Boeing Shares Halted Pending News - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/cheddar/status/1219701109108899843 <comment><AUTHOR> Update: It's resumed trading. News was that the FAA would delay ungrounding of 737 Max until June/July at earliest, months later than Boeing originally promised.

</comment><comment><USER2> Boeing 737-800 crash landing in 2009 already highlighted the same general issues as with 737 MAX:

[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7909915/Design- shor...](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7909915/Design-shortcomings- Boeing-plane-caused-737-crash-2009-new-report-finds.html)

>New York Times cites unpublished Dutch report on Turkish Airlines crash from 2009 in which nine people were killed near Amsterdam

>Dutch investigators determined that design flaws led to the Boeing 737-800 crashing into a field

>Investigators found that a sensor mistakenly triggered a command computer to idle the engine as the plane approached the runway for landing

>But American investigators with the US government and Boeing pressured the Dutch investigators to emphasize pilot error while downplaying Boeing's role

And that about simulator sounds very familiar too:

>Boeing has stopped production of the planes and agreed to allow pilots to undergo simulator training before the jets return to service.

<comment><USER3> We should stop talking about this as an engineering defect that the FAA needs X number of months to review.

The root cause is not an engineering defect, but a set of organizational, cultural, and managerial defects. This is the root cause that leads inexorably to a variety of seemingly unrelated engineering defects.

Perhaps regulators should hold off on approving new airplanes until Boeing can demonstrate that they have fixed the organizational, cultural, and managerial defects that are the root cause of their safety problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Question: how much would it cost Boeing if the 737 MAX was never allowed to fly again? Could it bring them down, on the brink of bankrupcy, or is it something they could stomach?

<comment><USER5> Without "doing the math" \- I'd say they'd get bailed out by the US government since Boeing is a huge provider of military hardware.

<comment><USER6> I expect they don't need bailing, they do so much more than a single airplane model.

<comment><USER7> I agree that it would be unlikely to tank enough that it needs a bailout, but it could significantly hurt.

They have a large stock of undelivered 737 MAX airplanes (~400 brand-new planes sitting in parking lots), and wouldn't be paid for them. They also wouldn't be able to deliver on any existing 737 MAX contracts.

<comment><USER8> You never know. Companies like Boeing create LTAs with their suppliers, agreeing to specific pricing over many numbers of years.

Most of these contracts are written with language that if a part is no longer required that Boeing must still buy out the LTA. Basically, Boeing must buy parts for the 737 Max from suppliers even if they can never build another plane! Either that or the suppliers who make parts for the 737 will have to eat all the WIP and inventory costs which would be just as devestating to the domestic manufacturing market as if Boeing itself went under.

Aerospace is a yuuuuuge market for American Manufacturing. It's one of the only manufacturing markets that China is unable to compete in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't really understand halting share trading. Who is the exchange to say who may or may not trade a product you own? It just seems weird. If there's bad news, the people who pay attention most closely, and get access to that information the fastest should be allowed to use it, surely?

<comment><USER10> I've realized that everything I own it is because I have permission to own (and someone else, permission to sell). Property rights have not been properly defended so they are fading away.

I was reading Stripe and Braintree's restricted businesses ([https://stripe.com/restricted-businesses](https://stripe.com/restricted- businesses)) and saw _" unauthorized sale or resale of brand name or designer products or services"_. If I own something physical there should be nothing telling me I can't sell it.

<comment><USER11> > I was reading Stripe and Braintree's restricted businesses > ([https://stripe.com/restricted-businesses](https://stripe.com/restricted- > businesses)) and saw "unauthorized sale or resale of brand name or designer > products or services". If I own something physical there should be nothing > telling me I can't sell it.

Property rights also apply to Stripe, in that the company, as an asset itself, can be restricted by its owners to conduct business in some certain way.

