Foxconn Expands Operations in India, Vietnam Amid Trade Tensions - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/hon-hai-expands-operations-in-india-vietnam-amid-trade-tensions#gs.pXdcbNaX <comment><USER2> It's true at this current time, China is the best ecosystem to manufacture electronics. Moving anywhere will incur a higher cost but this higher cost is temporary.

This is econ 101. Moving now is pricier in the short run, but the investment, particularly in India, means that there will be a new ecosystem being built that will eventually provide the same costs and availability as manufactured in China without having to deal with the forced tech transfers, censorship, nationalistic boycotts, and a country that is increasingly hostile to democratic values and international norms.

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately I don't think it's that straightforward, specifically for moving development to India. One of the major issues for manufacturing in India is the availability of reliable electricity.

Even though India now has a net surplus of electric generation, there are systemic problems with the electric grid. Some of them are due to poor infrastructure, others due to theft or corruption. But the takeaway is that a factory in India just can't run for 24 hours a day the way it can in China.

This is not likely to change in the foreseeable future, even with sustained international investment. There are a ton of constituencies in India that make fixing these kinds of issues much more complicated than in China. So while a company like Foxconn may be able to setup a factory and use their considerable resources to make it work, I don't think we're likely to see the kind of ecosystem pop up that you see in Shenzhen.

<comment><USER2> I recall talking to an old hand at Li & Fung (they're the largest contract manufacturing company in the world) and he talks of the old days where Shenzhen was literally a village with no factories, no paved roads, and no electricity. When they wanted to manufacture textiles back then, they literally had to build a factory from the ground up.

It's true India has a lot of issues. But the good thing about investments like these is that it creates an opportunity for everyone involved to potentially make a change for the better. This could be the start of a new series of investment in manufacturing and the potential could batter enough heads together to fix issues like electricity reliability especially if every has a vested interest in making it work out.

I'm not saying it will definitely happen, but these are the sort of gamechangers that could disrupt the status quo for the better.

<comment><USER4> When was that? They may be exaggerating.

I was in Shenzhen in the early 90s, and there was already reliable electricity, roads, ports etc., and those were not built by Li & Fung

<comment><USER5> Here's a set of photos from 1980[1], Shenzhen looks pretty provincial at that point.

1: [https://www.flickr.com/photos/lwdemery/sets/7215761115407137...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/lwdemery/sets/72157611154071370/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> $213.5 million - Indian Unit - for "long-term investment"

$16.5 million - Vietnamese Unit - "for operations and sales"

Easy to see where the major investment is.

I see this is as a clear intent to start putting roots in the Indian market, especially since regulations for international phone imports in India are sometimes prohibitive. Though this move isn't to manufacture iPhones _right now_ , they might be making a strategic move to be appealing to Apple, to produce more phones (a future cheap - XR like version maybe?) in India.

That would be in addition to the production already in place in India for some iPhones.

Apple still has the brand awareness in India. The iconic Apple logo's power has yet to die. I'm not sure if they expect to sell high end iPhones about $1000+ in volume, because they will fail.

One because that isn't cheap even for American blood. And the concept of monthly payments for _a phone_ (price exceeding most two wheelers' prices -- a popular mode of transport) won't sit well with people there, especially devoid of all the carrier incentives in the states.

This is also following rumors from a bit ago - [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-india- exclusive/exc...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-india- exclusive/exclusive-foxconn-to-begin-assembling-top-end-apple-iphones-in- india-in-2019-source-idUSKCN1OQ0M6)

<comment><USER7> I thought Apple's new facilities in India had something to do with India's import restrictions:

"More iPhones made in India may also help Apple to hit a requirement of 30% locally-made products in order to get government clearance to open Apple Stores in the country."

[https://9to5mac.com/2018/12/27/iphones-made-in- india/](https://9to5mac.com/2018/12/27/iphones-made-in-india/)

<comment><USER8> Single brand retail chain ownership was restricted in India. A foreign entity could only own up to 51% in a single brand retail chain. That has changed last year in Jan 2018.

So, the article claiming the issue was 30% locally made products in 2016 doesn't seem right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The investment in Indian unit has been long time coming. India has a strict policy on imported phones. Xiaomi, which is nearly the market leader in India has been doing it for a long time:

[https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/xiaomi- now-h...](https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/xiaomi-now- has-6-smartphone-manufacturing-plants-in-india-will-also-make-pcbas- locally-1207974-2018-04-09)

Apple had lobbied hard against these rules but given that "Made in India" platform had be one of the bedrock policies of Prime Minister Modi, this was going to be an uphill battle.

That said, I might be pessimistic but I don't see this changing Apple's fortunes in India.

</comment><comment><USER9> A perfect example of a non-news turned into news just to sell ads. Trade tensions have nothing to do with foxconn or anyone's expansion in vietnam/ASEAN or india. Multinational corporations have been moving to vietnam and india for at least a decade now. Even chinese companies are moving to vietnam and india as they look to exploit wage differences between china and vietnam/asean/india.

From 2008 ( can't believe 2008 was 11 years ago ) ...

[https://money.cnn.com/2008/08/13/smallbusiness/the_new_china...](https://money.cnn.com/2008/08/13/smallbusiness/the_new_china.fsb/index.htm)

</comment><comment><USER10> $216mn in India and $16mn Vietnam seems really small investments in the grand scheme of things. I doubt this indicates any material change in strategy other than introducing some manufacturing in India

<comment><USER11> Considering that a typical office worker in a large city in Vietnam makes about $300/mo, that's like a $100 million investment in the US. Personally, I'm happy to see such things happening as they should never have been so centralized in a single country in the first place. This kind of investment will also help grow the economies of India and Vietnam.

<comment><USER12> Compare to multi $B by some giant tech companies invested to VN recently, $16M seems to be a tiny investment to me. [1] [https://english.vietnamnet.vn/fms/special- reports/174543/201...](https://english.vietnamnet.vn/fms/special- reports/174543/2017-update-on-foreign-mega-investment-projects-in- vietnam.html)

<comment><USER11> That's quite a nice list. It makes me happy to see it as I have several close friends in Vietnam.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It should be noted that Foxconn is a Chinese company in the larger sense of the term (i.e. not PRC but ROC) and its founder's family is from Shanxi and moved to follow the Nationalists (and so unsurprisingly he supports the KMT).

This is a business decision to expand and diversify but that also widens the Chinese sphere of influence.

Its existing factory(ies) in India are very much used by China mainland smartphone companies, which dominate the Indian market, for example...

</comment><comment><USER14> It is very hard to move that manufacturing process and supply chain out of China without making it more pricey. China got everything they need.

It will take decades to those other countries fulfil what China is offering _Today_

<comment><USER15> From today's NYT article:

But when Apple began making the $3,000 computer in Austin, Tex., it struggled to find enough screws... In China, Apple relied on factories that can produce vast quantities of custom screws on short notice. In Texas, where they say everything is bigger, it turned out the screw suppliers were not.

After creating months of delay, Apple ended up ordering the screws from China. Eventually, Apple found a supplier in Texas that could produce 28,000 custom screws, although they weren't the exact screws needed nor in the right quantity, according to the NYT. And they were delivered over 22 trips, often in a Lexus driven by the maker's owner.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/28/technology/iphones- apple-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/28/technology/iphones-apple-china- made.html)

<comment><USER16> Not the enterprise way, I know, but if they really really wanted those screws couldn't they just have gotten on an airplane and hand carried them back to the manufacturing site? Probably could fit into a standard luggage container.

<comment><USER15> They probably considered producing the screws part of the assembly process, so they wanted to keep it local.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Anecdotal, but I have a friend who manages a Thai manufacturering business/factory (hard drives, optical mice, etc). He said a couple of US companies moved their production out of China to them because of this trade war spat, which presumably he's happy about.

Now he's asked me if I know any other US manufacturers who he could manufacture for (guessing because I work in tech (though software) & live in the states)

Would love to help him, but don't really know how. Makes me realize I haven't networked enough.

</comment><comment><USER18> You have to think that competition between countries is good for Apple here.

If all the tech is in China, there is no competition to have the most favorable regulatory/taxation scheme. If there are two competitions, both have an incentive to lure more manufacturing towards themselves.

</comment><comment><USER19> Good for Apple's future in India - getting those manufacturing jobs over there is the first step to boosting incomes, eventually to the point of being able to sell more iPhones there.

</comment><comment><USER20> At least the Vietnam deal has been in process since early December [1] when the Vietnamese government leaked it to the press.

What I am somewhat confused about, that maybe someone with more experience in the import/export situation can enlighten me on, is whether the Wisconsin plant was also some sort of move in this direction or not. What are the advantages of trying to avoid a trade war by opening up facilities in some neutral third country, as opposed to what they already have, which is facilities in both "belligerent" countries? Is it that you're trying to route Chinese-made products through some minor step in India or Vietnam in order to say "no these really came from India/Vietnam, the tariff doesn't apply" and maintain capacity? Or is the idea that they're ramping up enough capacity in India/Vietnam/US that they no longer have to depend on Chinese policy in general? Or something else?

[1] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-foxconn-iphone- vietnam/ap...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-foxconn-iphone- vietnam/apple-assembler-foxconn-considering-iphone-factory-in-vietnam-state- media-idUSKBN1O3128)

<comment><USER6> I don't have any insider knowledge, but:

AFAIK the Wisconsin plant isn't going to happen. Even with the outrageous incentives, it will be more expensive than China. Because it isn't simple 'price of math of man hours in China <= price of man hours in America + savings in tariffs".

