U.S. Army, Uber sign research agreement - <AUTHOR> https://www.army.mil/article/204882/us_army_uber_sign_research_agreement <comment><USER2> Interesting, military only gave ~$1M for such an ambitious project while Uber is burning billions a year and could easily afford this.

My speculation is that this partnership is first and foremost an attempt to provide Uber with a patina of respectability for this attempt and access to military technical expertise. Uber just crashed and burned on self driving, something it desperately needs to quench its towering money fires. Uber's investors know that. Therefore, Uber needs to constantly appear to be "innovating" in flashy ways to keep its investors at bay with seductive promises of even greater riches.

This, even if the entire idea of flying cars driven by normal humans is insane or worse, piloted by a company known for breaking rules (now in Aviation of all things!) and have the dubious honor of being the first to kill a woman with self-driving AI.

It helps to have connections to get these contracts yo. And of course, yet another major American company cooperating with defense. Military-industrial complex indeed. Every peaceful venture must be tied to the killing machine. All the cool kids are, like Google and its TF support for drone assassinations.

EDIT: added technical expertise to 2nd paragraph

<comment><USER3> This is a cooperative research and development agreement ("CRADA"), which is generally a technology sharing vehicle. Money flows from the non-federal party to the federal party on these agreements. Looks like ARL is matching the funds, so Uber is putting $500k on the CRADA and ARL will reciprocate with $500k in sole-source funding on an actual contracting vehicle. I'd be surprised if the $500k paid for anything more than a proof of concept demonstration on both sides.

<comment><USER4> I have done multiple CRADAs and frankly believe they are the most underutilized tool in the tech industry, they're the intellectual equivalent of buying mining rights for $5/acre.

The government has staggeringly interesting problems that need solving and sole access to some very interesting data, which they will happily share as long as you bring your own pick-axe and shovel.

Go to federallabs.org and start shopping. It's not Amazon, you'll have to actually go to some of these places and meet the custodians of the problems and data, but it's worth it.

I've said Google is where the future falls from the sky like rain. These labs are like the Mississippi River basin, all the water goes here.

The key is prospecting. You want to look around, get a good idea of how big a particular reserve is, and go for something big. You may have to start small, but keep your eye on the prize and work up a glide slope. You can get there. The law was created so you can get there.

Key programs

* Veterans Affairs

* DoD: too many labs to name, coordinated by each service, ONR, AFRL, and ARL

* NOAA

* DoE

* DoI

* DHS

Really, get a look at the Death and Taxes Poster if you want to shop by category. But the labs are the shelves lined with product you need to shop through.

[https://www.timeplots.com/products/death-and- taxes-2016](https://www.timeplots.com/products/death-and-taxes-2016)

<comment><USER5> This sounds super interesting but my knowledge in this area is too limited to fully get what you're saying.

 _they 're the intellectual equivalent of buying mining rights for $5/acre ... The key is prospecting. You want to look around, get a good idea of how big a particular reserve is, and go for something big._

Could you elaborate on this a little or give an example?

As far as I understand CRADA is "cooperative R&D", so each side contributes to the R&D of some subject. Wikipedia says

"Private corporations participating in a CRADA are allowed to file for patent, and they retain patent rights on inventions developed by the CRADA. The government gets a license to the patents"

So if the govt already gets a license to the patents, and the tech has been developed with defense purposes in mind, how am I going to profit as a private company?

<comment><USER4> > So if the govt already gets a license to the patents, and the tech has been > developed with defense purposes in mind, how am I going to profit as a > private company?

Let's break that down a bit...

So the government has patent rights. They'd have to exercise them, which requires product development. Are you aware of the government selling many widgets to citizens? They sell road maintenance, insurance, and security services. But they don't really sell citizens "things".

Companies are savvy. If the government approached you and said "we have this patented tech, we want you to use it in this widget", now that you know about CRADAs, wouldn't you be a bit worried about a lawsuit from the other people who have rights on that patent?

Further, without commercialization, the government has rights on that one thing. They don't have rights on version 2, or even version 1.1.

You mention defense. Why? Are you in the defense business? Dept of Transportation might be better for self-driving cars. DoE or NIST might be better high tech partners. USDA or FDA if your in the food space. Etc.

<comment><USER5> Ok, I get the patent part. But what I was mostly interested in is how you see CRADAs help companies make money.

To me CRADAs just sound like a vehicle to share R&D costs, which, in most companies, aren't dominating the budget. So they can be a nice help but no game-changer.

However you mentioned "mining rights" and "going for something big", so it sounded like there's another way to look at this, which I was interested to hear about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can see Uber doing R&D in autonomous cars, I see that an extension - and the next logical steps - for transportation as we know it.

But, when I read:

"The joint work statement focuses on research to create the first usable stacked co-rotating rotors or propellers; this is a concept for having two rotor systems placed on top of each other and rotating in the same direction."

I scratch my head: where is Uber's domain expertise in this?

<comment><USER7> It's a $500,000 dollar research grant, I assume the military gives out a _lot_ of these and almost none make press releases. Uber has talked about flying cars before, so that's the experience answer.

<comment><USER8> I also talked about flying cars before, how is that "experience"?

<comment><USER7> Do you have people on staff working on building flying cars? If so you too can probably match the government for $500,000 and research the topic.

<comment><USER8> > Do you have people on staff working on building flying cars?

Does Uber? They sure talk about things a lot and yet, there is very little - if any - proof of them doing actual work on "flying cars".

I'm inclined to agree with other comments that this is mostly a PR stunt for Uber.

<comment><USER9> UberElevate Summit Videos:

Part 1: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWvQuk0_xjs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWvQuk0_xjs)

Part 2: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uELtDHITGo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uELtDHITGo)

You can see that they do have people actually working on various important aspects of urban aviation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Isn't it ironic whilst Google's engineers are mass protesting against military contracts, Uber already signed a whole bunch without any moral dilemma whatsover. Tells a lot about the company ethics there.

On a separate note, could someone enlighten how stacked co-rotoring (moving towards the same direction) may make the aircraft silent and not noisier?

<comment><USER11> > "Google's engineers are mass protesting"

~12 Google employees resigned. Out of ~4,000 signers to the petition. Out of ~74,000 total employees. A drop in the bucket. Clearly the vast majority of google employees don't care, rationalize away, or excuse the fact that they work for the military industrial complex.

<comment><USER12> 5.6% of staff signed a petition and 1.6% resigned.

In comparison, the largest petition in the US was 4.6 million signatures, a mere 1.8% of the working age population.

<comment><USER13> >> ~12 Google employees resigned. Out of ~4,000 signers to the petition. Out of ~74,000 total employees.

> 5.6% of staff signed a petition and 1.6% resigned.

1.6% would be almost 12,000, not 12. I'm not familiar with this case but a quick search corroborated that it was a dozen employees that walked out.

<comment><USER14> 1.6% of 74000 is approx 1200, not 12000.

<comment><USER13> Actually it's 120

<comment><USER15> 74000 * 1,6 / 100 = 1184

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So the army saw how Uber's driverless cars handle pedestrians crossing a road and said "shut up and take my money"?

<comment><USER17> They probably didn't even think or care about it. I bet someone on the board reached for some connections and it just happened to be the military. A lot of that stuff happens behind the scenes even though officially the is a bid and proposal process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> >Uber and the Army's research lab expect to spend a combined total of $1 million in funding for this research; this funding will be divided equally between each party.

That's about 8 person-years in salary. Given Uber's scale that doesn't make any sense.

<comment><USER19> Could it be a front for some other kind of deal? It sounds a bit paranoid but if it's classified they wouldn't tell us anyway.

<comment><USER20> Most probably from government side this is purely a bold "In case these guys manage to do it we don't want the tech to fall to hands of <insert random country> so let's get contract on their R&D now and keep eye on it. If they succeed we'll push for exclusivity and if they fail, well it's a million, who cares. We're already some 20 trillion in debt so pish posh."

<comment><USER21> It was a 500k match not 1 million.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Or would it be time to give up on Uber and finally admit that they're neither a technology company nor anything else "groundbreaking" that Valley thinks they are.

"Technology" for the company has been coming up with a mobile app to connect drivers and potential customers - something hardly groundbreaking. Probably the most groundbreaking technological thing coming from these guys has been the multiple evasion software etc which at the end of the day are not only just sketchy to begin with but also not really anything worth their company valuation, even on the defense contracting etc where such applications could become worth something if you have slick enough lobbying/sales people.

And while their efforts to "disrupt" the taxi economy have been "great" in all honesty they've only created room for their competition to benefit on this - Uber has simply managed to take a business (taxis) and run it to chaos while what would've been the logical step was to run a similar application by the taxi companies for ride hailing.

The US defense collaboration we can only speculate on but presumably this is either government wanting to get their hands on the Uber spying software or taking their bet that if these dimwits ever come up with anything technological they can always call for it - why spend billions upon billions on R&D when you can get a bunch of small contracts for which you can negotiate exclusive rights for upcoming R&D by the companies.