And I wouldn't be surprised if Stripe's policies will have more to do with the credit card companies than Stripe. Then, further, the credit card companies act as a cartel by using the government to prevent anyone else from using property to create a competing service by making the ROI on creating a competing service worse than other investment opportunities, or even just blocking it outright under some nebulous "shut down for accounting irregularities" or "insufficient consumer protections" nonsense.

<comment><USER12> When someone speaks of property rights, they usually mean their own rights, not others'.

<comment><USER11> > When someone speaks of property rights, they usually mean their own rights, > not others'.

This is completely your own assertion and suggests a lack of understanding of property rights. How can I talk about property rights under the assumption that they apply only to me, unless I believe that I am the only one in the universe with property rights?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> They should have paused all building of the 737MAX long ago, and switched to other models. The 777 in particular seems to at least have a stellar reputation still.

<comment><USER14> You can't really just up and retool a production line for a one year delay. Even switching to 737NG isn't really possible.

And the triple 7 isn't a replacement for the MAX. It has double the passenger capacity. It's like if Ford had to stop manufacturing Fiestas and manufactured F-150s in their place. These are different markets.

<comment><USER13> It should have been pretty obvious that this plane was a turkey and that building more of them was just throwing good money after bad.

Meanwhile, they could have been producing more planes that don't have problems, and actually sell, even if they are for different markets. There's a backlog for all planes, so switching to something else would have at least helped clear that backlog and net more profit, instead of just building more planes that are just going to sit in parking lots.

While doing this, they should have immediately started work on engineering for an all-new replacement for the 737.

Of course, instead of having me as their CEO, Boeing would rather have some clown like Muilenberg who makes stupid decisions that got them to where they are now, and then give him a giant golden parachute when they get rid of him for incompetence. I would have cost far less.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I don't think a Dow component has ever been halted before, so this is highly unusual.

Shares crashed more than 5.5% in the 30m or so before it was halted.

<comment><USER15> > I don't think a Dow component has ever been halted before, so this is highly > unusual.

What do you mean? Stocks get halted all the time especially before big news.

<comment><AUTHOR> Dow component...

Though someone mentioned JNJ did. Otherwise it's very uncommon for a blue chip to be halted.

<comment><USER16> AAPL had a trading halt last January [0], pending a profit warning. Google will likely find dozens if not hundreds more halts in Dow components.

[0] [https://thefly.com/landingPageNews.php?id=2842788](https://thefly.com/landingPageNews.php?id=2842788)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I thought I saw a headline earlier today that said that Boeing was permanently halting production of the 737 Max. It was probably fake news. I can't find any real news on that subject.

Maybe the market today is overreacting to that fake news/rumor?

<comment><USER18> You may be confusing 'officially' with 'permanently'

There's a headline on the front page of HN saying that they've officially halted production.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22108220](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22108220)</comment></comment>


How Badoo Saved $1M Switching to PHP7 - <AUTHOR> https://techblog.badoo.com/blog/2016/03/14/how-badoo-saved-one-million-dollars-switching-to-php7/ <comment><USER2> I'm glad to see such positive news about PHP. It received way too much beating from the community in the last couple of years while constantly improving. Interesting to see some benchmarks on how PHP7 compares to Python and Ruby in terms of performance.

<comment><USER3> I think one overlooked good thing is how little drama I hear about the transition from 5.6 to 7. People seem to be moving on quickly (the large perf improvements help a lot). I feel it's not going to be long before almost anyone with a half skilled dev to care for it will be on 7 and we won't have a Python 2 vs 3 or Perl 5 vs 6 scenario.

<comment><USER4> The reason for that is that python2=>3 fixed several fundamental problems. 5.6 => 7 is just a incremental upgrade, whatever the version numbering tells you. Most of the PHP problems are still there.

<comment><USER5> > The reason for that is that python2=>3 fixed several fundamental problems. > 5.6 => 7 is just a incremental upgrade, whatever the version numbering tells > you. Most of the PHP problems are still there.

too bad for py3's fundamental problem: that it broke the interface so badly, people _still_ don't use it. PHP7 has no such problem, and gets to add boatloads of new features (which will be immediately used/adopted) while deprecating old versions of the language.

