The Elephant in the Smartwatch Room - <AUTHOR> https://www.aboveavalon.com/notes/2016/12/15/the-elephant-in-the-smartwatch-room <comment><USER2> The elephant in the article is that he mentions Garmin, as a major player, then nearly completely ignores it. The industry isn't an Apple Watch industry, it's Apple/Samsung accessory on one side, and true fitness watch on the other.

As a Garmin user (Fenix 3 HR), I find it indispensable on my rides, swims, runs, etc. Nothing works better with the same battery life and integration. The notifications are kinda nice, but honestly the fitness part of it matters far more.

Apple clearly has been moving in the fitness watch direction, but it's unlikely they'll get the same performance because they're unwilling to sacrifice svelte design (dedicated altimeter, GPS, temperature, extra radios plus long-life battery take more space). Even in the current watch they have about 1/3 the battery life using GPS. Of course that's fine for a lot of people, but there's a healthy number who want more.

I think the final layout will be Apple/Samsung with a large majority of the market, and sports specialists (Garmin) having the rest, but that segment being quite strong and healthy over the long term. Where that leaves Fitbit, I don't know. They don't have a model that meets the needs of someone who wants a Garmin (though Garmin is expanding down into their space), and they'll never have the integration the "cool-accessory" market wants.

<comment><USER3> I won't disagree for hardcore fitness people.

But for 'normal' fitness people the Apple watch is a pretty strong value. It's much better than a basic FitBit but works better. It integrates with your phone very well and the notification handling quickly became my favorite feature.

I think the Apple watch is _far more_ than good enough for most people's fitness needs, and I don't think Garmin's strength there will be enough to elevate them out of the niche of hard-core fitness people.

<comment><USER4> For normal fitness people, I would think an iPhone would be more than enough for your needs. Get an iPhone strap or carry it on your hand. There's really no need to have a watch.

On the other hand, if you are planning for something serious, like running a half-marathon in spring, or doing interval training, then you begin to need heart rate monitoring. Many then discovers that the Apple Watch HRM is cr*p (mine read 215bpm which is at least 25bpm more than my biological max) and you can't really use Apple Watches for fitness. Apple would need to invest massively in heart rate monitoring technology (+battery) to get any interest from fitness crowds.

One are that makes sense for Apple Watch is simple activity tracking. How many steps, how many floors climbed. Where you have been. How much sleep you had etc. Those are important metrics for your health and worth the price. But at the same time, you can get a Fitbit or a Vivoactive for $150 less

<comment><USER5> > On the other hand, if you are planning for something serious, like running a > half-marathon in spring

For the encouragement of would-be or newbie runners, it is of course _entirely_ possible to run a half-marathon distance without any form of monitoring, diagnostic or tracking equipment.

Invest in good shoes first and don't worry about gadgets. The only one I'd recommend would be a small mobile phone in a back-pocket in case of emergency if you're running cross-country or remote roads.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. You don't need a fancy Garmin or the latest gadgets. See the kenyans who are running and training without fancy gadgets.

A gps sports watch helps though to track progress and also get feedback. It provides that extra bit of motivation that makes a difference

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Perhaps the elephant in the story is that with 35 million smartwatches sold, ever, compared to 1.4 billion smartphones sold globally this year, smartwatches simply don't matter.

</comment><comment><USER7> I can't buy into this analysis. I just got a Gear S3 Frontier. It's a literal cell phone, but it _looks_ like a watch. It's fairly comfortable (after the absurdly bad band is replaced), and its interface feels natural.

It's the watch I wanted when I was a little kid with the cereal box Tetris watch. [0] I had a whole bunch of Casio databanks, from the 32 number to 150 number [1] to the neato 'touch screen' version I saved up for a year to buy [2]. I remember dreaming of getting that computer watch off SkyMall's catalog (can't find a link just now), and dreamed of having something like it. Now I have a gizmo more powerful that Roger Smith's in BigO.

Again, it is an _actual_ cell phone. My inner child is gleeful about it. But here's the gripe: the software to talk to it is only available on a mobile device. ONLY. Any my phone is more than 4 years old, so it turns out my bluetooth can't talk to it.

Still an awesome watch, and I can't wait to upgrade my phone and load my usual apps on it. Would I have gotten it if it were smaller, less capable? Probably. I tried to get an S2, but my phone store wouldn't sell it while the S3 was on the way.

EDIT: This is one of the first watches I've seen that is capable of standing on its own (somewhat) if untethered from a phone. There have been cell phone watches, but not at this price point, and not with the same slick interface.

[0] You know the one: [https://stevecochrane.com/v3/2006/09/15/tetris-should- be-eve...](https://stevecochrane.com/v3/2006/09/15/tetris-should-be- everywhere/) [1] [http://archive.casio.com/products/archive/watches/databank/d...](http://archive.casio.com/products/archive/watches/databank/dbc150-1/) [2] [https://www.flickr.com/photos/timepieceslove/6362901777/](https://www.flickr.com/photos/timepieceslove/6362901777/)

<comment><USER8> Soo .... it's a cell phone that needs a cell phone to work ?

Sounds more like a bluetooth headset that you wear on your wrist

<comment><USER7> No, that's the cool bit: it's like a cell phone on your wrist!

The 4g connection is pretty good, and I think the call quality is pretty decent. Battery can only handle maybe an hour and a half of call per day (between charges), but I'm not too chatty, so it works great for me.

<comment><USER8> > But here's the gripe: the software to talk to it is only available on a > mobile device. ONLY.

So "talk" here means "change settings"? That's what confused me.

<comment><USER7> Right? It really violates the Law of Least Astonishment. I think part of the idea is that the phone serves as a close hub to get push notifications from, since it doesn't retrieve my mail without the phone. Which honestly I'm starting to think I preferred (you really start to notice how much nonsense heads your way when the notifier is on your wrist).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This reads like someone who's fallen in love with his Apple Watch but actually never used a Garmin or a Fitbit and doesn't really get why someone would spend $200 or $400 on a Garmin.

It's like someone who used a DSLR camera all his life and then tries to write why GoPro don't make any sense, without every trying one.

The writing and the graphs are nice though. Now go out of your ivory tower

</comment><comment><USER9> It wasn't until I was 2/3rds of the way through the article that the supporting evidence he's provided wasn't an indictment of the viability of smartwatches as even a product, and was only an effort to demonstrate how dominant Apple is. It's completely baffling. He's completely ignoring that all the numbers he gives in the article paint a picture of a failing/foundering product segment that if anything are a compelling argument for Apple to exit the space now before it's too late.

</comment><comment><USER10> The idiom "elephant in the room" means "a difficult-to-discuss problem that we all know we have to talk about but that we're all pretending doesn't exist". I don't see how the title here is relevant for the linked article, which is a dull summary of low sales of "smart" watches and how most of them are Apples.

<comment><USER11> I've found some people misunderstand and misuse the colloquialism in instances where the phrase "800 lb gorilla" would be more appropriate. This seems to be one of those cases.

<comment><USER12> The 800 lb. gorilla in the elephant room made of glass.

<comment><USER13> You're beating around the bull in this China shop.

(yeah yeah it's a Reddit -like comment but this whole thread should probably be downvoted)

<comment><USER14> Why can't we have a little fun on HN? Maybe we should have a flag for "humor" and let people opt in to seeing comments flagged as such.

<comment><USER15> I'd rather see HN focused on being a site for substantive, in-depth commentary rather than a slew of one line comments attempting to be witty (and failing), a la Reddit and Slashdot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> We really are in an awkward place because people simply aren't seeing the value in smart watches just yet.

The technology is also just a bit behind.

People see it as geeky and not really solving any problems they have.

Personally I am a fan of the new hybrid watches that are coming out.

They look great (they look exactly like classic watches, because they are), the battery issue is gone (modern hybrids last up to 6 months or longer) and do what people really want a smart watch to do:

see if that notification is something worth taking your phone out for. (most hybrids have different symbols or vibrations or lights that show what it is and who its from).

Throw in the activity tracking and controlling your music from your wrist and you have the perfect combo.

If the marketing is done right I can see hybrids really taking off.

<comment><USER17> I'm interested in watching this develop.

As a nerdy guy, I love signaling my nerdiness with gadgets -- tablets, notebooks, cars, etc.

But watches? When I wear a watch I want something analog with a lot of gears and complexity, not a stupid cell phone OS crammed on my wrist. Have you seen folks in airports and such poking at their watch, trying to open apps? Talking to their wrist? It does not leave one with a positive impression.