My question simply is - why do you care of anything Uber anymore? After everything this company has proven to be from the law enforcement evasion to sexual harassment scandals and borderline impossible "innovations" (like seriously, who seriously thought these guys can figure out the self-driving cars etc when the 2 of the biggest technology corporations with virtually unlimited experience, know-how, funding and partnerships haven't done so yet?).

At best this would be proper honest R&D but in my honest opinion there's no way Uber is that far with the tech and no way US Army is doing R&D for civil purposes, you take into account the miniscule contract value etc and it's rather clear that this is either publicity stunt by Uber to save their sinking ship or direct tech takeover from government. In either case there's hardly anything news worthy and even less anything worth of spending time - let is sink and someone will build a better, functioning ship to take people across the busy streets of New York in some vehicle whether it's flying or on the ground.

<comment> dan-0 > "Technology" for the company has been coming up with a mobile app to connect > drivers and potential customers - something hardly groundbreaking.

> And while their efforts to "disrupt" the taxi economy have been "great" in > all honesty they've only created room for their competition to benefit on > this - Uber has simply managed to take a business (taxis) and run it to > chaos while what would've been the logical step was to run a similar > application by the taxi companies for ride hailing.

These two statements are contradictory.

While I'm not a fan of many things Uber does, this was something that was groundbreaking at the time, less than 10 years ago. If you lived in a big city before Uber/Lyft/etc you have fond memories of getting ripped off and taken advantage of, taking bad routes, dangerously manuvering through traffic, and either having to walk to a main thoroughfare or wait 30 minutes for the taxi that was supposed to be dispatched in 10 when you called for one. And good luck having anything come out of a complaint to the city over violations of passenger rights laws.

Now, regardless of what the complaints are against Uber, you can get a way more affordable ride, at a fixed price, on a mapped route, whose livelihood actually depends on how good they are (ratings), and know when/where your ride is almost as soon as you order it.

Even now where you'd expect taxi companies to take a stance to provide better services, they're devoting more resources to lobbying local government to control "ride share" companies. Mean while, all they'd have to do is provide a rating system, fixed prices over mapped routes, and an app to order a taxi and I'd be happy. Just enforcing that they use some direction service that can route around traffic would probably be enough for me. Instead, it seems they prey on locations full of non city tourist (like airports, train station, and attractions) that don't know any better.

Uber has undoubtedly done bad things, but to say they aren't a technology company and that what they did (and still are doing) isn't groundbreaking is wrong.

<comment><USER20> Not to get nitpicky here but the statements are not in contradiction - one is stating what was the "technological breakthrough" of Uber and another is stating that their disruption of the industry they wanted to affect hasn't really gone their (or anyone else's) way. I'm not really sure if that what they created in the industry (taxis) and what their basically core and original product is (app which connects drivers and customers) are in contradiction here.

Good comparisons imo in regards to the disruption if that bothers here would be something like PayPal or even AirBnB which disrupted the industries they work within, and did it in a way that created positive progress and actually both companies are still on route to making that disruption of old wasteful industries better - Uber didn't do this and has long given up on anything except trying to burn as much money as possible (just a personal opinion).

Yes Uber (and Lyft etc) did a disruption in what you mentioned and I fully agree with your points on the issues with taxi traffic previously (and to some extent still, even with these lovely ride sharing companies). However one has to simply wonder if all that would've been possible with just providing product for taxi companies (and individuals) offering the benefits of this disruption - mapped rides with feedback system and pre-determined rates. Also what has to be taken into account here is that some of these features already existed within the industry, while maybe not in US they still existed.

The ride thing, I agree here albeit Uber has been, and still is the most expensive option (in a lot of countries it's even more expensive than those taxis taking the bad routes etc). Mapped routes (aka GPS) isn't Uber invention btw, it's called navigation and has been there since 1995. The rating system works (technically) and gives an incentive for the drivers which I think think all can agree is a good thing. Then again what if someone just came up with app that provides feedback system and price calculations based on the length of the trip and variables in traffic and offered that to the taxi companies and individuals (and why not for everyone with a smart phone), would that cost 2,8 billion as loss annually. Dunno.

The taxi companies are taking a bad fight here admittedly and in no way I think either party's lobbying efforts are really making any progress here with traditional business trying to fight for the "fossils & fuels" so to say and the new players trying to not just enhance but break the existing legal regulations etc. Either party really isn't looking to create anything new nor improve, but more so at the end just fighting for the money, and well guess it's business but I agree here that the traditional taxis really aren't helping their case either.

To say Uber isn't a technology company is a thin red line imo, it's not a technology company as Google nor Stripe, they aren't really doing technological innovations nor products but more so sociological and business related disruptions. Their app might've been the first there and they might've jumped on every single branch of technology from aerospace to AI and food delivery. What I mean with this is that their innovations within the technology space have been rather miniscule (in comparison to other companies that actually work with technology, or Dominos for that matter of working with food delivery and through that in hospitality) when taken into comparison with the massive impact they seem to have in the industry. Or would you consider saying that naming a product which essentially is a standard equipment in cars, albeit it's fancy name of UberKIDS, a child safety seat (and not a fancy high-tech one, just having that in a car) is a technological breakthrough or, well anything technological? I don't know, just tossing my 5 cents in the pool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Uber misses no opportunity not to like them.

</comment><comment><USER23> And when the agreement completes they'll each gain +200 science.

</comment><comment><USER24> It's good that the US isn't at war in Iraq any more. Uber's surge pricing would bankrupt them.

</comment><comment><USER25> Guessing this refers to [http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8640985.html](http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8640985.html) : multiple co-axial rotors spinning in the same direction sounds a bit odd but evidently does something clever with wakes to increase lift / reduce noise.

<comment><USER26> Well, jet engines are internally co-axial rotors spinning in the same direction (except for some with contra rotating HP and LP).

<comment><USER27> That comparison only really holds if you ignore the stators, which the rotors are reacting against.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Good reason for legislators to kick Uber out of their country.

<comment><USER29> I think this is definitely true. There are many countries in the world that are looking for an excuse to turn public opinion against Uber, and having the US Army as a partner is definitely a good way to do that.

<comment><USER30> And then they can also scrap all of the planes, space programs, tor networks, telephones and just about every other modern technology that the US Military has in someway funded

<comment><USER29> The way this tends to work is not rational, it's reactionary and often punitive. It doesn't matter if product X also was partially funded by US Army, if regulators don't like Uber, this is yet another thing to create that argument with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Will Uber aquire the necessary licenses from the FAA to fly these things or will they also ignore those because they want to 'disrupt' the industry? Theses things better be safe before they get used.

I for one don't want one if these things crashing on my house.

<comment><USER32> They sort of have to right? If they don't its going to be obvious and the government should come down on them.

I guess the world isn't perfect but we at least have regulation for things we put in the air that we won't for self driving cars or ride sharing etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> You can see a picture of the "stacked co-rotating rotors" on their partners website: [http://www.launchpnt.com/](http://www.launchpnt.com/)

</comment><comment><USER34> Two guesses:

\- Uber has ambitions to build a Volocopter [1] alternative

\- Uber wants to become an US Army contractor (probably to utilize their AI technology for drones or self driving supply trucks/tanks)

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tODIvUmH6cs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tODIvUmH6cs)

</comment><comment><USER35> >To date, stacked co-rotating rotors have not been deployed in existing flying craft.

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

What am I missing?

<comment><USER36> Existing systems are contra-rotating, this research is co-rotating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> If both rotors spin the same direction, what keeps the aircraft body from rotating the other direction? Is there a tail rotor?

<comment><USER20> Good questions, even better question would be how did we figure out quantum theory etc but couldn't figure that twice the vertical lift from 2 rotors is more than lift single rotor? How's this something credited to Uber? Dunno.

<comment><USER38> Tandem rotors have been around for almost a century.

What they're doing here is stacking rotors on top of each other, not for lift, but apparently because it's quieter and allows for 'better performance' .. whatever that means.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I find it interesting that Uber wants to do everything except find people rides.

I'll continue using Lyft. Uber is going to either get lucky with something and also be the Uber Of That or they're going to burn hard by forgetting what it is they are supposed to be doing.

</comment><comment><USER40> Wow....salute to this

</comment><comment><USER41> "US Army hoping to learn from Uber's UAV killing machines"

<comment><USER42> It's called the Uber CrowdControl™ technology. It could prove useful in enemy territory when surrounded by hostile forces.

<comment><USER43> If not, they activate Surge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> It's about time i can order a black M1 Abrams to get me to the club in style!

</comment><comment><USER45> Are they going to equip all Uber cars with a standard charge of explosive in case one of their customer need to disapear?

</comment><comment><USER46> I wonder if any Uber staff will resign in protest. I wonder if customers and drivers in countries not entire aligned with US imperialism will vote with their feet too.

<comment><USER47> US imperialism? Go away troll.

<comment><USER2> Afghanistan. Iraq. Central America. Indonesia. Korea. Vietnam. We can do this for a while and that's just the overt military interventions not counting colonization by American business and capitalist ideology.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> One would think Uber has enough problems recruiting and retaining talented people, what with "go fast and break things (people)".

Now it's not just casual misogyny and user surveillance. Your work may actually kill people when used as intended.

<comment><USER49> > Your work may actually kill people when used as intended.

