Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings - <AUTHOR> https://jalopnik.com/every-single-american-car-brand-is-on-the-bottom-half-o-1829974713 <comment><USER2> I hate it when a vendor replies, as appeared in this article, that the problem was "a supplier-related issue". I purchased the product from you, not the supplier. You're responsible for what you shipped me.

By contrast: there are many reasons to criticize pharma companies but they don't take suppliers' word for any materials. Dell doesn't blame Delta when they ship bad power supplies, they take responsibility. But some industries (cars, aircraft, et al) are perfectly happy to blame someone else.

Note: it's OK if you say "we got some bad products and _we_ failed to detect it..." That's defect analysis. But own it.

<comment><USER3> This is one of my favorite aspects of the writing in Outer Worlds: that no one who works for a corporation is _ever, ever_ allowed to speak ill of it, of it's products, or anything even tangentially related to the corporation.

It's hilarious the mental gymnastics these fictional people will leap through to avoid earning the ire of their employer, and it's absolutely shocking how true-to-life it often is.

<comment><USER4> `Outer Worlds` the video game? I want to play it now.

<comment><USER3> Correct. It's quite good, though the combat is a little one-dimensional and cast against the design, writing, and world-building, it's very much turned into a situation where the game itself is sort of an obstacle to what I'm enjoying in the game. I don't think it will prompt a re-play but I am thoroughly enjoying it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's interesting to note the difference in communication styles when company PR teams respond to requests for comments. Fiat Chrysler and Chevy both responded in predictable marketroid speak, complete with extensive use of passive voice and grand, hand-wavey platitudes "We care committed to blah blah blah" "Quality is of the greatest importance blah blah blah" "blah blah above industry average blah blah blah" "blah blah launching with excellence".

And then there's Tesla: "We fixed issue XYZ, which affected people in exactly this particular way." "We proactively send bulletins and over-the-air fixes." "This particular issue was for this particular year, and has long since been fixed."

<comment><USER6> I felt the opposite. Tesla's answer came across the worst to me, and reads to me with the over-specificity of a student making excuses for why their paper isn't done on time.

> "It was a supplier-related issue".

Passing the buck is really not a great look to start with. It makes the rest of the response seem like a series of excuses.

Tesla chose the supplier. Tesla built and inspected and sold and shipped the car with those parts. This is a Tesla-related issue. The only time Tesla should mention a supplier issue is in response to, "why can't you sell me a car?"

> "[It] did not pose any threat to vehicle safety".

That's good, but this isn't the safety survey.

> "[T]here was a[...] false service alert [... that was fixed] within two > weeks of being reported".

I'm not even sure how to react to this one. Bringing my car in to be told "false alarm" is really not reassuring. And two weeks to fix a false alert doesn't help me - I've probably already brought it in for service.

> "This proactive approach to improved reliability is one of the reasons why > Tesla is the highest rated car brand among consumers, according to Consumer > Reports." (Paraphrased:) Our cars are the safest and best performing, and > Model S is #1 in satisfaction.

To me, blaming a supplier for the issues is a terrible way to start, and this is likewise a terrible closing.

"You just fell in the rankings to come in 3rd to last in our reliability survey. Any comments?" "Our cars are the safest and fastest and we have always ranked #1 on your customer satisfaction survey."

Those stats are undeniably good. They also make me think those are the stats the company cares about a lot more than reliability.

<comment><USER7> If I had to choose, I would choose specifics over platitudes.

<comment><USER8> Especially specifics backed by OTA fixes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Yeah, as a Kiwi, I'm entirely unsurprised. I've owned Japanese cars from various manufacturers, but the absolute worst I owned was a Toyota Cavalier - a rebadged Chevrolet as part of some trade deal between the US and Japan - that the Japanese steered well clear of and immediately exported to NZ and Aus.

It had a great wee 4 cylinder 2.4L engine, a hell of a lot of fun to drive, but it was of notorious build quality (which I learned after the fact). I spent a lot of time trying to keep it running, and in the end, it was worth a surprising amount at sale simply for the spare parts, because these buggers chewed through them and as they were gray imports into NZ, very hard to find official parts for them.

It was the little things - like the interior light you could only turn on by turning the dashboard brightness dial all the way up - the boot/trunk latch that was made entirely of plastic, and was held onto the boot/trunk by plastic pins. The perpetual thirst for an odd (for Jap imports) grade of oil (5W30 only). The coolant that drained out if you parked on a slope. The sunroof that always leaked and you could never quite fix.

The park lights that involved taking the entire bumper off merely to replace a bulb - in a country used to actual Japanese built cars, such European levels of PITA maintenance earned the Cavalier a deserved bad name.

I don't know if GM just half-assed it on purpose, or by mistake, but it was hardly a soaring endorsement of American engineering.

<comment><USER10> Why not both?

The J-cars (cavalier/sunfire/sunbird) existed b/c of the second oil crisis in '78\. GM needed something FWD, smaller than the X-cars, that could get better fuel economy than the RWD V-6 and V-8 cars it had been selling in the '70s. The thought was that people in the US would buy these because they had to, not because small cars would suddenly become appealing to Americans in their own right.

The Js were never terribly profitable, the lower-end ones were almost certainly sold at cost to boost the company's mileage compliance numbers. The traditional easy way of squeezing costs out of a car is to pull them out of the interior & trim, which would explain the sunroof, the dash electronics, the trunk closures and taillights.

The engine you got in yours is almost certainly the Quad OHC, one of the last Oldsmobile powertrain designs...in its original 2.3L config, Olds had it making 185hp (in 1989, with no turbo!). Powerful but with no balance shafts, it pulled well but sounded & shook like a pair of wolverines trapped in a dryer, which is why the 2.4L version got balance shafts and was detuned to 150hp.

<comment><USER11> My then girlfriend had a Sunbird. She was a very nervous driver. I thought it was part of some other psychological issues she had. Then I had to drive her Sunbird somewhere. Terrifying! Somehow in a noisy gutless cramped smallish car GM had managed to reproduce the floaty uncontrolled body motions and vague imprecise steering of the full size cars of a decade earlier.

<comment><USER10> It might sound crazy, but according to one of Bob Lutz's books, there is/was a huge corpus of GM Engineering Standards, some of which dated back to the 1930s, that had a big influence on design. This might explain why a compact Pontiac Sunbird might feel like a fullsize 1979 Pontiac Parisienne-both cars might have to meet the same set of criteria regardless of market fit!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Its not a direct comparison, but having owned cars from Japan, the US, and Germany, watching the videos of cars being made by the major manufacturers makes the difference somewhat obvious.

I've linked them below, but just looking at the factory processes, the workers, and the methods used it seems the German process is just designed to build cars with tighter tolerances. The cars don't move down assembly lines with humans touching them (in the 911 factory). When a human is working on the car, the car isn't moving. Compared to the Corvette (much cheaper, but still "high end") you can see how quantity is prioritized, and how the car never really stops for any extended period of time, before moving down the line.

Again, this is a totally subjective opinion, but comparing my current car (VW) to a similarly priced Ford I test drove the other day (GT350) the difference in build quality is night and day.

This is a Porsche factory, building an expensive, high end 911 - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbcKZ1lRDuA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbcKZ1lRDuA)

Here is the Chevrolet Factory building a Corvette - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ccOrwFs3No](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ccOrwFs3No)

<comment><USER13> it's worth pointing out that a porsche 911 base MSRP is ~$110,000, while a corvette base starts around $60k.

<comment><USER14> Last time I checked, everything was an optional extra in 911s too. Even stuff that is a standard feature on cheap econoboxes. Last I looked there was something utterly bizarre as an expensive optional extra, it was something like powered windows or remote locks. Something that I didn't even know didn't come as standard in a car. I wish I could remember what it was. (this was like 2010, so whatever it was might have changed, but it was still grossly out of place back then. It was not air conditioning, that at least makes sense from a weight perspective on a performance car.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > _CR says Chrysler's Pacifica was one that contributed to the drop in > rankings thanks to the minivan's infotainment and transmission issues._

Every single "downgrade" I read about is either infotainment or transmission or both.

Except Honda, which apparently has shit locks on it's kid hauler.

I'm a bit skeptical of consumer reports after actually reading it. My car, a Subaru WRX is given low marks for "stiff ride and constant engine noise", which I think re reason why people buy WRXs, not avoid them.

<comment><USER16> I dig the WRX, but I would love if the engine were quieter. IMO a quieter engine is _always_ desirable - akin to how I always want my computers to have quieter fans for any given level of performance.

<comment><USER17> Not to enthusiasts, who are driving for the experience of driving, including the feel, sound, etc

<comment><USER16> I consider myself an enthusiast, and still consider engine noise to be undesirable.

Among various other car things, I'm very enthusiastic for in-car noise cancelling: [https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/9/18175748/bose-noise- cancel...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/9/18175748/bose-noise-canceling- system-car-ces-2019)

<comment><USER18> Interestingly enough, the industry is actually going the opposite direction. Engines are getting quieter externally, to avoid pissing off your neighbors (there are few things as annoying as a tuner with a fart-can exhaust driving down a residential street), but with artificial engine noise piped into the cabin via the speakers in order to give enthusiasts the noisy experience they want.

<comment><USER19> That should help with _some_ of the fans of loud engines—those who just like listening to their own car.

But I can't shake the suspicion that a significant percentage of loudness fans want _other_ people to listen to their vehicle (With bikers, this is explicitly acknowledged in the name of security: "Loud Pipes Save Lives").

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm an American and I will probably never buy another American made car again until we switch to EV.