Set aside for a second the loss in margins due to absence of substantial ecosystem of parts and other manufacturing companies. The worker situation and protection in US would be a lot greater, which means 'less' productivity. So that man hour equation is a lot more complicated. That is unless a large scale automation of testing/validation effort kicks in. Again the technicians for those machines will be double or triple digit more expensive in the US (the rate at which income growth with skill rises in US is much higher - like most developed countries).

That deal, in the first place, was made possible because of multitude of reasons:

1\. Foxconn saving their butt in case a horrible trade war happens between US and China, where the rumours were floating since way back before the tariffs actually came in effect last year (ref: Youtube video of Trump saying China, China, China)

2\. According to Point 1, if China-US trade wars do hurt their business, fish for US tax incentives for minimal damage. Insurance.

3\. The local Wisconsin representatives trying to win over voter base saying they will win jobs. These are the guys that screwed up. Just look at the scale of those incentives.

But we can see today, a trade war won't happen, atleast at the scale that will warrant an immediate start of manufacturing at the Wisconsin plant. This is because Trump and Xi know trade wars kill GDP, and GDP, with all its flaws is still the media's image of the long term economic growth.

> Is it that you're trying to route Chinese-made products through some minor > step in India or Vietnam in order to say "no these really came from > India/Vietnam, the tariff doesn't apply" and maintain capacity?

Possibly. India doesn't have the ecosystem for manufacturing many parts. So it might be the final step of assembly. Because the tariffs will be for phones, not for parts of phones. Though Indian government isn't stupid (I hope) enough to get the short end of that stick.

<comment><USER21> > But we can see today, a trade war won't happen

A trade war is already taking place. And will increase in scope very soon. And no likelihood of it stopping

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross: The US is still 'miles and miles' from a trade deal with China

[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/24/commerce-secretary-wilbur- ro...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/24/commerce-secretary-wilbur-ross-the-us- is-miles-and-miles-from-a-trade-deal-with-china.html)

<comment><USER6> I'll go out on a limb and say that's all posturing. On both sides.

There is no way China will take the chance of losing its position as the manufacturing hub. They might throw a couple punches, but will make up sooner than a product release cycle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> A subjective point but:

Chinese manufacturing work ethic > Indian manufacturing work ethic.

This will be disastrous short term.

<comment><USER23> Work ethic, really? How does being more susceptible to exploitation play into that?

Indian workers can go on strike and vote in elections. Not so in Red China.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> shows how weak china's position is as a global competitor. a tariff on goods made in china will obviously cause manufacturers to move out of china. why wouldn't they do that? the tariffs are actually very very very effective.

</comment><comment><USER25> If Trump's policy on putting tariff gets the support of the politicians elected after him, I guess tariffs will only follow wherever the production shifts to. This is not about only China (for now), this is about breaking the back of competition. Isn't it?</comment>


Ford Buying San Francisco-Area E-Scooter Startup Spin - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2018/11/08/business/08reuters-ford-scooter.html <comment><USER2> Of the scooter companies that have launched in the Bay area, Spin were by far the least technically advanced - the scooters were basically unmodified Xiaomis, to the extent of still having power buttons. Rather than an integrated location and management system, location data came from a off-the- shelf GPS tracker spliced off the battery lines. Since the scooter control board had no cellular link, there was no mechanism for Spin to directly manage the scooters which meant that handshaking involved the app notifying Spin's API that the user was going to hire a scooter and then sending an unlock code back to the scooter via Bluetooth. Locking was the inverse, which left plenty of opportunity for state to get out of sync (server thinks scooter is unlocked but the unlocking failed, or vice versa).

It's possible that their launch was very much an MVP and they've been doing a lot of engineering work in the background, but they were _way_ behind Lime and Bird at launch time.

(Edited to clarify that the unlock code is sent via Bluetooth)

<comment><USER3> Is the unlock code unique, or the same for that specific bluetooth serial number?

<comment><USER2> This is an excellent question that I am going to decline to answer.

<comment><USER4> eScooterKeyGen.exe lol ;p

<comment><USER5> You joke, but there are android apps that will bruteforce the admin password on the current router you're connected to using the standard admin logins for each manufacturer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> All of the commenters saying e-scooters shouldn't be allowed on sidewalks are right. Sidewalks in most densely populated US cities are too narrow and busy to safely allow a human gliding along at 15 mph within ~2 ft of a doorway where another human may be exiting, or past blind corners.

The bigger issue is that e-scooter parking is fundamentally broken right now. Despite being told not to, users still park them in the middle of a pedestrian walkway. Even if the user parks them correctly, they get knocked over or blow over into the walkway. This product is broken until these companies do what Jump did, and INTEGRATE A LOCK INTO THE PRODUCT, and make users lock it to something at the end of their ride. This almost entirely eliminates the problem of blocking a walkway, and also reduces the loss of product to theft, accidental damage, etc.

Since they're required by law in California, I'd also like helmets to be integrated into the locking mechanism, but that's a nice-to-have.

E-scooter companies: Build locks into your products. It fixes many of your problems.

<comment><USER7> Scooters seem unnecessary in densely populated cities. Most high-density areas have good public transport within a few minutes walk of your destination, and the footpaths are too busy to ride a scooter on anyway.

They are much more useful in medium-density cities and suburbs where the roads and footpaths are less busy and public transport is not as effective.

I love using my scooter for commuting and errands in my low-density city, but I can't imagine riding it through a busy CBD - not on the road _or_ the footpath. And yet that seems to be where most of these scooter rental companies are deploying. It seems crazy.

<comment><USER8> "Cars seem unnecessary in densely populated cities. Most high-density areas have good public transport within a few minutes walk of your destination, and the roads are too busy to drive a car on anyway."

FTFY

<comment><USER7> Cars address a different set of requirements. You use one when you need to transport many people, heavy cargo, tools, etc. A scooter does not solve any of those problems.

A scooter does allow a single person and their possessions to travel at faster than walking pace without getting sweaty. In the CBD that is not necessary, since public transport works so well. In the suburbs a scooter is more effective.

<comment><USER8> Sure, but look at your typical freeway rush hour traffic jam— how many of those vehicles really have multiple people or heavy cargo?

The point is that for short commutes and as a last mile solution to extend the coverage of public transit, scooters are amazing. And a rental system means they can stay downtown instead of needing to take up space both ways on the mass transit vehicle.

<comment><USER7> > Sure, but look at your typical freeway rush hour traffic jam - how many of > those vehicles really have multiple people or heavy cargo?

I'm not sure how that's relevant. You edited my comment to try and make it apply to cars, but it does not - cars are necessary both in the CBD and out for instances where you need to transport cargo etc, while scooters are less necessary in the CBD if you can use good public transport instead.

The fact that many people use cars when they _aren 't_ necessary is not relevant, other than to note that there's a lot of potential to reduce traffic by replacing single-occupant cars with personal transport.

And I'm not claiming that scooters or scooter rentals are bad - I love my scooter and see scooter rental companies as a big part of reducing the number of cars on the road. But why do they insist on deploying in areas where scooters are not wanted? Why not focus on the areas where they are most practical?

<comment><USER9> > But why do they insist on deploying in areas where scooters are not wanted? > Why not focus on the areas where they are most practical?

Because the most population-dense areas (NYC, SF) also happen to have the highest density of VC investment money.

I agree with you all the way up until here! I live in Miami, where single- passenger cars are king. Scooters would be great here. But the cities that would benefit most from scooters are not exactly overflowing with investment money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What you're seeing is car companies trying to transition to "mobility" companies -- the difference being the former is a manufacturing company with 3% margins and the latter being a services company with much fatter margins.

Autonomous car fleets are the main "mobility services" prize of course -- all the major OEMs have autonomous research labs -- but you're seeing more interest in scooters and bikes (there was a headline about GM releasing an e-bike last week).

<comment><USER11> No, I don't think this is a transition.

What we're likely seeing is M&A people caught up in the hype and trends.

In some ways, it's worth spending some amount as a hedge against something happening, but I don't believe these scooters will represent any meaningful change ... personally I think they are kind of a fad.

The logistics, cost, narrow use cases of all of it just don't work out well enough. Truly - what % of people could actually commute using these things? It's very small. Of those, who would actually do it? In winter? Up and down hills? Are they a little bit too old for this, or maybe not so open minded? Are there status issues, i.e. if you are a 'serious professional' in many industries it just doesn't bode well to be bouncing around on a scooter (I know this might seem foreign maybe to HN readers but this is a thing). And then of course - if it was useful for commuting, why wouldn't people just end up buying one so they always have it when needed? I think the use cases for these scooters is very narrow.

While I agree the general attitude of 'moving beyond traditional cars' is a strategic impetus, and it makes a lot of sense to 'participate' in these things early on ... I don't think this is a secular shift. Not yet anyhow.

America is a very spread out place - even LA.

And we're only just starting to see the regulatory and populist backlash.

<comment><USER12> >Truly - what % of people could actually commute using these things? It's very small. Of those, who would actually do it? In winter? Up and down hills? Are they a little bit too old for this, or maybe not so open minded?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RQrKP9a0XE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RQrKP9a0XE)

Potentially: Everyone, winter to summer (look up his other videos), up and down hills (they're electric, hills don't matter), regardless of age. America is not the only country in the world, but even the US has cities far denser than the spread out, gridlocked hell of LA like San Francisco or NYC.

<comment><USER13> Macau is by far more dense, has a large petrol scooter population, and almost no e-scooters. Petrol scooters are far more flexible at this point in terms of speed, torque, gross weight carried; and announce themselves much better in the many twisty / blind streets and alleys.