Are you intentionally being completely oblivious to the fact that many people believe this consequence to be a good thing for them and humanity as a whole? I don't want to get into the debate about whether this belief is true or not; I'm just curious as to why HN commenters so often pretend that people with different political beliefs don't exist at all, or are only pretending to have these beliefs out of some other, hidden, true reasons.

Even if you don't agree with some political stance, it's just strange to convince yourself that nobody sincerely believes it.

<comment><USER50> I don't think that's a fair criticism here.

The parent didn't say "Don't you know this will kill people!?" they said "This will kill people".

<comment><USER49> It also implied that this fact carries a certain value judgement, ignoring the reality that said value judgement may just as well be completely the opposite.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: K-ramel (JS state manager, be productive) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/alakarteio/k-ramel <comment><AUTHOR> Because k-ramel:

\- is fast

\- is immutable

\- is modular

\- encourages to decouple UI and state management

\- encourages to not have side effect into your business logic

\- has a light bundle size footprint (with http driver)

\- works with redux-dev-tools

<comment><AUTHOR> I use it with some of my clients and it turns pretty well:

\- very little footprint

\- easy to dev with it, my clients are very productive once I leave them with the base code

I will be honnored if you give it a try!</comment></comment>


Random number generators - <AUTHOR> https://www.badbug.id.au/of-random-and-randomness/ This post mostly makes sense but ughh. theoretically. for instance, /dev/random is almost useless because it blocks frequently. kind of moot. <comment><AUTHOR> Lot of things the author mentions isn't valid for practical world. Apache (with TLS/SSL) with /dev/random is asking for trouble; meaning, client's requests will just block forever if not enough seed cannot be generated (same with TLS/SSL aware postfix). A lot of software out there in use that require real-world RNG thus default to /dev/urandom. I am not sure whether its good or bad.

I know that on osx atleast, Yarrow kind of shields the fact that /dev/urandom and /dev/random produce non-blocking RNG.</comment>


Ask HN: How do I anonymize a user's IP Address? - <AUTHOR> For instance, take the IP address of "215.54.387.9"...if I simply use "215.54.387" and leave out the last "9" is that enough so that the IP address cannot be traced back to the user? My understanding is that a government entity, etc needs to match the HTTP referer in combination w/ the full IP address to track down the user's information, or am I wrong? Also, how would I deal with IPV6 addresses? <comment><USER2> _" I simply use '215.54.387' and leave out the last '9' is that enough so that the IP address cannot be traced back to the user?"_

A single company could easily own all 256 IP addresses in 215.54.87.*. (Larger companies can own even larger blocks of IP addresses.) So just dropping the last number doesn't offer much anonymity. For example, once somebody traced the address down to XYZ Company, that company might be able to give them a log of all outgoing traffic tied to specific employees' machines. Even an ISP might be able to link a partial IP address to a specific user if they can search their logs for a specific date/time/destination.

(Note: '387' could never be a component of an IPv4 address, since each component is 8 bits, or 0-255.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Do you NEED this information in your DB? Can you live without it? If so, just don't store the IP addresses.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm really trying to solve my other question: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11511793](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11511793)

I thought I'd break it up since it really is 2 questions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> a) please do not delete & repost, it's against HNs rules

b) You can't maintain a 1:1 mapping and anonymity, if I know your algorithm it's trivial to try all IP addresses and get a mapping to do a reverse look up. You need to throw away data to make it ambiguous, e.g. in probabilistic data structures like bloom filters.

I don't know what a snooper would want with the HTTP referrer information.

<comment><AUTHOR> didn't delete. I edited my other question (which has a different focus) and then posted this.

<comment><USER4> Ok, sorry, I just remembered seeing the question shortly before and couldn't find it again ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You can use HMAC:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash- based_message_authenticat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash- based_message_authentication_code)</comment>


Analogue Pocket taking Pre-orders August 3rd - <AUTHOR> https://www.analogue.co/store#pocket <comment><AUTHOR> This is the only recent thread I found that has any comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21272013](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21272013)

The device looks interesting, basically FPGA Game Boy with some adapters for other 16 bit consoles, but with generally modern hardware.</comment>


CDE: Automatically create portable Linux applications - <AUTHOR> http://www.stanford.edu/~pgbovine/cde.html

<comment><USER2> Interesting. Sounds a lot like ThinApp for Linux. <http://www.vmware.com/products/thinapp/>

</comment><comment><USER3> This has been posted previously here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1901175></comment>


How the wireless spectrum crunch is squeezing carriers and hurting consumers - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/106745-how-the-wireless-spectrum-crunch-is-squeezing-carriers-and-hurting-consumers

<comment><USER2> tl,dr; No new information about spectrum allocation just an overview of an observer's perspective on the industry. Loosely conforms to the status quo belief that there is a 'lack of available spectrum' and that this is and will drive higher prices in the future/set the tone of the wireless industry.

My issue with these kinds of 'reports' is that more often then not they are little more than scare tactics by the big telcos. This week it's probably from AT&T trying to scare people into accepting their shit merger.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there a resource that details who owns what (and where) of the wireless spectrum (ranging from kHz to GHz).

<comment><USER4> It's pretty packed: [http://www.mobiletrax.com/Portals/mobiletrax/wheeler%20Oct_U...](http://www.mobiletrax.com/Portals/mobiletrax/wheeler%20Oct_United_States_Frequency_Allocations_Chart_2003_-_The_Radio_Spectrum.jpg)

I also heard Lightsquared (national wireless broadband company) is having spectrum issues as well, as their band is right next to GPS, and there is much lobbying going on now, as the govt is trying to buy back some satellite bands and re-purpose them for terrestrial use.

<comment><USER3> What does "fixed" mean in the context of that chart?

<comment><USER4> Fixed wireless (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_wireless>). It's usually point to point transceivers, probably mostly applicable for business and industrial uses.

<comment><USER4> What? how did I get down voted twice here for being helpful? Did it just get automatically flagged as a flame war because I responded too fast?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The tragedy, of course, is that spread spectrum technology could allow these carriers to share bands, and actually operate over a wider band. IF the 700MHz-1GHz range was allocated to cellular and mobile voice and data services, and any player who used spread spectrum could use it... then AT&T, Verizon and Sprint would have all have:

1\. Vastly more total bandwidth to use, allowing for faster bitrates.

2\. More reliable services as the phones could adjust to the ranges within those bands that have the best signal.

3\. A lot lower operating costs due to not having to tie up Billions upon Billions of dollars in spectrum (which means cheaper for everyone else also, due to competition).

4\. Standardized equiptment across the carriers, which means cheaper cell towers, cheaper handset components, cheaper infrastructure in general.

5\. Brain-dead simple roaming agreements since everyone would be using the same technology, or at least, would be pretty quickly if this scheme had been implemented form the beginning.

6\. The opportunity to easily and cost effectively deploy secondary services that don't need the full cellular modem capabilities, like GPS loggers, kindle data feeds and even broadcast technologies we don't have now with the level of regulation they have to operate under.

And consumers would win too, because you'd have a lot more regional carriers like Cellular One and Cricket, etc. Companies like Virgin could build out their network by contracting with multiple carriers-- using verizon in new york and AT&T in SF, etc.

Apple and Google both could have built out their own networks and provided end to end services, like its clear they wanted to.

There'd be a lot more competition, the quality of everything would be cheaper and the prices would be a lot lower.

Everybody wins, right?

Well, no, the loser would be government. Government takes in Billions from these auctions and that's why they auction of spectrum as if people needed (or could) "own" it.

In a time when we're blowing billions a day on pointless wars that isn't really big money, but it is certainly big money for the people involved in the auctions who have favors they can call in industry after they leave government, and it helps the big three that the spectrums were allocated such that there could only be 3 national wireless networks (I remember this being the plan way back in the late 1980s, 1990s... they said "by having three there would be competition!" as if there couldn't be 30 competitors, and that wouldn't be better.)

If WiFi can share spectrum with microwave ovens, a lightly regulated cellular industry can share spectrum as well.

Spectrum scarcity is artificial, the result of a corrupt process, and keeps prices higher and quality lower for everyone. But it does ensure the dominance of verizon and at&t.

<comment><USER4> Interesting thoughts, and I always thought it would be nice to have a more uniform arrangement for all the providers, but I don't quite think it's quite that simple. Spread Spectrum isn't some magic buzzword that you can throw in there and it instantly fixes all our technological woes. Yes, it works, up to a point, up to a fixed amount of traffic on any particular channel, but when you start getting into denser populations, you need to start getting more complex. general wi-fi tends to crap out if there are too many (around 13) operators in the vicinity, cell towers in urban areas need to handle hundreds, if not thousands of calls at any one time. (yes I realize that isn't the best analogy, as the technologies are quite different) And wi-fi sucks up a big chunk of the unlicensed 2.4Ghz spectrum. Then you start to get into the question of bandwidth, if you want more users, they are each going to have less bw, thus you can advertise your 100mbs bw for 4G, but if any more than one person is using it, you download speed is going drop fast.

