Python Wheels - T-A http://pythonwheels.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is far and above my favorite post on python wheels from the guy who wrote Flask, bits of Sphinx, and jinja2 to name a few, Armin Ronacher:

[http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2014/1/27/python-on- wheels/](http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2014/1/27/python-on-wheels/)

I switched our webapp deployment from using sdists from an internal pypi instance (yay cheeseshop!) to using wheels built on the server and the time to install some things such as lxml, or numpy, went from 20 minutes-ish to 20-30 seconds. Python wheels are fantastic.

<comment><USER2> How are you hosting the wheels internally? Are you still using an internal pypi instance but with wheels instead of sdists?

I've been looking at doing something similar in our environment but there's so many options I haven't figured out what the best and most straightforward way might be.

<comment><USER3> Shameless plug: I had the exact same question at my last gig, and wrote up a quick open-source tool to build wheels and dump them to an S3 bucket. [0]

Usage is as simple as

        mkwheelhouse mybucket.mycorp.co scipy numpy

which will automatically build and upload those wheels for your current architecture and dump them into mybucket.mycorp.co. It builds a pip-compatible index, too, so you can just tell pip to search your wheelhouse first before falling back to PyPI:

        pip install --find-links mybucket.mycorp.co scipy numpy

If you need to build for several OSes, you can run mkwheelhouse against the same bucket from each OS.

The downside of this approach is you can't host private packages, because you need to enable public website hosting. (Although, VPC endpoints might have changed this!) But the simplicity of this approach plus the massive speedup of not needing to constantly recompile scipy was totally worth it.

[0]: [https://github.com/whoopinc/mkwheelhouse](https://github.com/whoopinc/mkwheelhouse)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Python packaging is such an absolute disaster. As a casual Python user, can someone explain to me how Wheels fixing the problem?

<comment><USER5> As a casual python user, I've always found it fairly straightforward.

As a systems engineer, I've always found it challenging to maintain a sane python ecosystem across multiple hosts.

<comment><USER6> As a (now casual) sysadmin, I think things have gotten a bit better. Virtualenv (now part of python3) helps a lot. The trick, if running on Debian, is:

1) use system python -- if you can. Now with python3.4 and 2.7 in stable, that's the easy bit.

2) If you can't do 1), use backports and/or manually backport[1]

3) If you need python-packages that depend on c-libraries, use "apt-get build- dep python-foo".

4) use a virtualenv, or several virtualenvs, eg:

      virtualenv -p python2.7 myvenv
      ./myvenv/bin/pip list -o #list outdated packages,
       # typically that'll mean you first need to:
      ./myvenv/bin/pip install -U pip #possibly also setuptools

Then install the packages you need with pip -- see 3) for tip on stuff like pyqt that needs some (fairly hairy) packages.

This works for most everything -- except perhaps for pygame, which is exceptionally gnarly.

[1] Manually backport, the easy way:

      sudo -s
      echo "deb-src http://httpredir.debian.org/debian\
       sid main contrib non-free" \
       >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/sid-src.list
      apt-get update
      cd /tmp
      apt-get build-dep python3
      exit # No need to build as root
      apt-get source python3 # this assumes sid has a version
       # that'll work for you
      cd python3*
      dpkg-buildpackage -uc -us
      cd ..
      sudo dpkg -i python...deb

Note, this may or may not work with major packages like python -- but it often goes a long way. If you can't get enough build-deps satisfied, things are more complicated -- and you're _probably_ better off running testing/unstable in a chroot, possible with help of the schroot package -- rather than fighting with conflicting packages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't personally care about Python packaging (and virtualenv) anymore when I can use any relevant Python package with Nix, or easily make a Nix package myself. I just hope the wheels don't make it harder to package stuff with Nix. With eggs I think there's something like an --old-and-unmanagable flag that makes it still output a directory structure.

For deploying software to end-users (rather than developers), bundling all required Python code with appropriate wrapping to adjust PYTHONPATH works just fine.

</comment><comment><USER8> You could alternately use conda, as much of the scientific computing community does: [http://conda.pydata.org/docs/](http://conda.pydata.org/docs/)

<comment><USER9> No, no no. No 'alternately'. The python community needs to pick ONE standard and, uh... _standardize_ on it.

<comment><USER10> This isn't the issue.

Wheels and Conda are almost completely orthogonal. Conda is a higher level abstraction than pip. Wheels is operating at the lowest level of abstraction.

Multiple package management tools are relatively fine. Having multiple competing _format_ standards (egg vs wheel vs lots of other options) _would_ be a disaster.

(For reference, there's .deb versus .rpm, but also dpkg versus apt-get versus yum versus up2date versus...)

<comment><USER11> From a continuum.io blog post about Conda [1]:

> Having been involved in the python world for so long, we are all aware of > pip, easy_install, and virtualenv, but these tools did not meet all of our > specific requirements. The main problem is that they are focused around > Python, neglecting non-Python library dependencies, such as HDF5, MKL, LLVM, > etc., which do not have a setup.py in their source code and also do not > install files into Python's site-packages directory.

I haven't used Conda, but I totally get their main point here. _Python packages sometimes depend upon non-Python packages_. Any Python-specific packaging solution that cannot express that e.g. a Python package depends upon a native library does not really solve this problem.

I don't regard packaging, dependency management, and isolation as programming- language-dependent problems.

[1] [http://www.continuum.io/blog/conda](http://www.continuum.io/blog/conda)

<comment><USER6> Conda certainly sounds ambitious -- but I'm doubtful how useful it really is. As I see it, it mainly fills two needs: the lack of a package manager on OS X and the lack of a package manager on Windows.

Windows is getting a package manager now, and OS X arguably have the App Store.

Everywhere else (read: Linux/BSD) -- most of what's packaged by Conda, is already packaged by the vendor.

In short: I don't think it's the best way forward (but it may very well be the best way for _many_ usecases/users _right now_ and in the near future).

<comment><USER12> A big part of Conda's usefulness is not system-wide package management a la apt or yum or whatever, but being able to have reproducible, isolated environments for scientific computing or other times when reproducibility is very important, and/or when you need multiple versions of packages for compatibility with other packages.

I believe it uses virtualenv for this, but I may be wrong. Regardless, having this feature (as well as no interference with the system Python) is one of the killer features for me, and others I'm sure.

<comment><USER6> This is a great point. Still, whole system snapshots in the form of a vm disk image, vagrant etc might be a better way to serve that use-case. Perhapssome form of appkiance levering something like guix or coreOS?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One of the real benefits of wheel files is that the file format is standardised: [https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0427/](https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0427/).

This means the Python community can work towards standard tools and interfaces for working with Python packages rather than trying to support many different ways of installing / distributing packages.

</comment><comment><USER14> My experience with wheels has been that it continues to be an absolute nightmare to deal with Linux distros and we end up building from the tarballed source as usual.

Then again, we tend to struggle a bit with Python package management in general (who doesn't, I guess).

<comment><USER15> Which packages specifically did you have to rebuild?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > Avoids arbitrary code execution for installation. (Avoids setup.py)

This isn't much of an advantage as you're trusting code compiled on an untrusted machine. I suppose it saves you some CPU cycles, but don't be fooled into thinking it's safer.

<comment><USER17> There's a somewhat compelling use case for `pip install foo` not trusting the packages, but the actual Python code that runs "import foo" trusting it. In particular, if I'm a sysadmin of a shared machine and a user asks me to install something systemwide, I don't want arbitrary code running as root, but if the installed code is malicious, that's up to the unprivileged user who chooses to use it to keep their own data safe.

It's not terribly compelling given stuff like virtualenv, though, since users can just `pip install` stuff on their own and the experience is strictly nicer. And it's also not compelling if there isn't an explicit promise that this is treated as a security boundary.

<comment><USER16> > In particular, if I'm a sysadmin of a shared machine and a user asks me to > install something systemwide, I don't want arbitrary code running as root, > but if the installed code is malicious, that's up to the unprivileged user > who chooses to use it to keep their own data safe.

Ah, that makes a lot of sense, especially for applications (eg meld) and command line utilities (eg httpie) which are nice to install systemwide as root, but only ever run in an unprivileged user's context.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Where did they get the list of the top 360 packages on pypi? I tried to find it the other day but it looks like it was removed?

Also, the ordering on the right seems to imply they are in order of popularity on pypi.

Does anyone know where they got their list or if they are associated with pypi in some way?

<comment><USER2> It looks like they're querying the rpc interface for pypi and sorting by downloads:

[https://github.com/meshy/pythonwheels/blob/master/utils.py#L...](https://github.com/meshy/pythonwheels/blob/master/utils.py#L68-L71)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wheels solved one major issue that few people talk about: packages that needed compiling on 64-bit Windows (which was a mess, bordering the impossible).

<comment><USER20> Stop using Windows, it's impossible to keep any level of sanity on a non POSIX system.

<comment><USER19> Customer uses Windows, so...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't get all the hate towards Python packaging. For any package that isn't ancient (or extremely complex like NumPy or SciPy) it just works to "pip install". And nowadays pip will even cache builds locally as a wheel so installing something a second time takes next to no time.

Also, learn to use:

        pip install --user <package_name>

Disclaimer: I use Python every day, mostly on OS X and RHEL.