Time for anecdotes! I'm in the process of changing our families vehicles: I've sold our Toyota Tundra and purchased a Toyota Sequoia, and I'm currently selling our Honda CR-V and will be downsizing to a Toyota Matrix or Honda Fit.

The Tundra has been one of the most amazing vehicles I've ever owned. I bought it used with 160k miles on it, and sold it at 200k. Over 5 years I have done my own brakes and oil changes, and have only had to replace the starter. I sold it for $1k less than I bought it (I got a good deal). We bought essentially the exact same vehicle, just in SUV.

The Honda has been a little less stellar, but still good. AC compressor has gone out multiple times (a known issue affecting multiple models), but we replaced it with a warrantied aftermarket part the first time it failed. It's currently at 220k and still kicking.

We only buy used and in cash, so finding the right car can take some time. Toyotas and Hondas have unbelievable resell value in the used market. A used Toyota can fetch a similar price as a _brand new_ American made equivalent.

<comment><USER21> For someone who doesn't want to buy American made cars, you sure speak fondly of some of them. Tundra and Sequoia have only ever been made in the us, matrix was once upon a time made in the nummi factory that is now Tesla's, and have been made in North America since, crv have also mostly been made in the us, otherwise North American production, same with all newer fits. The only car you mentioned made outside of North America would be the first generation fit, made in Japan.

I had a friend's dad who was one of the few people I talked to who, as a Japanese brand enthusiast, went out of his way to find a Chevy/Geo prizm - same mechanical bits as a Corolla, built in the same factory, but way cheaper because of all the people who reflexively avoided American brands.

<comment><USER22> It seems you and OP aren't working from a shared definition of "American made."

OP seems to have a reverence for autos made by foreign-based companies (Toyota and Honda).

While you are rightly pointing out that both Toyota and Honda manufacture in America.

The key difference in OP's enthusiasm seems to be not in location of manufacture but in company process/ethos/culture that delivers reliable vehicles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> A lot of the issues may come down to whether management prioritize financial engineering / making huge bonuses / pleasing wall street vs making good vehicles. The same with Boeing - they used to be run by engineers who wanted to make great planes and then the shifted control to finance guys in Chicago who wanted to make big profits. You see the effect a bit with Tesla where I'm sure Musk would love to focus on quality but has to rush things out to make decent quarterly numbers or risk going bust by not getting ongoing financing.

The Japanese seem to have almost the opposite attitude to finance where they will keep putting money into loss making stuff for ages out of a kind of loyalty which may lead to it's own issues of course.

<comment><USER24> I worked for years as an engineer and manager at a legendary Japanese corporation, known for their quality.

It was a frustrating experience. Their obsession with quality made even the smallest tasks difficult and tedious. 3,000-line testing spreadsheets, where even one failure pooched the whole deal.

But you can't argue with the results.

Good quality is difficult and tedious. I like to think that the work I do is of exceptional quality, but I am often met with outright hostility by American engineers, when I talk about my methodology.

I'm not being snooty, or projecting onto others. I'm merely talking about what I do, and I'm treated as if I'm eating a ham sandwich in Temple.

<comment><USER25> It's funny, because this is the kind of philosophy that makes software engineering in Japan so difficult, but is very ideal for automotive mass production.

<comment><USER24> Yup. It hobbled our software engineering efforts, but they make excellent hardware.

I quickly learned never to use the word "agile" in Tokyo. Frowny faces everywhere.

Since leaving that company, I have gone to "ultra-agile" methodology, but quality is still one of my principal axes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I must admit that's not what I expected - I've seen it repeatedly asserted that electric cars are so much simpler than ICE cars that their reliability should be much higher (which does seem reasonable to me). Mind you - its over twenty years since I've had an engine/transmission problem with a car (plenty of other faults - but not with those components) - maybe I've been lucky though.

<comment><USER27> They're much simpler but they're still complicated and you still require experience to design and build properly. Tesla was too busy breaking the rules to stop and think about why things may have been done a certain way.

<comment><USER26> Actually, most of the problems we had were fundamental design flaws e.g. a Toyota my wife had where the instruments (speedometer etc.) started cutting out occasionally - problem was tracked back to, of all things, the sunroof! There was a small leak and the electrical connectors for the instruments were in the bottom of the passenger foot-well - where the water was collecting from the sunroof and shorting things out.

Similarly I had a VW that was prone to flooding the interior due to poor design of the battery compartment - if the drain hole from the battery compartment was blocked it would overflow into the interior of the car (we're in Scotland so problems inevitably involved water).

Edit: To anyone asking why we bought a car in Scotland _with a sunroof_ , I do wonder and we'd never do it again!

<comment><USER16> I don't especially want a sunroof, as they inevitably leak, but it's becoming increasingly difficult to get a car at anything other other than the base trim level without sunroof - and when combined with other requirements I have (e.g. sat radio) presence of a sunroof is one of the first things I'll compromise on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Looks like a lot of discussion here is about housing, but the CR report suggests that most of the issues are with the infotainment systems in cars. And that includes Tesla. I assume that the ecosystem is big enough to create a 3rd player that's better than android auto or iOS and better suited for cars specifically.

<comment> blaser-waffle Maybe it's just me but the infotainment systems in cars, despite being more complex, aren't really _better_ in any meaningful way compared to my 2007 Mazda 3 (RIP). I've got a new car with a touchscreen but it's more of a PITA then hooking up an MP3 player via the aux audio.

<comment><USER29> I have an older car. I replaced the head unit with one that supports Bluetooth, and it stays on Bluetooth 24/7\. I have a suction cup mount for my phone which runs GPS. That's all I need. I dread having to buy a car made in the past decade or so, purely because of way-too-intrusive infotainment systems.

<comment><USER30> What you describe is what I did to my older Outback a few years ago, replaced the aftermarket non BT stereo my older brother had in it with BT. The swap wasn't too bad and It's been working great since then.

I just got a recent year Mazda3 that came with the free (from Mazda) upgrade to Android Auto/Apple Carplay. I'm and Android guy so can't speak to Carplay but the basic functions provided by AA like music/podcast playback, navigation, and overall interface are solid even without a touch screen. In fact, I'd say the lack of touch screen is a perk as I'm not reaching out to tap something vs using the console/cup holder area interface that I picked up quickly and like (other than a so far not re-mapable star/favorites button that only goes to the Mazda audio favorites list outside of AA). It's less distracting than a mounted phone, has a bigger screen for navigation, and works really well for me. I don't think Id buy a newer car without either a basic BT stereo setup or full blown AA.

That being said, I have the trade off now of requiring a cable for AA to work otherwise I'm only on the built in BT infotainment (which I still find way better than the Toyota Corolla interface I tested out recently). I'm still used to leaving my phone in my pocket or jacket so I have to remember to pull it out and often end up leaving it plugged in and walking away (the spot where it sits is well hidden so not too worried about theft in my location). According to forums, it is possible to hook my phone to AA setup via wifi and project wirelessly with some lag which I am interested in setting up but I think I need to update the software in my unit before it can make the wifi connection.

I'm really liking the AA setup in this car. It's pretty intuitive, easy to set up and control, and feels safer than another setup with the caveat that it needs a cable. Good news is it keeps the phone charged up (the Toyota Corolla USB didn't provide enough power to charge my phone, for some reason). I would recommend it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Not really a surprise. US manufacturing is optimized for the extrema (i.e. it's a saddle curve): inexpensive stuff to heavy to be worth shipping (e.g. paper) and inexpensive low-labor commodity product (e.g. grain) and at the other extreme: super high value, difficult to produce items (e.g. ultra-high precision bearings, cruise missiles).

<comment><USER31> That is total nonsense. I buy nearly everything either made in the US or Europe. Kitchenware, tools, outdoor equipment, clothing, furniture and just about everything else except my phone, tv and computers. It's always excellent, durable and unfortunately, expensive.

<comment><USER2> I agree about many European products (the appliances in my house are all 20 year old European ones that still work perfectly).

But inexpensive "made in USA" stuff I tend to find (folding outdoor chairs and the like) seems to pretty much last a short time or even single use, and as has been lamented publicly, is rarely exported. Most of the everyday product purchases seem to come from SE Asia.

<comment><USER32> Only on the extreme low end. If you want cheap crap, there is a certain national economy geared to that, and its not the USA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is a bit flame bait-y but I really feel like America is getting a super Galapagos effect compared to the rest of the world. Everything is super different and weird and kinda bad, and nobody seems to notice.

I go to peoples houses in the US sometimes. Some of these houses are multimillion dollar homes. The doors are all terrible. The plumbing is crap. The furniture just feels bad. The cheapest studio apartment in Western Europe or Japan ends up with better infrastructure than the $2M duplex in California

Then you get to grocery stores, and you have to go to the "fancy places" to even get the baseline of quality you see in the rest of the developed world. All the chocolate is bad.

My dad has a really expensive american-made fridge. It sucks. The UX is awful and it basically just looks shiny.

Maybe this is the result of 30 years of wage stagnation. I like to think it's the result of people not really traveling abroad (reasonable! It's expensive and far away). People don't get that so many other places are just nicer and have higher quality things for cheaper.

There's some quote about how somebody was super poor when growing up but was fine about it because they didn't realize it. I think about that all the time when looking at some stuff in the US.

<comment><USER34> American bread is particularly problematic as someone that moved from Europe. Until I found bread I liked I'd often joke that it was suitable for storage in a bomb shelter since it has an unnatural shelf-life and tastes like it.

After a tedious search, we wound up buying $2.60 "Sara Lee Artesano Style Bread" which is still less good than a 70c loaf of Hovis in the UK, and certainly less good than fresh made French bread (which in my opinion is world class). But it is very notable that it has a 7~10 shelf life, not one month like other supermarket breads, is actually soft, and not overly sweet.