<comment><USER4> You don't understand. To fix problems like python3 did, you have to break older code.

Php7 did nothing like that, that's why the "porting" process was so light. But it also means it didn't fix any of the big things.

<comment><USER6> > Php7 did nothing like that, that's why the "porting" process was so light.

This is nonsense, PHP 7 contains a long list of backwards-compatibility breaks:

[http://php.net/manual/en/migration70.php](http://php.net/manual/en/migration70.php)

If PHP 7.0 didn't break anything, it would have been called 5.7.

The upgrade is easy simply because these breaks do not have as much of an impact as Python's did.

<comment><USER4> No, it's not nonsense. The things you listed in there are incremental fixes, not fundamental.

[http://php.net/manual/en/language.types.type- juggling.php](http://php.net/manual/en/language.types.type-juggling.php)

How would you fix this without breaking most PHP code out there?

How would you fix ==, > and < behaviour without breaking most PHP code out there?

How would you fix Unicode without breaking most PHP code out there?

If PHP fixed things like this, it would be a decent programming language, but it would also break a lot of things. Kinda of like what python3 did, only that it didn't have to break quite so much, since python2 was already pretty decent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is awesome. Not only did the have an excellent write up but also contributed the patches back.

I'm not the biggest fan of PHP (mostly because I learned it on PHP4 and it encouraged bad coding practices back then). However I can't deny how many people use it and how easy it actually is to get started.

<comment><USER8> Up until last year, typing "PHP [anything security- or cryptography-related here]" into any popular search engine would lead you to bad practices.

Then this happened: [https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/293930/problematic-...](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/293930/problematic- php-cryptography-advice-in-popular-questions)

Stack Exchange websites rank well and they allowed myself and others to provide better answers than they had previously. This leads to more developers being exposed to safer, cleaner ways to solve problems. Which means less terrible code being written from following terrible SO answers and tutorials.

And now things are a lot better. There's still obviously work that needs to be done, but:

        - The ecosystem (i.e. tutorials) is improving
        - The language is improving drastically
        - The community is pushing towards better practices
        - Framework developers are taking security seriously

A lot of people don't like how PHP used to be, including most of the people who put time and energy into making it better. You're not alone.

P.S. If you like the direction things are headed, help us make 7.1 even better:

* [https://wiki.php.net/rfc/mcrypt-viking-funeral](https://wiki.php.net/rfc/mcrypt-viking-funeral)

* [https://wiki.php.net/rfc/libsodium](https://wiki.php.net/rfc/libsodium)

* [https://wiki.php.net/rfc/php71-crypto](https://wiki.php.net/rfc/php71-crypto)

<comment><USER9> Brilliant. Do other languages need the same cleanup?

<comment><USER8> Java, C#, and Node.js come to mind immediately as good candidates, but any beginner-friendly language probably need it to some degree.

The Node.js core is particularly bad: It only offers OpenSSL's userspace RNG rather than the operating system's CSPRNG. (That's what window.crypto.getRandomValues() hooks into.) Many of node's deficiencies are tackled by the community, of course. For example: [https://www.npmjs.com/package/scrypt-for- humans](https://www.npmjs.com/package/scrypt-for-humans) versus the native PBKDF2 (with no constant-time comparison).

I hear Ruby's SecureRandom still refuses to switch from /dev/random to /dev/urandom as well. Feel free to throw your hat in the ring on that issue.

Historically, C# doesn't have as strong of an open source culture, but if you wanted to make an impact, you could try to nurture it into growing explosively.

But generally: Look at the languages you're already familiar with and see if bad security advice gets more attention from non-experts than from experts. If that's the case, go out of your way to learn how to do things better (if you aren't already well informed) and publish your corrections.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> PHP used to get a bad rep, and I myself looked at it sorely, but PHP7 is indeed looking promising, and I have noticed a lot of the tutorials I've seen on the more major sites promote proper PHP development (from the little PHP I know). For $5 a year I could host a PHP website, can't effectively do that in other languages / platforms. I really hope PHP7 gets more recognition amongst most web hosts.

