deal with the constant influx of 3p vendors with blackhat tactics.

</comment><comment><USER37> speedybarcodes says "At this time, you have no choice but to obtain barcodes from GS1 if you want to list your products on Amazon." on the additional information page.

I wonder what the fallout will be like when the boxes arrive at amazon and the UPC codes are considered to be invalid.

</comment><comment><USER38> I have done some of this and it is as speculative, competitive and risky as product market fit in startup land. You can make some money but you will probably make a lot more writing software.

It is still a lot of fun to go through the process and I learned a lot doing it.

<comment><USER39> I have done this also, but not on Amazon. Amazon is pretty expensive + competitive + I simply don't trust them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Have you experienced Amazon selling your "destroyed" items? I've always suspected that was the case but haven't confirmed it.

<comment><USER40> I'm pretty sure they do this. I also don't have a concrete case I can point to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Sorry, what does FBA stand for?

<comment><USER42> Fullfilled by Amazon.

It is the program where third party sellers can send their products to Amazons warehouses, and Amazon then handles the shipping to the customer. The big advantage is that this makes the products eligible for Amazon Prime, as opposed to products that get shipped by the third party themselves.

<comment><USER43> It's more insidious than that: Amazon commingling means that the merchants inventory which may be all counterfeit is indistinguishable from genuine articles prior to the buyer actually receiving it. If you want to be safe avoid _any_ product that has both Amazon and FBA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> > Master Yoga

ಠ_ಠ

<comment><USER45> I'm pretty sure that's included to irk Trekkies.

<comment><USER46> I'm upvoting you on the assumption that was intentional.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> The site seems to be down.

<comment><USER48> Yeah, getting ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> > to solve crash problem without upgrading my plan. I just simply created a > cron job which restart my server automatically every 2 hours

Love it, immensely :)

</comment><comment><USER50> You'd think someone involved in e-commerce would at least know that the dollar sign goes before the number and the percentage sign after.

<comment><USER51> Author is not from USA. It's common everywhere except for 'murica to put currency sign after the amount...

<comment><USER52> Nope. And it's not common to put % in front at all either.

This quirk identifies the author as having as their first language Arabic, perhaps Persian (where both styles are mixed), or Turkish (that one surprised me - RTL origin didn't): [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percent_sign](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percent_sign)</comment></comment></comment>


A simple document datastore using Redis - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/solso/jor The project provides storage for JSON documents that uses Redis as the backend data-store. JOR also provides a MongoDB-like query language for fast retrieval. <comment><USER2> I simply can't imagine a use-case where you would want this and MongoDB wouldn't be a better fit for the task. Redis is good at serving as a cache, it's a good centralized data structure service for decentralized computing systems, but it's not a great permanent storage mechanism.

<comment><AUTHOR> Redis persistence is very reliable, reliable enough to be a proper datastore when using replication (master-slave). We have been using it in prod for 4 years, with many GB and not a single problem. From my experience, redis is perfect for storage.

However, you have a point that if you are to use this setup, you could be better off using mongodb right away, it's a matter of trade-offs.

A use-case of JOR is, for instance, when you need to ship a system on the premises of your customer, or you have an embedded system. In such cases, the ease of configuration and maintenance of redis really pay off (we run both systems in production). You do not have all the power of MongoDB, only a fraction of it, but you also have a fraction of operations cost.

But I do agree, that if your system is big enough, or you have the resources for the proper mongodb setup, go for the real thing (mongodb) :-) JOR is some sort of middle approach, for those cases that you say, would be good to have the queries from mongo but it's just too much hassle to install it (in-house or in-premise).</comment></comment>


Ever app used customer photos to develop facial recognition tools - <AUTHOR> https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/millions-people-uploaded-photos-ever-app-then-company-used-them-n1003371 <comment><USER2> I would like to ask if it's possible to prove that your image went through a DLNN like the photos did here with Ever. Say Ever never kept any photo access logs and decided to delete the model training logs or didn't keep logs for that at all. If all you know is that your photo was on their service, and you had their deep learning model (eg. as evidence in court), could you prove that your image was used to train the network?

</comment><comment><USER2> Google has been doing this with Google Photos since its inception, the only difference being that Google actually uses it (in my opinion) for good by auto-tagging and offering search across your entire life of taking photos.</comment>


WSL2 will be generally available in Windows 10, version 2004 - <AUTHOR> https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/wsl2-will-be-generally-available-in-windows-10-version-2004/ <comment><USER2> When you start looking at what Microsoft can offer now re: Microsoft365, Dynamics365, Power Platform, Sharepoint, Azure, wsl, massive sales dept. with years of experience, etc., why would the enterprise ever go with anything else? Something tells me Azure will end up kicking Amazon's ass in the end.