<comment><USER7> I'm gonna shill here and say check the S3 (or S2 classic). The spinning bevel is really slick, and the OS feels really natural. Partly because it seems to understand there's approximately enough space on a watch to put like 4 icons _ever_. The voice works great, and I've had conversations with my arm at my side (but really, get a bluetooth headset - airports are too crowded to use a speakerphone).

And some of the watch faces are clever. The default chronograph one actually fakes the light reflecting around the face as your wrist moves. Complete BS, but passes the illusion nicely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'd re-order the 'four reasons' for the Apple Watch's success and put 'it's made by Apple' up top, which is a superset of its integration with the iPhone.

Apple's brand power and brand loyalty are well-reported and much-discussed, and compare favorably to Samsung's try-everything-and-see-what-doesn't-fail approach -- all the while being a mainstream brand with an appeal that transcends several income bands, and not just a purely luxury aspirational product for the ultra-rich.

</comment><comment><USER19> Pebble was a great little company, and could have stayed a great little company, but somehow everybody decided that smartwatches were the next big thing. Pebble started hiring to grow into a billion dollar company, ran out of money and died.

<comment><USER20> [*] Pebble, the only smartwatches that actually made sense. As a happy user, I'm very sad to see them gone.

<comment><USER21> I'm pretty excited about the third party development that's growing from Pebble's former employees and dev community.

Seems like they may eventually have custom firmware, and they have backups of the entire Pebble Store.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Smartwatches are today where iPhone was in 2008-9 timeframe. If and when technology in smartwatches get to a price-point where value/price ratio becomes hard to ignore for the global middle classes (like smartphones hit in about 2009-2010 timeframe), Android watches will flood the market and take it over. If that time ever comes.

What seems much more likely to me is that middle-class wrist space will be claimed more by fitness devices which encroach more and more on the smartwatch territory without all the frills. E.g. Something like Xiomi Miband 2 at ~$40 is hard to resist with a tiny LED display and 20 day (yes.. actual 20 days) battery life. What I want on my wrist is something tiny, cheap, waterproof and hardy I can wear and forget (for weeks on end) as opposed to something bulky, delicate, not quite waterproof (say, in the swimming pool) and requires nightly charging. Who needs that?

</comment><comment><USER23> One thing the article doesn't talk about is how _sustainable_ the Apple Watch's dominance is going to be. The iPod gained dominance via its superior UI (namely, the clickwheel), but what allowed it to sustain that dominance was the fact that iTunes' music selection and integration with the iPod was unparalleled. Does Apple have a similar advantage with iOS/watchOS and the Apple Watch?

<comment><USER24> The article does talk about this in one respect: the integration with the iPhone would seem to be the primary (and substantial) advantage that Apple Watch has. You could argue that this limited Apple Watch to a minority of smartphone owners, but it's still an addressable market of 700M. Plus, the Apple Watch will likely not always be tethered to an iPhone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Siri for sending txt messages is much more useful on the Apple watch.

Also checking messages is more discrete and less disruptive with the apple watch. Use mine constantly for this.

Don't care about the health trackers, wish I could delete that completely

<comment><USER26> And for me, it is completely the opposite. Text messages are for when I can't or don't want to speak on the phone (sometimes because I don't want the whole room to hear my conversation). So I have no need to send text messages from my watch. I'm more interested in the constant monitoring of heart rate, movement, etc., with the added features of notifications, silent alarms, and music control (though I don't really use music control either). That is precisely why I chose the Fitbit Blaze over the Apple Watch, even though I'm a very happy iPhone owner.

<comment><USER3> > I'm more interested in the constant monitoring of heart rate, movement, > etc., with the added features of notifications, silent alarms, and music > control (though I don't really use music control either).

It does all that. The Siri integration is a killer-app for me though. I use it all the time (when alone) to set reminders, reply to texts, etc. But since it's from Apple it will always have better messaging integration than any 3rd party could EVER provide.

Of course I'm guessing the Blaze is much cheaper.

While it doesn't apply here, I'll also say that I've come to hate FitBit. They _really_ don't want to play with other people and I had to buy an extra app (that I have to run every few days) just to sync data from my last remaining FitBit device to Health on my iPhone. Since I first bought one they seem to have gone from very open to hostile and closed. And I don't want to reward that.

(And that ignores my customer support experience, which alone turned me off from them)

<comment><USER26> > It does all that.

Sure, I didn't mean to imply that it doesn't. I was simply illustrating how different people have different use cases for these wearable devices. While we may see some more convergence, I think that multiple categories will remain (fitness, etc).

> I use it all the time (when alone) to set reminders, reply to texts, etc.

The great thing about the iPhone and Siri is that you don't need a watch to do that. Most of the time I don't even have to pull my phone from my pocket to do a "Hey Siri". Apple seems to have done a pretty decent job with the voice recognition and hotword detection (I think that's the right term).

> Of course I'm guessing the Blaze is much cheaper.

Actually not much. The Blaze retails for $199.

<comment><USER3> I knew you knew it did all the other stuff.

You're right about the phone, but it's very nice to be able to just raise my wrist and sort of whisper into my watch. I don't have to make sure I'm loud enough that my phone can hear me from my pocket. It just feels easier/more natural if you don't already have your phone in your hand.

I wonder if the pricing on the Blaze was set before the latest Apple Watches came out. That would have been a decent value against $350 or whatever they were, but now that a very nice one starts at $260 it's a tougher sell.

<comment><USER27> Blaze does not appear to be a tough sell on Amazon. Right now different Blaze models place 1st, 3rd, 5th, 8th, 11th and 12th in the top 12 places on [https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Cell-Phones- Accessories-...](https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Cell-Phones-Accessories- Smart-Watches/zgbs/wireless/7939901011)

Apple Watch models in spots 2 and 10.

<comment><USER3> Interesting. The big catch on buying an Apple Watch right now is that depending on the model you want you can still face a pretty decent delay in being able to get one. All things being equal I wonder how that would affect the rankings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> If I want a watch, I want a $20 Timex beater that will go until it is physically smashed up or the battery dies years later. Not a very expensive, fragile, fiddly, power-hungry gizmo.

<comment><USER26> And that is exactly why I think the industry messed up by calling them smart watches. Telling the time is probably one of the least important things these devices do. If all you need is a way to tell the time, one of these devices would be a huge waste of money and inconvenience.

<comment><USER3> What else would you call them though?

Calling it a watch makes it very clear where you're intended to wear it and that it will always be there.

<comment><USER29> It will be interesting to see if people eventually normalize 'smart watch' into 'watch' and old school watches become referred to separately as 'timepieces' (for example).

<comment><USER3> I can tell you I don't refer to mine as a smartwatch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I would _love_ me an Apple Watch, and I would pay double the price, if only the damn thing lasted at least a month on a single charge.

Unfortunately, the technology just isn't there.

<comment><USER31> Why do you need so long on a single charge? Even on my non-smart watches I take them off at some point during the day(those ones normally for sleep).

With my Apple watch I take it off in the morning while I get ready and stick it to the charger and by the time I'm done it's ready for another day.

<comment><USER30> That's an interesting paradigm. I do take my Casio Protrek off during sleep, but I kinda enjoy the fact that my watch is the single gadget in my life that requires zero maintenance. It'll outlast my body in any and every circumstance. I basically only need to replace the battery once every 5-7 years, since it just charges through the solar element that's the surface of the watch dial. I feel like having to plug the watch into a charger is yet another thing to worry about during the day. And with my chaotic life, there'll be a few days during the week where I won't know where the charger is, or I left it at work, or it's in the car, or the nearest outlet is occupied by the kitchen blender, and I'll be too lazy to reach the outlet in the next room, etc. I feel like a month would give me reasonable legroom to keep it constantly running.

In my perception, a watch should be something that is zero hassle, and smartwatches just ain't it.

<comment><USER31> I guess with everything it's a trade off. I get a lot more functionality than a standard watch but the trade off is once a day I need to stick it on the charger for a few minutes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Much more interesting to me is the impact of smart watches on the high end regular watch category. I have a feeling that category has been rejuvenated by the Apple watch. I would love some actual numbers on that though.

<comment> noir-york > high end regular watch category

Would that be the Tissot's (higher-end quartz movements) of the world? Or the Omega/Panerai's?

Maybe there is an impact on the former, but I cannot see anyone picking an iWatch over a SpeedMaster, let alone an AP.