It is kind of unfortunately that in the US basically passable bread is called "Artesano" and earns a price premium. Many living in the US haven't had the opportunity to try elsewhere to compare. The strangest thing about this is that you'd expect the US's bread to be much cheaper (given the quality reduction) but that wasn't at all my experience (in fact fresher bread in Europe was substantially cheaper than long-shelf-life-bagged bread in the US).

<comment><USER35> It's the same in the UK, where most of the bread you can get is basically intended for a toaster.

But, it's down to volume and consumption; in my country (NL), bread is a daily staple, often featured in two meals a day - so a family will easily go through a loaf a day. It makes more sense to optimize the production and logistics for a shelf life of days instead of weeks. We can get reasonably fresh (factory- produced) bread daily, and a lot of grocery stores have an in-house bakery as well nowadays if you want to go super fancy. (I'm sure that's a logistical optimization as well, that is, dough or its components are easier to transport than ready-made bread, especially because some (like croissants) are very fragile).

<comment><USER36> I actually hosted some couch surfers from the UK and other places in the world while in Germany. I had a local market with an old bakery(remember that even in Germany the great majority of bakers are now a handful of companies) very close to my place.

The bread they bake is genius it has just the right amount(little) sourness and never tastes soaky, crispy around but soft inside.

But the point being is that some of the couchsurfers would hilariously laugh at the strangeness of having bread that isn't white fluffy toast. I got that reaction from Brits and South Americans. The French would appreciate it and the cheese choices with it.

The UK is an interesting little phenomenon IMHO. Not quite the US but also not quite Europe. In a lot of ways more similar to the US(not always in a bad way). You also get plenty of HFCS there

<comment><USER37> Are you sure things have HFCS in the U.K.? What's it labelled as? I often look at ingredients and only ever notice "sugar" ie. sucrose

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> This is why I think Tesla will have a hard time when most manufacturers are creating EVs. In Europe we are already seeing that a lot of Tesla owners are turning to Porsche.

The build quality is just sad for such an expensive car. Wind blowing into the side window!? Ok, they will fix it over time, but I'm just flabbergasted they shipped those cars.

<comment><USER39> sorry, but where are we seeing that ? Has Porsche already delivered any electric cars to customers ? Or are you talking about the fact that the e.g German media finally has a darling to talk about, even if it is really really pricey and slower with less range ?

I have no issues with E Porsche. Good for them and their fans. I hope they sell as many as you can even if they take all Tesla customers that overlap. But Porsche only sold 256,255 cars last year after decades of existence since they target a certain clientele. Tesla will surpass that this year in volume.

<comment><USER38> The Porsche Taycan is pre-ordered more than 30000 times. Most of those customers currently own a Tesla.

<comment><USER40> Would you mind disclosing your source(s) for both statements?

<comment><USER41> I Google'd "Porsche Taycan 30000" and found these sources for the 30k pre- orders claim:

* [https://thedriven.io/2019/07/31/porsche-taycan-pre-orders-su...](https://thedriven.io/2019/07/31/porsche-taycan-pre-orders-surge-to-30000-three-variants-hinted-for-debut/)

* [https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/29/porsche-taycan-reservation...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/29/porsche-taycan-reservations-surpass-30000-ahead-of-world-debut/)

There is almost-certainly no source for the "most of those customers currently own a Tesla" statement, because that's not something Porsche would ever disclose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Is this new? I'd be curious to know the last time it _wasn 't_ true, outside of Tesla. I'm guessing you'd have to go back to the 60s or early 70s. I actually think US cars have improved tremendously in the last decade, though.

<comment><USER43> they have improved. the measure in the article is relative reliability. Almost any car now is more reliable than the best cars from 30 years ago.

<comment><USER42> I mean relative to the foreign competition. There's still a gap, but at least in terms of fit and finish it has narrowed. That's more initial quality than reliability, I guess.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Isn't this just stack ranking? Hasn't that always been a terrible way to measure quality?

Every car, especially American makes, are _drastically_ improved from even just a few years ago. Being in the bottom half in 2019 is a completely different story from being in the bottom half in 1999, or 1969.

<comment><USER45> The dynamics of how to evaluate a team of people that work together are quite different from ranking the quality of competitors in an industry. The reasons that stack ranking is bad don't really apply to choosing your next car manufacturer or to evaluating the relative health of US car companies versus others.

</comment></comment><comment> mark-r I haven't bought a U.S. branded car since 1979. That 1975 Dodge Dart was bad enough to turn me off them forever, especially when I saw how much worse its replacement (the Dodge Aspen) was. My last 4 autos have been Toyotas, all excellent.

</comment><comment><USER46> So much for my dreams of buying a used Tesla.

I've got kids, so I buy my cars used. A while back I decided to start buying Toyota products, I haven't regretted the decision.

I do hope the American manufacturers turn things around, though. Maybe with the electrics.

</comment><comment><USER47> "alleged infotainment issues"

I mean, not that it doesn't matter, but it feels like a bait and switch when people say "reliability" and then it comes down to this.

I had a new Honda just a few years ago that had a broken internal engine part, a leaking head gasket, and a failed alternator within months. It had to be towed once. I decided to trade it for a "less reliable" vehicle.

If you look online for used cars with high mileage, you will find, I think, that there are a lot of undesirable brands/models that nonetheless commonly last a long time.

</comment><comment><USER48> Don't get me started on ANY German car ... my cars and home appliances are all Korean now.

<comment><USER49> All power to you but I know if the choice was between a Bosch and a Samsung washing machine, it would be the Bosch one every time. Too many gimmicks, poorly designed software and cheap plastic pieces.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Can't help but draw a parallel to the Boeing mess. Is there something in corporate America that leads to this (aside from the obvious answer of profits over everything)

</comment><comment><USER51> I'm quite pleased with my 2017 Ford Fiesta SFE with its German engine and French gearbox and Mexican assembly.

Unfortunately, Ford is eliminating the Fiesta in the US.

<comment><USER52> That's surprising considering that car has the worst transmission in car history. Unless the SFE is the one with a stick.

<comment><USER16> AFAIK every trim level of the Fiesta has been available with either automatic or manual except the ST (i.e. the hot hatch version) which is manual-only.

<comment><USER51> I believe the SFE (using the 1.0L, in-line 3 "EcoBoost" engine) was only available with a 5 speed stick. I suspect the performance with an auto transmission would be unbearable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Does anyone know how much importing cars adds to the cost of a Toyota? I'm curious how much more of a lead Japan has when accounted for that.

<comment> mark-r Many "imported" cars are made in the U.S.

According to Wikipedia [1]:

> Toyota has a large presence in the United States with six major assembly > plants in Huntsville, Alabama, Georgetown, Kentucky, Princeton, Indiana, San > Antonio, Texas, Buffalo, West Virginia, and Blue Springs, Mississippi.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota#North_America](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota#North_America)

<comment><USER53> Thanks for the info! Didn't know that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I have travelled US a lot and have rented a lot of different cars. Honestly I don't know a much about reliability (except I got several problems with top Nissan models), but comparing to US cars, the rest of the world cars just don't drive and are not fun. And then you got Tesla which is crap inside but for some reason is super fun and you want to buy it immediately.

<comment><USER55> Have you ever rented a Lamborghini?

<comment><USER54> Ok ok, for me fun means the car should deliver fun to all my family while traveling.

<comment><USER41> Ah, so like an Audi, BWM, Mercedes, Acura, Infiniti or Lexus?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Take this with a grain of salt. A vehicle's reliability has just as much to do with who you sell it to (at scale) as what the vehicle is. Reliability ratings are greatly biased toward vehicles that are expensive and don't have tons of manufacturer financing incentives to put them in the hands of everyone with a pulse.

</comment><comment><USER57> this is from 2018!

</comment><comment><USER58> Some years ago, I heard it told that the American car companies had done the market research and found that the typical car-buyer in the US bought a car and kept it for 3 years, on average. And so, armed with this info, the cars were designed to last 3 years on average. This is also why the 3-year lease is a thing.

Now, I don't know how true this is, or what definition of "average" was being used in those statements (mean, median, or mode), but let's roll with it. Assuming a normal distribution, that would mean half the cars built last less than 3 years, some significantly less so, and half the cars built last longer than 3 years, again, some significantly more so. Depending on how wide the distribution is, that could mean that there's simultaneously a lot of shitbox lemons and a lot of indestructible workhorses at the same time. And regardless of how wide that distribution actually is, that would explain the varying reports of various US-built cars I've personally heard: some glowingly praising reliability that rivals the Japanese stereotype, and some that would bring more value to the world as crushed metal cubes.

I want to argue against engineering the cars to last only as long as the typical new-car-buyer keeps one, but I have a hard time doing so. If most new cars aren't kept longer than that, why should you care how long the car lasts after the first owner has sold it? I think you could argue that the poor reputation of your used cars could harm new car sales in the long term, but I don't know how to quantify that. In the absence of numbers of how such reliability planning harms long-term sales, I could totally see decision- makers coming to favor designing to a 3-year reliability target, with the car being considered disposable thereafter.

In either case, if the average car buyer buys a car every N years, and thus, you treat that as reliability target, then targeting for a median or mean reliability of N years strikes me as the wrong way to to that. IMO, the ideal reliability distribution would be something of a skewed one, with a long right-hand tail. Keeping the assumption above of N = 3 years, then you'd want the mode on the reliability distribution to be 3 years, with the band below the mode as narrow as possible. If you couldn't reasonably make it any narrower, than push the target modal reliability up, such that the number of cars that fall below N are significantly less than the ones meet it. Yes, that means there will be more cars exceeding your reliability target, but having cars that lasted longer than the minimum necessary strikes me as a lesser evil than having ones that didn't.