</comment><comment><USER22> "Installation of a C extension does not require a compiler on Windows or OS X" This is the real advantage.!

<comment><USER23> I have often seen it touted that OS X is "real Unix." To me, that would imply the easy availability of working compilers and compile environments. Is that not true?

<comment><USER24> There's easy availability, but it requires installing the Apple Developer Tools, which can either be done at install time (by not by default) or by downloading them from apple. So even though python is installed by default a C compiler might not be, and if a beginner is trying to use python for the first time they might be daunted by having downloading several gigabytes of developer tooling to install one python package.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't see an explanation for the name -- is the joke that cheese comes in wheels and Python packages come from the cheeseshop?

<comment><USER26> Yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Are there community buildbots for OSX and Windows for people who don't own licenses of those OSes?

<comment><USER11> Re: Windows, Appveyor provides a CI service for windows. It has been used to test and build python packages, and produce wheel archives for windows. E.g. sklearn uses this. I have used it myself to set up a CI build for a simple python utility and found it straight forward to get working.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The biggest problem I've had with Python packages is that you can't use multiple version of the same package in a Python project without a lot of complex tricks. This becomes more and more a problem in large code bases over time. One dependency might need requests 1.x and another 2.x in incompatible ways.

Unfortunately Wheels don't solve this problem as it seem inherent to how python imports modules.

I've seen people get around this by vendoring their dependencies and I've done some tricks in the past where you provide a vendor proxy package that you can point at a different site packages but this is brittle if your dependency has additional dependencies or uses absolute imports. Now you're maintaining a fork.

I'd love to hear if anyone has had more success in this realm. I love Python but using node and rust, and having the ability to have isolated dependencies trees has made me sad about the state of python packages.

<comment><USER23> To balance this, you might also solicit feedback about the problems that are caused by Node's use of multiple versions of the same package in a project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Anyone else have issues with pillow/PIL and wheels? I have to force that package to _not_ install from cached wheels, because the first build is fine, but subsequent installs from the cached wheel seem to break.

<comment><USER29> Pillow and PIL have always gave me headaches while installing (not specific to wheels)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Not related to wheels, but Python packaging targeted towards RHEL/CentOS systems. This is extremely convenient:

        python setup.py bdist_rpm

Has to be done one a RHEL/CentOS machine obviously.

</comment><comment><USER30> Why is it called a python "wheel"?

Should python really have been called "rodent" with "wheels" being the "cheese wheels" we rodents get from the "cheese shop"?

<comment><USER26> Think British comedy, not big snake. Monty Python had a sketch about cheese. Thus wheels of cheese.</comment></comment>


NeXT Logo Presentation by Paul Rand to Steve Jobs [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://jacobmorse.com/see/Next_Rand.pdf <comment><USER2> In the trade we call this "post-rationalisation" and it's worse than worthless, it magically adds value to the worthless.

Good design, especially good logo design, is self evident and doesn't need this kind of drivle.

Also, it's objectivley a bad logo. Always has been. Always will be. It makes me angrier than it should, but that's why designers design I suppose.

<comment><USER3> My favorite example of "post-rationalization" is the BREATHTAKING Design Strategy behind the new Pepsi logo of the last decade.

[http://www.goldennumber.net/wp-content/uploads/pepsi- arnell-...](http://www.goldennumber.net/wp-content/uploads/pepsi- arnell-021109.pdf)

The bit about Pepsi energy fields and globe dynamics is my favorite, but it is all kind of amazing.

Edit:

By comparison, this NeXT logo document seems pretty tame. Mostly describing the intent behind font choices and getting people's attention. Making the 'e' small does help prevent the all-caps design from looking like it has 'EXIT' in it.

And for what it's worth, I kind of like the NeXT logo. It looks a bit dated today, but it's not bad. Very 80s futurist.

<comment><USER4> But that Pepsi logo document is obviously satire, in the spirit of "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity".

Right?

<comment><USER5> When it was leaked a few years ago, it was widely reported to be an actual document. All of the articles from the period said that Arnell Group wouldn't comment on its authenticity. I think it was definitely created by Arnell Group, but whether it was actually prepared for Pepsi's executives or whether it was a viral marketing campaign is still pretty much unknown.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Paul rand writes: "There is nothing about the IBM symbol, for example, that suggests computers, except what the viewer reads into it. Stripes are now associated with computers because the initials of a great computer company happen to be stripped."

I'm very surprised that Paul Rand misses completely that the stripes in IBM symbol resembled how computers printed letters back in the time with matrix printers. There is also a metaphor with the extremely classic paper used for computer business reports (white with blue stripes).

My favorite logo design is Cisco's, that blends San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge with a network analyzer display.

<comment><USER7> I always considered the stripes more reminiscent of the phosphor stripes of an old greenscreen.

<comment><USER6> Yes, that too. In other words, I think that the IBM logo has plenty of computer-related cues, only that you have to go back to 1970-1980.

So I think that Paul Rand misses the point when he says that the IBM stripes are meaningless, even when it was Paul Rand himself who designed the IBM logo[1].

[1] [https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/logo/logo_8.html](https://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/logo/logo_8.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a video of Paul Rand actually showing Steve and the company the logo for the first time:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNeXlJW70KQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNeXlJW70KQ)

</comment><comment><USER9> Fascinating document. I always wondered if these well-worded explanations and positionings in historical context serve to get the logo accepted by biasing the reader, or if they genuinely add something. In other words, I wonder if the same logo, supported by a different document, will lead to a different answer by the client. Given all the work that's obviously been put into this document, I suspect it does matter.

As an entrepreneur, I will endeavour to be presented the logo of my project in the same light and context that my customers will see it, and not with a heavy serving of storytelling, as that can only make things worse for my poor brain when it comes to choosing.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to read the context and process that led to the design, but only after I've made a choice.

</comment><comment><USER10> I remember when reading the Steve jobs biography I got very excited about the next logo and had to put down the book to look it up.

I was very disappointed.

<comment><USER11> We really liked back when NeXT was a thing.

<comment><USER12> And we thought it was the ugliest part of absilutely stunning machine. It had zero correlation with the product and stuck out like a sore thumb.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Amazing to see what Steve Jobs paid $100K for.

What's interesting is that because the logo was based on the black cube it actually would have forced the hardware to be in that configuration. Even though at the time the engineers were having a nightmare of a time trying to get components to fit inside it. If the logo was different then you could've seen the NeXT hardware in a different shape at a much lower price point. This then could've positioned them much better against Sun and SGI.

Makes you wonder if this logo never existed would Jobs have ever ended up back at Apple and turned it into the company it is today.

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting to compare the typographic treatments to those used by the UK clothing retailer, Next Plc ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_plc](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_plc)) - a ubiquitous UK highstreet brand since the 1980s.

The white Caslon/Trajan style all caps on a black background that Rand showed on one page of this document (top of page 77 of the original, page 5 of the PDF) pretty much was the Next retail logo from 1991 to 2007.

</comment><comment><USER14> The NeXT logo probably would not be the choice today as it doesn't scale down small enough for favicons, mobile screens and so on.

However, nobody really ever got to see a NeXT machine apart from Tim Berners Lee. The web really was 'next' so it all worked out well in the end.

<comment><USER15> id Software famously used them as well.

<comment><USER15> To put more flesh on the bone, there were apparently about 40,000 NeXT users in 1993, many highly loyal. [https://books.google.ie/books?id=QDsEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA54&lpg=PA...](https://books.google.ie/books?id=QDsEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA54&lpg=PA54&dq=next+80,000+nt+critical+success&source=bl&ots=WIERCpziId&sig=1TydheJMHteXy0jyqv5PobsOKmM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=2rw8VdurMsyy7Qbsh4GwBQ&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=next%2080%2C000%20nt%20critical%20success&f=false) So while the NeXT system certainly wasn't a mass-market hit and the company struggled financially, it wasn't quite as quirky and deeply obscure as it may seem nowadays.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Related video: [https://youtu.be/WHsHKzYOV2E?t=62](https://youtu.be/WHsHKzYOV2E?t=62)</comment>


Machine learning in Microsoft Word's new Editor gave me the frights - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2017/02/28/machine-learning-in-microsoft-words-new-editor-gave-me-the-frights/ <comment><USER2> Removing 'maybe' might be useful for writing or speech that is intended to persuade someone else or with an online argument (or perhaps even intended to spark one). When I'm trying to communicate my thinking, my thinking is often, but not always, probabilistic (but always fallible). Words like 'maybe' convey the state of my mind rather than depicting a world which I can imagine to be the case...or one I might wish to imagine to be the case for really good reasons or for the sake of presenting a winnable argument.

All that with the caveat that Socrates is a personal hero. He didn't just talk the talk, he walked the walk all against the rhetoricians. Standard writing advice is to write dishonestly in five paragraphs as if for a grade. The standard is PR wire press releases rather than Cervantes.</comment>


Gray Failure: The Achilles' Heel of Cloud-Scale Systems [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.cs.jhu.edu/~huang/paper/grayfailure-hotos17.pdf <comment><USER2> yeah, this is really interesting, and something that, as far as I can tell, most companies aren't so interested in. I remember one place I worked with many thousands of computers, during burn-in, they's re-write every sector of disks, and would only fail the disk if it couldn't reallocate all sectors three passes in a row.