<comment><USER33> If it's quartz, I don't think it really counts as high-end. High-end watches are all about jewelry, romance and human involvement — AFAIK they're always mechanical, with more & more complications the higher-end they get.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Several months ago I decided to buy a Huawei watch [0] - black with metal band. It's a good-looking, comfortable watch, and reasonably functional. I had been wanting to get an all-black watch anyway, and one day when I saw this on sale I decided to give it a shot.

The big draws for me were the full circle face (I don't like the look of the square ones or the 'flat tire' on some of the earlier cirlce watch faces), the fact it looks like a basically normal watch, and that it runs Android Wear (I considered a Samsung Gear, but I don't like that it's within the Samgsung software ecosystem).

I wear it pretty much every day, though I often take it off while I'm coding/keyboarding (which I've done whenever I wore a watch).

I've never wore a watch while I sleep, and always just put it on my nightstand beside the bed. The magnetic base is on my nightstand, and it takes about 2 extra seconds to put it on the charger vs just set it down, so I generally charge it every night. I've forgotten a couple times, and it easily gets through two days anyway.

For me the most useful things are message notifications and the ability to reply quickly with a couple canned responses and agenda.

I actually use Microsoft's Outlook watch face. The outer permiter shows blocks of time for the next 12 hours where something is scheduled and it's pretty cool. I didn't find any other faces that had quite the same functionality, but I think I could build one using one of the custom watch face apps, I just haven't bothered to spend the time yet.

I don't use the fitness tracking on it. An interesting side effect though is that my phone counts more steps. When I'm sitting at my desk, I tend to take my watch off but keep my phone in my pocket -- so if I get up to go to someone else's desk, bathroom or get coffee, my phone counts those steps whereas before I had the watch, I'd often take my phone out and then forget it on my desk when I did those things.

The Google Authenticator app is _almost_ useful on it, but it generally only works if I've recently opened it on my phone. I rarely have to use it more than once in day, so I just use my phone.

Weather is useful. Oh, I also use Stocard to manually enter loyalty numbers at a gas pump. I've never tried using in store.

It's kind of neat for controlling Google Music whether I'm listening with bluetooth or casting to my living room stereo, but not something I use regularly nor would miss if it didn't exist.

I don't really use any other apps on it. I had to block quite a few notifications of random things -- it seems everyone thinks their app notifications are really important and should show up my on wrist.

People find it a combination of fascinating/impressive/weird that I can pull up a live HD view of my baby camera (via TinyCam connected to a Foscam HD IP camera). I don't find that to be a useful feature so don't do it other than when my wife asks me to show someone.

So I know there's a lot of negativity here about 'smart' watches, but overall I'm pretty happy with it and really have no big complaints. It's got a couple handy functions vs a normal watch. It costs within the same ballpark as what I was going to spend on a watch anyway (I'm not a watch guy). It looks like a regular watch (a few times I've had someone see me activate it and say something to the effect of "oh, it's a smart watch! I was wondering how you could tell time on that blank black face".

[0] [http://consumer.huawei.com/en/wearables/huawei- watch/index.h...](http://consumer.huawei.com/en/wearables/huawei- watch/index.htm)

</comment><comment> dumb-saint Boring

<comment><USER35> Please don't post like this here.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you ask for credit card info for free trial signups? - <AUTHOR>

I've been debating whether taking credit card info during free trial signups is the best way to go for my SaaS app.  Obviously, asking for this information will turn some (many? too many?) possible users away, but it also seems like a good way to acquire paying customers smoothly (as opposed to trying to acquire credit card info once the free trial is up).
I've looked at how several other successful SaaS apps have handled this, and it seems to be a bit divided.  Many ask for credit card info up front, while others are much more interested in just getting you to sign up and try them.  I can see positives to both approaches.
I'd be curious what other think about this... <comment><USER2> As a potential user, I would certainly not like this. I think if your product is good enough for me to pay, I will pay for it regardless of whether you got my cc info upfront or after the trial period ends. So keep it simple. Do not ask for cc info unless you are charging at that point. Like I said, the user who thinks your product is worth it, will pay for it later as needed.

Only use case I can think of asking for cc upfront is not related to payment. It is more related to checking authenticity if you own a critical website and want real users (may be). But again, definitely not for the case you mentioned.

</comment><comment><USER3> On <http://bugmuncher.com> I don't require CC details for the free trial, simply because it pisses me off when other sites do that.

I feel like sites that require CC info up front are trying to trick me into giving them money by forgetting to cancel.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback Matt. I think you're right. I'm going to remove the CC info fields from my sign up form.

By the way, bugmuncher looks cool. Congrats!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> IMHO the whole purpose of the free trial is for the potential customer to see the value in your offering and build a certain level of trust with you. Asking for a CC as part of a FREE trial smells funny and doesn't go well with building trust.

</comment><comment><USER5> A/B test it. Your conversion rate from free -> paid will drop if you're not asking for CC upfront, but your signup rate for the the free trial will drop if you do ask for it. The exact rates will depend on your user-base though.

</comment><comment><USER6> I refuse to give CC info until I am actually paying for something. I definitely won't give it for just a trial period. Such a requirement stinks of scam to me -- or the very least shady business practices.</comment>


Is Artificial Intelligence Permanently Inscrutable? (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/40/learning/is-artificial-intelligence-permanently-inscrutable <comment><USER2> Maybe the issue is that intelligence itself is inscrutable?

When you are asked why you did something, and provide an explanation, is your explanation accurate? Do you really have access to this information? Or did you think, "I must have done X because of Y"?

What about a simpler question: "How did you do X"? When I answer this, I often cannot provide an answer, and I have to redo X and observe what I'm doing.</comment>


Bash Configurations Demystified - <AUTHOR> http://dghubble.com/.bashprofile-.profile-and-.bashrc-conventions.html <comment><USER2> See <[http://blog.flowblok.id.au/2013-02/shell-startup- scripts.htm...](http://blog.flowblok.id.au/2013-02/shell-startup- scripts.html>), the most comprehensive overview I've encountered to date.

<comment><AUTHOR> ^ broken link.

<comment><USER3> It has to do with the fact that the GP put the URL in < > and HN assumed the trailing > was part of the URL. Just remove the trailing > in the URL and it'll work.

Alternatively reproduced here without the '>': [http://blog.flowblok.id.au/2013-02/shell-startup- scripts.htm...](http://blog.flowblok.id.au/2013-02/shell-startup-scripts.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What's the reason for all the files, and why do I care whether my shell is a login or non-login? To me, no matter where I get my shell from (whether VT, SSH, gnome-terminal), I want all my aliases, settings and nice terminal colors to be there.

<comment><USER5> Because when you run a script in a shell you don't want the script printing out the message of the day and messing with things. Say for example you want to create a new shell with LD_LIBRARY_PATH and PATH that are different than you set them when you login. If you always start a login shell your .profile is always run and you always reset your paths.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > As the name implies, .bashrc is for bash configs. Environment variables or > other configuration settings should typically be written to .profile on > Ubuntu and .bash_profile on OS X.

I don't understand this. If I set PATH in .profile or .bash_profile, then on Ubuntu I won't see that setting when I log in via a non-login shell. This is common for non-interactive SSH sessions.

So consider the following example:

      * I install MPI to /usr/local/openmpi-X.Y.Z
      * I add /usr/local/openmpi-X.Y.Z/bin to PATH, inside my .profile

Now MPI is broken, because MPI executes out of a non-login shell when running on remote nodes via SSH.

I think I'll keep my PATH settings in .bashrc, thank you very much.

<comment><AUTHOR> ~/.profile is executed only at login on Ubuntu so changing your PATH there will be applied the next time you login. You can source the ~/.profile in your current non-login shell if you need the PATH change right now. I've tried to tweak the second paragraph in the "When not to modify .bashrc?" section to make this more clear.

Thanks for bringing this up.

<comment><USER6> The problem is that running an MPI program on a remote node starts a new non- interactive SSH session. That SSH session has no parent login session, so it won't inherit environment variables from any session that read the .profile file. And because the SSH login is non-interactive, the only file that the shell inside the SSH session reads is .bashrc.

Sure, you could source .profile manually, but this is awkward to code inside an MPI application. In addition, this will cause .bashrc to get sourced twice, because your shell already read .bashrc when it started the SSH session. Hopefully your .bashrc is idempotent, but even so, it feels wrong to have to read .bashrc twice.