Now i do agree that it'd be nice to have one standard, and open up all these frequencies for common use. But it's more than just big brother out there holding fast to the status quo. Companies use very different technologies. (especially in the States) Companies like Qualcom (Verizon/Sprint CDMA technology) invest enormous sums of money into protecting their IP, and aren't about to share it, just so that AT&T customers can use their spectrum. Yes, there is a merge towards LTE, but by an large, there is still the CDMA/TDMA divide between companies, and the use of propriety chipsets means that two different technologies can't really share the same spectrum, as there really is so much traffic on each channel, SS isn't going guarantee there is no interference. Also, you better believe the current networks are utilizing SS technologies to their MAX already within the band they own.</comment></comment>


Anti-Features - <AUTHOR> http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/antifeatures <comment><USER2> I like the term a lot. However, popup blocking is actually a real feature since sometimes you want to block popups and sometimes you don't. Designing a system that makes sorting out allowed vs. disallowed in a user friendly way is non-trivial and is in fact a feature of a browser. It's especially a feature if enabling means, as it did for the Internet Explorer team, going back and changing old functionality to allow for blocking.

<comment><USER3> I'd call it an anti-feature at the browser API level. Code to launch a new browser window is nonessential and it was included as a feature long before anyone thought about whether it was a good idea for the product as a whole.

Today, popup windows are an accepted feature, though still insanely overused. The only time I have ever found popups at all valuable is for instruction annotations during stateful sessions where winding up in a situation where the 'back' button is needed is undesireable. I would still usually prefer to simply open a new tab.

Ok: one other time, this web application at my last company had a subtle bug where putting two consecutive slashes in the URL of the login page caused weird things to happen. Their answer was to launch the app in a popup window with the correct URL.

I think if it had been always impossible to launch popup windows by default, then websites would be generally better designed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's well thought out article. One key insight that Benjamin Hill offers is that anti-features are often driven by business model requirements. If a competitor "un-implements them" (enabling the feature) it's hard for the original firm to follow without changing business model. This applies beyond open source vs. proprietary competition.

</comment><comment><USER3> That is a great term. I've been searching for years to sum up that concept so elegantly. Probably since first time I encountered copy-protection on a video game (X-Wing on a 486, I think it was)

</comment><comment><USER5> _It does not cost free software developers anything to avoid anti-features_

Damn well better not cost them anything since their remuneration is zero.</comment>


Valley's most successful people are preparing for the end of civilization - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/892543/apocalypse-insurance-reddits-ceo-venture-capitalists-and-others-in-silicon-valley-are-preparing-for-the-end-of-civilization/ <comment><USER2> Well the ingredients are basically there already.

What happens when people spend and borrow for a life they can't afford? Credit card debt, a second mortgage, a new car. Borrow, borrow, borrow. Eventually it comes crashing down and a massive correction takes place that is painful.

So we've basically been doing that. The last financial collapse was partly a correction that was needed, but was forbidden to let happen by virtually unlimited borrowing, near-zero interest rates, and 16 trillion in secret loans by the Federal Reserve. Sanders called it 'socialism for the rich,' while everyone else had to endure the pain.

Combined that with the escalations in the war with Russia over Syria, the discovery the US is funding jihadist terrorists, power returning to the people through hacktivism, the Nobel Peace Prize winner dropping 100,000 bombs throughout 7 different countries over the last 8 years, decreased liberties, increase police state abuses, never-ending unchecked constitutional abuses, dangerous identity politics coupled with undemocratic forces increasing diversity and immigration, and the rise of China and its actualization as a world power... Get ready.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agree with everything you just said but this has been happening for years. Aren't we in the safest time of the history?</comment></comment>


AirPods kick off Apple's battle for our ears - <AUTHOR> https://www.aboveavalon.com/notes/2016/12/22/airpods-kick-off-apples-battle-for-our-ears <comment><USER2> Pretty sure that happened when they purchased one of the most popular headphone brands.</comment>


Does anyone care about your new product? - <AUTHOR> http://andrewchenblog.com/2011/06/14/does-anyone-care-about-your-new-product-conducting-market-research-with-googles-keyword-tool/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AndrewChensBlog+%28Andrew+Chen+%28%40andrewchen%29%29 <comment><USER3> This post grapples with some interesting issues, especially conceptual confusion about terminology, and how to classify specific situations.

New market or pre-existing category: I agree an mp3 player was a pre-existing category - but what about iTunes? It is more like Edison creating a power- station and network along with the light-bulb; or Birdseye establishing freezers in the supermarket, along with actually freezing food.

The iPhone is interesting: sure, it's a phone, and sure, smart-phones were a pre-existing category. But the iPhone (a) included new technology (touch- screen) that revolutionized user interaction with phones (does that make it a new category?); (b) it wasn't really a phone, nor really a smart-phone, but a platform for apps - like a PC; (c) the innovation of the appstore, to facilitate that platform.

And let us remember that, historically, Apple invented the PC.

\---

Is a new sub-category (of a pre-existing category) a new market or a pre- existing category? And, more importantly, what difference does it make - i.e. for what tasks is this distinction relevant? (how is it used)

Target an existing need (Christensen says _customers 'hire' products to do jobs they want to get done_ ): I agree this is a good way to go - but it is much broader than "pre-existing category". Let's be clear though: there's needs that exist that people are aware of (enough to search on), and needs that exist that people aren't consciously aware of. And that's where we truly get into "new": not just a new category, but _new need_.

I agree that new markets are much harder to target, but also much more fun. Andrew, I'd be interested to hear you elaborate on " 'blank-slate' ideas" being _superficially innovative, riskier and "first mover advantage" being wildly overrated_. Can you give examples? (I don't quite understand what you mean).

\---

Re: "marketplace" abstract terms: Reminds me of annual report terms like _caffeinated beverages_ and _baked confectionery_ \- a cool, elevated god-like view that no-one can relate to.

A horseless carriage is a carriage that doesn't go - unless you already know about cars.

\---

PS: despite all my complaints, I find it a very interesting submission - <USER2> I've been playing with the <https://adwords.google.com/o/Targeting/Explorer> and it's a very revealing and powerful tool.

<comment><USER4> "But the iPhone (a) included new technology (touch-screen) that revolutionized user interaction with phones (does that make it a new category?); (b) it wasn't really a phone, nor really a smart-phone, but a platform for apps - like a PC; (c) the innovation of the appstore, to facilitate that platform."

a) Touchscreens had been available on smart phones for QUITE some time. They just were designed for styluses. They WERE pretty awesome, though.

b) The original iPhone was most certainly not a platform for apps. Yet, it was still very popular.

But really, why bring up Apple at all? For a company, Apple is _weird_ and opaque. Trying to use their actions or success to justify your start-up is foolish, since you don't really understand how and why Apple got to where they are. No, really. You don't. (Not nearly well enough to duplicate or otherwise replicate it) Bringing them up is an unnecessary and unhelpful complication.

EDIT: Yeesh, I guess I skimmed right over the part of the article where this is brought up, for my last paragraph.

<comment><USER3> I was commenting on the article, which discusses apple products starting at "The reference example of this is Apple..."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a general rule, one should expect no-one to care about anything new you happen to be working on. Consider: if people cared, it would be done already. The only worthwhile, achievable things that aren't already done are the things that people don't care about - through ignorance, or some other barrier that can be eliminated by persuasion and demonstration (usually much more the former than the latter).

Take my latest side-project:

<https://www.opencures.org>

From a sympathetic audience of thousands who read my other related work, persuading even a handful of people to help Open Cures in any way is real challenge. This is the way of the world: if people cared and agreed and were up for it at first glance, it would be done already.

So expect the long uphill fight. It says nothing about the merits of what you're doing; it just is.

<comment><USER6> >As a general rule, one should expect no-one to care about anything new you happen to be working on. Consider: if people cared, it would be done already

I think that's a bit of a jump! There's plenty of things that people care about but don't personally think they could achieve. If you do a startup to end world hunger, people would be interested as soon as you proved your credibility in actually achieving it.

Also - Interesting side-project! What's your background (are you a software dev? biotech scientist?)

<comment><USER5> I'm a software tech, with a few years of experience in writing about the life science field - this would be a lot easier to bootstrap if I had actual biotechnology skills and deep knowledge there as well.

There are people working credibly on ending world hunger, and all sorts of other even more important projects (such as ending aging, which kills far more people and causes far more harm in the developing world) and they have the same uphill struggle and lack of interest. I submit that we're using different reflexive definitions of the word "care", which might be expanded out as (a) "care in the abstract sense" and (b) "care enough to actually do something".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I keep seeing this advice that you can find market by looking at adwords tool. I love the idea, but I've never seen a real example that end up as a real product, only the general tip and I tried but never got interesting results ? Does someone has a real credible example ?

<comment><USER8> I can't speak for the other advice you're seeing, but the article isn't really suggesting that you can go to the adwords tool with a blank slate and _find_ a market. Rather that you can use the adwords tool to validate that a market exists based on search volume.

<comment><USER9> The book Start Small, Stay Small, gives examples of this, as well as ideas on finding niche markets.