It also rains a lot. Do people ride e-scooters in the rain in SF?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I used Bird, Lime, Lyft, and Jump scooters over the weekend in LA and they were great for getting around when I'd have otherwise considered driving (over a 45 minute walk). I tried a Skip scooter again when I got back to SF, and once again, it simply could not handle a minor (for SF) hill. I don't know what the solution is, since it seems like a bad idea to power them more to handle hills given the dangers that would pose on flat (or downhill) terrain, but I can't imagine them really taking hold in the same way in hilly cities.

<comment><USER15> The old Bird and Lime scooters had 250W motors. The new Skip scooters have 350W (plus suspension which is nice). The skips can get to a walking pace up to ~10% grade, but grind to a halt anywhere near Nob/Russian Hill. You need at least 750W to do the trick.

They also all have just a single break, which makes going down those hills dangerous.

<comment><USER16> What about Jump bikes? Because they go up hills pretty easily. Not the steepest ones but I get around pretty well with them in my neighborhood, which has lots of hills.

<comment><USER15> Jump bikes are 250 and yep, pretty good for SF hills. 250 W goes a lot further on an ebike (as a compliment to to leg power) than a scooter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Am I the only one who wants to see more _seated_ scooter innovation? I would much prefer riding one of these self-balancing scooters/microcycles to the standing scooters that everyone is using.

1\. [http://rynomotors.com](http://rynomotors.com) (launches April 16, 2019)

2\. [https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/newest-fat-tyre- elect...](https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/newest-fat-tyre-electric- unicycle-one_60748336939.html)

3\. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcZk9zn82-g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcZk9zn82-g)

<comment><USER18> Why not just rent/ride an ebike? Once you put a seat on a normal 2-wheeled scooter it's not much smaller than a bike.

I'm not sure I'd trust the balancing capabilities of the unicycles you've linked to, especially in the face of shitty roads. Have you tried one?

<comment><USER17> These are much safer than small-wheeled scooters as their larger wheels allows them to more gracefully handle bumps in the road.

Also, unlike most ebikes I can actually sit stationary on these without falling over. I'm very short and most ebikes are not designed for short people.

<comment><USER18> Yeah rental ebikes don't scale down very well. You should be able to buy a bike that fits you well, and add ebike capabilities via a kit (yourself or have someone do it).

I haven't used a balancing unicycle, but based on experience with other balancing vehicles, I doubt I'd feel safe going as fast as on a scooter. Sounds like you might own one?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I just wanted to point out that Hyundai Motor demoed a electric scooter as an accessory for the Ioniq line in Jan 2017 at CES.

[https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/pictures/hyundais-ioniq- scoote...](https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/pictures/hyundais-ioniq-scooter- concept-looks-more-fun-that-its-car-ces-2017/)

And BIRD was founded in Apr 2017.

Some staff PM/engr/marketer folks at Hyundai Motor had the right idea. Too bad they were not in a position to start a startup.

edit: I'm not saying BIRD or any other copied Hyundai. Coming up with the idea and executing it is a big accomplishment. Electric motor scooters have been around a long time too.

</comment><comment><USER20> These e-scooters could be a really great way for many cities to decrease short-haul car dependency, but they really need to be off the sidewalks.

A motor-propelled machine going 15 mph doesn't belong on the same surface as a baby stroller, a senior citizen, or a person with a disability.

They belong in the bike lane (which should exist in the first place), and their speed should be capped in areas of dense foot traffic.

<comment><USER21> I've owned both a scooter and skateboard for 7 months.

I disagree, you can ride a scooter on a sidewalk safely and I need to do it from time to time. Of course, I don't prefer it. But it's pretty easy to do safely and it shouldn't bother anyone if done correctly.

The rules I follow:

1\. Go much much slower.

2\. Stay far away from other people and blind corners.

3\. Always assume a person is about to make an erratic movement

4\. Never pass closely to a person. When passing, go their walking speed + 1mph. It should be a similar speed differential to passing someone when you're walking.

5\. If you have no space to pass, you need to go walking speed until space opens up.

6\. if the sidewalk is too packed, just get off and walk it.

7\. If you have far visibility (no blind corners, doorways, storefronts, etc) and there is no one in sight, let'er rip.

It all depends on the conditions. You should _never_ blow by people at 15 mph. I commuted partly on 5th street in downtown Los Angeles and never had an issue, a close call, or had someone bat an eye. The goal is to blend in with other people walking.

<comment><USER22> Nobody follows these rules. Whenever a skater is coming at me I very much get a "get the fuck out of my way, peasant" vibe.

That's why I believe they should be _enforceable rules_ aka laws.

<comment><USER21> I follow them. You really have no choice if you care about your own and others safety.

<comment><USER22> Well, thank you, that's very good, but that doesn't exactly solve the problem.

I'm a hard-line rule following bicyclist, but I have no control over the other cyclists that blast past me at red lights. What are we supposed to do, render our nonexistent authority over them? I suppose I can say "please don't do that," but I try that and it has no effect.

<comment><USER23> I applaud your attempt at civil discourse. You deserve a medal for patience. Thank you for posting as I think discussions like this could use more of your style.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> These scooters aren't suppose to replace lyft or bart or muni. They're suppose to let you get from 24th mission to 16th mission with minimum context switching & waiting. This translates less well to manhattan but would (if theft weren't a problem) to Brooklyn, most 2nd tier cities in the U.S., and college campuses. I think it's a good investment.

<comment><USER25> Why not Manhattan? The sidewalk docking might be an issue in some neighborhoods but if they managed to get street docking areas like the citi bikes it would be a perfect fit in Manhattan as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> There I was, sitting at the busy intersection of Sacramento and Ashby in Berkeley, when I saw two boys that couldn't have been more than 8-10 years old fly by on Bird Scooters. And I thought to myself, some kid is going to die.

And lots of people do die on these things: [https://www.google.com/search?q=bird+scooters+deaths](https://www.google.com/search?q=bird+scooters+deaths)

These scooter companies suck, I wish they'd all go away. If they weren't all going for hypergrowth, they'd be less of a menace. I can see the boon for commuters on the last mile, but when I weight that against how they endanger children, encourage illegal usage of sidewalks, ruin pedestrian experiences, and don't provide helmets - I think the industry is in need of a reckoning.

They also totally wrecked the coastal street/"boardwalk" in San Diego. As a pedestrian, you're constantly looking over your shoulder for drunk idiots on scooters.

<comment><USER27> You have to be 18 years old with a driver's license to ride Bird scooters.

<comment><USER26> Theoretically.

<comment><USER27> Legally. And the app makes you take a screenshot of your license

<comment><USER28> I've not tried it, but how easy is it to fake the ID? Like, does the photo feed to a person that OKs the ID manually, or does it just look for some vaguely rectangulary shaped object?

<comment><USER29> It scans the barcode and makes sure the id is valid. If it can't determine that it will ask people to take a picture of the id, which then gets manually reviewed by a human.

Disclosure: I work for one of the big scooter companies.

<comment><USER28> Thanks for the info!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Are any of these electric scooters worthwhile for hilly commutes?

I live about a mile from the closest train stop, and currently I walk to and from because the entire way is steep coming back, at 10% grade.

My gut tells me a scooter would need to be unreasonably powerful to work in this area.

<comment><USER31> "Scoot" is absolutely fine on hills. Drove it from Pier 1 to Golden Gate park on California and back with zero problems on hills. Of course, BMWs will make it a point to shoot by you to show their superiority, but you won't be holding up traffic up hills.

I do wonder what would have happened if my phone died before I parked the Scoot. Seems like it would be a pain in the ass.

<comment><USER32> You must be talking about the Scoot motorcycles. I don't see the little scooters lasting from Pier 1 to GGP and back.

<comment><USER31> I am - the ones that aren't legal on the sidewalk. I don't see why you would get the little scooters. There didn't seem to be that much price difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> First Chariot and now Spin (also investments and partnerships with Lyft and Zoom Car in India). Seems like Ford is betting on a future where they see people rejecting the idea of owning a car and where car companies are just mobility providers.

</comment><comment><USER34> I've recently visited Santa Cruz, where I rode my first jump bike. I had an absolute blast with it, raved about it to friends non-stop for weeks. More recently, I experienced my first Bird scooter (and Lime) in Indianapolis. I did many fun things there so I didn't expect that these silly scooters to be the highlight of the trip, but they were.

Aside from being an insanely fun and effective way to get around a city, my favorite thing about them stems from my hatred of cars. I own a car. But selfishly only like cars when its _my_ car and _I_ am driving it. Other than that, I think they're dangerous, loud, expensive, terrible for the environment, and far too plentiful in crowded city streets. They crash and congest roads shared with public transit, wreaking havoc daily commutes, oh and they frequently murder the more tender specimens on the road.

I get disappointed when I see people complaining about these scooters and bikes "cluttering up the walkways" and pedestrians having "dangerous encounters". I will admit it I saw a fair number of scooters that had fallen over on walkways. It really didn't faze me. Walk around it. Step over it. Pick it up if you're in a great mood. Maybe society needs time to adjust and develop more etiquette. It could be handled better, but to call this an immediate "problem" is just wrong— And what are the stats on scooter vs. pedestrian fatalities?

This debate reminds me of the hiker vs. equestrian vs. mountain biker tension. We all want to use the same trails and it's a bit contentious. Hikers feel threatened by the fast moving bikers. Bikers are inconvenienced by people walking slowly on the trails. The horses are just taking 6LB dumps all over the path for everyone else to step in and ride through. They all try to lobby and ban one another from using the trails. Nobody seems to care about anything they aren't partaking in.

In the end, people should be open to alternative forms of transportation that are effective regardless of whether they utilize it. I think these bike and scooter shares represent a massive objective improvement over cars, and even public transit. It might take some time for etiquette and city planning to catch up, but we need to check the hall monitor mentality and give it time, for the greater good.