Try this on a remote server:

        remote:~$ cat .profile
        echo "read .profile"

        echo "sourcing .bashrc from .profile"
        source ~/.bashrc
        remote:~$ cat .bashrc
        echo "read .bashrc"

And then from your local machine:

        local:~$ ssh remote
        read .profile
        sourcing .bashrc from .profile
        read .bashrc
        local:~$ ssh remote -k true
        read .bashrc

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Excellent article.

I recently had the task of straightening out the default install of dotfiles we had at my job. Since we're behind a corporate firewall and require various HTTP proxies to hit the outside world I devised pretty much the same setup as explained in the article.

All of the environment exports are placed in .profile as, at the very least, I expect this to be sourced on a login shell. If there is a non-login shell, for the most part, most people tend to source it pretty early on in the process. The .bash_profile is kept around for diagnostic information for interactive shells such as the Ruby, Go, Node and Java versions of the machine you are logging into.

Because everyone tends to have their own dotfiles I hijacked the .bash_login to keep machine specific information which can be optionally sourced. This leads me to tell people to basically keep .profile and .bash_login out of their revision control and to source both of them relatively early on in the login process.

All .profile is for environment variables that are machine/network specific. If you have any overrides, e.g. aliases, all that goes into your .bash_login.

My .bash_profile: [https://github.com/johnbellone/dotfiles/blob/master/home/.ba...](https://github.com/johnbellone/dotfiles/blob/master/home/.bash_profile)

My .bashrc [https://github.com/johnbellone/dotfiles/blob/master/home/.ba...](https://github.com/johnbellone/dotfiles/blob/master/home/.bashrc)

</comment><comment><USER8> _Programs like RVM add a .bash_profile file so you should be sure to append [[ -s ${HOME} /.profile ]] && source ${HOME}/.profile to the added .bash_profile file._

You can also rename .profile to .bash_profile on Ubuntu and Debian. All other distros that I've encountered set up .bash_profile by default.

<comment><USER9> .profile works nicer if you run another Shell, I presume, so can be added to _every_ users home directory upon creation and not just to those of Bash users.

What I don't get is why RVM adds a .bash_profile, when there is, for example, /etc/profile.d/.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10>
         > the scary console login after you've messed up your GUI settings

That's where I stopped reading...

BASH isn't _that_ mysterious.

         man bash

<comment><USER11> If you're only using a console because you broke your WM config (or something similar) then I imagine it's quite intimidating.

"help" is the most likely first place looked for assistance in such circumstances I'd imagine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is there a specific reason why you would want to source .profile from within .bash_profile instead of just making one a symlink to the other?

<comment><USER13> Other shells (e.g. ksh) may only use .profile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is really helpful, thanks.</comment>


WOFF (Web Open Font Format) 1.0 Submission to W3C - <AUTHOR> http://www.w3.org/Submission/WOFF/

<comment><USER2> > An optional block of extended metadata, represented in XML format and > compressed for storage in the WOFF file.

At least it's compressed, but seems like it might make more sense to use compressed JSON, given that you're likely only ever going to read it with, you know, JavaScript.

<comment><USER3> I think the primary interactors with this data will be the browsers themselves, and browsers tend to have XML parsers handy.

It'd be no sweat for the browser to JSONify this data for the DOM, anyway.</comment></comment>


Chainlink CEO: How "Mixicles" can change the game for smart contract privacy - <AUTHOR> https://decrypt.co/9037/chainlink-ceo-sergey-nazarov-mixicles-smart-contract-defi-privacy <comment><USER2> Where can I read technical description of "Mixicles"? Couldn't find it on official website and developer documentation.</comment>


Eaze, cannabis delivery company, raises 27M - <AUTHOR> https://www.eaze.com/blog/posts/eaze-continues-advancing-cannabis-industry-additional-27m-raised <comment><USER2> There's something really disturbing about this given the fact that people are still rotting in jail in this country for selling a dime bag in the 90's. The time for federal prohibition to come to an end is far overdue.

<comment><USER3> Is that exaggerated or do you really have confirmation of somebody serving time in prison for minor pot dealings? I would be willing to be most serving time in prisons for pot were moving quite a bit of product, which would still be illegal even in legalized pot states today.

<comment><USER4> There are many cases of extended time served for small personal amounts of marijuana. Especially after "tough on crime" effort and 3-strikes laws that permeated throughout the country starting in the 90s. Obama vacated many federal sentences before his term ended, but that didn't cover prisoners in state and county prisons.

Plenty of press and articles around this over the past few years.

<comment><USER5> I think that this is true, but didn't Obama have a massive wave of Pardons of people like this before he left office?

<comment><USER6> Didn't Google invent a search engine? People are still being incarcerated for long periods of time for minor marijuana offenses (well under a pound). This isn't news.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Maybe I'm missing something, but why are X delivery companies a thing? Why not have just a delivery company? This is a case where I can't even think of any special handling being required, but I wouldn't be a customer so may be ignorant to something.

<comment><USER8> In the case of Eaze it's delivery for a market with a very unique regulatory and logistical nature. As opposed to say, food.

<comment><USER9> I might be missing a joke, but food _also_ has a unique regulatory and logistical nature. Amazon and Walmart.com have had trouble expanding to groceries for this very reason, and that's why they've been partnering with or acquiring grocery delivery startups.

Food essentially requires its own supply chain and has its own health regulations. Consumer preferences for food shopping also seem to be distinctly different from preferences on other classes of products.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Serious question: Are the investors not at risk for being charged with a federal RICO case given that marijuana is illegal at that level in the US? Legally, it's no different than them investing in a heroin or cocaine ring.

</comment><comment><USER11> That delivery spike on 4/20 is amusing to see. I suspect it will become the equivalent of Christmas sales volume for Cannabis vendors.

</comment><comment><USER12> Gets them another 27mo of runway, according to the other article that they burn 1m/mo. Wow, how can they be burning that much?

<comment><USER13> Doritos, I presume.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why would (largest regional pharmacy retailer) supply chain not be able to win this market? Already has all those hard assets in place with ops, people, efficiencies, etc.

<comment><USER15> Distribution. Many cities have different rules about if and where you can place a shop that can sells Marijuana. The corner store beside your house is not going to be selling weed anytime soon. Hence delivery is very handy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I get the need for runway given the burn rate at 1 mil/month. I just can't understand the investors motivation. What does annual revenue really look like? Meadow raised just over 2 mil and is close to profitability. It all just seems a tad excessive in terms of cap raise, burn and realistic growth. But again, just keep raising capital, eventual you can IPO and dump it on a bunch of retail guys.

</comment><comment><USER17> Congrats to Eaze! I run a popular networking event for CannaTech professionals in Denver and while it's a little scary to see Silicon Valley coming after this area that Colorado has been dominating, it's a good thing for the industry in general. Stigma and risk has kept a lot of top talent away and it's exciting to see that finally starting to change!

</comment><comment><USER18> Glad to see some increasing activity for funding in the cannabis space. Prohibition is lifting, and it is exciting to watch it happen.

</comment><comment><USER19> It's a bit surprising to see that they've raised so much. Given that Eaze is only available in California and they will need a very local approach to deal with city by city and state by state regulations which have slight differences.

I can definitely see an Uber/Lyft dynamic emerge in the marijuana delivery space.

</comment><comment><USER20> I wonder if the increasing cannabis accessibility leads to an increase in smoking? Lots of friends of mine never smoked but started "smoking" cannabis, usually combined with tobacco (vapors not used once). Kind of a sad development in my opinion when lots of countries are pushing hard for a smokefree life.

</comment><comment><USER21> Can the VC be implicated for financing distribution of controlled substances ? There could be enough grounds for Banks to terminating their relationship with Bailey Capital et al. Why would a venture capital firm expose themselves to this, when its not even legal in half of the country?

<comment><USER2> >Can the VC be implicated for financing distribution of controlled substances ? There could be enough grounds for Banks to terminating their relationship with Bailey Capital et al.

Yes, and yes.

>Why would a venture capital firm expose themselves to this, when its not even legal in half of the country?

Because selling weed is basically printing money

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I hope they can invest at least some of this money into 5 minute drone deliveries.

<comment><USER23> Marijuana delivery by drone is already illegal or will be in the next 5 minutes. (Which is too bad because it is a very elegant solution.)

<comment><USER24> High value, light weight. Sounds perfect. Customers would appreciate the Wow factor too.