Interesting and useful stuff. You may locate a niche market, find that there is genuine interest in it as reflected in ad words, and also get a sense for what the existing market is like (e.g., is there already a highly-dominate player, and is it cost-effective to try to move into this niche).</comment></comment></comment>


Rekeying and picking locks - <AUTHOR> http://mikesenese.com/DOIT/2010/10/how-to-re-key-a-lock-how-to-pick-a-lock-how-to-break-a-kryptonite-lock/ <comment><USER2> Scary stuff. I've had too many bikes stolen. Good to know what I'm up against.</comment>


Ask HN: What would you do if there was no Internet? - <AUTHOR>

Tought question?
Actually, my main interest is to know what you
guys do while not coding or hacking the world.
For instance, I'm a volunteer firefighter and enjoy doing any kind of sports. <comment><USER2> Write more code, visit more BBSes, garden more.

As I get older (late 30s), I'm finding Internet culture more alien and less appealing to my demographic, so I've been spending less and less time on it.

Outside of work, I'm looking at about 5 minutes per day, unless I'm online gaming, but then its just to game, not chat with other players. I read a lot of online articles (Wired Danger Room++), I scan through feeds, find an article and Instapaper them for offline reading.

I don't feel like I'm really missing anything. Any information important enough will eventually get to me.

</comment><comment><USER3> Life would go on.

I'd spend more time with my son. Pretty sad, but true.

</comment><comment><USER4> Reading, rock climbing, enjoying the outdoors, getting exercise, spending time with my family.

If there were no Internet because the Internet didn't exist, the world would be very different and maybe I'd have stuck around school for another degree helping people dream it up. :)

If there were no Internet because I were stranded somewhere with no Internet, I'd find a way to get the hell out of there.

</comment><comment><USER5> Writing or photography.

<comment><USER6> I second that. Plus I would learn how to make music, party a lot and travel even more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Crap, can I borrow someone's hobby?

<comment><AUTHOR> Heh, that's what I mean... Do you guys have a B or C plan? :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Tour guide for white water rafting or mountain biking somewhere around the Grand Canyon

</comment><comment><USER9> If there were no internet, I would subscribe to magazines and visit the library.

</comment><comment><USER10> Maybe I would actually start getting some serious work done

</comment><comment><USER11> Back to magazines.

</comment><comment><USER12> Do more boat designing, building and sailing.

</comment><comment><USER13> Complain, then call my ISP repeatedly :P

</comment><comment><USER14> Philosophy and sports.

</comment><comment><USER15> Philosophy.

</comment><comment><USER16> Invent it.

</comment><comment><USER17> Even though if there would have been no internet it won't effect my discipline (electrical engineering) directly, I wouldn't be this smart. I would have been an average kid succumbing to peer pressure and taking up the _hottest_ discipline I can get from my _< insert standardized test name here>_ score.</comment>


New hubiC offers - <AUTHOR> https://hubic.com/en/offers/storage-10tb <comment><USER2> I signed up for hubiC a while back with the intention of using their touted OpenStack compatibility with Duplicity for encrypted backups (using the Swift backend) - only to discover they have placed their own authentication mechanism on top of OpenStack, breaking compatibility with all OpenStack clients. The only solutions available seem to be running a proxy between your client and hubiC.

<comment><USER3> OVH like to dick around with the kernels on their VPS and dedicated servers. You can work around it but I really wish they didn't do this.

<comment><USER4> On dedicated servers at least you don't need to work around it. You can install vanilla version of your chosen distribution straight from their panel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would stay away from OVH until they fix their billing system. At least on the server side, you have to log in and pay an invoice by PayPal each month. And if you forget, they delete the server without further warning.

Love the services, but the billing system must cost them a huge amount of customers - both customers that find it too time consuming, or customers that forget and are forcibly ejected!

<comment><USER6> This is out of date information, they introduced auto renew for OVH and Kimsufi sometime toward the end of last year. Both my machines use it.

<comment><USER5> If they have now introduced it, that's great. I was never offered it; perhaps it varies by region (us/fr/ie). I suggest making sure that you get automatic renewal before signing up for any services. (And then be sure that your credit card doesn't expire!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Last time this was posted, several people suggested they strongly cap upload speed to something silly like 200kb/s so it would take years to actually use that "10tb"

<comment><USER8> That seems to be through the web interface, I've seen screenshots of people pushing more than 10MB/s.

<comment><USER9> I don't have a fat enough pipe to confirm or deny 10 MB/s but here's my experiment uploading a few RAW photo files (~25 MB each). Seems good enough. I haven't tried download speed though. For what it is worth, downloading files from the web interface in Microsoft OneDrive (previously SkyDrive) is ridiculously slow.

I think there is a distinction to be made between syncing (Dropbox, Google Drive, Barracuda Copy, Microsoft OneDrive and so on) and back ups. The providers try to blur the lines with features like trash can (where files go when you delete and you have to delete again), file history so you can go to a previous version of a file, selective synchronization so you can only download files you need and so on. However, I'd say the distinction still remains because we need to measure backups by how easily and quickly we can recover in case of a disaster.

At 10 TB, I'd imagine OP falls in the latter category. If they limited us to 200 kbps unless we paid extra, that'd be a big fail.

That being said, I doubt they'd do that. Here's a screenshot of me reaching 37 mbps peak upload:

[https://i.imgur.com/1tSr48U.png](https://i.imgur.com/1tSr48U.png)

Edit: I take it back. Upload from the web interface stalled. [https://i.imgur.com/UC8qWA4.png](https://i.imgur.com/UC8qWA4.png)

<comment><USER9> I don't know why the upload stalled but I went back to upload the rest of the files and it worked. I tried downloading and it was a little under 2 mbps which isn't that great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> hubiC had a great campaign a while ago which made me try it out. their client crashed and produced dialog boxes every time my notebook was offline or didn't get an IP address fast enough.

My experience is about half a year old now but back then it has been a horrible piece of engineering not only from the client but also from their website (EULA in french only).

Personally, I felt it was not good value for money but rather a cheap service that I wouldn't want to trust with my data let alone backups.

<comment><USER11> I don't have the greatest of impressions of OVH either, though I didn't have any problems during my short period trying out hubiC.

That said, I'd rather have my backups on many cheap providers than on a single expensive one. There are inherent risks in relying on a single company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> But, why? The upload time / cost must be enormous (on my home DSL it would take all year to upload. And the value of online remote storage is seriously limited by the access time.

This is like the fragmented 20TB hard disk (considers the magnetic upper limit) - even if you had a disk that size the seek times would mean months to take the data off.

It's nice to have but the uplift needs to occur throughout the whole network for there to be benefit.

<comment><USER13> Are you serious or trolling?

The vast majority of us can benefit from this. If not your home computers, then your VPSs or something like that.

<comment><USER11> To stress your point, hubiC supports the OpenStack API to access your storage: [https://api.hubic.com/](https://api.hubic.com/)

<comment><USER14> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9281292](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9281292)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I heard some stories from someone inside OVH who told me that basically Hubic is not stable enough so you can lose some files (without knowing which ones). I wouldn't use Hubic seriously.

I'm using OVH for other services (dns, servers) and I'm quite happy with their services though.

</comment><comment><USER16> How's the Linux support for hubiC? Could use this for backups.

<comment><USER11> They've had support since 2013, but it's supposedly still in beta: [https://forums.hubic.com/showthread.php?272-hubiC-for- Linux-...](https://forums.hubic.com/showthread.php?272-hubiC-for-Linux-beta- is-out-)!

<comment><USER17> I would call it half-hearted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Last I checked their API was useless, can anyone comment on upload/download speeds (i have 10gbit servers could use backup location)

</comment><comment><USER19> does this have client side encryption? they only mention login/password which doesn't really explain anything

[https://hubic.com/en/data-security](https://hubic.com/en/data-security)

<comment><USER20> It does not. Duplicity can use it, however, which does client-side encryption for you, as mentioned above.

Well, duplicity can _usually_ use it. You may have connection problems, because hubic.com is TLS version-intolerant; it'll only use TLSv1.0 (and does _NOT_ negotiate with TLSv1.1/TLSv1.2) with AES-256, AES-128 or 3DES, with RSA and no forward secrecy.

Not what I wanted to see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's OVH so I expect it to suck, and absolutely without support

</comment><comment><USER22> Link with no tracking params: [https://hubic.com/en/offers/storage-10tb](https://hubic.com/en/offers/storage-10tb)

</comment><comment><USER23> Should be ok for encrypted backups. I wouldn't trust a British company with anything sensitive, given their government's policy on privacy.

<comment><USER8> OVH is a french company, if you read their terms the contract is between you and OVH France.

<comment><USER24> Are France any better? they outlawed encryption long after the Americans had given up on it.

<comment><USER8> Probably not, just trying to keep the facts straight. Offsite backups should always be encrypted on the client side, so it doesn't really matter where the provider is located or if it's trustworthy. (except for things like reliability / retrievability).

<comment><USER24> Can't disagree with that.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Study on decision-making stokes controversy over power of distracted mind (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/unconscious-thought-not-so-smart-after-all1/

<comment><USER2> The problem is that shocking unexpected results get a lot of press beacuse they are interesting of the public. But the retraction or refutation result get almost not coverage because it totally expected.