</comment><comment><USER35> Interesting scheme. You corner a scarce resource and then sell it. I wonder what new permit schemes we're going to see and how we can capitalize on this.

</comment><comment><USER36> I talked to a self-driving PM recently and he said that self-driving cars are a extremely expensive and complex way to reduce cost per mile urban transit/taxis and admitted scooters might be a much cheaper way to accomplish the same thing.

<comment><USER37> The biggest issue for urban transit is safety. I don't think scooters can be a valid replacement for cars until the streets are redesigned or all the cars are self-driving. I used to bike to work until a couple close calls. I don't feel comfortable riding a bike or a scooter unless its a dedicated bike lane away from parked cars so I don't get doored.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Would be really nice to see F turn around: [https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/f?ltr=1](https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/f?ltr=1)

<comment><USER39> Detroiter here - I'm off of Adams Ave. downtown, next to Grand Circus Park/Comerica.

Ford needs -

1) Better styling. I just bought a Grand Cherokee, and despite the 2020 Ford Explorer being RWD, I would never consider a Ford vehicle. Their exterior/interior styling is bland.

2) An off-road sub brand to compete against Jeep. The upcoming Bronco/baby Bronco/Ranger is a start, but Jeep is making a killing with the brand image despite 95% of people only taking their Wranglers over curbs in a mall parking lot. The 'dream' sells. They need to compete with Jeep in off-road prowess to sell the dream.

3) High performance trim levels for 2020+ vehicles high margin vehicles (Nautilus, Explorer, Aviator, F150, Mustang, Navigator) with hybrid/electric options that have a sub 10.5 second quarter mile.

<comment><USER40> I have no idea what I'm going to get when my 17 Focus ST dies, hopefully there will still be manual (or at least sporty electric) hatchbacks...

<comment><USER41> I'm on an older Fiesta. If I were buying a new car today, depending on priorities (for me, manual, hatchback, sat radio, safety), I'd be looking at an Impreza (only model that currently hits every checkbox for me), Corolla Hatch, or Elantra GT. (Possibly Mazda 3 hatch or Audi A4 if I'm willing to make more compromises.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Congrats to the Spin team!

</comment><comment><USER43> Can someone explain the valuation on these scooter companies?

<comment><USER44> Humans will always need to move around, yet it's not clear _how_ we'll move around in the future. While self-driving cars have potential it's not clear that dense urban areas will make a ton of sense for them, and so perhaps bikes or scooters or something else will become the norm.

On the other hand, we spend enormous amounts of money on other solutions like busses or underground metro systems in dense urban areas which have significant problems like not taking you where you want to go. If there are systems which do get you where you want to go you might not have to make those up front and gigantic investments in future.

If you have systems which are point to point, then the value of real estate that isn't near a metro stop can go up since you don't have to price in the walk from that place to a metro stop. There are all kinds of fun implications.

Also, scooters might only be step 1. Maybe self-driving scooters with a 5 mile range are step 2, or something.

So if you compare to existing systems you can argue that scooter valuations are cheap if that's the direction we're going, though that isn't certain.

<comment><USER43> Thanks. I guess I was trying to imagine an amount income over time per device multiplied by a number of devices that would lead to a valuation of over a billion dollars.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> How does the investment in Spin compare to the one in Argo AI? Are electric scooters hotter than self-driving cars?

</comment><comment><USER46> Perhaps we need a self-driving scooter?

</comment><comment><USER47> I am enjoying all of the comments here. I was lucky enough to study traffic- as-density-waves in younger days, and I think the future will be very positive. For this particular argument, I think the common themes to solve are lack of infrastructure, and the resulting safety hazards from casual users:

The setbacks: The infrastructure currently does not support the reality of the populous renting scooters (and bikes and mopeds). City planning was not developed around the recent technological availability of motorized personal transportation. Humans are irresponsible, and will leave scooters in disruptive locations. Humans are reckless, and a large portion won't abide by the established traffic safety. This "last-mile" transportation movement is a result of public transportation being a poor experience: slow-moving, dirty, congested, mismanaged.

Positive thoughts: "last-mile" transportation is highly effective if it could be implemented properly. Proper implementation would require responsible user behavior and infrastructure compatibility.

An anecdote: The company Scoot, at least in SF, gave access to moped-like vehicles for casual commute. Great idea. Give people the ability to personally navigate dense populations without vehicle ownership.

The problem: driving a personal motorized vehicle in dense large-vehicle traffic is a major responsibility. For instance, riding a motorcycle is extremely dangerous, and the vast majority of motorcycle riders take their safety incredibly seriously. They vehemently abide by traffic laws because small mistakes can lead to major physical consequences.

Scoot riders have unilaterally behaved like inexperienced idiots in traffic. Running lights, making last minute decisions, and ignoring speed of traffic sensibility The casual nature of that commute style leads people to behave like they are on bicycles, when they are riding around already-frustrated car and truck drivers.

The same me-first attitude was clearly visible when scooters were widely available. Even with city permits, people are still selfish.

Solutions:

There are conscious decisions to make city-wide improvements in efficient transportation. Mass transit combined with low-impact personal vehicles would be a utopia. But no large city was designed with that reality in mind, and the "disruptive" companies that make these technologies accessible, often with the "ask-for-forgiveness" mantra, are very disruptive to both the pedestrian reality and the detriment of too many cars.

Tl:dr, people are selfish and reckless, and even smart and available technologies will be abused unless infrastructure is designed to handle human habits.

<comment><USER48> > Humans are irresponsible, and will leave scooters in disruptive locations.

This is not a hard problem to solve. Give scooter companies a ticket if their scooter is found somewhere disruptive. Let the scooter companies figure out how to cajole their customers to lower the disruptive-location rate to reasonable levels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Nice one @newy, congratulations!

</comment><comment><USER50> >They belong in the bike lane (which should exist in the first place)

the problem is the existence of bike lanes. If public officials start saying "scooters belong in the bike lane", then they have to confront the fact that their cities have no cohesive network of bike lanes that can actually support a real journey. This has been acceptable up until now, because cyclists are weird and it's okay to tell them to just ride in amongst trucks travelling 40mph when a bike lane abruptly ends. But e-scooters are for "normal people" who aren't as content with being told to go play in traffic.

<comment><USER22> > because cyclists are weird and it's okay to tell them to just ride in > amongst trucks travelling 40mph.

This is unsustainable. It's caused blowback from cyclists. "Fine, you want me to play in traffic, I'm going to start doing some dumb shit." I say this as a cyclist, I'm doing only 5 miles round trip but I do it every day. I see people blow red lights, weaving in and out of traffic, hopping onto the sidewalk, blasting through crosswalks inbetween pedestrians.

I mean yea, don't give them bikelanes, this is what happens, they feel scorned or something and start breaking the law.

<comment><USER51> I also bike. Don't give me a bike lane? That's fine, I'll take the middle of the traffic lane. Honk all you like, I'm not going to give you room to try and squeeze between me and the oncoming traffic while I risk getting doored. Cars can wait.

<comment><USER52> Good luck to you, it's a dangerous game you're playing. It just takes one idiot in a car who doesn't notice you because they're checking their instagram feed, or whatever, for your life to be over.

I knew someone growing up who was a very successful banker. He had everything - 3 kids, a beautiful wife, amazing house, etc. Cycled to work every day.

One day, someone didn't see him.

Doctors managed to save his life but he was unable to use any muscle from his neck down. Had to be on a respirator for the rest of his life. Couldn't talk. Etc.

He killed himself by driving his motorized wheelchair into a pool. He left behind a beautiful family and wife.

Good luck, be safe. For the record, I fully support bicyclists and wish our cities were designed better to promote their safe use. Unfortunately, they aren't right now, and I hate to see people needlessly punished for choosing to cycle to work.

<comment><USER51> I also knew someone who was very successful and died too young leaving behind 3 kids, a beautiful wife, amazing house etc. (I'm not being flip, this is true). He died in a car accident.

I'll take the relatively small risk of being hit while biking in exchange for the 100% chance of the very positive benefits (free exercise, no traffic, free parking). Driving has about the same risk of killing you and 100% chance of making you fat, miserable, and angry.

<comment><USER53> _You are 15 times more likely to be killed on Britain 's roads if you ride a bike than if you drive a car._[1]

If you look at total deaths they may seem comparable to driving, but way more people drive than cycle.

Good on you for dedicating yourself to cycling, but you shouldn't ignore the increase in risk.

[1][https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/cycle- safety...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/cycle-safety-laws- new-kim-briggs-death-warning-against-witch-hunt-a7960291.html)

<comment><USER51> You'd also have to take into account the reduction in life expectancy from the stress of driving and additional time being sedentary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> "Scoot" is where it's at anyway.

</comment><comment><USER54> There is simply no space in most inner cities for this mode of transportation.

Which is fine, since inner cities are the most walkable places in the world, and the most well-served by public transit.

Unless we're prepared to spend billions on new construction over decades, there is just no infrastructure for a mode of transport that conflicts with all of the existing modes.

If anything, we should be building more bike lanes (on a gargantuan scale) since they are proven, efficient and already have substantial infrastructure.

</comment><comment><USER55> Own a Segway/Ninebot ES2 w/ the extended battery pack. Top speed 20mph. Have clocked over 300 miles on it. I live in Boston, Bird tried to launch this summer and Cambridge/Somerville local gov freaked out (rightfully so). I use my scooter for 10 mile rides on the bike path, communing and short haul trips. It gets locked up in my apartment when I'm done with it.