<comment><USER25> Sounds perfect for intercepting!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Automate your tinder swipes - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/feelobot/tindermation

<comment><AUTHOR> This tool is an automated script for swiping right on every single tinder user that it encounters. I just made it as a proof of concept to my friends on how I can tinder while sleeping if I wanted to.</comment>


We may have spotted a parallel-universe going backwards in time - <AUTHOR> https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24532770-400-we-may-have-spotted-a-parallel-universe-going-backwards-in-time/ <comment><USER2> Ironic the user name 'letsendpaywalls' posted an article requiring a subscription.

<comment><AUTHOR> In addition to discussing the content of the article posted, this was the intended point of the username. Additionally, if anyone has a reasonable approach to accessing the complete content of this article, I would love to know it. My typical approaches did not work.</comment></comment>


Anti-union activity is heating up ahead of Google contractor's vote to unionize - <AUTHOR> https://m.pghcitypaper.com/pittsburgh/anti-union-activity-is-heating-up-ahead-of-google-contractors-vote-to-unionize/Content?oid=15886644 <comment><USER2> I always wonder about these ham-handed anti-union efforts. I assume they must work to some degree, or they wouldn't do it. But it seems like the sudden escalation of anti-union arguments would only end up working in favor of the union. Because it betrays how against it they are. It confirms that yes, this union will have an effect, and not in management's favor. Like "Clearly we're onto something here if they oppose it this much."

<comment><USER3> > It confirms that yes, this union will have an effect, and not in > management's favor. Like "Clearly we're onto something here if they oppose > it this much."

I think it's important to note here that "bad for management" doesn't necessarily mean "good for employees". It is possible that unions are bad for both, by gumming up the negotiating process, and insulating low performing employees at the expense of high performing employees. It may or may not be the case that this is what happens, but it does not follow from the fact that management opposes it, therefore it is good for employees.

<comment><USER4> On average unions work better for the most people. People on the upper end will not stop contributing or trying, people on the lower end don't matter much anyway. It's the middle that provides most of the advancement.

<comment><USER5> At least two other data points - I have a friend who worked in a govt agency - doing cool and important work - she left because of the unfirable lifers - while the stories are funny you can't go to work and perform well in that situation.

In high school teacher X was notorious for giving no work and no s*its. He missed lots of his classes so always subs. We thought it was cool (usually easy A). He was there years but my senior year he must have done something way over the line because he was fired midday. Amazingly the gossip never figured out what he did (despite kids w parents on school board)

<comment><USER6> Those are nice anecdotes, the data says otherwise. There will always be slackers, they exist in every job and industry.

<comment><USER7> [citation needed]

Eliminating any motivation to perform well is of course going to discourage people who try harder for rewards. That's basic economics.

Claiming that the top performers will continue to innovate and lead when they are compensated the same as the bare minimum clock punchers is extraordinary and requires evidence.

About the only place where unions are better (at least the salary negotiating US style ones) are jobs where innovation and efficiency are irrelevant.

<comment><USER8> With UBI that should remove the lazy ones who are stuck in those type of positions.

<comment><USER9> Society pays for those who won't work? Nice promo material!

<comment><USER10> We pay for them in some way or the other... they either are on public assistance or end up in jail. We pay either way.

<comment><USER9> You have a preference?

<comment><USER10> I prefer a basic income.

<comment><USER9> Pay criminals not to work? Somehow I don't think this is good PR...

I don't disagree, but I don't know know if this is how the case needs to be made...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Should replace Google with HCL. The actual employer and one lobbying against unionization

<comment><USER12> Well, its Google's responsibility in this to make it clear unlawful anti-union activities are grounds for terminating contracts. They have a lot of the power here and if they set a precedent, a lot of other companies can follow.

<comment><USER13> That's actually not Google's responsibility. It's the government's. I mean, it would be a nice thing for Google to do, but Google is not law enforcement. It's important not to assign the responsibilities of the state to a private company, as that inevitably leads to disappointment.

I'll also just point out that Google probably lacks a sufficient, just apparatus to evaluate the claims being made. I mean, USW claims that illegal anti-union activities are occurring. HCL would probably deny those claims. Google is not a detective agency, and it shouldn't be. If it observes illegal activities occurring on its own property, or has substantial knowledge of them, that would be one thing, but I imagine that if HCL is doing this dirty stuff they are not going to make it obvious.

Finally, I doubt the unionizing HCL workers would appreciate the remedy that some people here are proposing. People are saying to terminate the contract with HCL. What? What good would that do? Do you think the unionizing workers would appreciate having their positions eliminated? If anything should be considered anti-union, this proposed remedy is it!

<comment><USER14> I do think it's Google's responsibility to ensure their suppliers are adhering to basic standards of decency, whatever Google thinks decency is. The government has nothing to do with that.

I don't think the government should be adjudicating virtue, nor do I think companies can say "I outsourced that part of my product, so it's not my concern how it gets made!"

<comment><USER13> I agree with your broad claim, but the devil is in the details. Google should presumably have an element in their contracts that says that contracting companies should not do anything illegal with respect to their employees. Perhaps there should even be a minimum wage requirement. However, I do not think it is Google's responsibility to adjudicate and investigate whether a particular anti-union activity on the part of a contracting partner crosses the line of legality.

<comment><USER15> The question is not about whether it crosses the line of legality, but whether it crosses the standards set by Google. Would Google admit to treating their own employees in this way? If not, it's reasonable to demand the same from their suppliers, legality aside.

<comment><USER16> > Would Google admit to treating their own employees in this way?

Isn't this exactly what companies want to avoid doing? They need to treat employees and contractors differently or risk getting sued.

[https://www.reuters.com/article/businesspropicks-us- findlaw-...](https://www.reuters.com/article/businesspropicks-us-findlaw-dont- treat-c/dont-treat-contractors-like-employees-idUSTRE53063S20090401)

<comment><USER15> I don't think the workers here are contractors; they are employees of a firm contracted Google, which is a different thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> 1-6 Good, if unions can make it less appealing for Google to hire less temp, vendors, and contractors, they might hire more full time employees. There's already a chasm forming between TVCs and FTEs. It's only going to grow bigger.

<comment><USER17> Just remember that if this happens and spreads out the insane software engineer salaries will be gone. Whoever makes a Silicon Valley salary is a benefactor of the current setup (which, I agree, is a little outrageous).

<comment> t-writescode The people that will be most impacted by any sort of equalizing are the people who make like 120-250k per year. Not silly rich, but they have a house or two that they rent out, etc.

This is okay, because everyone is better off, despite the upper-middle-class being knocked down a peg or two.

Yes, they'll have to sell their 2nd rental because it's unsustainable.

<comment><USER18> You think most junior Google programmers own 2 or 3 homes?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> _" HCL employee and union organizer Ben Gwin says HCL workers make between $30,000-60,000 a year, and it varies widely."_

That's really low. I wonder what kind of work they do for Google.

<comment><USER20> The painfully obvious answer is that the work is low skill. Why? Because the job market in the Bay Area is such that high skilled labor can easily and quickly find more gainful employment.

It doesn't make it better for them to earn less, and a union is one way to group high and low skill labor pool such as the whole can have a better quality of life.

<comment><USER21> This is not true. There are a large number of contractors working at Google, Facebook and other companies in engineering and other skilled roles. Their contracts are from 3 to 6 months long.

If you're in a bind and need a job, you get placed quickly by one of the firms supplying contractors to the large companies. Since you're in a bind, you accept making a lower salary, which ends up being around 60-75% of the base salary of a full-time employee without any of the other benefits of being full-time.

<comment><USER22> There are more than 100k TVCs at Google. I don't think you can speak generally about them, because there is high diversity in their job roles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I don't understand how a contractor unionizing gives them any more power over Google. Either which way they are a contractor and have to negotiate a contract. This article seems to imply the workers have an issue with Google, but unionizing just gives them power over HCL. So are they not happy with HCL?

</comment><comment><USER24> Maybe this is the way it shapes out - the contractors of the new economy are equivalent to the hourly worker in the old economy, the perm people management. The contractors have representation from a union, and the perm people, none.

<comment><AUTHOR> It probably won't be that analogous. I suspect that having the parallel, contract labor force is at least somewhat about exerting additional control over those employees that are actually permanent. A kind of implicit threat that your employment status can be downgraded.

<comment><USER24> I think the threat of firing is more relevant - no one gets downgraded to a contractor, you just get pushed out the door

<comment><AUTHOR> People get downgraded to contract labor after being fired from FTE jobs all the time. This broader trend of increasing tenuousness of employment is part of what is driving the upswell in labor organizing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> We should all unionize IMHO

<comment><USER26> Nordic social democracy isn't magic, it's just what you get when most workers are in a union.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> "HCL itself would be violating the National Labor Relations Board law if the company fired workers for forming a union, but Gyrgo is concerned the union can't protect them from the work they do with Google, since they don't actually work for Google."