Of course, for all I know, the US manufacturers do exactly as I described in the above paragraph, and the German and Japanese brands simply have a longer tail.

Edit: I should make it clear, I personally don't agree with this statement, "If most new cars aren't kept longer than that, why should you care how long the car lasts after the first owner has sold it?". I'm not trying to excuse or justify the low reliability ratings of domestic manufacturers, I'm trying to understand how they got there. I'm trying to model the decision-making of US car manufacturers, and it's a mindset I can see them running on, given the paragraphs above it.

Those down-voting, I'd love to hear your counterarguments. If I'm wrong, then I'm wrong, but it's hard to make less-stupid arguments without knowing how I'm wrong.

<comment><USER59> >If most new cars aren't kept longer than that, why should you care how long the car lasts after the first owner has sold it?

Because those that buy second-hand hear how much trouble a given OEMs vehicles will likely be to own. If they become money-sinks, then after-market value will plummet. If they become worthless on the second-hand market, either consumers will hang onto them longer (encountering the problems themselves), or they'll become less popular to buy first-hand (because they are difficult to sell for a worth-while price).

<comment><USER60> This is exactly why you can snag a relatively low mileage 4-5 year old S Class for around $30k, a car whose msrp was nearly triple that. Vehicles in that segment of the market typically cost a fortune to keep running. Check out the youtube channel Hoovie's garage for a hyperbolic version of this. His schtick is buying the cheapest used car of a given model that he can find and usually ends up dumping a ton of money into it, only for it to still be in terrible condition. The cars are usually beaten into the ground to begin with, but it does give you a sense of the little things that add up over time, especially on high end luxury vehicles and sports cars. His E60 M5 and Maserati Quattroporte were absolute nightmares.</comment></comment></comment>


College2Startup - school is out, find a startup to join - <AUTHOR>

One of the most daunting parts of running and growing a startup is finding the right people for the roles available. Startups are different from other companies, the skills required are a peculiar set and often times, hunger and passion trounces experience in this industry.
College2Startup is a website that wants to take a lot of the noise out of finding new hires. The site takes its extensive list of brilliant grads and undergrads looking to work at startups and connects them with the startups they will fit into best.
Startups often find themselves buying other startups, more for their engineers and other employees than for the revenue potential these days. Finding the right people is a big deal, and that is the reason for college2startup. The site is currently in beta and is inviting subscribers, the earliest few receive the first batch of invites, hence access to available jobs.
Url - http://college2startup.com/ <comment><USER2> Clickable: <http://college2startup.com></comment>


How We Solved the Worst Minigame in Zelda's History [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hs451PfFzQ <comment><USER3> This was surprisingly awesome.

There's a "battleship" like game in Zelda that is "required" (I guess) to be won three times in quick succession for a complete speedrun. Trying to get three wins in a row is too slow, so they developed a method that uses knowledge of the random number generator to find the answers.

The method is, as I understand it:

* The seed for the RNG is fixed (RNG is Whichmann-Hill with a seed of 100,100,100, apparently)

* The RNG is used throughout the game and is called upwards of 5.5M times before they get to the "battleship" challenge, so there's a bell curve distribution on what state the RNG is in by the time the player arrives at the challenge

* The bell curve is too wide to effectively be used to narrow the search down initially, so a few "battleship" games are played (and lost) to guess the state of the RNG

* From the last step, this narrows the search down to a few "key states" of the RNG, each with their own bell curve distribution of what state the RNG is when next used to create the random mini-game

* A new distribution 'heat map' of possible ship positions is generated so players can have an increased probability of solving the puzzle

* Each subsequent guess and/or win give more information about the RNG state to effectively narrow down the search

The key point here is that the RNG is used throughout the game, with an unknown number of calls in between when it's being called for the Zelda mini- game they're trying to win.

Since the method is out of game (as in, not reading memory from the game, using only input from the player out-of-game), it's allowed in speed-runs, much like consulting a web-site with a tech-map or other quick calculations to help the player in game.

I'm no expert but this sounds almost verbatim what cryptoanalysts do to break some encryption protocols with known seed states or other 'side band' information.

<comment> dane-pgp The video is definitely worth watching, but that's an excellent summary, thank you.

It seemed to me that there might be a trade-off (when selecting a square in the game) between squares that have a high probability of containing a ship/squid and squares that are a good choice for carrying out a binary search of the remaining possible board states.

Presumably, though, the remaining board states are sufficiently random that no square is significantly better than any other in terms of the binary search.

<comment><USER4> I implemented a solver for the computer hacking minigame in fallout 3 (? whatever one is the oldest with the hacking minigame)-- it was sort of a 'mastermind' but with words.

My solver eventually always won, without anything as fancy as reverse engineering the game. But to get there I had to both choose the option that maximized the information gain and look ahead many moves to make that estimation accurate-- the choices were non-independent so a simple entropy estimate (e.g. picking the choice closest to 50% on their heatmap) won't necessarily give the best play.

Sometimes the move that distinguished the answer list the best was was not the first move in the _pair_ (or n-tuple) of moves that best distinguished the list.

By lookahead I mean for each ultimate answer, play out the game many moves taking all (or a pruned set of choices) and measure how much narrowing you get after several moves conditional on the first move.

IIRC without the lookahead the entropy based play was worse than playing the most likely choice, and with just the most likely choice my solver wasn't good enough to always win without retrying, so I had an incentive to overcome the local minima of using just the most likely.

Something similar might apply to this, as the geometry of the targets makes the choices non-independent.

But it sounds like taking the most likely choice is good enough in this game so perhaps they stopped their development there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is what I love about speedruns: it's basically the core of the hacker mindset—solving problems through creativity, often to a insane degree.

If you don't feel like watching a 24-minute video, please do yourself a favor and resist that urge. It really pays off.

And if you enjoy it, take a look at these channels:

\- [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtUbO6rBht0daVIOGML3c8w](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtUbO6rBht0daVIOGML3c8w)

\- [https://www.youtube.com/user/BismuthWasTaken](https://www.youtube.com/user/BismuthWasTaken)

\- [https://www.youtube.com/user/karljobst](https://www.youtube.com/user/karljobst)

\- [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIyZiiHXIH7KkqfaDvBmG-Q](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIyZiiHXIH7KkqfaDvBmG-Q)

\- [https://www.youtube.com/user/RWhiteGoose](https://www.youtube.com/user/RWhiteGoose)

<comment><USER6> The proper way to watch a speed run video is with a speed run. Watch at 2x speed or more for < 12-minute completion time with a possible _gain_ in comprehension.

<comment><USER7> Actually, it turns out that you can save a couple hundred frames at the beginning if you enter the video holding down A.

<comment><USER6> What does that do from a technical standpoint?

<comment><USER7> Nothing, it's a reference to the "Watch for Rolling Rocks 0.5x A Presses" video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpk2tdsPh0A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpk2tdsPh0A)

<comment><USER8> amazing

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is this mini game in Ocarina of Time where you enter a room with two locked exits and a chest containing either a key or some consolation price. Every exit leads to a new room with a chest. You win the game by picking the room with a key N times but price in the next room is always random. At some point I got stuck and the best thing I could think of was to open random doors. A hole day I picked the wrong door and at the end only got a quarter extra health for my effort and was still stuck at the game. Had to find this enter-hook think hidden in some old grace.

<comment><USER10> You can use the Lens of Truth to cheat and see the contents of the chests before opening them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why did I just watch this? Fascinating but I don't even know what a speed run is. In terms of the statistics, heat map and mini game breakdown - <USER2> slick. I just don't understand why so much effort was put into unpacking this game within a game :)

<comment><USER12> A speed run is an attempt to finish a game faster than anyone else. (Within some set of constraints; e.g. it might mean seeing the credits, it might mean explicitly winning every stage or ever boss in the game, etc).

The issue with this minigame was apparently that players would need to waste a basically random amount of time on the minigame, it was necessary to win the minigame to finish the game (in a way that meet these particular speedrun constraints).

If the game takes two hours to finish and the minigame can take 1 minute or 5 minutes of it, an attempt where it takes 5 minutes is probably never going to beat the record. You might as well scrap it. And in this case you would not know until half an hour into the game whether this attempt you'd get lucky, or if it was a total waste of time. So this group wanted to find a way to mitigate the randomness, such that the viability of an attempt was determined by player skill rather than luck in a bullshit minigame.

<comment><USER11> Got it - I didn't realize speedruns we're so popular for this game and that this minigame was the crux of the speed run problem. Impressive dedication to such a minute problem.

<comment><USER13> There are different categories for speedruns within a game. The most popular is for completion, then for 100% completion. Sometimes other restrictions too. Like Super Mario Brothers has ones for winning with and without warp pipes.

The fastest Super Mario Brothers speedrun is under 5 minutes: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gum4GI2Jr0s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gum4GI2Jr0s)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The speedrun community is wonderful for this sort of thing. And tbh it's therapeutic to have on in the background as I've been WFH since COVID started.

Sort of related, it's awesome to see that they're still finding massive bugs in these old games (such as Ocarina if Time, which only recently have a proper ACE exploit found) 20+ years later and figuring out _why_ these bugs happen so they can figure out easier ways to make it happen so they can actually use them in runs. It's fascinating to watch the progression of these exploits

<comment><USER15> Check out the history of Wind Waker's barrier skip as well. I believe it saves 30 minutes of a 3.5 hour run. It's always been known that finding a way to skip Wind Waker's barrier would be massive, but it resisted any attempts to bypass it until a year ago. The barrier blocks off the final dungeon of the game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > Thanks the NSA for the beautiful piece of software called Ghidra

(had to look it up: [https://ghidra-sre.org/](https://ghidra-sre.org/) ).