<comment><USER11> I can host a python, go, or Java site for free on app engine. Cheap hosting isn't exclusive to php.

<comment><USER12> Economically speaking, it really is. App Engine will run those languages cheaper because it's subsidizing them.

PHP hosting is more naturally cheap which is why there are so many cheap PHP hosts out there. It basically boils down to one simple principle: boot up.

With other languages, you have to boot up. You've got to startup the app, load it into RAM and sit there waiting for a connection. With PHP, you can fill up a hard drive with code and it will all run when called as long as the request volume doesn't overload the RAM.

That's the entire reason that PHP hosting is so much cheaper. RAM doesn't get used until a request comes in.

<comment> iso-8859-1 Isn't the language much bigger than the size of the parsed code? Using PHP with FPM or with mod_php, you have that language runtime sitting there unused even if there are no requests. By your logic, CGI would be the cheapest.

<comment><USER12> > By your logic, CGI would be the cheapest.

It would be. With PHP the language is loaded once regardless of how much code is going to be parsed and executed. The amount loaded matches size of the code base with other languages that have to boot up, which puts a cap on how much low traffic code you can put on a single server.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Or alternatively how Badoo could have saved $1.9M by coding in a compiled language.

Ruby guys can always do the argument "Our code required 50% more servers, but it increases developer productivity by 50%, and since developers cost more than servers - it is a win".

Has anyone ever really made that argument with PHP? It seems one of the least developer friendly languages possible on a large project. So developer unfriendly + server unfriendly = ?????

<comment><USER14> >Or alternatively how Badoo could have saved $1.9M by coding in a compiled language.

Assuming you don't include the cost of converting their 3 million lines of code to a new language and the cost of learning a new language. Of cause they did need to "port" from PHP5 to PHP7, but I feel that it's cheaper than going to a completely different language.

You're not wrong, but the $1M saving is much cheaper bought than the $1.9M. PHP is a weird language though, it's easy to get started with, pretty efficient at this point, and yet somehow people use it to write ugly and sluggish code. I haven't written PHP in a long time, so this may have changed, but it almost like the language is missing ways of structuring the code in a sane way.

<comment><USER15> This isn't really true anymore. Namespaces, as ugly as they are visually, plus autoloading plus a package manager that handles it for you allows quick structuring of a project. This can be configured to fit whatever conventions you prefer but the community has put out there a set of good conventions in the form of PSR docs so you can get started quickly.

The whole mixing of HTML with PHP with SQL is bad form and is widely discouraged. In fact, this code is often seen with usage of mysql_ functions plus manual escaping and interpolation. This is discouraged to the point where that library has been removed.

I'm no evangelist, I prefer other languages, but with these "good parts" so to speak, the language is usable and supportive of good structure. We have had these improvements relatively late in the game but they do appear to come thick and fast nowadays.

There are many warts in the language. Sometimes I'm angered when very good ideas for progress are shot down via committee. There has, however, been improvement since PHP 4.

<comment><USER16> Could u explain why HTML&PHP&SQL is bad? And is it only bad when all three are combined?

<comment><USER15> I don't think you should have been down voted for this question. It discourages asking to learn.

What I meant was mixing them together in the same piece of code. The other comments explain why: its doing too much, its difficult to maintain and reason about so its harder to find bugs, especially serious ones, and difficult to fix them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's hard not to love the CPU usage graphs. Same would go for the memory usage graph if it wasn't scary, looks as though the application is using no memory at all.

I've also been looking around for places using PHP7 in production, was glad to hear it went well. While Etsy did it, they have Rasmus. Does anyone else have examples of PHP7 running in production, especially if the development team has written about it?

<comment><USER18> We ([https://judson.biz](https://judson.biz)) switched to PHP7 in production last month. I need to review the git commits, but our modern (~2yr old, running PHP 5.6) customer frontend and admin backend were very close to production-ready without any work.