I honestly don't know if I'd trust public scooters, purely for safety reasons. (I use Zipcar which is a hit or miss most of the time, some of the cars are really filthy and broken since you can use it at 18) How often are they inspected? Do the scooter companies keep maintenance logs? Who fixes them? Do they use contractors or have in-house staff? Where are they souring the parts? These things are used way more than mine. I've fallen off my scooter twice and really fucked myself up and I always wear a helmet. One fall I hit the back of my head behind my right ear on the pavement first. You can easily kill or cripple yourself or someone else. An adult at 165lbs going 19mph packs a punch. They are not toys. There's huge liability here.

This feels like when Uber rolled out. Nobody trusted them and it took time for regulators to catch up. These tiny electric vehicles are awesome and represent way more to come. I just hope nobody gets seriously hurt in the process.</comment>


Still Current VW Ads in 1966's Popular Mechanics Mag - <AUTHOR> https://books.google.com/books?id=8dMDAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA85-IA2&ots=QRUiKu8Pcv&dq=detectron%20mac&pg=PA85-IA4#v=onepage&q=detectron%20mac&f=false <comment><AUTHOR> Reminds me of Elon Musk's creations: They laughed at Tesla's electric car. They laughed at SpaceX as a private space company. They are laughing at the Boring company now...

A few videos of the laughers: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxCH_lxQ4Nk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxCH_lxQ4Nk)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56uD6Z3EIWI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56uD6Z3EIWI)</comment>


Photographer Michael Light Exposes the Terraforming of the American Dream - <AUTHOR> http://www.archdaily.com/609941/las-vegas-vs-the-landscape-photographer-michael-light-exposes-the-terraforming-of-the-american-dream/ <comment><USER2> Seems like there's a huge opportunity there when the LV market recovers enough.

The thing is, the core cause of the housing crisis is still there- the cost of money is being kept artificially low. The fed is effectively pumping cash into the economy and keeping interest rates below the market cost of money, which means that cash has to find somewhere to go.

Right now it's going into stocks and a lot of hedge funds and the like, but eventually it's going to result in a bubble.

Like pushing air into a balloon, the balloon can't help but inflate.

</comment><comment><USER3> People attack suburbia for this sort of thing, but even the suburbs cover a very small percentage of the earth's surface. The Earth is really, really, really big. Those deserts that Las Vegas is expanding into could hold twenty more Vegas' before it'd really notice, at least as far as footprint goes.

<comment><USER4> What will they do for water?</comment></comment>


Rumor: Microsoft looking at purchasing Research In Motion - <AUTHOR> http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2010/02/11/rumor-microsoft-looking-at-purchasing-research-in-motion/

<comment><USER2> 'Seemingly coming out of nowhere, rumors have started circulating this week'. This rumour has been circulating for years, and I believe Ballmer has even commented on it. RIM does need a new OS, and Microsoft could definately benefit. But this isn't a new concept.</comment>


Show HN: Promotioner - Allow your readers to pay with clicks - <AUTHOR> http://Promotioner.com

<comment><USER2> Looks like an interesting idea, but I'd be extremely wary of signing up for any site that rewards users for helping boost your SEO with inbound links. Google has traditionally been pretty harsh on anything resembling linkbuying, and these incentives seem to blur that line.

That said, I think there's a lot of room for improved, dead simple referral systems, and I'm glad to see another one enter the fray.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Michael. The long term idea is to bring the idea of referral marketing to blogs and CMS systems.

ALL of the top 500 ecommerce websites have their own referral or affiliate programs. None of the top blogs have their own referral program. And thats because there was no dead simple way of referring blogs yet.

We plan to change that. Launching with reward-for-clicks as our MVP. Will introduce pay-per-sale referral model soon.

Google hasn't shown any harshness to referral programs yet. But even then, we're not going to focus on SEO part a lot. We consider it a side benefit. And it'll have just 1 line on our sales page.

<comment><USER2> Thanks. That one line just stood out as a red flag to me on what looked like an otherwise very compelling product - anything that I think could even hint at a Google penalty is sort of a non-starter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Internet marketing garbage. Alas, tis the fate of HN.

 _"Just ask 2 of your friends to visit:

<http://firstname.lastname@example.com>

and you will receive the report "5 Elements of a Successful Viral Marketing Campaign" for free in your email."_

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comment. I'm at a loss as to how to respond. I'm show casing my startup that is a referral marketing app. Of course, the demo that I set up for it will be about referral marketing too, no?

<comment><USER4> Don't worry about it, a lot of techies are just grumpy about the very idea of marketing, because they think the world would be a better, purer place without it. They're obviously wrong. Carry on!

<comment><USER5> Those same idealist techies who hate marketing are the ones who wrote all that wonderful FOSS that these marketing hacks use day-in-and-day out to make the web a shittier place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why does it require me to put my email address on the end of it for a reward. Considering that for anyone to get any real benefit out of it the links (containing the email address) would have to be posted publicly. Just seems like a huge spam magnet.

I think most people would be pretty wary of adding their email address to a link and posting publicly. Especially on a strange site they dont know about.

<comment><AUTHOR> We had to make a choice: go with a signup form which leads to fewer referrals. Or automatically sign people up when they add their email id at the end of "any" page on your domain to increase adoption rate and get more people to promote you.

This second option could lead to spam worries. Thats why, we offer optional usernames. The first time our system recognizes a new email id, an email is sent out to them with instructions on setting up a username with which they can replace their email id while promoting URLs.

(Also, we'll be launching social media integration buttons next week, which will automatically shorten the URLs and disguise your email ids.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Awesome idea.

Quick thought: You would get a lot more users by testing difference bases(reducing the 15 to something really small, like 5). Feels like more people would do it, you would get more than 5 anyways, and the the exponential gains outweighs the difference in the base.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comment. Good idea. Made the change and lowered the barrier to 5 clicks.

(I had kept the milestone at 15 clicks as a comparison to $3. But you're right, lower base doesn't matter if it can increase the number of people who start sharing.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _(And yes, for folks who don't want to show their email address in the URL due to spam worries, they can replace their email address with a unique username.)_

I would make this the default. Exposing addresses like that is begging for your users to be spearfished.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Creating a username requires people to signup. Signing up = friction. And makes fewer people promote you.

Allowing people to refer any URL without signing up, simply by adding their email id at the end of the URL seems to be working better in increasing web traffic.

Its a trade off. But its a decision taken because the pay off is worth it (till now. If a lot of users say otherwise, then will switch it).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The logo looks nice, not sure about the heavy black colour scheme though and I have to say that the headline font looks positively ghastly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback. Any suggestions on a replacement font?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> very similar to successnexus - but, they have a very good blog going as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're the same guys actually. Promotioner is owned by SuccessNexus :)

Promotioner is a lean rebranding effort to focus more on the site-wide referral idea, and less on the all-in-one ecommerce + mailing list + referral program tool.

<comment><USER10> I thought something was up. I like the concept. I've considering trying a SEO contest based on the number of senders or even paying linkbuilders this way.

It would help focus people on quality over quantity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I like what you are doing here. You're turning ordinary people into a marketing team for website owners. This is one of those "Why didn't I think of this!" ideas. Kudos.

</comment><comment><USER12> :)</comment>


Why not even exercise will undo the harm of sitting all day - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/223160/why-not-even-exercise-will-undo-the-harm-of-sitting-all-day-and-what-you-can-do-about-it/

<comment><USER2> This article's conclusion aren't adding up.

1\. Physical exercise won't help but getting up from your seat does. The former is a super set of the latter. You could argue that you only get up once for physical exercise but you can't totally discount the muscle movements during that 30-60 min period.

2\. They assume that those who are sitting for long hours are obese. As far as I've seen, a large percentage of engineers who sit in front of the computer all day aren't all obese.

Maybe the article wants to focus on a small section of couch potatoes and trying to sensationalize sitting.

<comment><USER3> > 1\. Physical exercise won't help but getting up from your seat does. The > former is a super set of the latter. You could argue that you only get up > once for physical exercise but you can't totally discount the muscle > movements during that 30-60 min period.

They're not saying sitting for extended periods negates all of the advantages of exercise, but what they _are_ saying is that no amount of exercise can negate all of the disadvantages of sitting for extended periods. The counter- intuitiveness of this claim is exactly why this is in the news.

<comment><USER2> Neither did I conclude that sitting negates exercise. I said, if exercise can't benefit, how does break in sitting does? The article is an incorrect conclusion to the study.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do I come back to software development? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN. I'm in my 40s and father of two. 4 years ago I made a career switch, from software development to internal audit, at the same financial insitution at southern Europe.
Being a software guy here is a second class job. I was fed of the mediocre pay, of boring projects and...sorry, I don't want to sound arrogant...incompetent colleagues. Sure, I'm guilty too. I've been very relaxed for 10 years doing several roles in various groups, as I'm a generalist.
So when management offered me the opportunity to apply for Internal Auditing I saw an opportunity. Here you're rewarded with this kind of offer, not with raises. The task is easier, the pay is a little better and hours are better too.
But now...
...4 years after the switch I'm now fed with having to ask people like they were kids even for the most basic things. Here, I've discovered that my skills are above de average. I'm not a superhuman nor that mythical 10x developer, but I have 20 years of experience and my skills range from writing parsers, CRUD applications, security, OS kernels, raytracers...The issue here is that these are all private side projects, as I'm very shy of sharing code.
I'm adraid I made the "intelligent" choice by social means but the one which most saddens me everyday. I'd like to move back to software development (not at this same place)
I read a lot about how not having a promiment Github profile should not be an issue if one can demonstrate their skills. But everytime I apply for a remote job (via Stack Overflow, via Who Is Hiring, etc.) I get rejected without even taking the first interview.
I know that you can't give me good advice without knowing all the details but, what do you think? Should I infer that having switched to a non-development job I'll be unable to back to software development again?
PS: Sorry for the long question. As you've spotted, English is not my main language and I can't synthetize things as well as in my main language. <comment><USER2> Your post raises a couple questions:

> _Being a software guy here is a second class job._

I don't know where you are, but I find this statement puzzling. I've lived both in South America and in Germany, and in both cases software development is a well-paid job due to a general shortage of programmers. So question number one would be: are you sure that you looked in the right places? And if so, have you considered moving?