<comment><USER3> That's what my company is doing. We're small, already a Windows shop, so it just makes sense to centralize on Azure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Huge wsl fan, really think software developers don't know how good windows is for software dev

<comment><USER5> You could run native Linux with VMware, VirtualBox forever if you mean a Linux environment on your Windows made any difference.

<comment><USER6> There has been always options (VM, cygwin etc) but WSL made this very fluent experience.

Interesting to see how WSL2 feels now that Linux things are actually running in separate VM.

<comment><USER7> Also WSL's filesystem integration is flawless

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> While this is a nice development, I personally still require running VMs and Hyper-V's GUI/console support is so limited I'm going to be forced to stick with VirtualBox for VMs.

Fortunately, Cygwin is fine for basic shell/utility stuff and using Cygwin also means that I can continue to use ssh-pageant (talks to putty's ssh agent) which isn't possible under WSL.

</comment><comment><USER9> How do drivers work? Like if I have an app talking to ALSA or something, can I get output from Windows?

<comment><USER10> They could in theory implement a sound device for the virtual kernel though I cannot see any information that they have actually done that from a quick search.

Some people have worked around this issue by setting up pulseaudio for windows and then connecting pulseaudio via network from WSL out to Windows. Works for both WSL1 and WSL2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nicw.

I'm still going into a docker for linux on windows dev but want to play with using WSL2 for this cycle (deploy is to linux machines / container images). Mostly just need to figure out tooling setup (pycharm / vs code)

</comment><comment><USER12> Nice. Been waiting long time for this.

</comment><comment><USER13> Somebody pinch me. This feels unreal!

</comment><comment><USER14> WSL appears to have significant adoption already.

Is there any advantage over simple multibooting?

<comment><USER15> Only semi-snarky answer: The song and dance of drivers, and not having to reboot.

Plenty of mainstream PC configs are going to be a hassle to get to functional parity on the Linux side. You can complain "it's deliberately crippled hardware/bad drivers" but odds are, the guy buying the fleet PCs are not checking if they're Linux-friendly.

If I just want to run some command-line dev tools, I can probably get there faster by installing WSL than trying to start with a Ubuntu ISO and setting up the nVidia drivers.

<comment><USER14> When the one buying the fleet PC's is a Bozo what can you do?

Give full credit to them for the capabilities while fully documenting the limitations compared to alternative choices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm now very interested what the performance comparing docker on mac vs docker on WSL2 looks like!

Why spend $4.000 on new mac for development if you can get $2.000 windows 10 machine that will give you same/similar/better? performance.

</comment><comment><USER17> Is this already out?

</comment><comment><USER18> It must've been tough to give up on WSL1 (to call it something), but it really sucked. It was full of bugs.</comment>


Ask HN: posted startup jobs at github, 37sigs, and only 6 resumes? - <AUTHOR>

We posted our startup jobs (pretty great jobs I'd say, exciting startup, well paid) in the best places we could think of:<p>* 37sigs: http://bit.ly/g24KTD<p>* Stackoverflow: http://bit.ly/gchGuU<p>* Github: http://bit.ly/dSzOvu<p>* and our blog of course http://blog.getgush.com/<p>Only 6 resumes in a week. Half of them worthless. Is this typical? I would have expected quite a few more applications, these job postings are fairly expensive. How have others faired with these job boards? Is there something wrong with/missing in our job posting? <comment><USER2> Your posting is too generic. You don't mention what you're working on or why I should be excited to work with you guys. You also make it sound like you use every major programing language/framework out there. Java, javascript, groovy, ruby, python, scala, ios, android, windows mobile its all there plus a bunch of frameworks and other tools. It all makes me have no idea what I would be applying for or to expect, so I personally wouldn't waste my time writing you a story about myself, which you are requesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, that's good feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> There's no indication of salary apart from "competitive".

"Working remotely is possible." How remote? Would I have to live in Canada? Is USA ok? Further afield? Would you want me to come into the office at least once a week? Once a month? Is "never" ok?

<comment><AUTHOR> You should be in Canada or move there. Salary is competitive means we tend to pay people more than they ask for. I guess you're saying it's too vague?

<comment><USER4> The rewrite is a lot better, and specifying Canada was important (dang, I'm job-hunting now and can't apply because of that).