Our 10 year old inventory/vendor backend that relied on the (now removed) mysql_* calls needed to be shimmed[0].

Our largest benefit was a significant drop (50%+) in memory usage when allocating lots of objects (which we do when pre-fetching ORM relationships), and a significant reduction (40%, 100-200ms) in render latency when rendering many partial product templates.

Edit: One thing that did bite us post-rollout, which didn't show up in development was this php7-fpm bug[1].

[0]: [https://github.com/dshafik/php7-mysql- shim](https://github.com/dshafik/php7-mysql-shim) [1]: [https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/1720](https://github.com/php/php- src/pull/1720)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Let's face it, PHP is the Donald Trump of programming languages.

Tons of people love it, but admitting you do is pretty much socially unacceptable.

:)

<comment><USER20> I don't know why people downvote you, I think it was a hilarious comment and I've written php for years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > "Besides this, the overall load on the cluster fell below 50 percent thanks > to Hyper-Threading technology, further contributing to the impressive > results. In broad terms, when the load increases to over 50 percent, HT- > engines, which aren't as useful as physical engines, start working."

How did "overall load on the cluster fell below 50 percent thanks to Hyper- Threading technology"? Isn't HT simply exposing a virtual core for every physical core on the CPU?

When an HT CPU is monitored to be at 50%, it's actually at 100% or close to it, so it appears that what fell 50% was the reported values for CPU usage. I don't understand how there's a 50% decrease in load due to "when the load increases to over 50 percent, HT-engines, which aren't as useful as physical engines, start working"

</comment><comment><USER22> If anyone wants to try a PHP7 LAMP stack, I wrote a Docker image a few days ago: [https://hub.docker.com/r/fauria/lamp/](https://hub.docker.com/r/fauria/lamp/)

</comment><comment><USER23> I would care more about the reaponse time increase per request over the tiny 100k saved in servers, though 300 less servers makes a happy sys admin out there.

</comment><comment><USER24> Do you guys know any good ressource to learn PHP 7 from someone who learned PHP years ago for fun (thus probably with a lot of bad practices)? Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER25> 3 millions lines of code for a dating website ? Hopefully they don't decide to create their own OS !

<comment><USER26> That's what being online for 10 years will do to your product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Might have been $3M had they switched to a functional language

</comment><comment><USER28> "The idea that databases are a bottleneck in web-projects is an all-too-common misconception. A well designed system is balanced: when the input load increases, all parts of the system take the hit. Likewise, when a certain threshold is reached, all components – not just the hard disk database, but the processor and the network part – are hit. Given this reality, the processing power of the application cluster is arguably the most important factor"

Oh my. Where do we begin? I guess, using this logic, the language that is just the exact amount of slow to match whatever database workload you have is the optimal language.

Because, as we all know, all parts must be equally balanced, otherwise it's not optimized. So if you need to use 100 mysql servers, you better darned use 100 computing servers of equal computing power, because if you only use 50 you're not balanced.

<comment><USER29> Pardon, are you sure there was anything about being "equally balanced"? Why 100 databases lead to 100 app servers? I'm afraid the key point is missed: in a balanced system, when input load increases, all parts should slow down all together. Means you just need to have a "proper" proportion of resources in various parts of the system. No need to have 100 apps if your MySQL cluster dies only at 25% cpu load on the apps cluster. This might just indicate you better have 25 app servers vs 100 databases, and spend the rest of money proportionally on both clusters (assuming you only have apps and databases). And a good balance also doesnt mean you have perfectly designed or optimized system. These are different things.

<comment><USER30> "Given [a well-designed/balanced system], the processing power of the application cluster is arguably the most important factor."

That doesn't follow. You can have a well-designed system where the PHP code only contributes 10% latency and resource usage, in which case the PHP code is clearly not the most important factor.

"This might just indicate you better have 25 app servers vs 100 databases and spend the rest of money proportionally on both clusters."