> _I read a lot about how not having a promiment Github profile should not be > an issue if one can demonstrate their skills. But everytime I apply for a > remote job (via Stack Overflow, via Who Is Hiring, etc.) I get rejected > without even taking the first interview._

My experience with SO and HN has been fairly disappointing when applying from Europe, assuming they even let you apply to begin with ("remote" often means "from your apartment in or around SF"). You should look at other, more local job boards. Also, getting your CV checked by someone else could be helpful.

> _Should I infer that having switched to a non-development job I 'll be > unable to back to software development again?_

No, I wouldn't say never, but you'll need to work a bit to convince future employers that you are the right person for the job. Networking is your friend - either see if a former colleague of yours can recommend you to their bosses, or join the local meetup scene. Presenting something interesting, for instance, is a great alternative if you have to start from nothing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. I think I'll just bite the bullet here :)

> _I don 't know where you are, but I find this statement puzzling. I've lived > both in South America and in Germany, and in both cases software development > is a well-paid job due to a general shortage of programmers. So question > number one would be: are you sure that you looked in the right places? And > if so, have you considered moving?_

I'm based in southern Spain. In this exact location and intitution, the average salary for a programmer (experienced or not, you're considered a resource) is around 22.000€. I have a lot of friends making that amount, or even less, having one child to raise. Moving is not an option right now, sadly.

I appreciate your advice regarding visibility when stating from zero. Thank you again.</comment></comment>


Why neutrons and protons are modified inside nuclei - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00577-0 <comment><USER3> I want to take a second to rep my absolute favorite podcast, Physics Frontiers.°

It's not a "pop-sci" podcast - they take a couple of interesting modern physics papers and discuss them; no more, no less. A lot of it is way over my head as a chemist, but that's part of what makes me love it. The topics are always understandable, even if it takes self-study to get the nuances.

One guy is a physicist and the other is a sculptor who, I assume, taught himself physics.

Just a thing that would likely appeal to one who cares about particle physics and is not well satisfied by the preponderance of 'physics' podcasts that endlessly re-explain what entropy is or what wave/particle duality means.

I wish more science podcasts dealt directly with modern research, and this one is a great example...even if they're skeptical about Copenhagen and prefer pilot-wave "realism".

° [https://physicsfm-frontiers.blogspot.com](https://physicsfm- frontiers.blogspot.com)

<comment><USER4> I'm very intersested in the idea of a podcast that does the same for topics in climate science, biology, natural sciences. Know of anything you could point me at?

<comment><USER5> I've found talks on youtube to be very interesting. You can often just listen to them without watching the video. Some links:

Allen institute lectures about neuroscience: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtPgW1ebxmE&list=PLOpjORaUU7...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtPgW1ebxmE&list=PLOpjORaUU74zmq6Pmo3O6dzhxFBtaGsdt)

A talk about the insight Mars lander by the guy who proposed the mission: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXyLaER23aU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXyLaER23aU)

Climate change (focused on Boston but he really knows his stuff): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MToNKd6RQhk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MToNKd6RQhk)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article on Semi-empirical mass formula [0] is also interesting read, especially deconstructing the formula and seeing what impact each term has (e.g. asymmetry term and the difference between the relation of number of protons to the number of neutrons).

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi- empirical_mass_formula](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi- empirical_mass_formula)

<comment><USER6> An interesting fact: free neutrons [0] are unstable and will decay into protons [1] with mean lifetime of ~15 minutes. That is one down quark will decay into an up quark (neutron is composed out of udd quarks, proton: uud) because down quarks have bigger mass than up quarks (see this nice Feynman diagram [2]). In the nucleus on the other hand Pauli exclusion principle makes two protons less favorable than a proton and neutron.

Warning: this is what I understood from Wikipedia, IANAP (I am not a physicist).

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

[1]: And a couple of other particles, see: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron#Description](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron#Description)

[2]: [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Beta_Negative_Decay....](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Beta_Negative_Decay.svg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Silly question, I'm sure, but: Why do we think that nuclei contain distinct neutrons and protons at all, rather than simply being conglomerations of Up and Down quarks with the constraint that color charge must be zero and electrical charge must be integral?

<comment><USER8> Does this help as a starting point? [http://hyperphysics.phy- astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Nuclear/scatele.h...](http://hyperphysics.phy- astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Nuclear/scatele.html#c1)

<comment><USER7> Yes, I think that answers my question -- if I'm reading it right, the scattering behaviour of low-energy electrons indicates that they're hitting something "proton-like" rather than something "quark-like" inside the nucleus?

<comment><USER8> Yes.

Nucleons and quarks represent internal degrees of freedom (DoFs) inside the nucleus resp. proton that can receive momentum-energy from a scattering electron. This is measured as a loss of the sum of the kinetic energies of the electron and its target.

At low energies, the transfer to internal DoFs is negligible, so the scattering is elastic. At higher energies the transfer is relatively large, so the scattering is inelastic.

At sufficiently high energy, the nucleus disintegrates into components and new particles, and in the target's centre-of-momentum frame the sum of all their kinetic energies matches the change of the electron's. But at even higher energy there is again an apparent loss of kinetic energy, so there must be further internal DoFs within the components. Those are in the proton.

The higher energy scatterings are "deep".

As one does deep inelastic scattering, the proton's internal DoFs absorb electron momentum-energy. At sufficiently high energy levels the proton disintegrates into many new particles.

There are also differences in the scattering angle -- the amount by which the scattered electron is deflected from its beam path. Scattering angles are low in elastic scattering, and high in inelastic scattering. This gives further information about the internal DoFs.

For more see Mott scattering, deep inelastic scattering, and the parton model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> where can i find simple explanation of how they distinguish elastic vs inelastic collisions? They talk about the ratio of elastic vs inelastic collisions as a function of incident particle energy which is where I am confused. Excuse my ignorance - I am interested though not schooled in the particulars of particle physics. They also talk about cross section - <USER2> imagine they calculate that based on the frequency of collisions - just like Rutherford did.

</comment><comment><USER10> Could this lead to a different approach to fusion?

<comment><USER11> No, this isn't directly related to fusion. The binding energies are already well known and nucleon modification effects in fusion are far to small to be meaningful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Could this pairing have something to do with radioactive decay?

That neutrons and protons are interacting with themselves and each other, but that these interactions would have nothing to do with a unstable nucleus radiating a particle would make me slightly unhappy.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is offtopic, but do neutrons and protons have a similar dual wave / particle nature like photons do? What about quarks and all the sub-particles?

<comment><USER14> Yes. Also molecules and macroscopic objects.

The largest molecule where this has been experimentally verified had 810 atoms (roughly 15,000 protons,neutrons and electrons).

Matter–wave interference of particles selected from a molecular library with masses exceeding 10000 amu [https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2013/cp/c3cp5150...](https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2013/cp/c3cp51500a)

<comment><USER15> Thank you. I too had the same question. At what size does this wave particle feature stop? For example a coffee cup does not toggle between being a wave and a particle.

<comment><USER16> > _a coffee cup does not toggle between being a wave and a particle_

Neither does an electron, for that matter.

Particles such as electrons, protons, etc, are quantum objects. They're not waves. They're not particles. They are quantum objects - which means they have some wave-like properties, and some particle-like properties, but really are something else altogether.

<comment><USER17> The toggling that does occur is in our mathematical treatment of the objects: sometimes it is advantageous to model them as a billiard ball and other times as a disturbance of a field. Sometimes you have no choice but to treat them fully as the quantum object they are.

It just depends on whether you can eliminate some part of the complexity and still come up with an answer that is useful in reality.

<comment><USER13> This is something I've wondered about. Is the particle and wave idea just a calculation model or does that seem to be how things are actually constructed?

For example, the Bohr model of the atom probably doesn't reflect how atoms are but 100 years ago (and in high school today) it's a useful model.

<comment><USER16> Both "particle" and "wave" are simplifications. And yes, models can be useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Does this draw into question whether there is such thing as a "nuclear field"?

<comment><USER19> No. The "nuclear field" is just a term for the composite field resulting from the constituent particles of the nucleus (the quarks and gluons) and their interaction. For there to be no "nuclear field" there would have to be no nucleus.

Well, that's not entirely correct, because particle fields permeate all of space. To grossly simplify, there's something happening in those fields in a nucleus. The various particle fields are vibrating and interacting. "Nuclear field" is just shorthand for this interaction that is the result of the presence of the particles of the nucleus.

The result described in this article just rules out the nuclear field as being responsible for the EMC effect.</comment></comment>


PCs still running XP - sy-fur https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2017/06/29/news-in-brief-pcs-pcs-still-running-xp-bug-hunters-cashing-in-airport-security-stepped-up/amp/ <comment><AUTHOR> At this point they'd be better off just using retail Windows CBB (Current Branch for Business) and keeping it up to date like everybody else. A police force isn't a delicate aircraft, the ROI of millimetrically-micromanaged software deployment, with accompanying overhead costs and obvious security consequences, can't be worth it.