In other words:

Google won't be violating the law if the company fired workers for forming a union because they will be doing so using a proxy organization as a scapegoat. This in effect allows them to circumvent the law referenced above.

Complete horseshit

<comment><USER28> Labor law in the United States is so obviously broken, I'm sort of amazed that it isn't talked about more.

Even beyond unionization, the fact that I had to waive my right to sue my employer for gender or racial discrimination in the courts (in favor of a private arbitrator they hire) as a condition of getting the job is just bullshit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I wonder to what extent the the thirst for a union could be quenched if the compensation of all members of a company were to be made public and always updated.

If management wants to maintain direct negotiation with their staff, they must eliminate information asymmetry.

<comment><USER30> Look at government jobs for this example. Salaries and their limits are public record. The unions can keep them up to market rates.

Unionizing isn't a thirst that needs to be quenched. It's simply asking for fair compensation. That's why the contracts are up after a certain time so everything can be negotiated again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Is there a good place to learn about what unionizing tech workers will do/is trying to accomplish? Also, isn't being a contingent worker an implicit contract that you are willing to give up benefits and (in many cases theoretical) stability for a higher hourly rate? Obviously I don't/can't speak for everyone but my spouse has the full time job and insurance and I grind it out to pad the bottom line. If widespread unionization happens I don't see any way that my take home pay will increase.

<comment><USER32> I think it's a very good question.

Google employees have some of the best salaries, generous benefits, plentiful vacations, massages, psychological help, free food - you name it.

I see how a union can make things worse for googlers. I cannot see how unions can make things better.

<comment><USER33> The Google employees advocating for unionization are contractors and do not enjoy the benefits you mentioned.

<comment><USER31> Which again brings to mind the question- if you want those great benefits you could try to get hired as an employee. Or come on as a contractor and prove yourself to the company. If you are a contractor you are trading that for higher per hour wages. In my industry in the Houston area the most I could ever expect to make as a developer a specific niche is roughly 150k plus or minus 30k. As a contractor on a good year I can triple that. Unionizing Would only bring that number down.

<comment><USER31> This isn't a hill I am trying to die on. And I would be happy to hear dissenting opinions. From my perspective, a contractor!= to an employee and there are trade offs associated with this difference. If you want benefits and more(again theoretical most of the time) job security then you go the FTE route. I'm not going to use examples of bad unions to argue my point and I even think in some cases they could make sense. I even think employees at google in a union make sense. But contractor? It is a low drag way to get people in and out the door without a bunch of red tape. Unionizing would make this not the case and likely just prevent contractors from being used.

This is a case by case scenario and I think a lot of start ups are using contractors as employees just to try and make their business viable.

Again I would love to hear a different view on this, I don't know that I'm an expert on this but seeing things from the perspective of being an employee/contractor/business owner is what has informed my point of view here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Union tech is a very interesting startup idea. How do union organizers keep track of members, handle dues, plan, and communicate?

<comment><USER35> There are some out there, like nationbuilder.com (not union specific, but used by some)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I wouldn't worry too much. Good working conditions are a boon to both the employer and the employee. A good union will negotiate that to the benefit of both. The reason is simple. If union negotiations lead to worse profits, then employees risk the whole business toppling, and then everyone loses. However, too much job security can actually make it harder to get a new job, once you need it, as it makes it harder to fire underperforming employees. The net effect of it, are employers who are extremely picky and careful about hiring anyone new, which is pretty muh bad for the whole economy.

</comment><comment><USER37> HCL is an Indian outsourcing company and they will do everything in their power (paying off politicians) to quash this.

</comment><comment><USER38> Really unions for Tech works from IT services companies. God bless tech industry.

Not good for anyone.

</comment><comment><USER39> To really make a dent, put a stop to H1B. It is an unnecessary program. All people doing work here should be citizens or green card holders. The employer should not have any say about this or sway over the employees about their status. People should be free to choose their employer and change their employer without entanglement of H1B.

</comment><comment><USER40> Before there were proper labor laws unions served a purpose, now it's more self-serving to the coffers and political power of the union itself. What should be equal is tipped in the unions favor at the detriment of the company. I think that's wrong.

</comment><comment><USER41> Where are the anti-HR movements I ask, only half jokingly?

</comment><comment><USER42> I sort of shocked contractors at Google want a union. Typically contractors make more in total comp than full time employees. I suspect this is not the case there, but in general it's true.

<comment><USER43> I've never seen that at a job I worked at. While I know other fields where this can be the case (typically housing related), Google's difference was rather extreme

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> So is "pro-union activity". Of course when an important vote is about to happen, the campaigns on either side of that vote will make their case.

</comment><comment><USER45> It's funny how progressive everyone is until it impacts their bottom line.

<comment><USER46> It's funny how everybody covets more power and more money, employers and employees alike, and always want to wrap it all up in a facade of being the moral choice.

<comment><USER4> Unions are as much about fairness as "more money". People genuinely want better work conditions, better hours, and better benefits just as much as "more money".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> USW is completely the wrong union for representing Tech Workers.

This will not turn out well for the Workers. The USW membership dues will start at $100+ per month and go to strike funds, Lawyers, Representatives, and Stewards who have their own self-interests in mind.

This is basically just paying protection money to thugs.

 _EDIT: For those downvoting, perhaps you 'd care to kindly suggest a better union for this cause?_

<comment><USER4> Running a union costs money, it's as simple as that. I often blow $100 bucks on a night out on the town. I would much rather pay that if I can get better hours, vacation, and negotiating power with the guys who just want to maximize quarterly profits at all social and moral costs.

<comment><USER47> The question is... will the United Steelworkers make the best use of that money?

Traditional Unions haven't evolved into the 21st century. They're still using signup sheets, phone trees, FTP, Fax machines, and Post-It notes to organize.

<comment><USER48> Sounds like they could use some modernization, if only there was an industry that touts itself as being all about innovation and regularly goes around disrupting traditional ways of doing things.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Design and layout of a quadcopter control board (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://jennerhanni.net/2012/03/quadcopter-control-board/

<comment><USER2> Very nice work. Funny how as I walked through your write up hit he DB-9 and thought 'overkill', then read the next paragraph to see the same word :)

What a pity about the V5/V6 issue, you're not the only person to be bitten by this:

[http://www.rs- online.com/designspark/electronics/tutorial/im...](http://www.rs- online.com/designspark/electronics/tutorial/importing-eagle-designs)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is from 2012? It'd be neat to see some in depth follow ups on stuff like this. I'm just now going from proto boards to building schematics and boards, so seeing the evolution and thought process on projects like this can be pretty inspiring.</comment>


Tesla's Fourth Gigafactory Will Be in Berlin, Elon Musk Says - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/12/20961812/elon-musk-berlin-tesla-ceo-fourth-gigafactory-construction <comment><USER2> I'd be interested to hear from someone who knows more than me about the general trend of car manufactors running factories in high wage first world countries. Are the transport costs so high that it makes sense to manufactor where the demand is? Or does it have to do with the time to transport? Some political reason? Why are cars made near demand while almost all other products are made far away?

</comment><comment><USER3> Doesn't have a use for the underutilized one in Buffalo?</comment>


React Router v4 - <AUTHOR> https://react-router-website-uxmsaeusnn.now.sh/basic <comment><USER2> So they broke backwards compatibility again? How many times did they do that? This is kind of my problem with the React(Native) ecosystem at the moment, everything breaks all the time. And since dependencies are so intertwined, in many cases you can't just pin your dependencies and code along...</comment>


China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate Amazon and Apple - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies <comment><USER2> Discussed here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18138328](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18138328)</comment>


Cronsync - web based time tracking and invoicing - <AUTHOR> http://www.cronsync.com

<comment><USER2> So, are you gong to tell us anything about this? Or is it just spam?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi RiderOfGiraffes,

cronsync was actually developed for the internal use at Kontrollfeld. We wanted to improve our time tracking and accelerate invoicing procedures. To find an appropriate solution, we screened all existing time tracking and invoicing products and found out that they were either easy to use, but too superficial for what we needed, or way too comprehensive and complex. So we started to create our own solution which was supposed to be "just right" for our purposes. Many of our business partners started to be interested in this solution and we made it available for them. As the feedback was very positive, we made the decision to offer it as a software as a service and call it cronsync.