Exactly. What matters is proportion of latency or resource usage contributed by the PHP code, and that can vary a lot between well-designed systems. The property of being "balanced" doesn't automatically make your PHP application cluster "the most important factor".

<comment><USER29> "The most important" phrase is misleading, I agree. The idea was to underline the importance of cpu resources on apps cluster but not to state it's the most important thing, the main, the one, always. You are correct.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Most Ad supported sites actually have a B2B enterprise sales model - <AUTHOR> http://andrewchenblog.com/2008/04/04/your-ad-supported-web-20-site-is-actually-a-b2b-enterprise-in-disguise/

<comment><AUTHOR> Key points

1\. Unless you are a ridiculously huge consumer internet site, you have to build up your revenues through brand advertising sales. It's very hard to just use ad networks like Google AdSense to sustain yourself: just do the math using 10 to 25 cent CPMs and you'll quickly see why.

2\. The users of your website are not really your customers. Your actual customers are the ad agencies and advertisers. Your Web 2.0 consumer startup is actually a B2B that sells inventory to brand advertisers.

3\. How to avoid this: directly monetize your users by coming up with something so compelling people will pay for it through subscriptions, virtual goods, or other E-commerce models.

</comment><comment><USER2> >> " just do the math using 10 to 25 cent CPMs and you'll quickly see why."

If you're only getting 10-25c CPM, you're pretty much at the lowest bound. To get a good CPM you have to spend time and effort on monetization, or happen to be in a good niche.

<comment><USER3> Bingo. If you're reaching, say, executives with buying power in a niche industry (and have a solid ad sales team), you can literally get 500x that amount.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I always enjoy reading Andrew's posts, but I didn't get much out of this one. Calling ad supported sites a B2B is just a unique way of looking at the situation--simply a different way to look at it, if you will. The fact remains that this "inventory" that is being sold to brand advertisers is worth very little in the marketplace (which he does eventually conclude in this article).

<comment><USER3> The problem is that there are so many sites reaching the same broad demographics of consumers that the ad space is totally commoditized.

But if you run a site for well-off cat owners, there's no reason you can't command a higher CPM for expensive cat-related products, it just may take the efforts of a dedicated in-house ad sales staff.

Anyway, the trend is to move away from CPM ad sales altogether anyway. Ad agencies and big marketing departments want CPL. They would much rather pay you $XX per qualified person who fills out a contact/download form, rather than CPM. That way the pressure is on you to deliver.

<comment><USER5> This is true, particularly for direct marketing agencies, but many traditional agencies are focused more on brand-building than CPA/CPL.

Selling to direct marketers is much easier than traditional agencies for this reason. There's a million people banging on the traditional agencies' doors with some pitch or another, and so long as selection is not based on concrete performance data, the media buys are based more on perceived brand credibility and agency connections. I know from experience that this approach has a frustratingly long sales cycle (i.e. >12 months) and involves a lot of politics between brand managers, agency people, sub-agency people, outside consultants, product managers, ad nauseam, any single one of whom can tank a deal if they want.

Direct marketers however are much more willing to try something out and see if it works.

<comment><USER3> Very good point, though I think that even brand building is going to start to move towards real metrics (be they "clicks to learn more" or something else).

But sure, there's always going to be a cachet with having a really strong brand that advertisers want to associate with.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Sleepbox - <AUTHOR> http://sleepbox.com/ <comment><USER3> In Japan we have long had 'coffin hotels' (or 'capsule hotels', pre- Neuromancer). We also have love hotels, which are expressly designed to be rented for two hours at a time to do whatever nasty, sticky business you can convince somebody to do with you.

The changing the linens and whatnot are solved problems. (Some businessman- oriented places have a sealed plastic bag of bedclothes hung in the room... you have to do the work of putting them on, but the upside is you know they're clean.)

Getting the price down to where I want to rent one to just take a decent nap during my layover (maybe $25? $40 at most?) is the key thing. As compared to 'my date and I need a space to get intimate for 2 hours' (~$85... okay fine $100... What! ARE YOU SERIOUS $175? THAT'S... OKAY _FINE_!)