Which seemed crazy to me, because the disks were used in non-redundant configurations... if there were read errors on those disks, it would cause actual data corruption, and eventually caused servers several steps up the line to crash and set my pager off, which is how i found out about it.

That's the hard part of infrastructure as code; a lot of programmers don't understand (or don't think about?) what it means to have a failure. In this case, running the disks non-redundantly was reasonable; the system would have dealt just fine with the whole server falling over... but because it "recovered" the error, the error was propagated all the way up to my goddamn pager. (Infernal pager? sisyphean pager? that job had the most active pager I've worn in 20 or so odd years of wearing pagers.)

<comment><USER3> _> a lot of programmers don't understand (or don't think about?) what it means to have a failure_

Most of my devops consulting these days is more on the human side of things (devs and ops not getting along, Managements Just Don't Understand, etc.) but whenever I end up in a design review this is _still_ the first thing I ask: "how does this break, under what circumstances will it break, and how to we respond to it breaking without waking somebody with SSH access up at two in the morning?".

<comment><USER4> It's expensive, and perhaps less enjoyable that other aspects of engineering, but it certainly pays dividends in many environments.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failure_mode_and_effects_analy...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failure_mode_and_effects_analysis)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Moreover, there are many types of gray failure that are not performance- > related

The only possible cenarios I can think off are then even worst: data lost, uptime lost...</comment>


Ask HN: Series A rounds and board seats? - Kepler-295c How often (in the Bay Area) do startups get through a series A round without giving away a board seat? <comment><AUTHOR> I doubt anyone will give you a truthful answer here. You might have better luck with offline conversations.

<comment><USER2> > _I doubt anyone will give you a truthful answer here...._

Why is that ?</comment></comment>


A Grab Bag of Intermediate Perl Regex Tricks - <AUTHOR> http://lispy.wordpress.com/2008/10/09/a-grab-bag-of-intermediate-perl-regex-tricks/

<comment><USER2> I didn't actually run the examples, but line 45 seems to reference a $text5 string that doesn't ever get created anywhere.

I'm guessing $text5 is what was supposed to be on line 44.

Or, I'm missing something.

<comment><USER3> I'm pretty sure you're right. If we replace $text5 with $text6, it works as expected:

        This is what happened: 'Hello 11!.</comment></comment>


Alibaba unveils Pay Watch, a $110 smartwatch clearly inspired by Apple Watch - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2015/09/23/alibaba-unveils-pay-watch-a-110-smartwatch-clearly-inspired-by-apple-watch/ <comment><USER2> Not sure why it's "clearly inspired" by Apple Watch; Does anyone else think all the smart watches look the same?</comment>


Apple Event: "view the AR experience" - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/samhenrigold/status/1303352698490757133 <comment><USER2> I don't see AR taking off any time soon, even if the "end state" success makes a lot of sense.

For those who haven't seen it, check out Mario Kart Home Circuit. You control a physical toy kart with your switch on a track arranged in your physical home. The kart has a camera on it. You watch the screen, not the kart, because the screen has a bunch of digital component happening too, like AI drivers and powerups. There's cool stuff like how picking up a digital mushroom results in a real world speed boost. It's super fun looking. Definitely just a toy, but I think this is closer to a successful model of AR than most of the stuff people have made so far. Looking at stuff through a phone like a window is a terrible UI. Glasses are hard to make comfy, fashionable, and practical. Nintendo's big brain moment here is that the AR parts aren't where you're physically looking and I think that's really clever.

<comment><USER3> I would 1000% agree with you had I not actually worn a Google Glass for a few weeks. Don't get me wrong -- there was so much wrong with it, but after a few days it was noticeable how freeing it was to not be looking down at my phone all the time (and I'm sure I've done that more and more since then). Even just a simple use-case where AR is used as a phone that you can wear on your head would be a significant leap forward. Again, if I hadn't tried it I would've sworn what I'm saying is nonsense, but ever since I gave it a go with the Glass I've just been yearning for the possibility of goggles-based phones, and good AR and a few other things are all that stand in the way of that

<comment><USER4> How do you see AR playing out in terms of the distraction factor? I find that having such easy access to a phone makes me so much more distracted, which in turn affects my ability to focus, to read, to be present. I'm really curious to see where AR goes but I'm also really getting into the whole screen/life balance thing.

<comment><USER5> I'm conflicted, it's true that glass like products are less distracting yet the constant information overlay with life is probably gonna change things a lot.

<comment><USER3> I agree, but that's where AR can really shine. With glass, constantly having it in your face was the only option. With advanced AR, things could easily be pinned to the world to allow you far more control and greater context over what you see and when. I think it may prove to give us more control and freedom over these things, not less. On my phone, for instance, I have no choice but to watch something but also be bombarded with notification messages from all sorts of things I don't care about -- in an AR phone-like environment, you could more elegantly segregate these things, and ultimately potentially allow the user greater control over their consumption of content.

<comment><USER5> I kinda disagree. The simple notion that I'm near a connected modem alters my brain (I'm not exaggerating for once).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you like me, don't know how to read a twitter thread:

\- Someone found a link and a title that appears to point to an Apple event.

\- There is a link to a 3D file: [https://apple.com/105/media/us/apple- events/2020/4239dd5f-d9...](https://apple.com/105/media/us/apple- events/2020/4239dd5f-d9de-4352-9894-0c3ee56588ce/quick-look/apple_event.usdz) INTER

\- That file can somehow be viewed as AR, as recorded by another user: [https://twitter.com/i/status/1303366736855486464](https://twitter.com/i/status/1303366736855486464)

\- The actual event is publicized here and not really mentioned in the thread: [https://www.apple.com/apple-events/](https://www.apple.com/apple-events/)

</comment><comment><USER7> > (Also neat, I didn't realize the Mac Preview app supported 3d models.)

I had the same pleasant surprise browsing through STL files for 3d printing; it's nice to be able to view them right in the finder.

<comment><USER8> Preview is one of macOS' best features, IMO. It's so simple and ubiquitous, but it can open practically anything and does a great job of it. Reading a PDF in it is buttery-smooth, you can even do a respectable amount of editing - both PDFs and images - directly within it. It's one of the last great examples of Just Works.

<comment><USER9> So true! Preview is one of those apps that Just Works™. I recently opened a PDF on a Windows 10 computer and was slightly shocked that a _web browser_ opened up to present the PDF. Being able to easily and quickly annotate a screen shots and photos for documentation is a huge boon, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I read that as "we are launching a new product and you will be able to see it in 3D at home as soon as it is announced" not "the product is AR". If the product were AR, they would not tell you to "experience" the _new_ AR with old AR (the .usdz file). It'd be like saying "use your SD TV to see how great this HD TV is".

</comment><comment><USER11> AR will be a paradigm shift, and Apple has to be prepared to adapt its business model accordingly. People will demand significantly more UI/UX customization than with the iPhone, where, conversely, simplicity is demanded.

If I'm going to buy AR glasses that sit on my face all day long, I really don't want to be looking out at the world through a lowest-common-denominator window. Just like my choice of clothes or the stack of books on my bookshelf, my UI/UX has to thoroughly feel like it is a reflection of my preferences. I want every element to be customizable (at least Windows level of customization, but ideally Linux). Otherwise, I will depart the iOS ecosystem.

</comment><comment><USER12> It does say iOS 12 though, is this old code done for that release and we are finding it out now? If I remember right there was an ARKit update along with iOS 12.

<comment><USER13> Probably minimum supported iOS version for the AR features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Its official: [https://www.apple.com/apple- events/](https://www.apple.com/apple-events/)

<comment><USER15> The logo looks like a devil fruit.

<comment><USER16> Looks like a 3D crossover between the Apple logo and the date of the event. (Click on the graphics on an iPhone or iPad, you'll be greeted by an augmented reality view of the logo you can move around.)

<comment><USER17> Worked on my iPod Touch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Twitter link says 'this is not available to you'. Location: Romania if Twitter does geographic filtering now.

<comment><USER19> Are you logged in? "Coincidentally" Twitter links fail to load for me in at least 50% of the time when I'm not logged in, at least the first time.

<comment><USER18> I don't even have a twitter account any more, I think. Made one and never used it, and at some point i saw that they're purging inactive accounts so it must be gone.

I'm sure I can live without thread anyway :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Slightly superfluous 3D AR animation, wonder if this points to new AR hardware (e.g. LiDAR on iPhone Pro)?

</comment><comment><USER21> Given the social effects of the past two decades of computing, I don't see how anyone could think AR is a good idea.</comment>


This Dad Wrote a Check to His Kid's School Using Common Core Math - <AUTHOR> http://www.buzzfeed.com/morganshanahan/this-dad-wrote-a-check-to-his-kids-school-in-common-core-mat?bffbparents&utm_term=4ldqphs#.hpmv81lXn <comment><USER2> There is no such thing as common core math. The common core only specifies skill goals for students. How those skills are taught or in this case the method for solving math problems are not part of the common core.

It is up to each school district to implement curriculum which teaches the common core goals. Most school districts have abdicated this responsibility to publishers and purchase curriculum. It is this purchased curriculum which teaches math in a manner which some parents object to, so their real issue should be with their local school district and the publisher.