In physics the main example are "faster than light" and "massless thrusters". You get a few experimental results each year with very low precision measurements, and all the unsuccessful reproductions are almost silently ignored.</comment>


Show HN: Magno – free international money transfers (try demo) - <AUTHOR> http://www.magnocash.com <comment><USER2> If you look at the users posting complaints in the threads at [https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=magnocash.com](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=magnocash.com), it's clear that you've been oversubmitting this. HN's FAQ ([https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)) says that a small number of reposts are ok, but you've exceeded that. The more you try to get attention, the more the community is going to feel like you're spamming them. That's not in your interest.

At this point, the best thing for you to do would be to wait a few months and then post another Show HN, plus add a first comment to the thread giving the backstory of how you came to work on this, and explaining what's different about it since you last posted. That tends to seed discussion in a better direction.

</comment><comment><USER3> Please stop:

         2 days ago
         4 days ago
         6 days ago
         8 days ago
         9 days ago
        11 days ago
        13 days ago
        15 days ago
        17 days ago</comment>


Ask HN: Is there an electronics manufacturing and packaging community forum? - <AUTHOR> I'm wanting to get some electronics manufactured but I am new to the field.
So I am looking for an online forum where I can ask questions and be welcomed and tolerated even though I'm a beginner.
Are there question and answer forums dedicated to electronics and electronics packaging manufacturing? <comment><USER2> You got two very good answers already! Gotta love HN.

A lot depends on the type of product. Even a generic split such as Industrial vs. Consumer can be a huge differentiator. I build prototypes of industrial electronic devices in my basement; I won't touch consumer products because I just don't want to deal with designing to that kind of price point.

For something more practical, especially if it's Consumer Electronics related I'd suggest going to Seeed Studio and posting on the forums there. If you want something local, google "electronics consultants" or "electronics contract manufacturer" in your general area.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you need help with packaging there's a small group of people who are extremely helpful over on r/packaging

It's somewhat not very active but whenever people come with genuine questions that need help will get pointed in the right direction by people in the field doing what you are looking for.

</comment><comment><USER4> If this is unhelpful information, please let me know. Please take everything with a grain of salt.

I found r/electronics and r/AskElectronics helpful for electronics questions but the best help I got was from asking engineers directly, whether electrical/mechanical/industrial.

If you're near a big city, I highly recommend hardware meetups or makerspaces.

I also found Bunnie Huang's The Hardware Hacker great.

Packaging if you mean the box should be easy once you're working with a Chinese factory. They usually have a relationship with packaging suppliers and can get great custom packaging for you with steep discounts with at least a 1000 MOQ (minimum order quantity).

Electronics manufacturing is a lot harder depending on what you're trying to build. One of my clients sells millions of dollars worth of electronics without an engineer on his team though, so I'm guessing it's not rocket science. If he did have an engineer on his team, I'm sure he would save a lot when it comes to quality products and QC though.

If I had to build an electronics product today I would get a working prototype. If I could build the working prototype myself, I would build the first 100 myself. If you can order all the parts and put it all together to test the market, I would. If I can confirm/prove demand, then I would talk to factories. Factories could help discuss what parts cost what and what manufacturing process might be best etc. In order to talk to factories, I would talk or find a sourcing agent. Or best might be an expensive consultant to hold your hand through it, a technical co-founder, or a mentor.

I tried to build a hardware product 2 or 3 years ago, a wireless portable charger. I never went through with it because of feature creep and I was poor and stupid. I could easily build it today though because many of them already exist. It would be as simple as finding a factory and making an order. For the portable wireless chargers, it was just sticking two existing parts together with a new circuit board. I think anyway since I'm not an engineer. That's how I built my prototype- I took things apart and put them back together. If you're not building anything too innovative, you could see if you can build what you want with existing parts as well instead of custom.

I'm sure I'm missing some things like expensive certifications ($10k?) or manufacturing problems but I think you can definitely test and there is a great hardware hacker community out there somewhere. Last but not least, I could be wrong but I would presume a 1000 MOQ for a hardware product. Some of my client's factories quoted him 10,000 MOQ. At a cheap price of $10/unit that is $10,000 to $100,000. These were for existing designs/products that the factory already made. Some of his other products had a $30+/unit cost. If you need a custom mold for your product, it might cost you $1k+. Last they may steal your intellectual property.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've been in the field for a while and can't think of anything intended specifically to answer questions related to bootstrapping manufacturing of an electronic product. There are a few forums for automated assembly. Dragon Innovation has a bunch of shiny marketing stuff that might help a little.

I'm assuming you aren't interested in info about how to build prototypes, but there are lots of examples scattered across sparkfun, adafruit, eevblog, hackaday, github, arduino and AVR forums, etc. with example designs and varying degrees of documentation and support. If you choose some dev platform like ESP8266/32, MBED, Arduino, etc. there is often a forum associated with it.

[https://electronics.stackexchange.com/](https://electronics.stackexchange.com/) is nominally what you are looking for, but the content is almost all on the design side vs. manufacturing. There are probably a few people on there who can answer the questions you probably want to ask. I have no idea how friendly they are.

I think the issue is compared to software, electronic goods are an incredibly expensive process to bring someone up to speed on, and there are orders of magnitude fewer english speakers doing it vs. programming. It pretty much requires producing multiple products in the real world before you are anywhere near ready to manufacture a product at any appreciable volume. Yes, that's a catch-22 for most people. Couple that with the needing to go overseas to make anything that's price sensitive, needing years to connect with a full array of reliable suppliers, and the guys who really do the work often speak a different language, and you don't end up with many people who can or want to sit online and gratis help out anyone who isn't already sending them purchase orders for thousands of units.

Consumer goods generally aren't profitable to manufacture until you're making 10k units or so. So most people who truly know how to do this sort of thing don't have the inclination to help someone who just wants to play and learn, or even someone who doesn't already have 95% of the skills to pull of a successful product. The fastest way to bankrupt a manufacturing company is to take on a bunch of jobs with halfway thought out engineering done by noobs who don't know how to move from step A to step B.

Seeedstudio offers a service where they will produce low volumes: [https://www.seeedstudio.com/propagate/](https://www.seeedstudio.com/propagate/)

Crowd Supply is sort of aligned with what you are after (they sell themselves as a crowdfunding platform who specializes in hardware projects and they vet your project for feasibility): [https://www.crowdsupply.com/](https://www.crowdsupply.com/)

If you just want a few pieces of something made, need this to be done in a finite amount of time, and you have some money to spend, I'd recommend hiring an experienced EE and make sure they can deliver some small quantity of tested-working boards as part of the contract.</comment>


FastPush: Push updates to Cloud Foundry/Heroku apps in seconds - <AUTHOR> http://xiwenc.github.io/fastpush/ <comment><USER2> Cool idea!</comment>


In Bitcoin Debate, Larry Summers Sides with the History of Change - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/04/30/in-bitcoin-debate-larry-summers-sides-with-the-history-of-change/

<comment><USER2> _Mr. Summers also notes that the existing system requires "enormous investment" in mitigating credit-card fraud_

Or, worded differently, the existing system protects consumers victimized by fraud, whereas Bitcoin doesn't (and won't ever be able to reverse a fraudulent transaction).

Fraud protection is a good thing. We should be trying to figure out how to get it into Bitcoin. YC should fund a company that aims to protect consumers from the risks of Bitcoin. Something like "trust us with your coins, and if we lose them, then this insurance company is guaranteed to pay you market rate for your losses."

I've been mulling over whether it'd be possible for Coinbase to get the equivalent of FDIC insurance. That would turn them from being "it's insane for anyone to trust you" into "you just became an _awesome_ bank."

I can't think of any choice for exchanges or webwallets: either get insurance or erode consumer faith in bitcoin. And since it's so hard to get insurance, it's likely that the first one who does will have a huge advantage over everyone else.

I have no idea whether it's possible in practice to insure bitcoins on a large scale. I'm only saying that it's absolutely needed, because it's absolutely necessary for consumers to be able to trust _some_ third-party service with their coins the way they trust a bank with their dollars. Either that, or make it trivial for people to manage their own coins as trivially as Coinbase does, which seems implausible.

When I point out that credit cards are superior to bitcoin from a consumer perspective, people sometimes counter with "you pay for that with 2% higher merchant fees, etc." But that's a small price to pay to guarantee you won't suddenly be unable to pay your phone bill next month due to theft. I've mentioned before, but someone once stole my credit card and got gas with it. I called up the credit card company and within 10 minutes the transaction was refunded and I was issued a new card. It would be amazing if that could be the case with bitcoin via some kind of insurance plan. I wonder if it's possible...

<comment><USER3> Xapo's vault comes with insurance: [https://xapo.com/#aboutVault](https://xapo.com/#aboutVault)

<comment><USER2> I heard that too, but unfortunately it looks like Xapo seems to be misrepresenting themselves to consumers:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7510403](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7510403)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/20dolm/psa_xapo_doe...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/20dolm/psa_xapo_does_not_have_the_insurance_they_claim/)

The top comment from that Reddit thread shows a pretty compelling discrepancy that probably indicates there's no way Xapo is actually able to provide the guarantees it's claiming: [http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/20dolm/psa_xapo_doe...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/20dolm/psa_xapo_does_not_have_the_insurance_they_claim/cg2awjt)

This is the sucky nature of Bitcoin circa 2014: before you trust anybody, research every single claim they make, else lose your coins if things go badly for them.