</comment><comment> sy-fur At least Microsoft created a patch for wannacry for XP

Security Update for Windows XP SP3 (KB4012598) [https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/download/details.aspx?id=552...](https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/download/details.aspx?id=55245)

And of course the other MS OS's [https://answers.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/forum/windows_10...](https://answers.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/forum/windows_10-security/wanna-cry- ransomware/5afdb045-8f36-4f55-a992-53398d21ed07)

</comment><comment> sy-fur And if wannacry got you, there maybe hope to get your files if you don't have some sort of data recovery in place

[https://github.com/gentilkiwi/wanakiwi](https://github.com/gentilkiwi/wanakiwi)

</comment><comment> sy-fur I can believe that 18,293 of the force's 32,751 desktops are still on XP.</comment>


Stealthy Dopant-Level Hardware Trojans [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://people.umass.edu/gbecker/BeckerChes13.pdf

<comment><USER2> In _Workshop on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems (CHES 2013)_ , Santa Barbara, California, August 20-23, 2013.

      @inproceedings{Becker2013,
          author = {Georg T.~Becker and Francesco Regazzoni and Christof Paar and Wayne P.~Burleson},
          title = {Stealthy Dopant-Level Hardware Trojans},
          booktitle = {Workshop on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems (CHES 2013)},
          address = {Santa Barbara, California},
          month = {August 20--23},
          year = 2013,
          note = {\URL{http://people.umass.edu/gbecker/BeckerChes13.pdf}},
      }</comment>


Google Said to Rethink Wallet Strategy Amid Slow Adoption - Bloomberg - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-21/google-said-to-rethink-wallet-strategy-amid-slow-adoption.html <comment><USER2> This is true, though I don't have high expectations for Isis. Boku has advantage here in that they're offering much more of an open ecosystem with their "Accounts" product, and plus they already have the carrier relationships with their legacy carrier micropayment service.

That said, it's ridiculous that carriers even have a say in this stuff anymore. When did carriers get the authority to approve apps?</comment>


Building a great product only gets you 20% there - <AUTHOR> https://breue.com/building_a_great_product_only_gets_you_20_percent_there?from=hn <comment><USER2> I have had the privilege of working with a lot of great people over the years. Starting my career at Idealab was like drinking from a fire hose. One of my favorite business comments from an early CEO of mine:

'Business is 4 equal parts; product, marketing, collecting money and timing/luck. They are all critical and very often, not in your control'

</comment><comment><USER3> This article should have a thousand upvotes and comments praising it. But too many devs think the opposite, that only a good product is worthy of success, and that it's easy if you just make a good product.

The reality is that marketing, support, distribution all matter more in the long run. I've been one of those engineers saying my app is so great, where are the customers? The customers were going to the apps worse than mine because those founders knew how to sell.

<comment><USER4> Maybe. Or maybe the idea of having this great product and launching it puts you too far from your customer.

My route was to build a MMVP, get one person to pay for it, and iterate over and over adding more paying customer. There was no magic launch day, just a few more paying customers every day/week/month. There was no marketing for the first year outside of happy customers telling their friends.

This was obviously easier as B2B. It would be harder to do a marketplace or something this way...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Developers at times can undervalue the role other key contributing team of the business play. Accounting, marketing, finance and support resources are all critical to the success of a firm.

</comment><comment> aj-4 recently launched a product i knew was great, people who have bought it sing its praises, 0 negative feedback.

sales were not terrible, but they were about 10x worse than I was hoping for.

I took the "focus on the product, customers will come" aphorism a bit too literally.

Marketing does not magically happen yet it's easy to ignore.

Obviously i knew this but it took experiencing it myself to fully believe it. Hard lesson.</comment>


Ask HN: A tool for writing English that checks "popularity" of used sentences? - <AUTHOR> As a non-native English speaker I find that the best way to check grammar is to google whole parts of sentences (in apostrophes - exact match). It's because there are multiple exceptions to language rules and some wording just can feel "not right" despite being correct.
Is there a tool that does something like this automatically?
I thought about writing such tool by myself, but it seems there are no good-quality, free search engine APIs that allow many calls. Or, maybe there are some open APIs to book dumps or something similar? <comment><USER2> You might like to check out writeful: [http://writefullapp.com/](http://writefullapp.com/)

<comment><USER3> Great app. Are you working on Android version as well?

<comment><USER2> Not my app, I'm afraid :) I just found out about it through my company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> AFAIK, an ex-Googler had that very same itch and he founded [http://www.linguee.com](http://www.linguee.com) to try to solve it.

<comment><USER5> I've found Linguee very useful for English -> French translation.

I think it draws heavily from the huge corpus of professionally translated EU regulations and documents.

<comment><USER6> Agreed, it has been extremely useful to me too for translating various Hungarian technical terms into English. Naming classes and database tables is much easier this way because most often the right term cannot be found in even the most detailed technical dictionaries but Linguee somehow just knows it. And it also shows the context so you can be very confident in your choice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There are quite a few Ngram datasets available [https://www.google.com/search?q=download+n-gram+dataset](https://www.google.com/search?q=download+n-gram+dataset)

... these are almost certainly used in many spelling and grammar checkers. (To help with where the same spelled word is used in different context)

[http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W12-0304](http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W12-0304)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I remember trying to use Google Books Ngram Dataset [1], but it was too tedious for me to setup and maintain a server with the data for a purpose of a quick-and-dirty tool (that's why I asked for a ready API). Still, using it is probably a nice idea for a more ambitious side project or even a startup.

EDIT. Actually I would happily pay for a tool that implements the idea. Grammarly has paid plans but $30/month is too steep (for my types of usages), and the types of grammar checks it performs is not exactly what I need (which is what real people in real situations use).

[1] [http://storage.googleapis.com/books/ngrams/books/datasetsv2....](http://storage.googleapis.com/books/ngrams/books/datasetsv2.html)

<comment><USER8> We (foxtype) actually have a dev tool that does exactly this.

If we publish it as an online tool do you think people will find it useful?

We have multiple corpora, some language models built in neural networks, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if there is a tool like this:

1\. You enter a sentence

2\. It gives out 5 different ways to say the exact same thing.

Such a tool not only would help ESL people but also it would help native speakers find more relaxed or formal versions of a sentence.

<comment><USER10> We're building a tool that does something similar but for email. Currently we're targeting cold sales emails- the idea is, you enter a recipient's email and we aggregate data about them and surface relevant, personable sentences that you can use in the email. You'll also be able to change the tone of these sentences (funny, professional, casual, etc.)

Learn more: [http://emailfox.co](http://emailfox.co)

<comment><USER11> Something like this will only work if your clients don't screw it up by spamming the same targets over and over.

If you can somehow get it through to your clients that they should only ever spam one target once, then hell, I'm for it.

<comment><USER10> Yup, agreed. I think overtime we'll also try to compensate for this by build a ML model from all the emails being sent to provide more 'fuzziness' to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Check out [http://foxtype.com](http://foxtype.com) \- does some of that but more grammar-like heuristics such as conciseness, complexity.

On a side note, I'm part of a team working on [http://emailfox.co](http://emailfox.co) which will provide 'Smart Sentences' for you when composing an email, based on a recipient. Allowing you to write personal, relevant emails faster.

<comment> angry-hacker People on mobile: looks like foxtype already is a product, it's a chrome extension.[0]

On mobile it just asks your email so they tell you when they launch (on mobile?). Horrible to have landing pages like that. Absolutely useless product page on mobile.

[0] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/foxtype/npcfiblhbj...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/foxtype/npcfiblhbjecbjogpdhilnigldhjnfal)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Try [http://www.netspeak.org/?locale=en](http://www.netspeak.org/?locale=en) it seems to do some of the things you asked. It is implemented on top of n-gram corpora.

<comment><AUTHOR> It looks helpful, but I would like to paste a whole document and be told which fragments look suspicious because of low popularity. The site requires putting wildcards and completes only a single n-gram.

<comment><USER12> I did not get that from your question. This takes parts of a sentence (i think at most 5-grams) and a few operators e.g.:

If you ask for similar words to 'much' in a fragment.

      'and knows ... #much ...'

      =>

      and knows a lot, 3.500, 65,2%
      and knows a lot about, 2.100, 39,5%
      and knows a great deal, 690, 12,6%
      and knows much, 630, 11,5%
      and knows lots, 380, 7,1%
      and knows lots of, 300, 5,5%
      and knows a good deal, 100, 1,9%
      and knows practically, 53, 1,0%
      and knows very much, 45, 0,8%

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> You could probably use some of the Ngrams datasets to figure this out. Parse some books from [https://www.gutenberg.org/](https://www.gutenberg.org/) or use the google ngrams corpus. Pay attention to the year(s) which you wish to model english from - grammar and form keep changing!

</comment><comment><USER14> I have been thinking of doing something like this (using Ngrams for grammar check for non-natives) for a while. I would be happy to fund development if you or somebody else are interested in working on it.

</comment><comment><USER15> From XKCD themselves, an editor that only allows for common words: [https://xkcd.com/simplewriter/](https://xkcd.com/simplewriter/)

</comment><comment><USER16> www.grammarly.com (haven't tried it though) In the demo they showed it turning a sentence into a more colloquial sentence.

I'm a native English speaker, and I'd like to know appropriate punctuation for a given combination of words. I'd like to search through a list.

<comment><USER17> Thank you, I especially like macOS editor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> When I'm conflicted about different phrasings of things (for instance, if there is a hyphen or there isn't on when writing compound words), I usually just use a google search and go with whatever result has the most number of hits. That could be a suitable enough proxy for your use-case, and perhaps you could just use the google search service as an API...

Of course, the RIGHT way to do this would be to use the n-gram datasets that people here have suggested :-)

</comment><comment><USER19> In FAQ: "Why does Google Books only provide feedback on 5 tokens or less?"

You mean "..feedback only for 5 tokens or FEWER?" Use your app! ;) //runs away

</comment><comment><USER20> Some thing like this: [http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/](http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/) ?