</comment><comment><USER3> People seem to think these are "the new" way of solving math problems, but in reality the students will be taught the traditional algorithms in later classes. These seemingly weird problems actually attempt to teach students to understand mathematics, not just blindly apply an algorithm.

</comment><comment><USER4> Isn't the whole point of common core that it's not determined by the local school?

</comment><comment><USER5> There is enough info in the check image to find his full name and address.</comment>


Amicus curiae brief of telephone companies - Olmstead v. United States [1928] - <AUTHOR> http://www.fjc.gov/history/home.nsf/page/tu_olmstead_doc_13.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I recently read an article citing this case and thought it would be interesting to share in light of recent events.

Additionally: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olmstead_v._United_States](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olmstead_v._United_States)</comment>


Emoji simulator – a tool to make cellular automata, with emoji - <AUTHOR> https://ncase.me/sim/ <comment><USER2> From the same author, the evolution of trust, [https://ncase.me/trust/](https://ncase.me/trust/)

<comment><USER3> That is an interesting game. Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Reminds me of something I remember playing with years ago, where you could draw various materials on the screen. Brick, sand, water, and then add different types of explosives. A really fun simulation all in the browser.

Anyone remember what this is?

<comment><USER5> Powder? [https://dan-ball.jp/en/javagame/dust2/](https://dan- ball.jp/en/javagame/dust2/)

<comment><USER4> Very similar to this! I wonder if someone else had re-made it since then.

<comment><USER6> Check out sandspiel: [https://sandspiel.club/](https://sandspiel.club/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Well that was delightful to play with, and I learned some stuff. Thank you!

</comment><comment><USER8> Why are the links on the right not actual links? Yuck.

</comment><comment><USER9> What happened to the glider hacker emblem? A pity it never took off..

<comment><USER10> It didn't go anywhere, here it is: [https://www.catb.org/hacker- emblem/](https://www.catb.org/hacker-emblem/)

I always thought that it was a symbol with unfortunate connotations of time- wasting. If you want to market youself with a symbol of something which is ultimately a useless distraction, this is not a attractive branding.

<comment><USER11> In what ways are conways-game-of-life or the glider-pattern associated with time-wasting?

<comment><USER10> The Game of Life is a fun toy, but ultimately unproductive. It does not inherently lead to anything else either; the entire field is a dead end (no matter what Stephen Wolfram says). And, what's worse, people more or less _knew this at the time_ , and still they let most of the best minds of a generation, as it were, be absorbed into doing nothing but the equivalent of mental navel-gazing.

<comment><USER11> Thanks, it's interesting you see it that way - but I've never seen that view common among 'hackers'.

So, I doubt that's the factor why the symbol hasn't been more widely-used, emblematically. I instead suspect mixed-feelings about anything ESR proposes, or just more generally the fact that hackers are so varied in interests/behavior that there's little need for a shared emblem. (Though, the glider appeals to a certain mindset, who have & will use it as a symbol, as when it appeared in many remembrances after John Conway's passing.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> it froze my chrome on android completely. it was hard to stop</comment>


WHO set to resume hydroxychloroquine trial - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-who-idUSKBN23A2LT <comment><AUTHOR> Decision probably motivated by this:

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/03/covid-19-surgi...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/03/covid-19-surgisphere- who-world-health-organization-hydroxychloroquine)</comment>


Ask HN: Why are there still unclaimed parts of Antarctica? - crypto-jeronimo <comment><AUTHOR> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Treaty_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Treaty_System):

 _"Article 4 – The treaty does not recognize, dispute, nor establish territorial sovereignty claims; no new claims shall be asserted while the treaty is in force;"_

Not every country has signed that, but all the import ones (big powers and those who claim it because of its relative nearness to their shores) have ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Treaty_System#Partie...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Treaty_System#Parties)). Note that the USA and Russia reserve the right to lay a claim in the future, so this is more like a (long-lasting) pause than an end state in the game.

Now, why has everybody been acting so nicely for decades? Basically because there isn't much to fight over there (given its distance to land masses of the major powers, it isn't even interesting for deploying military tracking stations)

I don't see this change soon, but if it turns out that Antarctica has resources that can be mined profitably, that can change.</comment>


The First Trillion-Transistor Chip: A New Design Space - <AUTHOR> https://www.sigarch.org/the-first-trillion-transistor-chip-a-new-design-space/ <comment><USER2> future is now</comment>


When Job Titles Offend - <AUTHOR> https://gamedevdaily.io/when-job-titles-offend-dd36a1e429e6 <comment><USER2> "Real engineers are regulated, certified, and owe a responsibility to public safety and reliability."

Are they really though? I know plenty of mechanical engineers that work for the automotive industry that are not certified in anything.

<comment><USER3> The certification comes through acquiring and maintaining the Professional Engineer credential: [http://www.nspe.org/resources/licensure/what- pe](http://www.nspe.org/resources/licensure/what-pe)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> To me, I don't like the term Engineer applied to programming that is not done as an engineering discipline… which _can_ be the case in software, but usually only with military or medical systems development. For the most part, the software creation process is a craft, in which case Developer/Programmer is likely more appropriate. If you are using any form of "Agile" for software development, it is not Engineering imho.</comment>


The Candlelight Conspiracy - <AUTHOR> https://www.libertarianism.org/media/liberty-chronicles/candlelight-conspiracy <comment><USER2> Any context on why this especially noteworthy or worth listening to?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it's fascinating to hear how one of the modern political movements first came into being. The 1830s really set up the American political future.</comment></comment>


We Are as Gods - <AUTHOR> https://www.weareasgods.film <comment><USER2> Stewart Brand: an American icon.

You might not always agree with him, but he won't bore you. And you've got to love an old guy who still has the enthusiasm of a boy.</comment>


Show HN: Capdiss – Capture file dissector with embedded Lua interpreter - <AUTHOR> http://codeward.org/capdiss/

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the input. I'll try to make the page more clear when it comes to examples. There's one example listed in the interface part of the page.

[http://codeward.org/capdiss/#interface](http://codeward.org/capdiss/#interface)

Same script is also available in the repository saved in file lua/example.capdiss.lua. You can run it this way:

capdiss -f lua/example.capdiss.lua ./your_capture_file.pcap

</comment><comment><USER2> Misread that as Cadpiss.

</comment><comment><USER3> No examples? Kind of hard to work out how to use it ..</comment>


HackerForums.co: One Month Update - <AUTHOR> https://hackerforums.co/the-lounge-f3/hackerforums-co-one-month-update-t287.html <comment><USER2> Having being part of HackerForums from day 1, it's nice to see this update and to hear dchuck's opinion on how growing a community goes.

Thank you again for all of this and for sharing the update :)</comment>


Balancing Multiple Metrics with Uncertainty - <AUTHOR> https://blog.sigopt.com/posts/balancing-multiple-metrics-with-uncertainty <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I'm one of the founders of SigOpt (YC W15). This is part 3 of a 3 part series we've done on uncertainty in modeling and optimization (Part 1 and 2 here [0] and here [1]). Let me know if you have any questions about this post or SigOpt in general. Javier is a Research Engineering Intern with us and wrote this post with our research team lead, Michael Mccourt. If you're a student looking for internships please check out our careers page [2]. Our platform is also free for academics [3]. You can find more of our research (including NIPS, ICML, AISTATS, etc papers) here [4].

[0]: [https://blog.sigopt.com/posts/modeling-with- uncertainty](https://blog.sigopt.com/posts/modeling-with-uncertainty)

[1]: [https://blog.sigopt.com/posts/bayesian-optimization-with- unc...](https://blog.sigopt.com/posts/bayesian-optimization-with-uncertainty)

[2]: [https://sigopt.com/careers](https://sigopt.com/careers)

[3]: [https://sigopt.com/edu](https://sigopt.com/edu)

[4]: [https://sigopt.com/research](https://sigopt.com/research)</comment>


Jeff Bezos Becomes the First Person Ever Worth $200B - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2020/08/26/worlds-richest-billionaire-jeff-bezos-first-200-billion/#15f816b84db7 <comment><USER2> If you try to imagine the amount of real things Bezos can buy, and even more, the amazing mass of 200B$ in 10 dollars bills, you then realize his fortune is more a symbolic attribute than the transposition of productible stuffs in real economy. This absurd level of fortune shows us that we don't live in a pure rational world/economy, but rather that we still follow and believe in fictive or conventional representations of wealth. The question is : how long people will still believe in theses social conventions, because as a last resort our actual world stand on social beliefs.

<comment><USER3> That is not the amount of money Bezos has, that is the estimated selling price of the stuff he owns. He could use it as money (by paying in fraction of shares) but a significant part of the value relies on the fact that he is not currently selling (a substantial part) of his wealth.

Similarly for Musk, it is easy to imagine how quickly Tesla value would drop if Musk where to tweet "I will now sell all of my shares" (he received a formal complaint because he said something that was vaguely close to it)

<comment><USER2> Ok thank you for your comment, I will go deeply in your point of view later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting to compare it to this list for some perspective: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_historical_figures)

<comment><USER5> ... Which of course the authors of the Forbes article never did, judging by some of the obvious historical competitors (Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, etc) they missed.

Leaving aside the bias for figures from the last 200 years (ignoring many figures from earlier epochs, whose shares of global wealth were no doubt comparable, or most likely far higher).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just think, if he hadn't cheated on his ex-wife he'd be worth even more.