I for one am rooting for them to succeed before my next international connecting flight, though.

<comment><USER4> Actually, Yotel already do this:

<http://www.yotel.com/>

I've used the Yotel inside the international transit area at Schiphol for jet lag purposes, during a 5-hour stopover on an intercontinental flight; it beats a recliner in a business lounge into a cocked hat for thouse 4-hour dead spots after a sleepless red-eye. I _wish_ this idea would catch on at more hub airports!

<comment><USER5> I've done the same thing at LHR and agree completely.

<comment><USER6> There's a Yotel at heathrow? Damn. Wish I'd known that last week :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Even if the pod is somewhat automated (e.g. linens are somehow changed without human intervention), you're not going to be able to get around the fact that you'll need someone to collect the dirty linens once in a while and replenish.

And really, the tired business executive is the ideal customer ... but you're probably more likely to get a bunch of less-than-ideal customers whose actions inside the pod are going to require a more extensive cleanup.

I have a feeling that even if the company has come up with some innovative ways to address these problems, I'm pretty sure the public perception of the pods will be negative, because you're naturally going to assume that the pods have been occupied by people doing unsavory things. It's going to be perceived as the generally gross Porta-Potty of the accommodations industry.

One of the nice things about hotels and hostels and other places that are staffed 24/7 is that if someone lights up a cigarette in a nonsmoking room, or starts trashing the hotel room, there's someone on hand to address the problem. Here, I can only assume, the pods would only be sporadically monitored.

I think a better solution to problem of tired executives with minimal needs for amenities is in the pod hotels that you can find in the biggest metro areas. They're somewhat similar to these pods in design, but because they're located in hotel structures, they are staffed and the linens are changed, rooms cleaned, etc. by humans:

<http://www.thepodhotel.com/>

<comment><USER8> This is such a software forum!

Why is everyone assuming this is a fully automatic coin operated system?

I read "miniature, ready to go hotel rooms that you can buy, put anywhere you want (inside a building) and figure out how to manage yourself."

Seems to me like it'd be a good way of doing exactly what you have mentioned: a podhotel.

<comment><USER9> Because that would require people to be PAID to go around, cleaning up the sleepboxes, which may or may not actually be profitable, when you consider the cost of the sleepbox on top of it.

The entire POINT of it is that it's automated enough that you don't have to deal with that crap.

<comment><USER8> Again, where do you read that automated is the point? I read "space saving" & maybe an implied cheap and/or low maintenance. There is no mention, hint or implication of automated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I hope something like this takes off, mostly because I'd buy one for my apartment.

A few years back I spent many weeks trying to figure out how to purchase and get shipped one of the Japanese capsule hotel units to my apartment. I found a manufacturer (whose website was entirely in Japanese) and eventually was able to figure out that it wasn't really feasible (getting one of the units shipped to the U.S. was a nightmare, and the units are generally meant to be purchased in bulk), which made me sad.

I fully concede that I'm a weirdo, but I've dreamed about sleeping in a little cocoon module for most of my life (I spent a lot of my childhood wishing I was on a submarine, I'm a-ok with enclosed spaces).

<comment><USER11> Build one! It's not that hard, hardware stores will cut materials for you, and your local hackerspace will help with design and technical stuff. And it will have the extra sweetness of being your own hard work.

<comment><USER12> I wonder what it would take to turn this into a business, and what the demand would be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I prefer the MVP I've been using in airports for years:

      - <USER2>
      - ipod with white noise
      - mindfold mask (mindfold.com)
      - inflatable neck pillow
      - backpack with strap wrapped around my arm
      - empty gate of any soon-to-be-bankrupt airline

It's already paid for, it works great (the mindfold is the secret, believe me), it weighs less that a pound, and I can use it on the plane too.

<comment><USER14> Do you not fly enough to have lounge access?

<comment><USER15> You can pay for lounge access, it's usually around $50. But you can get free wifi, eat and drink as much as you want, grab a paper, etc. Makes up for the cost.