We have launched cronsync this year. I look forward to your feedback!

Best, Jakob

<comment><USER2> Cool, but you still sound like an advert. I've read the FAW, and I still have a few questions. I'm sure most readers of HN would be interested in these:

What did you use to build it? How are you marketing it? What are you doing to try to get users? How has your usage been growing? What problems did you have? Are you doing A/B testing on your landing page? What's your conversion rate?

When do you expect to start charging? How will you decide your price points? Will you have multiple account types? What have you left out? And why? Can you make available your analysis of the market? Why do you think you've hit the sweet spot?

Can I get my data back out again? In what formats? Is it encrypted when it's stored?

These are the sorts of things that I, as a reader of HN, want to know. In the interests of full disclosure I am unlikely to use the service, although if my circumstances change then I might.

Regardless, I wish you the best of luck.

<comment><USER2> Sorry, s/FAW/FAQ/</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Dirty Reads for Databases:  Good Thing or Bad? - <AUTHOR> I'm doing some research on database isolation levels and which allow dirty reads through isolation level READ UNCOMMITTED.  The advantage seems to be speed and latency but at the cost of accuracy and consistency.  My question for the community is if allowing Dirty Reads is preferred? <comment><USER2> Like everything, it depends on the use case. Public facing financial transactions have different objectives than an RSS feed of LoL Cat pictures.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough. In my case I am making recommendations to clients, so it sounds like it is best to take it on a case by case basis. The majority of the literature seems to be about avoiding Dirty Reads, but there are some beneficial uses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm certainly not the most knowledgeable in this at all, but if I'm not mistaken most environments I've worked in have been only the dev instance allows it, while UAT and production won't allow any dirty reads.

<comment><AUTHOR> It depends. A couple databases have a default isolation level that allow dirty reads. Most SQL databases allow you to manually change the isolation level or ReadConcern level to allow Uncommitted Reads if you choose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Since the transaction that did the write is uncommitted, dirty reads are generally a bad idea as you may act based on something that is subsequently thrown away.

Only useful use I've found for them: emulating sequences on a DB without them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Could another use be to debug something that is happening inside a transaction?

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2471055/why-use-a- read-u...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2471055/why-use-a-read- uncommitted-isolation-level)</comment></comment>


Facebook down? Not a good start for the platform - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been getting few problems with facebook this morning with lots of bugs and broken links.

Now the whole site appears to be down. Is anyone else getting this? It fails to load pages (sends empty responses) or sometimes loads a "site unavailable" error message. Not a good start for the platform.

</comment><comment><USER2> This has been occurring with my univ network for days now, sometimes down for half a day at a time.

</comment><comment><USER3> Facebook has been fine for me, but I'm not using the api.

<comment><AUTHOR> Must be just my university network then. Highly irritating when working on a facebook app</comment></comment>


F-Script: Command-line Cocoa shell goes beta - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/open-source/reviews/2009/02/f-script-command-line-cocoa-shell-goes-beta.ars

<comment><USER2> If you're interested in F-Script, Nu ( <http://programming.nu/> ) is also something worth looking into. Its got a Ruby-esque syntax and written in Objective C. Fun language to mess around with.

<comment><USER3> Don't you mean it has an S-expression syntax?

The article also got the syntax part wrong. The syntax of F-Script is smalltalk's not Objective-C's. Objective-C's object semantics was influenced by smalltalk, so F-Script looks _and_ feels like smalltalk.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Building a successful startup on the side? - <AUTHOR>

I'm new to the world of startups, but everything I read (both on HN and elsewhere) is about founders who quit their other jobs and gave the startup their full attention.<p>Is there any reason why the startup can't be built on the side and then the founder could quit the full time job once it gains enough traction to sustain him/her? Is the issue just that it takes a lot longer to get to a release-ready state this way (i.e. only devoting a few hours a day)? Or what am I missing? I'm almost ready to release a MVP for a web app I've been working on (while working a separate full time job), and I just want to be sure I'm not in over my head. <comment><USER2> Definitely, if you're almost ready for release you've made it over the initial hump.

Once it gains traction you'll have a better idea on when to quit your 'day' job or perhaps reduce your hours at your day job.

Checkout the interviews on mixegy.com particularly with Todd Garland he was working a full time job while building buysellads.

<http://mixergy.com/buysellads-todd-garland-interview/>

I work full time as an engineer and run a web design firm as well as working on a start-up so I'm very busy as well. It's hard work but it pays off.

</comment><comment><USER3> I believe it depends on the atmosphere of your full time job. I've been working on my current project for the past 2 years now and have had 2 different full time jobs in that period. My previous job had me working at 120% of utilization, with a bunch of overtime. Needless to say, not much of my side-project got done. When I got home from work every day, I wouldn't even think about touching a computer. My current job isn't nearly as stressful. Although I get a lot done, I still salivate about programming when I get home. I think it all depends on how much of a workload you can handle past your full time job and how stressful your full time job is. Having positive and motivated people at your full time job also helps your motivation on your personal project.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think it depends on the individual situation/app. There are plenty who have startups on the side. That said, if your app is more heavily demanding user interaction/complicated then I think you are much more likely to find that customer service demands and/or technical issues post launch will exceed your part time availability.

An MVP tends to be just a small part of your vision. You test it out with some users and gather their feedback before progressing farther. If you cannot respond to them quickly I believe you will quickly find you have no users at all (good idea or not).

</comment><comment><USER5> you just have to REALLY want it. if you want it badly enough you will figure out a way to make it work. launching a company while working another full time job will force you to work within constraints that will help you create a more profitable and more efficient company than if you had plenty of time and plenty of money. that's what worked for me, anyway.

@undrwd thank you for the shout out :)

<comment><USER6> Well said. I also think if you REALLY want it, you can make it work. It will probably be way harder.

I am someone who is on the same boat, working full time on a completely separate project, and working on side to get my web app all setup. I lost a lot of my motivation late august, due to crazy working hours/ least social life/ issues at full time job because a senior guy quit, and I got a lot more workload than expected. But I believe this way I would also learn way more than normal scenario, picking either one, and probably the best learning/productive period of my life.

I guess only way to test your limits is to push yourself to the limits and then look back and see how far you've come.

Just FYI, my full time job involves Java, GWT, GXT(Sencha), Spring, Hibernate and/or JPA (depending on the branch), MySQL, JAXB, Java Web services and other Java related tools, (Ant etc.)

On my startup side, it started almost a year ago, when I had a working prototype of an Excel addin, written in C#, which we then realised needs to be a web app, and now I am working on a web app using Javascript, Jquery, LAMP etc.

Of course, there are always hiccups, and major issues, every couple of months, and I see my life and wonder if I would change anything and I don't really know how to accept "reality" (need to get a girl, marry, get a house etc.), esp since I still want to finish what I started. I just rebounded from a serious case of demotivation, but now my doctor is telling my I might have colon cancer and what not, and tomorrow is my appointment with a specialist about it.

But I know for sure, disease or not, as long as I have some energy left, I would finish my startup work and launch it in a couple of months hopefully.

Here's to hoping all my "working-on-a-startup-on-the-side" HN brothers too are able to do whatever is needed and get it started.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It partly depends on your definition of startup. But sure, you can start up your web app on the side and hope to gain traction. But problem is just that you are at a disadvantage since you don't have full time to devote to the project. That means you can't add features, respond to user requests, market, expand as quickly as your competitors who are full time.

</comment><comment><USER8> Most people can't successfully do a startup on the side. Are you one of the people that can? Probably not...but maybe.

<comment><AUTHOR> But why can't most people do it? What are the barriers?

<comment><USER8> Sustained motivation is the only problem.

Many people can only be motivated (over the long term) to do hard things if doing that hard thing is the easiest of the available choices.</comment></comment></comment>


Los Alamos National Laboratory fined for shipping plutonium via commercial air - <AUTHOR> https://www.abqjournal.com/1121661/los-alamos-docked-3-1-million-for-shipping-plutonium-via-commercial-air-cargo.html <comment><USER2> Memo to self: when traveling via Albuquerque, bring portable geiger counter.</comment>


Compare Carbon Footprints of Bay Area Neighborhoods - <AUTHOR> http://news.berkeley.edu/2016/01/06/new-interactive-map-compares-carbon-footprints-of-bay-area-neighborhoods/ <comment><USER2> Clicking on the interactive map is interesting. One thing leaps out immediately: Low population density correlates to higher energy usage. I can understand why for a couple of reasons:

\- Apartment/condominiums should be more energy efficient for heating and cooling than single family homes.