<comment><USER7> And he would have more money too!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some will see this with outrage, but I'm just thinking that it's an ad. I feel like I should get into Amazon stock while it's on the upswing!

<comment><USER9> Buy high sell low right?

Being half sarcastic though. There is still an argument that Amazon is a value stock.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is it still true that he's behind on paying his taxes?</comment>


Unicorn Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://www.pgbovine.net/unicorn-jobs.htm <comment><USER2> The rather unethical alternative is to find a job in a fairly incompetent group at a company that's not extremely tech focused, then spend most of your time working on whatever you want to. I've had jobs (and spoken to many people with similar jobs) where I could accomplish all my tasks within a couple hours of actual, focused effort, leaving the rest of the work week for personal projects, side business, etc.

<comment><USER3> I don't know if it's that unethical -- I think there are a lot of jobs where if you made a graph of the worload it would look rather spiky -- IE, sometimes you're very busy, but with long idle times in between. Those downtimes are a good opportunity to work on pet projects or learn a new skill for career development. I think most good employers will recognize that if you're otherwise good at what you were hired for.

<comment><USER4> Sometimes they don't know what they hired you for. As in have no idea how the task should be done and how much time it can possibly take. That can be unethical.

If you have spiky workload and work on fun projects or just learn, I believe that to be fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Whenever I give a talk about Erlang-related stuff, I almost inevitably get asked "do you do this for fun or for your job?" And I can genuinely answer "both, really".

While I'm the project lead for one of the more popular Erlang web frameworks ([http://nitrogenproject.com](http://nitrogenproject.com)), my main focus is on my sports league management system[1] ([http://bracketpal.com](http://bracketpal.com)), which runs on Nitrogen.

As a result, I can justify spending "free" time working on open source because at the end of the day, it improves my main products.

It's an interesting way to piggyback the so-called "unicorn" project onto a product (the design of which I get to control). Granted, it'd be nice to just get paid to work on Nitrogen all the time, since that work is generally more mentally _stimulating_ , but I can't complain.

[1] I know the landing page is a total dog. It's the current project to fix that up to something not terrible.

<comment><USER6> I'm in a similar situation -- right now I have what I guess would be called a unicorn job, I work on open source stuff that I have 90% or more of the commits on full time and am paid for it. But it's not really a fluke or that someone is 'vouching' for me -- the stuff I work on is essential to my company's workflow, and pays off very directly as our work becomes faster and better, so I don't see it as a job that will go away soon (although I could certainly be wrong).

I work at an agency, and we crank through a lot of smaller sites very quickly. My role at this point is to spend most of my time working on the tools that we use to build on top of, researching and evaluating other tools, and generally improving workflow and making it more efficient. I'll take a couple months to put in work on tools and workflow, then come back and lead a client project with the new/updated flow. When the project is wrapped up, I take what I learned from working on the project and use it to make further improvements to the tools/workflow I spend most of my time on, and that's generally the cycle.

Topics that I have sunk a significant amount of time into recently include using git/github more efficiently, researching and working with a variety of client-side MVCs, static site build tools, deployment tools, new project templating tools, sysops monitoring and provisioning (docker), requirejs and browserify comparsion and benchmarking in various situations, focusing on svgs and perfecting illustrator svg workflow, etc. It seems to me like there is an endless supply of cool things to work on at the moment, and I enjoy my work and do the same stuff whether I'm on or off the clock, which is nice for my company because I probably work a lot more hours than anyone else (although voluntarily, because I enjoy it).

I tend to span across the stack pretty widely, from design to ops and everything in between, which I like, and am also involved in a few new business accounts that are more dev-heavy. I absolutely love my job and would never give it up. Not sure if this is interesting to anyone or if anyone has perspectives on it, but I definitely am in a unique position and am curious to hear whatever it is that people think about all this!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think the question is completely wrong ... the question you should be asking is "how do I turn my current job into a unicorn job?". I've done this for almost 30 years and, with the exception of the times I was forced into management roles, I've loved engineering.

The key is that you have to be doing something your employer feels provides value, and ultimately you want to tailor the work towards something you're enthusiastic about. For me, I try to determine which up-and-coming technologies are worth including in future products. This means I get to play with lots of cool (and sometimes not so cool) technologies - and when my employer asks how something should be done, they "redeem" that knowledge with a list of concrete pros and cons.

Even the author's examples were projects that he was passionate about before he started the unicorn job. One point I definitely agree with is that you have to be a good communicator to first convince your boss you can provide value, and again to deliver that value.

I'll also agree that it might be easier to find a unicorn job in a university setting where things aren't quite so structured. In July of 2012 I landed a job at Penn State as an enterprise software architect/developer ... and it was music to my ears when I found out that my bosses' bosses' boss felt the university need to be more engaged with the open-source community and contribute to more projects.

<comment><USER8> > ultimately you want to tailor the work towards something you're enthusiastic > about

This depends on being passionate about a _how_ (e.g. a technology, a language, a development methodology) instead of a _what_. An employer will not frequently let you turn the project of building their food-reviews website into an automatic musical-accompaniment AI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Getting someone to pay you to work on what you want and how you want is likely to be rarer than a unicorn.

Starting your own business is a much easier path to that and even then you will be pulled in all kinds of directions.

The only case of a unicorn job that did actually spring to mind was the CouchDB founder. This is a very motivational talk by him - [http://www.infoq.com/presentations/katz-couchdb-and- me](http://www.infoq.com/presentations/katz-couchdb-and-me)

<comment><USER10> Starting a business begins as a unicorn job, and if you're lucky you find out that you also enjoy running a business. And get to keep your unicorn part-time job. Also, having other people help build your unicorn. I LOVE what I do every day - used to complain I wasn't coding enough, but it was because I was controlling the output too much and not delegating. It wasn't that I wanted to code more, it was just that I wasn't getting enough done. So I hired more staff and found I really like the balance of entrepreneurial life, helping my staff code their best (and towards our goals) and coding in the quiet hours.

<comment><USER11> Completely agree here. Anything specific that helped you delegate more? I'm getting started on that, but still feel I'm not getting nearly as much done as I could, and I'm a bottleneck for my outsourcers.

<comment><USER10> Delegation means knowing _exactly_ what results you want, and if your staff aren't skilled enough being able to lay it out down to the line with direct tasks with clear finish lines for each task. We do a lot of training, so when working with junior developers you want to break it down, break it down, and be able to think laterally in case they can't achieve exactly what you want - there are always other ways to get things done. Then trust them, and make sure you get daily reports. At first it feels like you are not getting anything done and then they start flying and it feels great.

<comment><USER11> That's a great way of putting it, and I have been working on precise templates for certain tasks, which are now bearing fruit.

Why daily reports, as opposed to any other interval?

<comment><USER10> I think all knowledge workers should note what they did at the end of the day - it helps with accountability and gives a sense of achievement. For example a tool like idonethis.com helps you and everyone stay up-to-date and see quickly where problems are. Or ask everyone to just email you at the end of the day or a fixed period. Always read them and respond if needed.

You note that you feel you are slowing your team down - if it's because you are relied on to be building core tasks, try building mock-ups first so they can work. Another good tool is apiary.io if you work with APIs for example: it combines fleshing out your API with actually providing a functional framework so the front-end guys can get to work.

If it's documentation slowing you down, give everyone some days off or get them on another task and catch up. Use paper and pen or whiteboarding or a design tool like Flairbuilder if you need to really understand your ideas before trying to explain them to someone else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This article might not be applicable to that many people. My guess is that many people are actually happiest working on things that are given to them. Working on your own projects requires that you think of an idea, and have the self-discipline to work on it in the absence of externally enforced constraints.

I think a better question for most people might be: how do I get a job where work on the job is itself interesting, rather than a job that allows me to do my own interesting stuff in my spare time.

<comment> FLUX-YOU I'd just be happy having a job where someone paid me to learn after showing some basic competency. In return, I would stick my neck out for the company and stay 10 hour days trying to solve problems and not ditch at the first whiff of a higher paycheck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was lucky to start a small startup which functioned like a 'unicorn' job. It allowed me to work exactly on what I was interested in for 4 years, while making more money than I had been. The only drawback was the amount of time managing advertising.

So, don't leave out 'start a business!'. Surprised to not see that possibility mentioned in the article... This is HN, after all. You don't need an employer to have a job.

<comment><USER14> It is mentioned in the article, near the end:

> One trite suggestion is, Why don't you just start your own company? From > talking with friends who have done so, I can confidently say that > entrepreneurship is not a unicorn job. You spend the majority of your work > days on logistics, errands, coordination, and other overhead that's not at > all related to furthering your core dream – but those steps are ultimately > necessary for launching your product and succeeding in the marketplace. It's > a great gig for some people, but definitely not a unicorn job.

<comment><USER13> I see. I'd suggest that one would need to be as selective and fortunate in finding Unicorn self employment as outside employment that fits the bill.

Also, whether one feels a position/endeavor meets unicorn status depends on personal tastes. For me, working for myself is just as important as what I'm doing and compensation. I also value being in charge of and learning the full stack, from sysadmin work to database and server side work to client side programming. It would be very rare to find such diverse work and responsibilities working for the sort of employer author considers his ideal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have an unicorn job. 100% to my own projects. My secret? I don't use any standard technologies: Python, Ruby, PHP, etc. Too much competition there.