<comment><AUTHOR> They have flexible immigration policies. Just apply :)

<comment><USER4> It sounds really interesting, but if we have to move for a job my wife would rather move somewhere warmer than the northeast, not colder!

Do keep in mind a lot of the boards are US-centric, which might also change the response rates.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Location. Location. Location.

I mentioned this in an article I wrote last week: [http://blog.coderstack.co.uk/lean-vs-vc-how-were-taking- on-s...](http://blog.coderstack.co.uk/lean-vs-vc-how-were-taking-on-stack- overflow)

But essentially it comes down to one of the biggest complaints about the job boards you've mentioned is that they charge the same price whichever city your in. Even if they only have a tiny handful of developers who would consider working in your city.

Your best bet is to use a specialist local job board if one exists or otherwise reach out through the local startup community.

</comment><comment><USER6> What do you do? I care significantly more about that than I do about what technology you use.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're pre-alpha, so I don't really want to tell the world yet, although I'll tell you all about that in an interview.

Does not saying what we do reduce the chances that you'd apply?

<comment><USER7> _Does not saying what we do reduce the chances that you'd apply?_

Reduce? Try "eliminate." I would never bother applying to a company where I don't even know what they're building.

If you're that alpha/stealth, you'll probably fare better recruiting locally through referrals from friends / colleagues / former co-workers / local user groups / etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Really? I'll happily spill the beans during an interview, I just don't want to post it out there just yet (we're barely getting started). Maybe I should reconsider that?

<comment><USER7> _Really?_

Yes.

 _I'll happily spill the beans during an interview,_

That's nice, but what's the incentive for people to come interview with you, just to find out what you're doing? Like others have said, you don't have to give away deep, deep details, but you need to at least give an abstract description of what you're doing.

 _I just don't want to post it out there just yet (we're barely getting started)._

I think you're worrying about this WAY too much. It's not like there's a gaggle of idea-starved hackers sitting around watching your job postings, just waiting for a chance to jump on your brilliant idea, execute it better than you, and steal your market from you. Somebody - I'm thinking Steve Blank, but don't quote me on this - said something like "If your idea is any good, you'll have to beat people over the head to get them to go along with it." I'd take that to heart if it were me. <shrug />

But if you really want to stay stealth, why not stick to recruiting locally through trusted connections? What you're trying to do here seems almost like a fundamental contradiction. "Advertise widely, but keep everything a secret." I'm having a hard time seeing how that's going to work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough, and good feedback.

We've updated the job postings with a little more info. We're basically in the photo space, but NOT another mobile photo sharing app.

<comment><USER7> Cool, that looks reasonable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickables: <http://blog.getgush.com/> <http://bit.ly/g24KTD> <http://bit.ly/gchGuU> <http://bit.ly/dSzOvu>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> ps: based on the feedback, we're editing the job description to be more practical and say more about the product:

[http://jobs.github.com/positions/45d7614a-4f24-11e0-9e2f-43f...](http://jobs.github.com/positions/45d7614a-4f24-11e0-9e2f-43f3ee22dd93)

</comment><comment><USER8> Just out of curiosity, why did you hide the other URLs behind bit.ly but not your own?

<comment><AUTHOR> The other were horrendous insults to good url design (even Stackoverflow's). The only one that was reasonable was 37sigs. I didn't really give it any thought, ours would only have been like 2 chars shorter. Or perhaps it was self-promotional instinct :)

<comment><USER9> You can also shorten the StackOverflow one:

<http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs/10660>

Also a note, HN automatically truncates overly-long URLs so you don't usually need to worry about pre-shortening.</comment></comment></comment>


Applying to YC as a Single Founder(for the 10000th time, Again) - <AUTHOR>

Hi All,
I know that this question has been asked here at least a Hundred times but I still have a couple of questions regarding this matter. I just noticed that the application for the upcoming semester is open and I really wanted to apply so I started reading all of PG's posts regarding the application process and even though PG's "How to Apply to Y Combinator" did answer a lot of the questions but I still wanted to wrap my mind around few things.
1: Does it hurt your application to not have a Co-Founder? (Since YC cares more about the founders than the idea) 2: I remember YC started "Apply to Y Combinator without an Idea" so should we spend more time on refining and defining the "About" section than the idea?
I know these are basic questions but this is my 2nd time applying to YC and I really want to dot all the T's and cross all the I's before submitting it again ☺
Thanks -Mr. Awesome <comment><USER2> For 1, see point 1 in here: <http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> Well I see the point but my startup is at point where I don't need a co founder, I can get by just fine by hiring a person on a contractual basis and he/she can get the job done.</comment></comment>


Apple broke WebAssembly on iOS and are leaving it broken - <AUTHOR> https://www.scirra.com/blog/218/apple-broke-webassembly-and-are-leaving-it-broken <comment><USER2> "and are leaving it broken".