</comment><comment><USER21> To improve the qualitative aspects of writing, in this case for job listings primarily, check out [https://textio.com/](https://textio.com/). There's no API, but I think it will help you think about what "popular" language means.

</comment><comment><USER22> What you want is a language model. This will give you the probability on a word by word basis.

Something like [1] is pretty much state-of-the-art. It's worth noting that the kind of writing you are doing change the probability significantly. [2] shows this quite well.

[1] [https://colinmorris.github.io/lm- sentences/#/billion_words](https://colinmorris.github.io/lm- sentences/#/billion_words)

[2] [https://colinmorris.github.io/lm- sentences/#/brown_romance](https://colinmorris.github.io/lm- sentences/#/brown_romance)

</comment><comment><USER23> Bah, if you have good reason to be confident that your sentence is correct even if English speakers might feel it is wrong, then I say you should just write it anyway.

I like to read such things because it makes me think about what is being said and how the language works. If we always use "popoular" patterns then our writing becomes cliched and boring and people's eyes will glide right over it.

<comment><USER24> You have a point. But as a non-native speaker trying to learn a language, you aim to become so fluent that people will not notice you're foreign. You want to be able to play with the language.

A big part of learning a language is to become familiar with frequent speech patterns and slang. A language is not a sterile set of words with attached grammar but a slippery gelatinous blob that molds itself to the culture and people. Spoken languages are quite lively. If I want to integrate myself and joke around with natives, I need to learn to mold it the same way as natives to. In order to learn how to do that, you first have to start imitating.

<comment><USER23> Perhaps it also depends on your learning history.

Right now I live in Germany, and speak pretty ungramatically, but from being here I copy a lot of everyday idiom without really understanding it. So what I would like is the opposite of what you are looking for: confidence that my German sentences (especially written ones) are formally correct.

I don't mind if that makes me look like a well taught foreigner. Right now I sound like a badly taught foreigner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> If you can read Chinese, there's interesting tool:

[http://www.pigai.org/guest2016.html](http://www.pigai.org/guest2016.html)

It extracted common phrase from the sentences with explanations & suggestions & count usages from corpus.

</comment><comment><USER26> Never found it, but if you build it count me in as a user. Same issue, same solution.

</comment><comment><USER8> Thanks for the mention above (foxtype.com).

We're currently building an online editor checks

<comment><USER8> Oops, accidently sent.

We're currently building an online editor that:

1 checks for compatibility of words in a sentence (essentially popularity) 2 give example sentences for a certain word 3 word suggestions depending on context.

Language models would be a decent way to check popularity though it would be noisy. Sentence level rewrites would be hard unless you make it template driven.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> \incidental Use quotes (") for exact match, not apostrophes (').

</comment><comment><USER28> [https://github.com/rickyhan/bodine](https://github.com/rickyhan/bodine)

This is a tiny tool I wrote a long time ago. There's also writefullapp.com which is closed source.

</comment><comment><USER29> I can suggest [http://samedaypapers.com/](http://samedaypapers.com/). It always helps me)))</comment>


Multiple business tools and Complex Structure and expensive subscription = Chaos - <AUTHOR> http://blog.orgzit.com/project-management-tool-digital-marketing/ <comment><AUTHOR> Running a small business and worrying about its sustainability?

Digital marketing is sky-rocketing these days. I wonder if an all-inclusive tool could work for the same.</comment>


Redmond startup powers all-electric first flight of a Cessna turboprop - <AUTHOR> https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/redmond-startup-powers-all-electric-first-flight-of-a-cessna-turboprop/ <comment><AUTHOR> "The target market is planes that fly regional routes out of smaller airports, carrying 5 to 12 people distances from 50 to 500 miles."

I think the engine is the magni500: 570 kW / 750 shp [https://www.magnix.aero/products/#](https://www.magnix.aero/products/#)</comment>


The Tech Industry Is in Denial, but the Bubble Is About to Burst - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/26/the-tech-industry-is-in-denial-but-the-bubble-is-about-to-burst/

<comment><USER2>
      The fact that we are in a tech bubble is in no doubt

Yeah... no. It is in doubt, otherwise all the smart people who are still taking risks would stop. I don't pretend to know what the outcome is going to be, but from my perspective anyone who claims certainty is probably selling something.

To be honest I find Benedict Evans' analysis more convincing. Like many others here I was there for the dot-com boom (& crash) and this feels very different to me. There's real revenue being generated from a decent sized online population, not just a legion of ad-funded sites fighting for speculative CPM dollars.</comment>


Ask HN: Project management tool for working with a remote team? - <AUTHOR>

I am looking for something VERY simple, ideally something that integrates with Gmail and Google Drive (some Chrome extension?). I have always multiple projects and 4 developers to manage. Some simple daily TODO lists and time tracking also are needed. Any suggestions? <comment><USER2> Sounds like you're actually looking for something pretty complex if it needs all of those features. We use Asana for managing remote teams and that's worked well for us. If it needs to be something that lives inside GMail, maybe check out Streak. It's a lightweight CRM that let's you manage different processes, flows and relationships from within your inbox.

<comment><AUTHOR> It looks like something I was looking for! Very nice, thank you. Are there any alternatives to Streak? I didn't test it yet, but I am just wondering.

<comment><USER3> Hey there - founder of streak here. We use Streak internally to manage our product development process and bugs pipelines. We even have a blog post about how to use streak for that. See blog.streak.com. happtly to help if you need, reach me at aleem at streak.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, sounds good. So, the service is free? I don't see any pricing on the website.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You should take a look at our tool - Project Bubble ([http://projectbubble.com](http://projectbubble.com)). It's designed for creatives who work in teams. There's no payment commitment for small teams so you should be able to use it for free.

</comment><comment><USER5> You may try planbox ([https://www.planbox.com/](https://www.planbox.com/)), they have a Chrome plug-in

<comment><USER5> Or have a look at Microsoft's Team Foundation</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Copyright lawyer advice needed: Is this .jar file under the GPL? - <AUTHOR>

I need a lawyer who can answer whether the following is true: If the author uploads a .jar file with .class files in it to a GPL v2 Sourceforge project's file section, then by this act the .jar file and its contents get released under the GPL v2 under USA law, even if the author claims that this software was never intended to be and thus it never became GPLed. I'm ready to give more details during a 1-hour consultation session over chat or voice call. My budget for this consultation is 400 USD. Your private, non-lawyer opinions are also welcome, but to get my problem solved, I need professional advice with a high confidence (preferably based on past lawsuits) that the court would rule the same way. <comment><USER2> The Free Software Foundation offers legal consulting services. Here's part of email I got from them in 2007:

> The FSF has offered Free Software licensing support for many years, and has > a recognised engineering and legal expertise in this area. As demand and > expectation of our service has grown, we have required additional funds to > support our work. To this end we now offer our services by paid consultation > to non-free software developers.

> To answer your question as outlined, we will require 30 minutes of > consultation time, at a cost of $150.

That price may have gone up since 2007, but it likely in the same price range as you are looking for.

So my suggestion to you is to contact firstname.lastname@example.com with the above message.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've received an autoreply in a minute, but no human from FSF has answered my e-mail to email@example.com in the last 10 days. I'll send an update here as soon as they answer.

<comment><USER2> Well that sucks.

Some alternative ideas, though these are likely even less helpful than my previous one, is to contact Bradley M. Kuhn (he is on the FSF's board of directors) via one of the methods at [http://www.ebb.org/bkuhn/contact/contact- bkuhn.html](http://www.ebb.org/bkuhn/contact/contact-bkuhn.html) and as a long shot, contact the Software Freedom Law Center. (I say "long shot" since I think they only do work for not-for-profit clients.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tips. I'm a non-profit client.

<comment><USER3> I would contact the software freedom law center at ([http://www.softwarefreedom.org/about/contact/](http://www.softwarefreedom.org/about/contact/)). Providing pro-bono legal services to developers of Free, Libre, and Open Source Software is their purpose, so you should get a quick answer from them. They also got an irc channel for non-legal questions if you just want to get in contact with them.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


If MSG is so bad for you, why doesn't everyone in Asia have a headache? - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2005/jul/10/foodanddrink.features3

<comment><USER2> Because they're not living at altitude? I can eat all the MSG I want in Denver even, but above 7000' I'm in agony for twelve to eighteen hours. YMMV.</comment>


One Man's Impossible Quest to Read and Review the World - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/one-mans-impossible-quest-to-read-and-review-the-world <comment><USER2> This brings to mind "Review"[1] on Comedy Central, in which the protagonist attempts to review life itself.

"Life!" the show begins. "It's literally all we have. But is it any good?"

Highly recommended.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Review_(TV_series)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Review_\(TV_series\))

<comment><USER3> I second your recommendation, and feel that Review (maybe tied with You're The Worst) is one of the most underappreciated comedies currently airing. The show (and Forrest)'s uncompromising commitment to the central premise is both hilarious and crushing. Andy Daly deserves way more hype for his performance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a great site. I read a huge amount, but I easily "fasten" in detective stories etc. Discovery is a significant problem. I don't necessarily follow review columns in intellectual newspapers. When I come across an author that I really like, like China Mieville, I will find all of their books and read. But I am sure there are large galaxies of writers whose works I will never hear about.

I also love the focus on international writers. As a voracious foreign language learner, discovery becomes even more difficult, and seeing interesting literature available in other languages is a great motivation to learn. And in the meantime, we can rely on translation to at least get a sense of some of these works.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is an eccentric collection, nothing wrong with that. But for something billed as "Complete" it sure is missing a lot of classics, not a single Hemingway in the bunch.</comment>