<comment><USER16> I bet its haskell , isn't it ?

<comment><USER15> No, it isn't Haskell. But I respect a lot functional programmers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This setup is certainly rare. At my company ([http://istrategylabs.com](http://istrategylabs.com)) we've done our best to at least feed this desire and tie it back to revenue.

1\. Everyone in the company can work on R&D projects. 2\. There's budget set aside for this work. 3\. Everyone can pitch new ideas for new projects/products. 4\. If something get green-lit you can join that project if you desire and have value to bring to it.

It's really challenging to assign dedicated "20% time" or some other formal allocation. We've tried serval times and failed. Instead, now, we just setup hackdays/internal innovation days where the entire company can work on whatever they want. It's great for morale and produces new things we can pitch to our customers.

<comment><USER18> > We've tried serval times and failed.

How did you fail if you don't mind me asking?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think this is why some people go into Finance. Spend 10 years in some miserable high stress job, but hopefully gather enough wealth to retire in your early 30s and work on whatever you want.

Also why people work part time and spend their off time painting or playing music. Be poor but have time to work on what you care about.

Edit: Grammar

<comment><USER20> _I think this is why some people go into Finance. Spend 10 years in some miserable high stress job, but hopefully gather enough wealth to retire in your early 30s and work on whatever you want._

Some of my college classmates went down this route, and while the numbers can theoretically work out (these are uber-smart math/science/engineering folks), I've never seen a single person exit successfully from this game and then unicorn it. The main reason seems to be that they can't fight off the inevitable lifestyle inflation that comes with being in such a social circle. The last I heard from one guy, he was paying almost $10,000 a month to maintain two apartments in Manhattan ...

<comment><USER19> I definitely understand that. Personally, they are both tough choices. One is essentially a race to the top and the other a race to the bottom. That might be the trouble in looking for rare things(unicorns). You often need to go to extremes to find them, and extremes are usually quite uncomfortable.

Speaking of what I've done myself, I've found a combination of the two seem more likely to succeed. By limiting my resource requirements(cheap rent etc), which I may have focused on too much on the past, and increasing my skills(and pay rate), which I spend more energy on these days, I can spend a continually reducing portion of my time on the things I don't want to do.

Thanks for the interesting article btw.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Most founders/entrepreneurs have unicorn jobs, but it comes with a big caveat: being your own boss. Not as easy as it sounds.

<comment> UK-AL Is it really unicorn? Market forces push you instead of a boss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Question #4: are you a virgin? According to Wikipedia, "In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, [the unicorn] was commonly described as an extremely wild woodland creature, a symbol of purity and grace, which could only be captured by a virgin."

<comment><USER23> Now that explains why I can't get a unicorn job!

In a more serious note, while it's a well written article, it has a very narrow scope, since you can really say the same stuff about almost every aspect in life.

Not only there are no unicorn jobs, there no unicorn hobby projects either. You can every easily feel "trapped" and tired from your own hobby project.

Oh wait! There are no unicorn relationships either! And there are no... well you get the idea.

The reason is simple of course; everything "unicorn" assumes that a _certain something_ (you, your projects goals, the market, etc) stays the same, while the whole world around you is constantly changing and evolving.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The Meteor team has been working on Meteor for almost 3 years now and recently raised enough money to do it for a few more years.

</comment><comment><USER25> For those of us whose "core dream" is exactly the kind of logistical problem solving and organizational coordination the author describes as "overhead", starting your own company _is_ a unicorn job. Feeling lucky, I suppose :)

<comment><USER20> totally! if you love building businesses, managing organizations and logistics, and figuring out monetization and growth, then starting a company might be your unicorn job.

<comment><USER8> My unicorn job would be getting a steady salary to start business _es_ (multiple)--riding the highs and the lows, without risking my own money.

Maybe I should join a VC firm?

<comment><USER25> Or become a mentor at an incubator/accelerator?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> When your side project turns into a full time job via starting a company around it, your founding position at your startup is your unicorn job. I find that this is one of the biggest pulls towards entrepreneurship for me.

<comment><USER20> you mean if you end up cashing out and then unicorning afterward? i can't imagine _running_ a startup being a unicorn job, unless you love doing all sorts of things that aren't remotely related to your side project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I personally think that there are more unicorn jobs than people think. It's just that everyone has a different idea of a unicorn. The work I'm currently doing (the level of influence I have over the final product, the technical challenge, and meaningfulness of the work) all combine to make this probably the best job I've had. However others I talk to doing similar work in the past couldn't wait to find a different job.

</comment><comment><USER28> Side note: I went to high school with Phil (article author) - he is a smart guy.

</comment><comment><USER29> I have to say that looks a weird and potentially very harmful way of thinking. Why by default pit yourself against your job? Why you have to work on some "personal project" which seems to be completely isolated from, even contrary to your job? I guess it has to do with some "unsuccessful intern experiences" by the author, but I don't believe it's the correct perceptions of things. The ideal scenario, obviously, is to blend personal interest/fun together with the job you are doing. And I believe a lot of, even the majority, of top people in their field do things by such principle, and are living a happy + productive life, not only satisfying their own intellectual appetite, but also benefiting the company, and more broadly the world as a whole.

</comment><comment><USER30> I have a unicorn job. I sleep with the boss. It helps that we've been married for over 23 years.

</comment><comment><USER31> A rather narrow view, of the thousands of occupations and careers you are just looking in the mirror. How about my friend who owns a bike shop? Or my other friend who runs an art/design webzine? Or my other friend with the micro- brewery? None of them are particularly skilled at what they do nor have the right networking. I think their secret lies between living within their means and choosing to do what they love. Anyone can do that and if that is what you are looking for, a sabbatical with enough money to go by and full time to inmerse in a great idea: go ahead and do it, do not over think it, do not be afraid to fail.

</comment><comment><USER32> I've got a job where I get to spend a fair amount of time hacking on things that I'm personally interested in. I wonder if the 50% level, a la Guido Van Rossum, is some sort of optimum. Besides paying the bills, the non-unicorn work keeps me in touch with a lot of interesting people and ideas, and prevents me from getting tunnel vision.

Two things have helped me. First, the stuff that the company makes is close enough to my personal interests, that I don't have to fight too hard to justify my unicorn work. Second, I make damn sure that my hacks end up in products and patents once in a while.

</comment><comment><USER33> I haven't seen a job ad since I started my current job (~3yrs ago) that looks more interesting than the job I have. I do desktop applications (WPF/C#) one day, C++ computer vision/algorithms another day with an occasional scoping of signals with an oscilloscope and logic analyzer thrown in. All this and no politics or deadlines.

Most of the jobs I see advertised are one dimensional - they want a GUI person OR a computer vision person OR an embedded person, rarely more than one thing.

I've had a lot of great jobs and the thing they shared in common is they were small or tiny companies.

</comment><comment><USER34> I think most people don't spent enough time looking for the best fit. Most engineers I know select from the jobs offered to them by friends/recruiters. I did this for my first job (which sucked bigtime). The best jobs will never be offered (too many qualified people competing already). However, if you get out there and prove yourself to awesome people you'll get offered unicorn opportunities. My second job (helping schools write CS curriculum) came this way. My new years resolution: spend more time with less people.

</comment><comment><USER35> A better way is to make a technology and keep reusing it for clients. Have clients find you more clients, make commissions and eventually earn their money back. Give old clients features developed for new clients. Eventually build out a productized service, get a bank loan, market it and sell the company. Or open source the tech and get a community around it (like symfony, etc)

This is the outline of working on your own stuff and just charging clients for high-margin projects, all the while building your technology.

</comment><comment><USER36> I have one of these Unicorn Jobs.

I'm paid 40 hours a week, most weeks to warm the couch. I get time to work on my own projects.

But, alas, I'm a contractor and some point in the not too far future this ride will end. _knocks on wood_ Hopefully its not soon however.

</comment><comment><USER37> I don't know if I believe that Guido Van Rossum has to spend 50% of his time on not making python better, but perhaps it's true. Isn't he at dropbox now as well?

<comment><USER38> It's not clear to me that Guido actually wants to spend more than 50% of his time on Python. Stuff like the async stuff he's bringing into Python come from his time spent developing things with Python during the other 50%.

Also, is Python necessarily his unicorn now? It's certainly not the same as a project that he conceives and creates - it was a long time ago, but success changes that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Programming may be the wrong profession. Ed Witten says he has the greatest job in the world.

Now there are sinecures, but I certainly would not admit to having one, now or in the past...

</comment><comment><USER40> Isn't solutions/application architecture a kind of unicorn job by this definition?

</comment><comment><USER41> best way to find a unicorn job is to build and release a library of some sort and then contract yourself out to customize it for specific needs.

<comment><USER20> hmmm if you love library-building, then you probably won't like wrangling clients, chasing them down for payments, finding your next clients, etc. ... not to mention what happens when clients want you to customize your library in some bizarre way that goes against your core sensibilities, but you need to do it to get paid. doesn't sound very unicorn to me, since clients are ultimately driving your business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> There are unicorns. And you can catch them.

</comment><comment><USER43> OP is writing rubbish.

I've worked in enough companies and done enough consulting and advising to have some thoughts about this.