> Confirmed resolved in iOS 11.3 beta 1.

> 3 days ago

<comment><USER3> That's good, but as the article says, the release date for 11.3 is "Spring".

<comment><USER4> Why is it that Apple can't manage to update their browser without updating the whole OS?

<comment><USER5> Because it's not just the browser, it's WebKit for the entire iOS.

<comment><USER6> Does it _have_ to be?

<comment><USER7> It would mean shipping 2 WebKit frameworks, once for Safari and one for the rest of the OS. Even then it could be fixed in Safari, but then sites still wouldn't work in Chrome, Firefox, or other apps with embedded browsers.

<comment><USER6> You mean just like Android does with Chrome? How hard is that? Why is this even worthy of debate? The browser is an application, not a system resource. To commingle the two makes no sense.

Unless you think it's worth saving a few mbs of storage to have two instances for security and stability??

<comment><USER5> It is a system resource to Apple. There are a set of basic "protected" system resources you are not allowed to touch. You can debate if that is an ecosystem you want, but that is what it currently is. You cannot replace the phone dialer, you cannot replace the SMS interface, you cannot modify buttons etc. It's mostly for two design reasons: maintain a consistent UX, and, protect users from themselves. And yes, users need that, and no, it's not forced upon them, you are free to not buy it.

The thing is, that for 99% of the users, the defaults work wonderfully and allow them to be super productive without having to toy with their device like they used to have to in the Windows Mobile and Palm days.

<comment><USER4> While I think it's stupid that I can't use real Firefox or Chrome on iPhone, GP's point is that it's stupid that even Apple (forgetting third parties) can't update its browser without an OS update, and he understandably can't believe that people are defending this.

<comment><USER5> I suppose the reasoning is that it doesn't matter when you have a WebKit-flaw. It doesn't matter if the browser gets an update if the average user is using 3-5 apps every day that use WebKit themselves and are still vulnerable. For example, StackExchange has a built-in browser using WebKit, as do Twitter and Facebook. Updating Apple's Browser (is it called Safari on iOS as well?) separately would fix about 20% of the attack surface, totally not enough for any sensible company.

<comment><USER4> Then they should update both simultaneously, like Android has done for years.

But not even being able to update even the browser by itself shows an extreme level of incompetence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is this Apple demonstrating nefarious behavior (ie, a battle against webapps), they don't care about webassembly (who knows why, lazy?) or are they incompetent?

There may be another option, but in my experience, they want all apps to go through their store and have been almost belligerent to web devs in their mobile Safari/iOS development.

Edit: Or is this article inaccurate? The browser as a system update is such an obviously bad MS style thing to do, how was this repeated by Apple? How come so many people aren't completely baffled/angered by this decision?

Edit 2: It looks like a comment on the article says it's fixed in an iOS beta update coming soon...

<comment><USER3> Given the timing, it looks like a Spectre mitigation accidentally broke it.

<comment><USER8> But how could they accidentally release it? WebAssembly has no tests at all? I don't get it.

<comment><USER9> Maybe it was a pragmatic decision to quickly fix something that effected everyone at the short term cost of a feature practically no one uses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> According to one of the comments on the blog post (I haven't tested this myself):

> Confirmed resolved in iOS 11.3 beta 1.

<comment> X-Istence [https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=181781#c4](https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=181781#c4)</comment></comment>


An iPad owner's quest to get a $99 TouchPad on Friday night - <AUTHOR> http://astroaficionado.net/2011/08/20/hp-touchpad-friday-love-story/

<comment><USER2> Someone needs to turn on caching.

In the meantime I'll share a doesn't-own-a-tablet-but-has-a-work-iPad guy's quest to get a $99 TouchPad on Friday night. I arrived home from work and saw the firesale news on the twitternetz. I immediately left my house and walked to the local Futureshop, not really expecting there to be any. They were out and directed me to Staples, who was also out. Meanwhile my friend was driving to the Futureshop and Costco just outside town. FS was out and Costco had 5 of them, stil priced at $500, but employees had taken them off the shelf since they were dropping the price the following day and they wanted to claim them.

I then checked The Source before giving up. London Drugs was surely out by that time, around 8:30 pm, and that was my last bet. One of the guys at The Source was willing to sell me his used 16 gb TouchPad for $200.