Someone who works for Xapo posted a less-than-compelling counter-reply: [http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/20dolm/psa_xapo_doe...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/20dolm/psa_xapo_does_not_have_the_insurance_they_claim/cg2dmmj)

... and it strikes me as very foolish to trust that claim at face value:

 _The amount of reserves required to be fully-insured involves understanding specific methods of cold storage then applying actuarial methods for estimating losses, as well as other calculations._

That's the language of someone who can't outright say "we won't be able to survive catastrophic losses, and in that circumstance, you'll lose your money."

Something like an insurance guarantee needs to have a clear example of how payouts to consumers actually happen in the event of fraud. What can consumers expect? Will they pay market rate at the time of fraud, or will they pay current market rate? How long will it take to receive payment? Will they pay in dollars or coins? How can consumers really trust that you'll be able to cover the loss of n_users * price_per_coin?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The headline seems somewhat editorialized for what Summers is actually saying, even as he is quoted in the article.

> "I'm not ready to stand with those who are sure they have seen the future > here," he concludes, "but it seems to me that it's a serious mistake to > write this off as either ill-conceived or illegitimate."

</comment><comment><USER5> > To Mr. Summers, the potential contained in bitcoin's breakthrough > technology, with its fast, low-cost system for confirming transactions

any article that touts Bitcoin as "low-cost" is a joke. paying 3-5% transaction fees[1] via inflation is not any better than the 2-4% that credit cards charge. And soon the bitcoin protocol won't have any coin left to mine, so this 3-5% will just be charged to consumers just like the existing networks, thanks to its baked-in gold-bug monetary policy. At least credit cards are instant, and the companies have good fraud monitoring...

not to mention the cost of the mining rigs, electricity they require, etc...

[1] [http://blockchain.info/charts/cost-per-transaction- percent](http://blockchain.info/charts/cost-per-transaction-percent)

<comment><USER6> > "thanks to its baked-in gold-bug monetary policy"

The biggest problem with bitcoin that no one wants to talk about, except to say "the means (ridiculous monetary policy) justify the ends of it becoming popular." I thoroughly do not believe it.

Economists have been studying monetary policy for a long time, and I'm no economist, but I know they are pretty convinced that having flexible monetary policy is a very good thing, and having inflation be not too high, and not too low is also very good and important. Bitcoin is overall deflationary, with no monetary policy flexibility. If it did grow enough to be a serious factor in the global economy, I'm convinced it would have a horrible impact.

The distributed network truly does have potential to overcome inefficiencies, but I hope to god there is a bitcoin 2.0 or perhaps several currencies which are more sensible.

They compare it to the internet. Using that analogy, we had ipv4 limits and domain name limits. We changed that. But bitcoin is built for people to be invested in it not changing and not improving in very important aspects. For the technology to have a big positive impact on society, we are going to have to move on and improve the gold-like policy set in stone on its very first day of existence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seems like a typical weird Centrist argument. I don't think he really believes what he said; he's just trying to sound reasonable. He's basically saying "in 20 years, things will not be like they are today. Thus, when somebody tells you X will change the world, and you say otherwise, you are on the wrong side of history."</comment>


The more things change (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://bitquabit.com/post/the-more-things-change/ <comment><USER2> Good post and an interesting comparison with some intriguing parallels.

FWIW, this was previously discussed at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10381015](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10381015) (126 comments).

Also, related sidenote: I'm a Redux maintainer, and I love seeing what people are building with Redux and on top of Redux. Per the author's comments about later abstractions on top of WndProc, there's been a lot of interesting abstractions built on top of Redux, ranging from reusable reducer logic to higher-level libraries that try to simplify some of the setup process. I actually just gave a talk yesterday at ReactBoston on the growth of the Redux ecosystem, which showcases some of the variety of Redux-related tools and addons that are out there [0] [1]. In particular, libraries like Kea [2], Redux-Subspace [3] and Redux-Tiles [4] try to make it easier to define and reuse chunks of logic in a Redux app.

[0] [http://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2017/09/presentation- might-...](http://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2017/09/presentation-might-need- redux-ecosystem/)

[1] [https://github.com/markerikson/redux-ecosystem- links](https://github.com/markerikson/redux-ecosystem-links)

[2] [https://github.com/keajs/kea](https://github.com/keajs/kea)

[3] [https://github.com/ioof-holdings/redux-subspace](https://github.com/ioof- holdings/redux-subspace)

[4] [https://github.com/Bloomca/redux-tiles](https://github.com/Bloomca/redux- tiles)

<comment><USER3> It feels like this was posted in reaction to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15326648](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15326648), which is on the front page right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is the second article I am reading today that draws parallels between Windows 1.0 and the current state of Web Design.

The first article at [https://blog.plan99.net/its-time-to-kill-the- web-974a9fe80c8...](https://blog.plan99.net/its-time-to-kill-the- web-974a9fe80c89) though predicts the death of the web as a platform</comment>


Probability, Paradox, and the Reasonable Person Principle - <AUTHOR> http://nbviewer.jupyter.org/url/norvig.com/ipython/Probability.ipynb <comment><USER2> The thing about the value of money being roughly logarithmic sent me on a google exploration where I ended up on a suggested "logarithmic flat tax plan". The gist is, you figure out how many times the poverty rate you make, take the log-base-10, and multiple by some flat constant that is the same for everyone - the result would be your tax rate. Right now in the US that constant would be around 9, assuming the same tax scheme would apply to companies that make billions in profits like Apple and Exxon.

<comment><USER3> So Alice earning 10x poverty pays 9 (somethings), while Bob earning 100x poverty pays 18 (somethings)? Note that poor Carol earning 1x poverty pays nothing. I'd expect Alice to be rather unhappy with this system.

(Also, if someone ever manages to earn 0 in a year, you'll have to give all of the world's wealth to him/her. ;-) )

<comment><USER2> Alice pays 9% of her $117k income. Bob pays 18% of his $234k income. Those are lower tax rates than the present, so not sure why Alice would be unhappy with it. Carol pays nothing. Floor is the poverty rate, so no one makes infinity.

<comment><USER4> Unless I'm mistaken, if Alice pays 9% of $117,000 (i.e., $10,530), then Bob pays 11.7% of $234,000 (i.e., $27,400).

An 18% tax rate would apply to earners of $1,170,000 (i.e., $210,600 in tax).

The high end would be a 63% tax rate applicable to earners of $117 billion (i.e., $73.71 billion in tax).

<comment><USER2> Yes, I got 2x and 10x confused, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> At first I thought there was a bug in experiment 2b he writes that the sample space should be:

{'BB/?b', 'BB/b?', 'BG/b?', 'GB/?b'}

Because he describes the event as "He is observed at a time when he is accompanied by one of his children, chosen at random."

I thought he also needed to include two more cases:

{'BB/?b', 'BB/b?', 'BG/b?', 'GB/?b', 'GB/g?', 'BG/?g'}

Which again gives us 1/3 probability of both being boys.

but I guess the part that comes after the '/' indicates the observation event.

</comment><comment><USER6> Great post, I really enjoyed it. Norvig has a knack for modeling these domains in simple, powerful ways.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've always believed the most common responses to St Petersburg Paradox felt incomplete. The biggest miss is not looking at the other side of the transaction. What's the lowest that the casino offering the game would be willing to charge to play it?

<comment><USER8> I think the gap between what a person would be willing to pay to play this game and what a casino would be willing to charge is the reason that no one plays it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Previously discussed when it was an ipython url instead of a jupyter url: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10327409](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10327409)</comment>


Show HN: Realtime Collaborative Photo Whiteboard - <AUTHOR> http://realtime-photo.thejsj.com/

<comment><USER2> Inevitably, someone will add something NSFW, so use with caution.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, no NSFW images yet... I will have to keep tracking it though.</comment></comment>


It will soon be possible to design and build household animals to order - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/node/21551450

<comment><AUTHOR> When I read that scientists were able to grow human organs for transplant I thought that it was a great step forward for human progress. For some reason I feel this might be a step backward. Though I welcome any arguments that state this could be a good thing after all how is this different from selective breeding right?

</comment><comment><USER2> The date on this is March 31. Another early (or rather "late") April Fools joke I believe.

"If all goes well, these will be available by St Valentine's day. If not, customers will probably have to wait until April 1st of next year."

<comment><AUTHOR> If they had left out the part about growing a significant other the article would have worked a lot better.

April fools joke aside with the growth of human organs in the laboratory this has to be inevitable right?</comment></comment>


Pandemic Offers Contrast to Today's Coronavirus Lockdowns - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/forgotten-pandemic-offers-contrast-to-todays-coronavirus-lockdowns-11587720625 <comment><AUTHOR> >The disease was allowed to run though communities virtually unhindered until a vaccine became available to stop it about four months after it surfaced.