First, stop obsessing over binary distinctions that don't exist like "unicorn job". It's like "being rich". You won't get there by obsessing about it. There are shades of gray on this one.

Second, it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission. If Guido only spends 50% of his time on Python, that's probably because he doesn't _want_ to spend more than 50% of his time on Python. (I doubt he explicitly asked for permission to spend 50 vs. 75 or 25 percent of his time on it.) As with the creative arts, you'll make better stuff if you're part of the world, rather than completely isolated. Work for other people-- and, except when its interests contradict your own, for the benefit of your firm-- but on your own terms.

Third, "political forces" always exist but are not always irresistible. Yes, sometimes you have to work on things that wouldn't be your first pick if you were unconstrained, but that build your credibility or advance your career. Accept that. Everyone has to do some selling and alliance-building. Do that work, do it well, and make allies. It's important to stop hating that aspect of work; it's part of the game, too. It's actually fun once you're halfway good at it, and if someone like me can develop those skills then anyone can.

Fourth, make sure to find people, companies, and managers whose passions match your own. Don't try to sell a Java shop on Python. Find a company that uses Python, if that's what you want. It's much easier in the long run to keep looking until you find a company that agrees with your ideology, than it is to try to change everything.

Fifth, never work on stuff that isn't interesting to you _or_ good for your career. If you get assigned work that hurts your career and bores you, work quickly to find someone powerful who can use you for something else. (You might get fired in this process; accept that risk. It's better than being taken advantage of for 5+ years.)

Sixth, don't use the words "personal project". It may be something you initiated, but it's probably useful to someone. Find some way (possibly an abstract one) that your project is useful to someone else, and preferably your company as a whole. Again, make allies. Ask others for advice (this is a big one!) and let them have input into your work (but don't compromise on the vision in a major way). Treat people you work with as first customers, not as obstacles. Don't make it obvious that you're trying to take control of the show. People will ask you to join them long before they'll be ready to be led by you.

There's a lot more that I can say, but I hope I've made my points clear. You don't get this "unicorn" job or environment by becoming a brand-name engineer (it works in reverse; the great engineers get the autonomy and use it to become really good at something). Rather, you get creative at selling the work you want to do, make allies, and find companies and managers who are going in the same direction. I don't want to make it sound easy, but you don't have to be a celebrity to pull it off. You need to know what you want and work hard to get it. You also need to learn the difference between asking for permission (never do it) and consulting others (often do it). Don't ask "Can I do this?" (Counterintuitive fact: most bosses dislike being explicitly asked for permission. You're not doing him a favor, but _asking him to take on risk_ \-- for mostly your benefit.) Say, "This is what I want to do; how would you recommend that I go about it and make it maximally useful to those around me?"

<comment><USER29> >binary distinctions that don't exist

>you'll make better stuff if you're part of the world

>companies whose passions match your own

>that your project is useful to someone else

Exactly. OP shouldn't treat his own dull internship experiences as the whole picture about companies. His way of thinking is not productive/conducive at all IMO.

Though I don't totally agree with the "political" part.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I thought this post would be about jobs for 'unicorns' designer + developers positions conjoined.

That's what I want. A job where I won't be dictated by designers who can't implement their bullshit photoshop mockups.

I'm not an entrepreneur, but I like to create things. I am OK with a paycheck (where eating out on McDonalds is a luxury) with no equity, hell that's my current situation - sans creative freedom. Right now I'm a code monkey, and I kinda hate it, so I'm hoping that would change in the future. Just need a project without the photoshop-guy.

That being said, creating my own tech demos on my own free time helps keep my sanity in check

<comment><USER8> > 'unicorns' designer + developers positions conjoined

I've always found the resistance to this so strange.

My CV has Erlang, Haskell, IA32 assembler, and HTML5/CSS3 on it in various places. The first question any company inevitably asks me, when I send it in, is "what position are you applying for?" (Even though I answer this in the cover letter. Good evidence that they don't bother to read it.)

I should probably just start answering "development factotum."

<comment><USER45> The problem is that a less than A player in either design or backend programming will more likely shit things up instead of contributing in a minor way. It's just hard to believe that you are an A player in both.

<comment><USER8> Your statement hinges on the implicit premise that most of the skills required in programming share no common knowledge, and each must be learned entirely anew (so that time spent learning X is time not spent learning Y.)

I would pose the opposite: that learning more "parts" of programming at the same time, makes learning each individual part easier and faster. Epiphanies from learning functional programming will explain bits of compiler design; patterns you learn in macro assembler will clarify instruction-optimization vs. space-optimization choices; working with message-passing systems will revise your views on networking protocols; etc.

You'd expect, for a similar reason, someone with training in book publishing and communications design to not need much help getting into web design.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Air travel's sudden collapse will reshape a trillion-dollar industry - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/business/2020/08/01/air-travels-sudden-collapse-will-reshape-a-trillion-dollar-industry <comment><USER2> Let's invest in a high speed national passenger rail system!

<comment><USER3> Rail has much higher initial and fixed costs than air travel, and high-speed trains consume more energy than aircraft on long-distance routes (as airliners travel at high altitude with low air resistance).

The literal footprint of a rail system is also very large; clearing and grading rail lines across the country would have a significant environmental impact.

<comment><USER4> > high-speed trains consume more energy than aircraft

citation needed. It helps a lot that (electric) trains do not need to carry their own fuel. Also, trains can run on low-carbon energy, whereas there is no viable alternative to jet fuel at the moment, and producing that from net- zero-carbon processes (akin to biodiesel) is not economical.

<comment><USER5> Biodiesel is not economical and a dumb idea, but it's pretty cheap to make flying offset factory emissions like within the EU emissions trading scheme (works out to ~€3 per passenger-hour), or even direct air capture schemes (~$20 per passenger-hour). Zero marginal carbon flights still works out to be cheaper than most countries' high speed rail networks if you compare unsubsidised costs.

<comment><USER4> Four things I would like to mention that don't come up generally in discussions like these:

* Transportation infrastructure is a societal investment that produces benefits, it's not just about its cost. Investing in terrestrial transportation like trains, _even if it is more expensive_ can give rise to proportionally greater societal benefits than air travel--think, a long-haul train has multiple stops, providing connection points for economic activity (smaller towns and cities connected through train stations) that planes clearly cannot. I actually think it's totally _OK_ that trains require more investment because they may create larger network effects in the big picture.

* In some sense, all societal spending is make-work. If we're going to have make-work programs, we might as well spend it on the best long-term strategy, which in my honest opinion, having lived in Europe for a number of years, is cities being well-connected with cheap and fast rail, subways, and trams.

* Climate change is a real thing, and it's due mostly to CO2 emissions. It's _gonna cost money_ to fix. We need to stop deploying the "but itz mah dollarzzzes" as an excuse not to act. We need to start thinking about paying back the absolutely massive debt we racked up from cheap and easy energy.

* Carbon offsets are a shell game that we can play in the short run, but ultimate we need to get to zero carbon footprint, which cannot be accomplished with offsets alone.

In summary, we better start paying up.

<comment><USER6> High speed rail requires speeding up and slowing down too. And at 15m/mile it's significantly cheaper and better to build airports

<comment><USER7> What does "15m/mile" mean?

<comment><USER8> I suspect that means 15 million dollars per mile of rail. It should depend on where the rail is being installed though, because for paved asphalt roads, the price per mile can vary from 500k per mile per lane in a rural area, to north of 10m per mile per lane if you're in a densely populated urban area

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Even before this, the airline industry was downsizing. Boeing 747 and A-380 aircraft were no longer being ordered, and many were already parked. The 737-MAX debacle didn't result in a capacity shortage.

Business air travel, overall, will probably never come back. More meetings will be online; only for really important ones will people actually take an airplane. With more people working at home, there may not be an office to meet at. You'd have to book a conference center.

<comment><USER10> I hope it's never that disposable to fly for business ever again. At my last employer, they flew me across the USA one evening, drinks and dinner and hotel room. Morning breakfast, then we had the 1 hour meeting we had scheduled (a meeting that easily could have been done remotely). Then a big fancy lunch, my Uber arrived, and a plane ride back across the country to my home. At least during the 1 hour meeting my boss brought in his baby goats to show us, so there's that.

<comment><USER11> Honestly if you really analyze the world and how it works, this is because the folks at the top have to maintain the illusion that they do important work and need a certain level of spending to create the environment to execute it. I do agree that stuff like conferences etc. are absolutely necessary. However, any job or work above a certain level is more about projecting power, persona after following regular practices in strategy.

Probably your employer did it because they were allocated that amount in the annual budget and had to tick the box, but won't you as an employee prefer at least the stay to be extended by 3+ days for more meaningful interaction. Conversely won't it be better to cancel it altogether and pass 30% of the savings to you, the employee ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How do we stop any article that can somehow be linked to C02 from turning into the exact same off topic repetitive conversation about global warming again, and again and again and again.

This article is a big deal, but I doubt we'll see anyone talking about the spider web of the world having been removed and the massive ramifications it will mean.

<comment><USER7> It's not like we can't do both.

If I have anything interesting to say about the socioeconomic repercussions of shutting down air travel I will.

But, in general, I think the more people talk about global warming the better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Highway self-driving will immolate short and medium flights.