So I just came home, gave up, and am now lamenting all the TouchPads on eBay and Craigslist. I was apparently one of the few who actually wanted one. Hopefully nobody buys them and the price drops back down now that these people will be stuck with TouchPads they didn't actually want. I shouldn't complain too loudly though because my plan was to buy a 32 GB and 2x 16 GBs, then sell the 16 GBs at a profit to pay for my 32 GB.

(If you're curious, I'm furnishing a new place so I don't have a lot of disposable cash otherwise I would have just a bought a TouchPad at full price.)</comment>


Re: Factor: FizzBuzz - <AUTHOR> http://re-factor.blogspot.com/2011/08/fizzbuzz.html <comment><USER2> That reminds me - I really must go back to my analysis of the coding challenge I set ages ago. I got most of the way through, but never finished.

I ought to complete it.

In case you're interested, it was here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1383169>

I'm not accepting more submissions.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> FizzBuzz never feels natural to me in functional languages/style. The Python is much more readable.</comment>


Fiat Chrysler pushed a UConnect update that causes constant reboots - <AUTHOR> https://jalopnik.com/fiat-chrysler-pushed-a-uconnect-update-that-causes-cons-1822939437 <comment><USER2> They later posted on their Twitter feed that the problem was caused by SiriusXM, and as a stopgap fix they'd be disabling that. But this mostly sounds like a massive failure to follow software-industry best practices. In particular:

* They released the update a Friday (bad; you need staff ready to respond to problems

* They released the update to everyone at once (bad; you want to deploy to a small subset first, monitor that subset for problems, then deploy to the rest);

* They didn't have a rollback option ready

* They didn't isolate software components well enough (SiriusXM shouldn't be able to crash the whole OS)

* They didn't have good instrumentation - it took until Monday for them to find out there was a problem, and two days after that to find out which component was causing it.

The center-console software is mostly not safety critical, but there is some possibility for a problem there to be a safety issue, which makes these issues quite concerning.

<comment><USER3> The fact that they didn't do 5%/10%/25%/50%/100% rollout over a week or two is just pure amateur hour. It's like OTA 101 for this exact reason.

People always say the big 3 are going to catch up with Tesla but if anything this shows they have a heck of a long way to go.

<comment><USER4> > People always say the big 3 are going to catch up with Tesla...

Who are "people?" I don't own a Tesla, but from what I've read, they are not great at manufacturing, and that's something that takes awhile to fix. My guess is that companies with decades of experience in building physical things, but little in software, have a decent chance.

<comment><USER5> Agreed, like Blockbuster

<comment><USER4> Or Netflix. They got a whole lot worse as they started failing at shipping DVDs. Then BitTorrent ate their lunch.

EDIT: Unfortunately, Tesla is in the business of moving humans around, and they are physical things with mass and volume.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's things like this that make me enjoy older cars from the 80's and 90's.

I used to own an old Datsun truck. If anything went wrong, I knew that I'd most likely be able to fix it myself, or if I couldn't my mechanic could. There was no software to break, no security vulnerabilities that would cause the brakes to fail, no DRM requiring Genuine Datsun© lightbulbs for the lights to work.

Sure, the thing was a deathtrap, but I owned everything in that truck.

Things are a bit more locked down in 90's cars with fuel injection, as the injection system is a bit more specialised than a carb and they have an ECU. But even the ECU on 90's cars is fairly open.

Obviously there are a couple of fundamental flaws with older cars. The first is that older vehicles are a lot less safe than modern cars, the second being that they are a lot less reliable because they have usually done a lot of miles. They're also less fuel efficient.

I don't want or need an entertainment system in my car, all I need is a aux in, and I'm happy. I don't need my car to be connected to the internet, I don't need GPS, or the weather forecast, or any other dumb tech gimmick. I have a phone for all of that, and when my phone gets old, I can replace it. I can't replace the entertainment system in a modern car.

Luckily, there are still a lot of lower end cars that don't have all these "features". But what I would like is a higher end car, but without all the gimmicks, this is especially a problem with 4wd vehicles, they have too many electronic things in them. You can completely flood an old diesel Toyota Landcruiser or Hilux, and as long as your air intake is above the water, it will keep driving. You can't do that in a modern one.

<comment><USER7> I own a Toyota Celica Supra from 1985. I love the car to pieces - not only is it amazing to drive (absolutely no electronic interference between the driver and wheels), it is maintainable. I can access everything in the engine bay, the radio is an aftermarket JVC which Just. Works, I have aftermarket parking sensors fitted, and absolutely no internet connection.