<comment><USER7> I'm very happy to see that Ghidra is commodifying reverse engineering tools and making them available to efforts like these.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Linkus7 at Awesome Games Done Quick 2020 exploiting memory leaks so that the Gamecube can't malloc RAM for a barrier wall thus skipping over a large amount of the game [https://youtu.be/7XBPrFYN1MU?t=3106](https://youtu.be/7XBPrFYN1MU?t=3106)

</comment><comment><USER18> This video left me with a lot of unanswered questions, probably because I know nothing about reverse engineering console games.

How did they figure out the RNG method, and the initial seed values? And how were they able to count the number of RNG invocations while the game was running? This information was crucial for the rest of the setup, but not at all obvious how it was acquired.

<comment><USER19> Nintendo left symbol maps for the game on the disk, so they likely found the random number generator function within that, which is named cM_rndF. To count invocations, you could patch the game to increment a counter on every RNG call, and try an example speedrun. Or you could do a brute force to find the rough invocation count from the internal state.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I clicked on the link wondering if it was the battleship minigame. I hated this minigame so much, I too ended up writing code to help me figure out optimal moves just get past the dumb thing, and I wasn't even trying to speed run the damn thing.

</comment><comment><USER21> I can tell that so much effort went into this video, with so much explanations and those impressive animations, but then the sound was set to -18dB on export, making it barely audible. Oops!

</comment><comment><USER22> As an aside, Wind Waker is so beautiful. I remember at the time merely thinking "this is an opinionated visual style" but man did it fracture gamers at the time.

But now it feels pretty timeless...

<comment><USER23> The version shown is the Wii U version which has some updated graphical effects.

I'm playing through the original right now and while it's quite decent- looking, it's not as polished as the update.

<comment><USER22> Good catch - I had a feeling it might be.

Still, WW always amazed me for a GC/PS2 era game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> One of my great achievements in life is getting a score of 10 in this game. Perhaps someday I'll get a perfect 9.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is great. Bayes' theorem is such a simple principle, which is precisely why it's so powerful.</comment>


MacBook Pro with updated GPU is now available - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/14/macbook-pro-with-updated-gpu-is-now-available/amp/ <comment><USER2> It's really annoying trying to look up information for the "Vega 20" since it also refers to AMD's Instinct line.</comment>


URL shorteners are a short path to your hard-drive - <AUTHOR> https://boingboing.net/2016/04/13/url-shorteners-are-a-short-pat.html <comment><USER3> Ah, that explains why the OneDrive URL shortener is gone.

Noticed that a couple of weeks ago, when sending a link to a few pics - <USER2> a ...driv.ms short URL was not available any more.

Just tested a link I made one year ago, and it still works for me, but seems to go through the 'login' checks, from what flashes through the browser address bar.</comment>


Convoy presents itself as "Uber for trucking" - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/27/9620352/convoy-uber-for-trucking <comment><USER2> My brother-in-law (and next door neighbor) owns a logistics trucking company (that mostly ships for my father-in-law's hay company, which is the largest exporter in the US). My father-in-law is the largest exporter of anything out of Utah, and loads all of his trucks back up from the port, making him one of the largest importers. In short, they do a lot of business.

I talked with them at length about this exact idea, and they had me convinced that the Uber model doesn't necessarily make sense in this space.

First of all, there's no network effect or immediacy required (a la Uber). Basically you're just contracting out trucking companies, and there are a bunch of different ways you can already do that, even online. It's not a simple push-button order, and generally the ordering is done based on relationships.

So basically this company is putting that ordering process into an app. I'm not sure if there is a big enough of a differentiation to make a difference. But I wish them luck.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, that was my thought as well. Logistics companies have been operating computerized dispatch systems for decades: it just never made sense in the taxi business because prior to widespread smartphone adoption, the systems were too expensive relative to the amount of money a single taxi makes.

This might be attractive to small shippers, but yeah, anyone who does any volume of shipping by truck likely already has a computerized dispatch system that's probably integrated into their warehouse management software (so they don't even have to order the truck - the warehouse just does it for them when a shipment is entered into the system).

<comment><USER4> That is correct. The hard part of the logistics industry is getting the integration between warehouse, trucking and operations correct. I worked as a programmer in this space and most of the time and money in this space is not going towards apps and websites (most logistics companies have that or have easy ability to get those things up and running) but integration between interested parties.

<comment><USER5> Something something EDI something something kill me.

I too worked in that space. Super not fun. You're absolutely right that there is tons of money to be made by interconnecting interested parties with incompatible systems. It is a massive industry but yet still there is room for new competition.

I agree with you and above, nobody is going to replace their warehouse system's automatically generated requests with this Uber clone, they want deep integration and this doesn't get them closer to that.

Companies are already competing with this but not by copying Uber but by acting as a data intermediary making it easy to connect logistics companies with their end users. Data compatibility is the "hard problem" not connecting two companies together.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > 1.2 million trucking companies in the US, most of which have fewer than six > trucks

And thousands get shut down each year by the DOT. Being the Uber for trucking is great and all, but enabling these small trucking companies to pass DOT safety audits with flying colors could be the biggest advantage of all.

Safety rating is one of the biggest factors involved in selection of carriers because Union Carbide doesn't want their toxic chemical spilled all over the highway.

The safety rules for trucking are written in blood, meaning much of the rule book exists because people died. Trucking is immensely dangerous. If they get the safety part right, they'll take over the industry. If you knew how the trucking industry works you'd be amazed anything gets anywhere.

<comment><USER7> I would think that being able to package the passing of audits would be a service by now.

FWIW, the people who carry permit loads are more trained and at least when last I checked, not necessarily competing with the rank and file of truckers.

Your last sentence is 100% spot on. I wish people driving in mixed traffic including lots of trucks understood. They clearly do not.

<comment><USER6> > I would think that being able to package the passing of audits would be a > service by now.

Most of the software out there for this is crap. It is a big job though, mainly dealing with driver logs.

<comment><USER7> That's the part I'd most like to see automated. I'm sure it's not that simple.

<comment><USER8> Some people I know are building this: [https://keeptruckin.com](https://keeptruckin.com)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The shipping industry is ripe for innovation all over, and of course it's been driven by innovation for decades, at least since the 1950s when the shipping container was invented.

The trucking industry will absolutely see several new billion-dollar companies emerge in the near future. If I were investing in a startup, though, I'd want it to be run by founders with a background in trucking, shipping, and/or logistics.

If the only experience either founder has is one of them working a summer job at his uncle's company delivering office supplies, I'd be a bit wary. Between Lewis & Goodale, they've run a game studio, a natural-language processing startup, and had various software development roles.

You could argue that Uber broke into a blue-collar market without any experience, but they had the general public as customers, The trucking industry is a very insular place, they're going to need to get a co-founder who comes from the world they're trying to break into.

<comment><USER10> In 2007 or so, a number of us engineers from Lockheed had created a shipping/trucking cargo tracking device... It was a combo rfid tag with gprs, gps, wifi and mesh networking capabilities along with sensors like accelerometers...

Nobody wanted it.

<comment><USER11> in 2012 we had this in Afghanistan on almost every single container/pallet/load.

<comment><USER10> Yeah thats what we originally built at Savi... but there was no security, wifi or any other security in those original tags.

This was the impetus behind us trying to make the modular version.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 8 months ago a redditor shared insight to his freight brokerage business: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/2w8an6/any_fr...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/2w8an6/any_freight_brokers/)

6 months ago another 23yo redditor shared insight of his trucking company-- even as generous as a peek into his revenue and expenses spreadsheet: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/32gwjj/april_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/32gwjj/april_2014_i_started_a_trucking_company_while)

Lots to dissect from there.

</comment><comment><USER13> The reason the taxi business had been so ripe for disruption is that it's a big example of regulations creating a market failure. The business of actually driving a taxi is far, far less lucrative than being an owner of medallions and collecting rent from a fleet of drivers.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'd be worried about the trucking unions having a legal field day over something like this. The taxi unions are one thing, but the teamsters and longshoreman are a whole different thing. I don't think we'll see Convoy trucks picking loads up at port for some time (if ever), which is where the big money is to be had.

</comment><comment><USER15> Just for those too young who might not get the reference - I believe the company name is a riff on [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077369/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077369/).

I think I watched it in the USSR in late 80s - we all thought that's what USA is like.

<comment><USER16> It's more likely that the movie and the company chose the name because of its meaning. A convoy is literally a group of ships or vehicles transporting something, usually protected.

[http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/convoy](http://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/convoy)

<comment><USER17> The Peckinpah movie (and the hit C.W. McCall song that inspired it several years earlier) stands among the most famous instances of trucking in popular culture-- I would guess rather strongly that it's a reference.

<comment><USER18> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sd5ZLJWQmss](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sd5ZLJWQmss)

somebody gotta link the convoy song!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Notably, a URL for the website is missing from the news article, _as well as pretty much every single news article on Convoy._

But I found it, after furious Google sleuthing.

Their website:

[https://convoy.com/](https://convoy.com/)

And their Android app:

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.convoy.dri...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.convoy.driver&hl=en)

The iOS app is Coming Soon(TM), and apparently they received $2.5M in seed funding _yesterday_.

<comment><USER20> One would not have expected "convoy.com" to have required any "sleuthing" at all?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> uShip has been doing this for a while, curious as to what competitive advantages Convoy is going to bring to the space.