I guess they can, in some cases, make vaccines in months and not years.</comment>


Ask HN: How does one prototype a physical product? - <AUTHOR>

I have an idea for a product I want to prototype. It's a physical object, sort of like a plastic toy. It doesn't have a microprocessor or any electronics for that matter. Unfortunately, my background is in software, and I don't know zilch about industrial or mechanical engineering, especially when it comes to plastic manufacturing (unless you consider playing with legos as a kid relevant experience).<p>Where do I start? Any pointers will be greatly appreciated. <comment><USER2> Clay, paper mache, foam, legos, wire, sheet metal, balsa, glass, wood. You can carve a mold and inject molten plastic (styrofoam beads) at home (preferably well ventilated). You can also melt soft metals and use sand molds.

Thats simple prototyping. To get an exact replica, in the same materials you want to use for final production, there are shops that will make plastic or metal molds from CAD files, or can carve with lathes, etc.

Edit, I should add wax. Its actually an incredible material for prototyping. It carves especially well, and you can add pieces if they fall off accidentally, or you decide to change the design. If you don't like it, melt it down and form a new block. Lastly, when you're ready to make a mold, you can encase it in sand or another substance, and then melt the wax away to leave your shape.

<comment><USER2> Like someone mentioned below, resin works as well. its a great way to do additive design, adding material over time to get the thickness or curvature over time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Make a CAD model of it, then send that file to get it prototyped. I've used <http://www.redeyeondemand.com> and <http://www.quickparts.com> before; didn't have any extreme experiences with either of them (either good or bad).

<comment><USER4> How hard would you say CAD is to pick up for someone with no experience?

<comment><USER3> To tell you the truth, I learned CAD while designing cases for the electronic products in my previous startup, and it took literally weeks; not more than a month. To get started, I went through several steps of the SolidWorks tutorial, then started over on things _I_ wanted to make. The easiest package for me was SolidWorks, although the latest versions of AutoCAD are just as easy. While SketchUp is easy, it's awkward to to CAD-y things like draw a line and simultaneously specify its length (at least, that was the case when I tried it a year ago).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hi. I work for a company that does a huge amount of prototypes for all types of companies and industries. I would recommend using Google's sketchup over all the other options. It's free and gives you much better results than other software packages, even the ones you pay for. Doing something in rhino looks nice on the computer but is a huge pain when you go to actually create it because it doesn't have basic mechanical structure to it.

Check out www.protocafe.com They do a great job with everything i send them. Cheap and professional.

</comment><comment><USER6> How complicated is it? Can you make it yourself? It's probably best if you do. If you have something you want to make in quantitiy, you'll want to hire someone who is experienced with tooling up a factory efficiently. What you're doing is not really engineering, but more like "drafting".

If you live in the bay area: <http://techshop.ws/>

If it's relatively simple, you can find a CAM house that will build the part for you, but then it becomes expensive. This place has an FDM house (wikipedia for details): <http://www.emachineshop.com>

You can find cheap drafters on craigslist who can make a solid model of your part that you would ship to the machine shop.

good luck

<comment><USER7> I second <http://www.emachineshop.com> The software is fairly easy to use. You can get your prototype built in pretty much any material you can imagine, and the price is pretty good too.

My only problem was the cost to ship custom cut boat glass to Alaska. Ouch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've done this a few times. Mostly for industrial design projects like product bezels and cases and such.

I usually "carve" something out of wood and paint to get an idea of physical appearances, fit, etc. From that I'll usually make a fiberglass model (so that I can test fit something that is close to the actual dimensions/thickness of the actual item). Then I Google for a local freelance CNC shop in my area and commission a formal CAD drawing and prototype milled out of a plastic.

From there you can generally figure if your design is right for injection molding, vacuum forming, etc. Find the right CAD guy and they can often help guide you somewhat with the design as well.

Happy to help if you need more info.

</comment><comment><USER9> For 3D modeling, I like Rhino (<http://www.rhino3d.com>) ($800). The support the company provides on their usenet group is unbelievably good and there is a huge community of extraordinarily helpful users.

Shapeways for rapid prototyping (<http://www.shapeways.com>). Many people who use Shapeways use Blender which is a free 3D modeler.

</comment><comment><USER10> Great question.

There is very little magic to the prototyping phase. Google 'rapid prototype' (maybe add 'plastic' to it) and find a shop that has a price that is in your budget. (The price usually has to do with size of the blank they will work on for you.)

Spend a bit of time looking at the different methods of creating a prototype from plastic. Some use a type of "printer", others carve it from a chunk of plastic. Find out the pros-and-cons of the different methods. (Cost vs accuracy vs material.)

Find out what software format they import from and build your prototype in software that can export in that format. Email them the data, your credit card number, and in a few days, you should have your prototype!

Enjoy this phase -- the tricky/expensive part is going from the prototype phase to production.

</comment><comment><USER11> How about a RepRap, the Replicating Rapid Prototyper? <http://www.reprap.org>

</comment><comment><USER12> My girlfriend got a degree in Industrial Design, and that is the kind of things they do all the time. Sometimes the degree program is called "Product Design". With Auburn University, it is part of the College of Design. They generally have a studio class, design products and make prototypes out of them. This includes poster displays. There is also a big shop, like a collegiate version of Industrial Arts or shop class at high school.

You may be able to find such a program at a local university and ask a college student to make it for you. Whether or not you are planning to patent it, you will want to have them assign all rights to you, making this a work-for-hire, and be careful about the co-invetor stuff. Alternatively, you can get in with a local high school and borrow the shop class. Back in high school, I remember those old custodial staff messing around in shop class for their personal project (while the teacher spent time playing Quake with my friends and I).

Lastly, I highly recommend checking out Stephen Key's articles, such as this interview: [http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/11/26/a-beginners-...](http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/11/26/a-beginners- guide-how-to-rent-your-ideas-to-fortune-500-companies-plus-video/)

It includes a video where Key shows how he prototyped one of the ideas he had. There are other information in there too about licensing strategies.

</comment><comment><USER13> You might try a sculpting class at your local community college. It'll get you some basic skills, resources to use, and be inexpensive. Talk to the teacher at some point in class about what you'd like to do. If more of your ideas run this way you'll have a good start.

My prototypes usually start out on engineering paper, get a few quick 3D CAD drawings, then get made up in polymer clay as a form for a mold for shell casting. The 3D step is new, and hasn't eliminated the clay stage, where I still catch problems and see new opportunities that the computer doesn't bring out for me.

So I'll make a solid item out of polymer clay, then press that into more clay to make a negative mold. Then I make a shell casting by putting mold release on the negative form, pouring in some liquid acrylic, and wobbling the mold in my hand to let the acrylic build up a shell over the whole surface. There are other ways I use, too, but this is a favorite quick and dirty method.

There are books on plastic casting that teach the basics, but there's nothing like hands on in a class with an instructor, even if all you're doing in the class is learning the basic sculpting skills and tools.

<comment><USER14> If you are programmer you will appreciate the process if you see it as geometry. Design is a bit a religious thing. he he.

1\. Shape determines fabrication & material: Flat objects (including faceted, folded) can be best prototyped using paper/boards/sheets. Simply curved objects (cones, cylinders) aka single curvature surfacing & developables can be also done using paper. Complex forms aka double curvature requires either complex fab such as rapid prototyping, molding, pressing etc or rationalization (eg take a sphere cut it in layers, cut out flat sheets, glue, sand ie downgrade to previous option).

2\. Drawing: You can use either a mesh 3d editor: sketchup, blender, or NURBS / subdivision surfacing: rhino, solidworks, maya (download demo where available). This is only for the intuitive part of making the form. Even though simpler I would suggest avoiding 2d apps as they tend to be tough ie misleading for physical objects (fine for plans and pcbs)

3\. Fun: code it! You need OpenGL + you favorite language. Generate a polyhedral model, flatten it send to printer, assemble. Or just write out an STL file (super simple text format) and send it to a 3d printer (by far the easiest method for noobs). If you want cheep use z-corp powder puff machines (ceramic-ish), if you want an actually functional prototype use SLS (plastic)

4\. Find a product designer or architect (the building kind) and work together =)

hope that helps

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It doesn't make sense to bother with jobbing out initial fabrication of a prototype unless you've got VERY deep pockets and absolutely plan on going into production. Unless both of these are true I suggest modeling the part from balsa or foam and then cast your prototype in resin or low temperature metal.

</comment><comment><USER16> I noticed the other day that www.sparkfun.com does custom 3D design and prototype, though this probably isn't the cheapest option as you'll be paying them to make the design: [http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/static.php?name=custom_encl...](http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/static.php?name=custom_enclosure_design)

There are lots of premade 'enclosures' that you could hack apart to get what you want as well: <http://www.boxenclosures.com/category/category.html>

However, I would recommend something like the online services mentioned here that send you prototypes. Don't be intimidated.. just go through the tutorials and you'll be surprised at how easy it is.

</comment><comment><USER17> Use blue foam and get some razor blades and sandpaper. That should do it for the first few iterations.

</comment><comment><USER18> from visiting techshop, i found out that google SketchUp (plus a plugin) can be used as the CAD tool for their Dimension SST. SketchUp tutorials: <http://sketchup.google.com/training/videos.html>

</comment><comment><USER19> sculpy, wood, foam, sandpaper, exacto knives, chisels, saws.</comment>