The great thing about early fuel-injection vehicles is that they're phenomenally reliable. I have never heard of an ECU failing. The simple 8-bit microcontroller powering the Supra will just keep going and going and going. The brakes are purely hydraulic (no antilock, which okay, I accept is a bit of a problem when you drive cars that do have ABS). From the cylinder block to the wheels, it's purely mechanical transmission (stick-shift, clutch limited- slip diff). If something goes wrong, it's pretty obvious where the problem is, rather than chasing error codes that turn out to be a busted sensor buried deep in the engine and the thing it's monitoring is working fine. It has a beautiful, fancy electronic dashboard with VFDs for speed, fuel and temp, and LEDs for the rev counter, and it all works.

I wouldn't say the car is necessarily less safe than a modern vehicle, provided you respect its limitations. I am an alert and responsive driver, and I know how hard I can hit the brakes before the wheels lock up. I keep the tyres inflated, the brake fluid fresh and all the electrical components in working order. There's even a reassuring scenario that I hope never to experience - a driver of one of these cars once fell asleep on cruise control and crashed into a concrete barrier at 70MPH. The car was obliterated. The driver walked away, every bone in his hand broken, but considering the nature of the crash, it was incredible to think a 30-year-old car could protect the driver. The long engine bay acts as a huge crumple zone. The space-economy nature of modern cars seems to require a lot of creativity to allow for crumple zones to be squashed around the engine.

The reliability is also very subjective. Japanese engines and transmissions will long outlive the car they're fitted to. 300,000 miles and beyond is not unreachable. Bodywork suffers more, I have had to have lots of rust repaired on this car, and I'm struggling to source a few parts, but other than that, this 33-year-old car is fully working and starts first turn of the key. And on a long highway journey, I can get a good 500 miles out of the 60-litre fuel tank.

My family owned a brand new Land Rover Freelander, which was a pathetic off- roader - as you mention, once water gets into the electronics, it's game over. This happened once in a major flood and the car was never the same again. The car stalled, but eventually restarted, but never developed the same power. We eventually sold it for a Hilux Surf, much older, but the truck was considerably more rugged.

I have a real dislike for cars I'm not in full control of - my winter car is a Subaru Outback, and that has some annoying electronics. I'm constantly arguing with the automatic climate controls, which do what they like, and the electronic auto-box is sluggish and unresponsive in the extreme. It's a tough car, and a capable off-roader as I found out, but constantly second-guessing the driver is something I can't stand. I'm just thankful the car doesn't have OTA updates - I can imagine Subaru pushing new 'profiles' to the A/C and completely breaking it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> ....and this is why I don't ever want to own any car with a cellular radio and reflashable firmware. Why on earth would I want an automaker to have any control over my car after I've bought it, just because they happen to have manufactured it? No way. When the day comes that my only reasonable options are all vehicles manufactured after this noxious trend became universal, "how easy is it to disable the modem" will be one of my search criteria.

<comment><USER9> There is every chance that the car will say "warning, the firmware is 11 months old and must be updated or the car will not be usable in 30days"

With more and more features being "intelligent" (from driver aid to autonomous features) and the software being more and more complex, cars will ship with huge bug backlogs and critical issues will be discovered along the way (as well as changes to traffic laws, street signs and other things that must be patched in for the car to actually function).

Manufacturers can't risk having drivers drive around in old versions of the car. It hurts their brand. This (together with a few other other reasons) is why I think car "ownership" will soon be a thing of the past. Already we hear news of models that will never actually be possible to own.

<comment><USER8> Yes, you are describing the nightmare scenario I want to avoid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a bigger problem than the article indicates because it disables the rear-view camera.

The feds consider rear-view cameras essential safety equipment now, which is why they're required on every car made since 2015.

(Which is what makes the Honda ads so funny when they tout rear-view cameras as some great novelty they're giving you for free, when they're required to have them by law.)

<comment><USER11> This one confuses me. What's so safe about rear cameras? I guess if a little kid (or other very short person) is standing behind your car when you're reversing, but that's a failure of common-sense safety measures already.

<comment><USER12> Little kids don't observe common-sense safety measures, and can dart out behind a car before a parent even realizes what's happening.

Also the cameras usually have fairly wide-angle lenses. In situations like backing out of a spot in a parking lot, the camera often can spot vehicles or pedestrians that you otherwise would not see if you were just looking out your rear window.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I would seriously consider getting one of their cars (read: Hellcat!), but only if I could remove Uconnect and the associated computers/'entertainment' system altogether, or at least disconnect/disable the antennas, because there's no way I'm trusting my life to (random car manufacturer)'s idea of security. Not even Tesla.