</comment><comment><USER22> Never underestimate the power of the long tail.

</comment><comment><USER23> 10-4 rubber ducky.

<comment><USER24> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convoy_(song)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convoy_\(song\))

Give it a listen. It's pretty bad...</comment></comment>


A Year On Hacker News - <AUTHOR> http://bennesvig.com/2011/12/10/a-year-on-hacker-news/

<comment><USER2> I'm closing in on a year myself. One thing that HN has clearly done for me is turn my interest in technology into an interest in businesses driven by technology -- it's moved me up a whole meta-level.

I can't help but think of technology now in business terms. What does it cost? How much is it worth? Is _that_ a viable business model? etc.

For years I suffered under the familiar problem of being a technologist that was viewed by non-technologists as being essentially thought of as a high paid janitor. Nobody cares when things work great, but you get beat in the broom closet when something falls down.

The business-side that HN taught me has paid off tremendously, pay raises, promotions, more responsibility. Without any perceptible change in my skills as a technologist, I'm out of the broom closet and into the board room these days!

<comment><USER3> "I'm closing in on a year myself. One thing that HN has clearly done for me is turn my interest in technology into an interest in businesses driven by technology -- it's moved me up a whole meta-level."

Hah! It made me go in the opposite direction, but in a good way. I started drifting away from CS and SE, getting more and more bored by it. Slashdot was my only half-decent "tech" news site. Other things become more interesting to me.

Then I discovered this site. Now I'm very happily being dragged back into developing my hacking skills. For a while I was letting my skills slip. But now, I'm getting good at it again. Thank you, HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I come to HN for the comments. Every now and then I'll read something that really inspires me. I'm not necessarily talking about great advice, either. Sometimes just reading over other people's frustrations will lead me to new business ideas.

<comment><USER5> I'm often disappointed by some of the front page submissions these days so I end up reading a few gems and for articles I'm not really into I'll go into the comments too. The comments can often be more interesting than the articles themselves. I'm right there with you!

<comment><USER6> > I'm often disappointed by some of the front page submissions these days

The supposed decline in submission quality is mostly an illusion. PG set up a page that only shows submissions by older users (first six months or first year --not sure which) to evaluate the supposed submission quality decline:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/classic>

Additionally, everything has an item ID #, so if you want to prove it to yourself, you can go through everything sequentially.

<comment><USER7> I don't think "old users" is a good metric for measuring quality, it assumes that the age of your account is somehow related to your intentions on this site.

There's 3 things I think are affecting the quality:

1) A lot of stuff is written specifically _targeting_ HN, that probably didn't happen when the traffic a front page story got was negligible

2) There are sites that blindly submit everything they publish

3) There are people who blindly submit popular sites within seconds of them publishing anything

You don't have to be a new account to be doing any of those things. My account's ~4 years old, I could be doing any or all of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great post, and thanks for the read.

I'm about 6 months (daily-->hourly page refreshes) into HN and I've read some of the most incredible articles here. I feel the same way you feel, and agree on your point of "few people are remembered for being well read.....start shipping...".

With that boost of morale, my decisions to put a lot of things I've read here into practice seem all the more rational.

</comment><comment><USER9> After few months of reading hacker news articles and reading comments I decided to be a part of this community. The discussions here are of the highest caliber from any other community out there. Already over the past few days of joining, I've learned a tremendous deal. I can't wait to see how my development (personal and technical) will advance over the next year!

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm already past my one year mark, and somehow I have 917 karma.

I think I fell off the wagon somewhere.

<comment><USER11> If the difference between your karma and his concerns you, I suggest you not check the leader board.

<comment><USER10> That wasn't my implication. When I originally started with HN, I was telling myself I didn't want to join another community and all I wanted was aggregated links worth reading.

I am now 917 karma into said community. The wagon, I fell off it.

<comment><USER11> My bad. (Perhaps it implies I'm a "karma whore" that I jumped to the wrong conclusion?)

I hope you don't really regret the fall.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Report: Fracking raising water supply worries - <AUTHOR> http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/02/05/ceres-report-fracking-water-supplies/5230583/ <comment><USER2> So this is what, about $10^11 of GDP out of 10^11 gallons of untreated freshwater? Am I the only one with scope sensitivity, or are people valuing natural water at +∞, or what? Because I'm not even slightly outraged.

edit: The 10^11 gallon water figure is "since 2011", so maybe 30 trillion cubic feet of shale gas since then, eyeballing this chart [0]. That would have been around $100 billion, at the (insanely depressed) price of $3/thousand ft^3 [1].

You could replace (literally) that water at a cost of <1% of the shale gas. Literal as in, that's the energy cost to desalinate ocean water in the Gulf of Mexico and ship it to the center of the continent by freight rail. Going by the least efficient numbers in [2], the desalination cost is <150 billion ft^3; and by the numbers on [3], for 400 million tons of liquid cargo, and a 1,500 mile distance [4], is about the same.

I mean this is completely insane of course, it's just for perspective.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Natural_Gas_Production...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Natural_Gas_Production_1990-2040.jpg)

[1] [http://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/ng_pri_sum_dcu_nus_a.htm](http://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/ng_pri_sum_dcu_nus_a.htm)

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

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transport...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_efficiency_in_transportation#US_Freight_transportation)

[4] [https://www.google.com/#q=distance+from+fargo+to+gulf+of+mex...](https://www.google.com/#q=distance+from+fargo+to+gulf+of+mexico)

</comment><comment><USER3> Sorry, we need the cheap energy, and it can't be coal. The US oil crisis is 40 years old. I think every US President since Nixon has talked about energy independence.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis)

I guess we're getting there but I was hoping for a much better solution.

<comment><USER4> Yes, fracking sucks. But it sucks less than depending on the Middle East and Russia for our energy needs.

<comment><USER5> Does it? I don't see what sort of changes fracking has had on our foreign policy? I cannot think of a SINGLE foreign policy that has changed now that we've begun fracking.

<comment><USER6> Fracking has been going on for a looooonnng time, so the relatively recent attention and/or uptick in activity wouldn't necessarily propagate in foreign policy changes, at least in easily noticeable ways.

Another thing to consider: fracking is providing energy to meet the U.S.'s continuing growth for energy...I think foreign policy impact would most definitely happen if additional domestic energy production coincided with a national reduction in energy usage. As it is, though, fracking probably just maintains the status quo, and fracking proponents would argue that things would be much worse if we didn't have fracking at all, and energy consumption continued to grow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Like other resource misallocations, this would be a non-issue if water were priced at market rates.

<comment><USER8> Yes, It would totally be a non issue if poor people just got outbid for the essentials of life and just died.

<comment><USER9> If this were truly a concern, the trivial solution is to have tiered pricing which steps up the price of water after the "essential" quantity has been dispensed. This could be implemented as a yearly rebate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> ND isn't mentioned mainly because we are having flood problems in the east and the Army Corp of Engineers are doing there usual cruddy job.

At some point we need to get the whole desalination plant thing going since California has and is going to have problems with its agriculture and I am a bit more worried about that.

</comment><comment><USER11> There are also non-hydrualic forms of fracturing. Back in the 1960s, the Atomic Energy Commission partnered with utilities to explore the feasibility of releasing natural gas with underground nuclear detonations.

As crazy as this sounds, it actually worked quite well. The problem, of course, is that it created an enormous amount of underground radioactive debris and the natural gas that was extracted was itself radioactive.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rulison](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rulison) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Rio_Blanco](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Rio_Blanco) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Gasbuggy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Gasbuggy)

</comment><comment><USER12> The article says far more water is being used by agriculture. Probably not a good idea to have agriculture, which consumes vast amounts of water, in regions where there are water shortages. Alternatively, the nation does need lower cost oil and gas and the fracking should be encouraged.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm going to complain about the relevance of this post just to get to read the rationalizations for why this sort of thing belongs here. It's like "hacking" the earth? Hackers live on the same planet as the rest of us? Fracking rhymes with hacking?

<comment><USER14> IMHO hackernews is for the thought leaders of the world who are objectively smarter and more visionary than the rest (this is not a value judgment, and I mean "objectively" literally), while operating machinery in a capitalist system that hugely leverages their power so that they are, or can be, like philanthropist robinhood-tycoons, who do not need to exploit anyone or anything, but can create value out of thin air. (As, indeed, they do, starting by using their own labor to produce value far, far in excess of the market price of that labor.) That's how I see startups, at least.

You might have a different opinion of course. If you don't want to be powerful, don't found a startup, or read a site dedicated to this. If you do, then get a conscience while you do it.

On the other hand, there is a bit of a dearth of actual startup news these days.

<comment><USER8> I too enjoy sharing this space with fellow thought leaders Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg, Randy Cohen, Peter Singer, ...

<comment><USER14> There are indeed some people of the likes of Larry page and Mark Zuckerberg who know about this site. It is, after all, the new Slashdot. That is one of Paul Graham's goals.

Of course, you are right in that he's not doing well at it these days.

<comment><USER14> I will just say that Mark Zuckerberg spoke numerous times at YCombinator. I doubt very much that he hasn't read this site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If only the world's industries could run on bitcoins and puppies.

<comment><USER16> ...or on snarky Hacker News comments.</comment></comment>


Should a typo qualify for a bug bounty? - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/clemahieu/raiblocks/issues/302 <comment><USER2> In this case it was a typo in a comment in third-party code included as part of the repo.

In general, it depends on the terms of the bug bounty.

Perhaps the most famous is Knuth's bounty for any mistakes, not just typos but also the wrong use of font and other presentation errors.