\- A lower density likely means driving farther to work, hence greater auto transportation footprint and less likelihood to use public transportation.

The breakdown charts confirm this: San Francisco neighborhoods of single- family homes in the Marina show housing at 15.36, transportation at 20.34

While neighborhoods of apartments South of Mission show housing at 2.39 and transportation at 2.89

Those two factors alone illustrate a 7x consumption by single-family structures (plus their cars) over apartments.

I suspect there is also a strong correlation with household wealth, implying larger homes to heat/cool and more automobiles. So it would be interesting to see that illustrated as well.</comment>


A/B Testing Duration Data - <AUTHOR> http://www.evanmiller.org/ab-testing-duration-data.html <comment><USER2> The t-test is invalid because duration data is non-normal. You can actually see duration data as a histogram in GA if you want to test hypotheses on it's distribution.

<comment><USER3> I came here to say this, and am glad someone else said it first.

That on top of the unwarranted distribution assumption is very dangerous. How dangerous? If the true distribution has heavier tails than assumed, then the true variance can be many times what is assumed. If the true variance is, say, 4x what is assumed then an average standard deviation variation will show up as passing a 95% confidence interval in a random direction. Getting to 99% confidence by accident becomes quite easy, with bad results.

<comment><USER4> Ugh. I didn't even read the article and was looking for this response. Whenever I see "A/B test" I am usually right in assuming that the author is about to assume normality.

<comment><USER3> I understand, but the author of this particular article actually does know better and usually gets his statistics right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _" Here's the assumption: the probability of a visitor leaving the site at any given moment is constant._"

Terrible assumption. It's probably something closer to this:

      P(Leaves site without reading / sub 2 sec): 0.2
      P(Leaves site after skimming / sub 10 sec): 0.6
      P(Leaves site after reading 1 page / 5 minutes): 0.1
      P(Leaves site after reading a bunch of pages / 30 mins): 0.1

If you're going to make decisions off of something like duration, then you should code up a basic bit of javascript/database that can store real values.

<comment><USER6> No need to hack a whole analytics stack together - just use Snowplow with page pings turned on:

[http://snowplowanalytics.com/analytics/catalog- analytics/mea...](http://snowplowanalytics.com/analytics/catalog- analytics/measuring-and-comparing-content-page-performance.html)

(You can't measure visit durations including bounces accurately without a JavaScript tracker that pings back on-page DOM activity.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Merg. There are contradictory assumptions here. For the approximation on the standard deviation you assume duration is a Poisson random variable. To use the t-test you assume duration is a normally distributed r.v. There are ways to unify the two assumptions, but they can't be used without direct access to the data. At that point, we could just calculate s.d.

I'd stick with assuming duration time is normally distributed. This leads to another class of adhociness: [http://www.statit.com/support/quality_practice_tips/estimati...](http://www.statit.com/support/quality_practice_tips/estimating_std_dev.shtml)

</comment><comment><USER8> Especially with timing data I find it much more useful to look at the median instead of average value. If someone lets the browser sit open for a while it will skew the average but not the median.

<comment><USER9> If you use the same assumption in Evan's article you can calculate the median by multiplying the mean by ln(2), the natural logarithm of 2. I think Evan's writing this for a situation where your hands are tied WRT the data you're gathering, but still want to draw statistically sensible conclusions, e.g., Google Analytics.

<comment><USER10> If anyone is interested, I'm building [1] an analytics service which won't tie your hands. Why settle for the mean and count when you can have a histogram or even the raw data?

If anyone is interested in trying it out, my email is in my profile. Always looking for feedback.

[1] Actually I'm waiting to build it. I quit my job a couple of days ago and will begin work after my notice period is up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm a professional split tester as well and the internet is so full of opinions and noise. Programmers have plenty of chances to learn by just downloading someone else's code. You can execute it and see that it works. In statistics, it's much more difficult. There needs to be a stronger emphasis on proving one's point using simulation.

Run something like this through 10,000 simulations and you'll start to see how the theory really gets applied.

</comment><comment><USER12> I am afraid that the assumptions made in the article (regarding the distribution) are invalid.

One very long (say 2 days) visit will skew the average. And you can't infer the standard deviation from the average.

For an easy alternative, you could calculate the median time on site ex ante -- let's say it's 1 minute. Then for your ab test, see what percent leave within the first minute. Use that percent and determine if difference is statistically significant.</comment>


Motorola VP talks about wikis and blogs and why they are so important [podcast] - <AUTHOR> http://danbricklin.com/podcast.html#danbcast-2007-03-20-21-48-40 <comment><AUTHOR> Food for thought, for those of you not considering the corporate market.</comment>


Pushing the Limits of Amazon S3 Upload Performance - <AUTHOR> http://improve.dk/archive/2011/11/07/pushing-the-limits-of-amazon-s3-upload-performance.aspx <comment><USER2> I have seen some people get performance gains from using UDP. TCP tends to back off rather aggressively after even a single dropped packet, and the connection is slow to get back to speed. With UDP, the uploader can just stream packets with sequential ids, and the receiver can respond whith a negative ack if it misses a packet in the series.

UDP Data Transfer (Open Source): <http://udt.sourceforge.net>

Bandwidth Challenge: [http://www.hpcwire.com/hpcwire/2009-12-08/open_cloud_testbed...](http://www.hpcwire.com/hpcwire/2009-12-08/open_cloud_testbed_wins_bandwidth_challenge_at_sc09.html)

Aspera: <http://www.asperasoft.com/>

<comment><USER3> TCP backs off aggressively to avoid congestive collapse of the network. It is backing off in order to preserve shared infrastructure. If everybody used your UDP trick then the Internet would literally collapse. This is detailed at [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_congestion#Congestive_c...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_congestion#Congestive_collapse) . You should respect the rules of the road.

<comment><USER4> Isn't this ultimately up to the congestion control algorithm that is used alongside of UDP? Aspera and UDT, for example, have tunable congestion control that can be more or less greedy.

I'm not a protocol hacker, so hopefully one will weigh in here. But I do remember some Sky Is Falling discussion over uTorrent's use of UDP for transfer, and the uTorrent line was always that they were implementing UDP transfer in a way that played nice with TCP.

<comment><USER5> uTorrent's UDP congestion control algorithm (LEDBAT) goes further than playing nice with TCP. Unlike TCP, which only responds to packet loss, LEDBAT also responds to delay. This makes it yield remarkably quickly to anything else that might use the link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Timely! I'm just in the process of uploading 32 million objects to S3 :-)

The parallel upload code I'm using is written in Python, using the multiprocessing and boto libraries and is here:

<http://github.com/twpayne/s3-parallel-put>

It has some nice features, like reading values directly from uncompressed tar files - this means your disk heads will scan linearly rather than seeking around. It can also gzip and set Content-Encoding, restart interrupted transfers from its own log files, and do a MD5 sum check to avoid putting keys that are already set.

Comments and feedback welcome.

</comment><comment><USER7> Sadly no mention of multipart upload. If you use S3's multipart upload feature you can get similar performance for one file by uploading multiple parts of the file at once. I saw a substantial throughput improvement when I implemented some multipart upload code, even when uploading from EC2.

<comment><USER8> Totally true. However, I had to limit the scope of this post somewhere, and in this case, I focused on multithreaded upload of smaller objects, as mentioned in the first paragraph. We do have some larger object uploads, though they are a minority. I may do a separate followup post on high performance single file uploads through multipart uploading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow that's amazing. I didn't realize you can utilize beyond 10Mbs in EC2.

OTOH do people ever delete objects from S3? It seems people keep uploading to S3.</comment>


The Internet, new media, and the new American dream - <AUTHOR> http://thetechblock.com/internet-new-media-american-dream/

<comment><USER2> "Focus on building a community first, and worry about monetization later." I don't entirely agree with this statement. This is precisely why a lot of startups fail because they slap on the business model as an afterthought. DHH said it pretty well: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0CDXJ6bMkMY)

<comment><USER3> Strictly referring to new media as an independent content creator, I think the statement does apply. Building the community and relationships gives you the ability to monetize much easier.

However, I do agree with you on the broader point. Building or creating something isn't an instant recipe for income. It can't be a blanket approach to something like a startup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great piece and really solid points.

</comment><comment><USER5> Simply amazing. Good read!</comment>