To those who say this is a conspiracy theory: what happens when my newfangled car decides to kill me, or just takes over by accident? Unfortunately too many insane and unthinkable conspiracy theories have been proven true in the last few years. Can you imagine if every Intel processor had a flaw that allowed it to leak memory on demand, from in the browser? To wit: Chrysler/Jeep Cherokee, Toyota Prius, Audi, BMW, etc. People actually died due to sudden Prius acceleration and Toyota wouldn't provide any significant information, even under subpoena.

So, for me, I kinda like the idea of driving 2006 or older vehicles. Why I have to drive around my mobile phone/tracking device is beyond me anyway. (That's why I carry one.)

<comment><USER14> As a counter point: What if your old 2006 car decides to die while you're going 60+ on the highway because it's _old_ , and you die because it doesn't have as many safety features as newer cars do?

I mean, I get where you're coming from, I share some of the same worries you do, but the reality is that there is already hard evidence that newer cars are tons safer then older cars. It's really not clear to me that you can conclude that the chance of your new car deciding to kill you because of a software update/issue is a higher risk then the one you're taking by driving an old car. All of the examples you've given are more or less one-off events with newer cars, and they are serious, but people die _every day_ in crashes with old cars that they could have survived or could have been prevented completely with a newer car with better safety features.

<comment><USER15> >What if your old 2006 car decides to die while you're going 60+ on the highway because it's old, and you die because it doesn't have as many safety features as newer cars do?

Is there some middle ground? My 2007 Toyota Tundra drives fine, and has few software components (certainly nothing that is updating OTA). Is the 2018 really that much safer than 2007? Even the body style was only updated a couple of years ago.

<comment><USER14> > Is the 2018 really that much safer than 2007?

Yes. The raw stats show that newer cars half around a 50% reduction in fatal accidents. You can find the stats here[0], but the relevant information is below (Sorry the formatting isn't great. You can find this exact chart from the linked page, the important point is that the numbers are about half of what they were):

        Occupant deaths per million registered passenger vehicles 1-3 years old, 1978-2016
        Year	Drivers 	All occupants
        Cars 	Pickups 	SUVs 	All passenger vehicles 	Cars 	Pickups 	SUVs 	All passenger vehicles

        2006	77	101	49	73	112	137	74	106
        2007	70	95	44	67	104	128	69	99
        2008	65	87	35	61	92	114	52	85
        2009	57	63	25	49	82	83	36	69
        2010	49	64	20	43	71	80	29	61
        2011	43	49	17	37	62	66	24	52
        2012	42	44	16	35	61	56	23	49
        2013	41	39	19	34	58	52	26	48
        2014	37	38	18	32	53	47	24	44
        2015	42	40	20	35	62	52	29	51
        2016	43	39	21	35	63	48	32	51

A lot of things are simple, like standard back-up cameras. Newer cars also have stronger frames and more air bags (Especially side airbags, which your car almost definitely lacks).

One feature in particular, ESC[1][2], is probably not on your car but is mandatory for all cars 2012 and later, and IIHS estimated in 2006 that if the feature was standard on every car it would prevent as much as 1/3 of all fatal crashes each year (And of course, the above charts don't disagree with this estimate).

[0] [http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general- statistics/fatalit...](http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general- statistics/fatalityfacts/passenger-vehicles)

[1] [http://www.iihs.org/iihs/news/desktopnews/electronic- stabili...](http://www.iihs.org/iihs/news/desktopnews/electronic-stability- control-could-prevent-nearly-one-third-of-all-fatal-crashes-and-reduce- rollover-risk-by-as-much-as-80-effect-is-found-on-single-and-multiple-vehicle- crashes)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_stability_control#E...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_stability_control#Effectiveness)

<comment><USER16> "50% reduction" sounds impressive, but it starts to lose meaning when cars are already so safe. These are pretty low numbers, out of a million. My annual survival chances go from 99.993% to 99.997%, which is great on a population scale but essentially meaningless on a personal one.

For age groups 25-64, car accidents aren't even the most deadly type of accidental injury: accidental poisoning has twice the fatality rate [1]. If this were a software system and I proposed buying a newer car, my manager would be annoyed at me for micro-optimizing the wrong thing.