For an example from another project, tarsnap's bug bounty is at [https://www.tarsnap.com/bugbounty.html](https://www.tarsnap.com/bugbounty.html) . It uses different categories, each with a different payout level. The least level is:

> Cosmetic errors in the Tarsnap source code or website, e.g., typos in > website text or source code comments. Style errors in Tarsnap code qualify > here, but usually not style errors in upstream code (e.g., libarchive).

In this case it sounds like the submitter for the typo didn't follow the requirements of the bug bounty offer, so it doesn't matter if a typo counts.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Even though it's not a security bug, I'd give the guy a small reward for contributing given that the community/support for this project is trying to grow.</comment>


'This is the worst time for society to go on psychopathic autopilot' - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/23/frankie-boyle-fallout-paris-psychopathic-autopilot <comment><USER2> What a load of sanctimonious, inaccurate, massively over-generalised guff.

<comment><USER3> Sanctimonious and generalized, yes. But inaccurate? How so?

<comment><USER2> It's full of simplifications that are so over-simplified that they are just plain false. "We're always dealing with terror in retrospect". He talks about arresting Abdelhamid Abaaoud from a 'list of Terrorists', but of course Abaaoud wasn't on lists of Terrorists because until the Paris attacks he wasn't a Terrorist, and the French police had insufficient grounds to arrest him for anything. The author is basically ridiculing the French police because they obviously should have arrested him for having a foreign sounding name.</comment></comment></comment>


Steve told us - <AUTHOR> http://www.stevetold.us/

<comment><USER2> "There's a temptation in our networked age to think that ideas can be developed by email and iChat.

That's crazy.

Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions.

You run into someone, you ask what they're doing, you say 'Wow,' and soon you're cooking up all sorts of ideas."

</comment><comment><USER3> ..."And it comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don't get on the wrong track or try to do too much. "

</comment><comment><USER4> Beautiful</comment>


Ask HN: What does everyone think of Charlie Rose? - <AUTHOR>

I witnessed an interview from Charlie Rose to Warren Buffet last night and I was taken back by how interesting it was.  I don't want to obsess over his interviews until I get an actual grasp on the guy.
I already obsess over TED talks and my time is needed else where but what does everyone think of him?
I value your opinions and thats why I ask.  Thanks for responding. <comment><USER2> Maybe I'll have to watch more, as I've always considered him Ambien in human form.

</comment><comment><USER3> Was it a new interview (Buffet was on a couple of months ago)?

Rose does some really good interviews. Can be content heavy. And he also is friends to varying degree with quite a few people. He doesn't appear to deliberately skew interviews on this basis, but one should be aware that his personal connection may at times influence the trust he places in the messages being conveyed.

Still, one of the best interview format news sources around. He used to be a lawyer, IIRC, and it shows in his interrogatory.

Added: Those personal connections, plus the long format that really gives interviewees a chance to communicate what is of interest to them in a thorough fashion, also mean he gets interviews you won't find anywhere else.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank. You described just about what I was looking for. He does in an hour what looks like TED Talks does in 15 minutes.</comment></comment>


The band of biologists who redrew the tree of life - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05827-1 <comment><USER2> I studied under a professor who worked with Woese. It was great- lots of emphasis on RNA, using RNA to answer basic biological questions. One of the things I've never been able to understand is, how did Woese, with just a limited number of very limited sequence data, manage to carve out the existence of an entirely new form of life? I ask, because looking at all the effort to sequential gigabases today, it doesn't seem like we're learning geometrically more knowledge. Modern gains in sequencing seem highly incremental, and generally only provide correlation data, rather than causal data, and the data they do provide is not actionable.

Was Woese's discovery just "easy"? Would any competent scientist working in the field make that? Where are the Woeses of sequencing today?

<comment><USER3> > Was Woese's discovery just "easy"?

In a way, yes. It's widely established that 20th century biologists got to pick the low-hanging fruits. This shouldn't detract from the sheer genius they displayed.

In the specific case of the three domains of life (bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes) — which I'm assuming you're referring to? — Woese & al. got "lucky" with their study of 16S rRNAs.

In a nutshell, these RNAs are relatively easy to sequence and analyse. Their extremely high degree of conservation means that they can be trivially aligned to each other to study differences. But they also contain "hypervariable" regions that made it possible to distinguish different species at extremely high resolution, even using relatively slow computers and unsophisticated analytical tools. In addition, modern phylogeny mostly struggles with inconsistencies in classical methods that are due to unaccounted features (such as lateral gene transfer, which invalidates the typical assumption of a strict tree structure). Early studies ignored these inconsistencies (or didn't even notice them, due to the scarcity of data).

But since you talk about correlative vs causative data, it's important to note that this fundamentally hasn't changed: from a very high-level perspective, new evidence is either compatible with existing theories, or isn't. Strictly speaking, evidence never demonstrates causation — it can't. But sometimes there are few viable alternative models, so the available evidence trivially allows discarding all but one or two models. This gets harder the more nuanced your models are, and this is the natural progression we have in any scientific endeavour.

<comment><USER2> Based on my view of Woese's work (in which I saw the years of effort leading to better secondary structure alignments), I don't think it was "easy" nor was it a low hanging fruit.

And I think there's still low hanging fruit that people are missing.

<comment><USER3> … compared to subsequent phylogenetics (we're all standing on the shoulders of giants, after all). I agree that, at the time, the work must have been (a) mind-numbingly tedious, (b) intellectually challenging.

But comparing past papers (including that one [1]) to current ones does show that the amount of data, computation, and evidence necessary to produce a contemporary research paper is incomparably larger than it used to be. The seminal DNA structure paper was a single A4 page, with an estimate of the double helix height, no calculations or data shown. Good luck getting something like this published today.

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC54159/pdf/pnas0...](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC54159/pdf/pnas01037-0173.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another book on the topic that I can recommend:

The New Foundations of Evolution: On the Tree of Life, by Jan Sapp</comment>


Does Having a Day Job Mean Making Better Art? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/22/t-magazine/art/artist-day-job.html <comment><USER2> NYT is always pro-working for people with money. Art freed from working works against the system as a whole because it shows other ways of being and thinking are possible.

I'm sure there's something to artists living and working among the rest of us to make the art relevant, but it doesn't need to be on an employer's schedule or in the quantity they demand.

EDIT: For instance, having a job allows an artist to be a mirror of the current society, but does it help them look beyond it? Maybe, maybe not.

EDIT 2: Note this article is not by an artist for artists. It's aimed at non- artists.

<comment><USER3> Please help me understand. You're saying the NYT has some agenda to keep artists from quiting their day jobs? If so that seems implausible.

For many artists there is no other choice. Art won't pay the bills but for a small few. I for one enjoy the freedom that comes with having a day job. I don't have to worry if people will like my art (because it doesn't need to make money) And I often get good ideas for writing and music when completing some monotonous task in the office.

About your first edit... I think it's absurd to think you need to be jobless in order to question society. In fact, having a job gives you a front row seat to everything wrong with us.

<comment><USER2> > Please help me understand. You're saying the NYT has some agenda to keep > artists from quiting their day jobs? If so that seems implausible.

NYT doesn't specifically have it out for artists, they just are owned by capitalists and advocate the viewpoint that labor should be subservient to capital. Therefore they tend to publish viewpoints that are aligned with their internal ideology. They do publish some dissenting views, but by fraction this is their predominant viewpoint. If you'd like a sophisticated and detailed analysis of this, please read or watch Manufacturing Consent, a seminal work in this area.

> For many artists there is no other choice. Art won't pay the bills but for a > small few. I for one enjoy the freedom that comes with having a day job. I > don't have to worry if people will like my art (because it doesn't need to > make money) And I often get good ideas for writing and music when completing > some monotonous task in the office.

Note that this conception of freedom is bound up within the capitalist system. People that do not labor for wages are strangled until they comply. It can be that the particular conditions of wage labor are suitable for your individual situation. That is fine, but is not a comprehensive view of how art and society should interact. Real freedom would be for you to be able to work on your art as you please without want for shelter, food, or transport. Public funding of the arts is one way we can help create those conditions for artists.

It's considered notable that the British system of the dole is what created the conditions for the Beetles to develop. If you want really good art, you have to let artists practice their craft consistently.

> About your first edit... I think it's absurd to think you need to be jobless > in order to question society. In fact, having a job gives you a front row > seat to everything wrong with us.

That's exactly what I said. Having a front row seat allows you to be a mirror of society and allows you to develop particular kinds of criticisms. However, it is not the bounded conception of all possible kinds of art, many if not most kinds of art have nothing to do with developing a mirror. Instead, perhaps they imagine something totally different. Even producing a mirror does not necessarily require participating every day. Many times, just a taste is enough to develop an idea. Interviewing people can help you develop ideas. Importantly, the latter is inhibited if you have other things to do.

<comment><USER3> I get that NYT has a viewpoint. I know about manufacturing consent. What I'm saying is, if you wanna catch the media serving capitalist aims, you picked a lame example. For your argument to make sense, the times would have to conciously benefit from this story. Does anyone think that the tiny percentage of financially succesful artists makes a dent in the labor pool for NYTs ownership? The impact to capitalism from someone quitting their job as a taxi driver to sell paintings is miniscule. Even on a sub concious level, this is probably on nobody's mind at the nyt board, never mind the editorial staff. A better explanation for this story: its the sort of middle brow gee whiz art stories nyt readers love to click on.

Your argument makes even less sense when you realize that artists who quit their dayjob are still part of the capitalist system, and continue to get exploited. History is ripe with examples of musicians getting screwed by a label or writers getting screwed by their publishers. Even idependent artists still work within the capitalist system and get taken advantage of. So even if nyt was part of a capitalist conspiracy, theres no reason for them to care if the artist has a job or not.