Would you rather have YOUR car drive you overnight on a highway while you sleep and get to take far more luggage and have a car when you get there and spend about 20$ in electricity at a lower carbon footprint and you can leave and return and change your schedule at will?

Or go to the effing airport?

400 miles is about the same amount of time at a far lower cost and flexibility.

500-600 miles is an extra hour or two, and you can stop and see friends and eat food, or just sleep overnight.

700-1000? Sure a bit more annoying, but still you can take more, is cheaper, and you get your car when you get there.

So in my opinion, any trip under 1000 miles will probably be driven once self- driving takes off.

And highway self-driving is the easiest to automate, and highways are the infrastructure that will be "converged" or adapted with self driving first.

<comment><USER14> I don't sleep well in cars and I certainly won't make it that far without a bathroom stop. A quick flight sounds more appealing still.

<comment><USER13> You can ask your car to stop to go to the bathroom.

Self-driving cars will probably have better reclining that the current ones. It will be a feature.

Even if you don't sleep, going to an airport with sufficient buffer, checking baggage and checking in, security lines, waiting to board, boarding, actual flight, taxi time, getting baggage, getting ground transport is about 4-6 hours even for a 1 hour commuter flight.

And when highway self-driving really improves with mesh networking cars might be able to cruise at 100mph.

<comment><USER14> Are cars gonna have bathrooms in them now? Because if not, you're now talking about rest areas, many of which are closed at night. And if I wake up having to pee, and the nearest rest stop isn't for an hour, what then? I can't go back to sleep. The nice thing about a plane/train/coach is that the bathroom is right _there_ \-- no need to interrupt your travel.

It's all kind of academic anyway because I don't own a car, nor does owning one here make sense anyway as I'd never use it except on road trips, so the plane/train/coach is the only option.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There's a lot to hate about Covid-19 but the planet must be breathing a sigh of relief at the reduction in planes and cruise ships pumping carbon into the air.

<comment><USER16> Airlines = 2% of global carbon emissions

Cruise ships = 0.2% of global emissions.

Stopping both will have a negligible effect on global carbon, probably near 0 since more people will drive as a result.

* [https://www.atag.org/facts-figures.html](https://www.atag.org/facts-figures.html)

* [https://www.tourismdashboard.org/explore-the-data/cruise-shi...](https://www.tourismdashboard.org/explore-the-data/cruise-ship/)

<comment><USER17> Cruise ships are _massive_ emitters of sulphur dioxide.

> The results [of the study] show that the luxury cruise brands owned by > Carnival Corporation & PLC emitted in 2017 in European seas alone 10 times > more disease-causing sulphur dioxide than all of Europe's 260+ million > passenger vehicles. Spain, Italy, Greece, France and Norway are the most > exposed countries to cruise ship air pollution in Europe.

[https://www.transportenvironment.org/publications/one- corpor...](https://www.transportenvironment.org/publications/one-corporation- pollute-them-all)

<comment><USER18> Doesn't sulfur dioxide having a cooling effect on the climate?

<comment><USER19> I'm not versed on the subject but a quick google search seems to indicate it's a very obvious net negative for the environment. It's not just about temperature...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It would be fascinating if this resulted in the removal of rows of seats to make the passengers that they do have more distanced (and comfortable), maybe even seeing competition in the area of pandemic friendly amenities.

<comment><USER21> Why would we make such costly changes for a blip in the history of the planes? Almost nobody is going to want to keep up this horrid lifestyle after the virus is over.

<comment><USER22> Exactly. I'm completely baffled that some folks seem to think that our short term responses to Covid, which as you say are pretty horrid, will stick around after the pandemic ends. I agree there are _some_ instances where Covid has accelerated changes that were already in motion, but I've seen too much "introvert fantasy fiction" ignoring that the majority of people are itching to end these restrictions ASAP.

<comment><USER23> Most responses will be rolled back when it's safe again but there's a good argument that air travel might not. The entire world is getting experience with remote meetings & alternatives and they're not going to forget that in a year, and even most Republicans are starting to accept that climate change is real. It would not surprise me to see that a lot of business travel won't come back as people ask whether they dislike a video chat enough to spend thousands of dollars. That disproportionately affects airline revenue, not to mention hotels, restaurants, etc. and I wouldn't be surprised if that caused businesses to make permanent changes to emphasize parts of the experience which a remote chat can't match.

<comment><USER9> Yes. Some remote work will move back to offices, and some won't.

Brick and mortar retail will probably take a huge hit. The big problem with online grocery shopping was getting people used to using it. That's now done.

<comment><USER24> If by "getting used to it", you mean "experiencing the horror", than sure.

I tried it, twice. In both cases, produce was picked by either someone that didn't care, or didn't know how to tell if some food (mellons) were ripe.

Even if only poor produce was available, well, I'd have seen, and just not bought it.

I received substitutions too, and without permission.

Meat was sent with very soon expiry dates. I'd never snag that in person. Same for bread.

Online grocery is a no go for me. My local grocer is 10 minutes away, in store time is maybe 20 minutes, including checkout.

I get what I want, how I want it, and save money by not having unusable stuff delivered to me.

Food isn't like a TV. One orange is not the same as a other.

Even bananas... I prefer them almost green, a friend I know, almost rotten.

<comment><USER23> Your experiences aren't universal. None of my neighbors have reported things being anywhere near that bad - and having multiple competing options suggests it wouldn't stay that way if it was - and services like CSAs, Hungry Harvest, etc. around here have seen enormous increases. I don't think that'll go back to pre-pandemic levels in a hurry even if a vaccine shows up tomorrow.

<comment><USER24> I think my point was, _your_ experiences aren't universal. Yet you're still basing your determination upon yours.

Take what you will from mine, but even aside from my two bad experiences, I can't imagine how one gets precisely what they want, via online. I like to tap my melons, touch my tomatoes, and why does this sound like a porno now? :P

Anyhow. I think you get my point, my view. I've got yours, eg, you don't care about a personal pick.

So the real question is, how many really, really prefer to pick precisely what they want?

Obviously for a box of corn flakes, it probably matters little.

<comment><USER23> If you read my comment, note that I didn't present anything as universal. I'm sure both are real accounts of what happens.

The point is that you don't need perfection to have a big change. Video chat doesn't need to hit 100% of meetings, classes, and conferences to have a big impact on those industries. Delivery services don't need to completely replace brick and mortar to have a big impact in low margin industries. Maybe you personally want to check every tomato but ask how many people care that much every time, even when they're busy, etc. Do you think that'll be enough to shift an industry?

<comment><USER24> Sorry for the late reply. Been Saturday busy...

I think what you're missing here, is a bit of tongue in cheek. I, too, did not present my case as universal, yet you took effort to point out it wasn't.

Tit for tat, and all that...

That said! I think you have it a bit reversed here. At least, what I read as you (paraphrased) said is "Do you think people wanting to check product, will shift an industry?"

Yet, that question is a bit flawed, as I see it. This is because the industry isn't shifting because a person might want to check a tomato. It's _failing_ to shift.

The inertia, the default "People who want to check produce, have always bought in the store." and "Further back, people could only buy in the store."

Now, you seem to be under the belief that everyone is buying online. Using home delivery. Not going to the grocery store. Yet when I go to the grocery store? When I visit?

You know what I see?

People! Lots of people!

Take me, for example.

I received poor service, and as a result, have not used online grocery shopping. I've gone to the grocery store weekly, as I did prior to COVID.

So from where I sit, the industry isn't shifting in my case, _it never changed_. And from the numbers I see at my grocery store, this seems to be common.

And this is because I've always cared. I cared before COVID. I care now. I'll care after.

I think you're literally dismissing my experiences as if yours are the universal! Or, if not, as if yours are "clearly what is happening in most cases".

Yet I disagree here.

Let me put this forward.

How many grandparents shop online? I'm not talking about in Palo Alto, but all over the US and Canada?

And to answer that, let me mention something. Grocery stores have _always_ offered home delivery, for a small fee.

Why did most people not avail themselves of that? Why do you believe online shopping, is so different from phone shopping? Or fax shopping?

Both of which always existed.

Anyhow.

I have a feeling we're not going to agree at all here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> [https://archive.is/XdtCp](https://archive.is/XdtCp)

</comment><comment><USER26> Suddenly this big-brain thread from two months ago looks like less of a joke: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23165866](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23165866)

> More assertively, Airbus's boss, Guillaume Faury, does not rule out suing > customers who renege on their orders.

Okay, so it's still kind of a joke, but the tone of the humor has changed quite a bit.

</comment><comment><USER7> Other countries probably won't want to let many people in until a vaccine comes out.

But, for domestic travel, it seems to me that the airlines shouldn't need too much technological sophistication to make airliners safe, at least for people mature enough to wear some kind of airline-provided apparatus on their face for the duration of the flight.</comment>


[video] Obama on the Necessity of Science - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5-MgZD5IMc

<comment><AUTHOR> Its long but there's a lot of good information in here about future policy and funding for science - at least in the first 10 minutes.</comment>


Invisible Science: The Scientization of the Ordinary (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/the-cultural-contradictions-of-modern-science/articles/invisible-science <comment><USER2> The thrust of the article is right. Though defining "embedded science" so broadly means every construct in the modern world has "embedded science".

It may be better to say that our creations better incorporate an understanding of the true nature of reality.</comment>