[1]: [https://www.cdc.gov/injury/images/lc- charts/leading_causes_o...](https://www.cdc.gov/injury/images/lc- charts/leading_causes_of_injury_deaths_unintentional_injury_2015_1050w760h.gif)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I bet they didn't realize that deploying software updates to an embedded computer/OS like this effectively makes them an operating system vendor, and that they now need the same operations expertise as Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc. I hope they take lessons from the software industry and don't spend years relearning update best-practices.

<comment><USER18> The software industry is still relearning update best-practises, just look at Android fragmentation and how a mere 1.1% of users are running the latest version [1], or the entire Internet of Things [2]. If Google cannot manage to keep Android users relatively up to date (And yes, I am blaming Google), what are the odds that a random automaker will fare better.

\---

[1] [https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards](https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards)

[2] [https://twitter.com/internetofshit](https://twitter.com/internetofshit)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder it they will be able to fix this OTA, or will require a trip to the dealer. How can you perform a firmware update on a system rebooting every 45 seconds?

<comment><USER20> Only other possibility is a download to a USB stick. Not sure if they have this option though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I bought a new Accord two months ago. Where the tachometer is is actually a display that can be cycled; it started flaking out immediately when I did anything with the audio. Took a week to put new parts in.

Now CarPlay stopped working. I fear another week to repair/replace.

Not quite as serious as UConnect issue, but I totally feel people when they say they'd rather have less technology.

</comment><comment><USER22> My Fiat 500e's Remote/Status iPhone application hasn't worked in months, through at least 2 iOS updates. The app starts up, then crashes immediately. Are the Fiat Chrysler folks not paying enough to retain good devs?

</comment><comment><USER23> Anyone else excited for these systems to start driving cars?! It's gonna be faaaaaan-tastic.

</comment><comment><USER24> If you were to choose a car solely because of its infotainment system, what would you go with? Thought about that as was struggling with a conference call from my car this morning. Being able to do stuff like listen to podcasts, navigating via Google Maps, etc, as easily as possible might actually be my top car buying criterion.

<comment><USER25> Except for the obvious instant issue, the UConnect infotainment system is actually pretty nice, IMO.

<comment><USER24> And it can come attached to a Dodge Charger or Challenger, both of which have a kind of primitive, hypnotic appeal to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Car companies seem exceptionally bad at both software and hardware. Not only does the tech lag years behind the industry, it's horrendously designed. Like, your media network should be airgapped from your critical systems, but in practice they are not. This allows people to make your car slam on its breaks using nothing more than radio waves.

</comment><comment><USER27> Url changed from [https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/13/17007332/fiat-chrysler- uc...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/13/17007332/fiat-chrysler-uconnect- update-reboot-problem-broken), which points to this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> These are the companies that we trust to build us "safer than human drivers" self-driving cars, yes?

<comment><USER29> I can tell you for sure that the way they make software for engine, transmission, safety break, lane assist etc. is very different than the way they make software for anything not safety related. The ultimate luxury they provide is time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This likely qualifies under "lemon laws" to permit new car owners the ability to rescind their purchase; I'm surprised no one has done so yet.

EDIT: I don't think it's something worth doing for its own sake, but someone pursuing such an approach might be able to compel a more coherent reply from Fiat-Chrysler than a reporter alone.

<comment><USER31> How?

Lemon Laws require a persistent unreasonable issue to invoke.

<comment><USER30> 3 days of "entire nav and sound system now completely inoperable" out of, say, 30 days of lemon law window, would theoretically qualify as both persistent and unreasonable in a new car — _if_ the selling dealership says they are unable to resolve the issue, and they are unable to provide a timeline for resolution of the issue, when asked.

This would be less arguable if the manufacturer simply shipped the same nav+audio in all cars worldwide, but since they usually reserve this sort of thing for "fancy expensive upgrade options", selling a fancy option that goes dead within a week and stays dead without a timeline for repair is quite in- scope for Lemon concerns.

<comment><USER32> My parents went through a lemon law case on a Corvette related to the electronic system and alarm. The car would either set off alarm or electronic system wouldn't start the car. It took them 5 tows, hours of phone calls and a few trips to the dealer before GM was willing to accept.

Lemon law exists but its not as simple as my car rebooted last few days, take it back.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Choppr – Take control of your commute through flight - <AUTHOR> http://choppr.io/ <comment><USER2> Is this a joke? I... I can't tell.

</comment><comment><USER3> How bout a water taxi.</comment>


Human origins: Are we hybrids? - <AUTHOR> http://www.macroevolution.net/human-origins.html <comment><USER2> In high school we had to dissect fetal pigs. We were told the reason is that the fetal pig is nearly indistinguishable from fetal humans.</comment>