Thanks for quibbling over the semantics of freedom. Yes i know that id be more free if i could just make art all day and not work. Im not independently wealthy though. And we dont live in a socislist paradise. When i said freedom, i meant freedom from making money with art, and i thought that was understood. You cant deny that creative control with no paying audience you must answer to is one type of freedom.

Lastly, im not implying that having a job lets your art mirror society. Its possible to think outside of it. That has nothing to do with whether your employed or not. What it requires is imagination.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As one of the (perhaps many) artists here with day jobs in software, I read this with interest. I was a bit disappointed but, given it's the NYT, unsurprised there wasn't more about the primary reason most artists have day jobs in the first place: the art, more often than not, doesn't pay; and some of us need to make rent just the same.

I would not say being a software guy has, by itself, had much influence on my art practice so far, though I may yet end up mixing the two disciplines. But I will say that having a reliable, full-time day-job over the years has hugely influenced my artistic _productivity_ and not for the better. Other artists- with-day-jobs I know would almost certainly echo this.

However, for better or worse I chose this path because I didn't want the kind of financial insecurity I saw as a likely risk of trying the "professional artist" path. In retrospect I think I was only half right about that.

On the one hand, a good number of the successful artists I know have other money and also connections such that their worst-case scenario would have been falling back to a fancier version of my life. On the other hand, now that I'm 20-odd years into it I see that a lot comes to you from just staying in the game, and there are ways of balancing the "work" against the "art" that are more favorable to the latter. Figuring this out going forward is one of my big challenges at the moment -- it gets more complicated as your career progresses and you can't just punch a virtual clock anymore.

Purely anecdotal evidence: off the top of my head I can think of seven friends (plus me) who have real day jobs and are also visual artists. One basically gave up painting; two of us are stalled and trying to get started again; one has a job in the art world so is "inside" even during his downtime; and everyone struggles to find time for their art.

Among those I know without day jobs, I'd say about half are more or less broke and half are more or less successful (galleries, museums, etc.). But even among the successful ones there are several who would be broke if not for their partners. I guess I (obviously) still don't like those odds.

<comment><USER5> Your Hacker News bio doesn't link to any of your art! That very well could be intentional, but if you don't mind I'd be interested in seeing the paintings of a fellow HN regular. :)

Also, I'm sure you're aware that Paul Graham wrote a book titled _Hackers & Painters_? The short blurb in your bio reads as if the coincidence was intentional, at least.

<comment><USER4> Yes, the coincidence was intentional, thanks for noticing! I haven't read the book but I loved the famous review[0] of it.

Getting my online portfolio in shape is one of those projects I keep weighing against actually making some new art. A few old pics can be found here, but I have many many more to photograph and put online:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20140210041241/http://www.kevinfr...](http://web.archive.org/web/20140210041241/http://www.kevinfrost.com/)

Also: I don't mean to imply that my writing software has no influence on my artwork -- I've even made a few works of digital art[1], and for a while I was planning to go to grad school in that direction. But I've been programming since I was a kid, and I see "writes code" as a separate thing from "works as a software engineer." I could have made that clearer.

Thanks for your interest!

[0]: [http://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm](http://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm)

[1]: [http://lv8.biztos.com](http://lv8.biztos.com)

<comment><USER5> I really like the first painting you linked to. Your work is definitely the kind that I gravitate towards and I'd like to keep up with it when you get around to putting your updated portfolio online.

On your second point: have you dabbled in computational art? Anything from animation to machine learning to a homemade CNC painting bot? This intersection of the two disciplines, at least in my personal work, has always been what I find most exciting.

Apologies for the incessant questions! I just always get excited by code being using to create art and have always loved that _prima facie_ paradoxical dichotomy.

<comment><USER4> Thanks. I paint in a few other styles as well... gotta get that portfolio together...

Yes, I have done some computational art, going back to the 90's. Some Flash, some web-based, an abortive attempt or two at art-apps after the iPhone SDK came out, some low-key conceptual stuff[0]. When I think about maybe merging the art and software practices now, I think mostly in terms of physical objects affected by software interacting with humans. But not exactly robotics, I don't think that's my alley. But... time... Gotta make some old- fashioned pictures first.

[0]: [http://thislikethat.com](http://thislikethat.com)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article is about the creators of "static" art: writers, composers, and artists. Having a day job would affect actors, musicians, or dancers, much like it would affect athletes. The artistic fields that require "dynamic" performance need the hours spent on muscle memory.

<comment><USER7> Live performance art can indeed impact time resources. But so can other kinds of art at intensive levels.

Indeed I have known, as you call them "static" artists, and "dynamic" artists (poor dividing lines for this conversation), that were so enveloped that they had no time for a day job, career, marriage, or children.

But I know far more artists that have plenty of time for additional choices, such as job, career, marriage, children, leisure, etc.

Back to the original point, I don't find myself engaging readily with people who don't know, or understand, profoundly difficult physical labor, and profoundly difficult mental labor.

Both are character shaping. So an artist who is lacking one or the other, I don't find accessible. It doesn't mean that we are all busy all the time, working and thinking hard, it just means that at some point in life, having gone through that deeply impacts a person.

Throw in a little philosophy, introspection, and reflection, and those kinds of artists can produce static or dynamic (to use your words) art that really pulls one in, and demands engagement.

<comment><USER6> I didn't like "static" and "dynamic" but they were the best words I could come up with quickly. Mostly I mean that the performative arts involve a physical skill component that will be hard to develop without the sheer hours. Introspection and character-building are also necessary but less primary, and the threshold for technical skill rises as the amount of originality required decreases. Compare standards for classical music and ballet to jazz and modern dance. The expectations for a top violinist or ballerina are essentially those of a figure skater or gymnast.

None of this is to say painting and sculpting don't require skill, but I'm not sure Picasso or Van Gogh would've been able to show their genius if they had to be Bob Ross and do it live every time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As an aspiring songwriter with a 9-5 the main benefit is simply providing a time constraint that forces you to work.

<comment><USER9> I can totally understand this. This would be the main problem for me about freelancing. Too much freedom turns me into a hobo hermit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Unfortunately intellectual property (IP) contracts make the lifestyle described in the article difficult for engineers and programmers. Work on something in your spare time that is plausibly related to work your company does? Too bad, your company owns it, usually. (I plan to negotiate on this point when getting a job offer in the future.)

I wouldn't be surprised if such policies were shown to be negatively correlated with innovation (however defined), because they remove much incentive to generate good ideas.

</comment><comment><USER11> I had the best of both worlds, working as a photographer and in a lighting gig in TV with enough downtime to do all the work on what I shot when I wasn't working. Then, the photography thing took off, the lighting gig got crazy busy and my other other job got crazy too. Now I'm so tired I can't even think about working on photos and I never get time off. Be careful what you wish for....

</comment><comment><USER12> I made the best "art" of my life when I was unemployed living at home taking care of my elderly father.

However, I also believe that software engineering is an art, not just the programming part, but the communicating/organizing/planning part as well. It's hard to compare the two

</comment><comment><USER13> work, eat, sleep, repeat—an uninspiring 9to6 job does not help getting art done

<comment><USER14> unless your job IS making art, then you're golden

<comment><USER13> if it's the art you want to make, yes :)

<comment><USER14> Oh man, hopefully people aren't being hired to create art they're not trained in doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> We all know struggle is a prelude to strong beliefs. And that much of quality art relates to the struggles of the common man. So why should this be of any surprise?

</comment><comment><USER16> For me routine kills creativity, I suppose it could work if you're making "consumer art".

</comment><comment><USER17> Paywall. Can someone provide a summary?

<comment><USER18> Many artists had day jobs. For example, the composer Philip Glass was a plumber, the poet William Carlos Williams was a doctor. The article explores whether a day job gets in the way of your art or feeds it in some way.

<comment><USER19> And a very silly article it is too, because the confirmation bias is absolute.

We never hear of talented artists whose careers were sunk by job slavery, because their stories will never get media attention.

<comment><USER3> But the article spotlightd successful artists who say dayjobs fueled their work. I don't think the point is to answer the question statistically. For some talented people, a dayjob is preferred. And that's all the article is about</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Accessing the Accelerometer and Gyroscope in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.adobe.com/cantrell/archives/2012/03/accessing-the-accelerometer-and-gyroscope-in-javascript.html

<comment><USER2> Does anyone know if it is possible to get meaningful movement measurements from the combination of these two? i.e. get an initial fix via GPS, then measure movement from that point?

I'm imagining that it isn't (because no-one has done it yet) but would love to be surprised.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can you guys paste the javascripts I need to do this? I couldn't find it in the video. Will this work in the iPhone?

</comment><comment><USER3> Does this work on iPad or iPhone?

</comment><comment><USER4> doesn't work for me on android 2.3.x on an LG P990.

<comment><USER5> _Now that you can access motion sensors in both Google Chrome and mobile browsers, I decided to demo a couple of sample application which hook into the accelerometer and gyroscope: [video]

Note that the compass application only works on devices with gyroscopes (no laptops that I know if), and requires iOS 5 or newer._

Sounds like chrome + iOS5 are required

edit: I take that back, it works (albeit ridiculously slow) on my galaxy s with ICS stock browser</comment></comment>


How to make a hoverboard in real life? - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTkLaxYmgdE

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't get it, why does the hoverboard continue hovering after the hanger is removed?

<comment><USER2> Because it's a hoax.

<comment><AUTHOR> How do you know =)</comment></comment></comment>