<comment><USER14> Yeah -- the cheapest way if you fly a lot, yet have no status or good credit cards, in many airports, is Priority Pass -- $99/yr + $27/visit. Getting the $99/yr part free from low-tier credit cards is fairly common, too.

Amex Platinum (which, admittedly, is $450/yr) also gets you into a lot of lounges.

Founders Card gets you lounge access through mid-tier airline status on a few airlines (especially useful for Cathay Pacific, my favorite airline in the world).

I'd totally prefer a coach ticket + $50 lounge pass + + nice ipad and iphone and $500 headphones + nicer hotel room, food, car, etc. at destination, to paid first class tickets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I saw similar booths in the Munich airport a few years ago, where they were called "NapCab". I had had a rough overnight flight and a messy transfer in Heathrow, a six hour layover in Munich, and of course server problems came up while I was in the air - so a small private room with calm lighting, power, and an internet connection was a godsend.

It worked with a credit card and cost (IIRC) about 15 euros per hour (10 euros/hr in the evening). There was a touch-screen for setting lighting, audio environment, and a wake-up alarm. It also had a bottle opener and a bottle of water. When you're finished, I gather that janitorial staff are notified and the NapCab is cleaned up and restocked for the next person.

Their website doesn't seem to be active anymore, so maybe the company didn't succeed - but here's a not-very-good picture of what mine looked like:

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/26099052@N03/4733241817/in/set-...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/26099052@N03/4733241817/in/set-72157624231703347)

<comment><USER17> it is still there, sadly only at Terminal 2: [http://www.munich- airport.de/en/consumer/aufenthalt_trans/ho...](http://www.munich- airport.de/en/consumer/aufenthalt_trans/hotels/napcabs/index.jsp)

<comment><USER16> Good to know they're still there - too bad they haven't expanded much though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Sleeping in public causes security, privacy and hygiene issues."

This sounds like a rationalization. For me, the reasons not to sleep in public are that public spaces are designed to discourage it, and cops will wake me up.

Public sleeping should be a right, but if something like Sleepbox becomes common, it will become even harder to sleep without having money.

<comment><USER19> For me it's definitely about the security of my belongings & personal safety. In certain places personal safety is less of a concern, but belongings are still so easy for someone to walk off with.

<comment><USER20> You can put those in a locker though

<comment><USER21> In the US, there are no more lockers in airports post-9/11.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wow. That's going to wind up to be the filthiest box in NYC. Word will spread among the homeless and drug addicts. Need a quick place to shoot up? There's the Sleepbox. Given the state of public restrooms in NYC, you're also just asking for bodily fluids everywhere. This is not a business in America. It's a money sink and an exercise in frustration. And if you think you can "limit" who uses it, good luck fending off all the lawsuits that will tell you otherwise.

<comment><USER23> That's why it would be stupid to stick this on a street. In places like airports or offices, where drug addicts are going to be significantly less numerous, something like this makes a lot more sense.

<comment><USER22> Homeless and Living at the Airport [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9109795...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91097959)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> But who's going to change and wash the sheets? Especially if it's being rented out by the hour. Will there be a full laundry after each and every user?

<comment><USER25> They could work towards automating it by dispensing fresh sheets for each guest and somehow improving the ease of changing them. (I'm sure there's better ways than changing sheets and covers tediously by hands. I mean a simple thing for example would be to automatically raise the mattress from the base.)

<comment><USER26> could have sheets made of many very thin skins and remove one for each client.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Maybe it's my experience of living in central London but I can certainly think of many 'demographics' that would be interested in soundproof bedrooms on the street...

</comment><comment><USER28> Sometimes I really need to be alone to recharge (introverts, anyone??). And it's not possible to do it in a busy place.

There are plenty of times I've been in an airport and would love to just be alone. This would be perfect.

</comment><comment><USER29> Great discussion, a lot of it centered around the difficulty of the clientele screwing up the place. But there are also a lot of assumptions going in which may not hold.

So if you look at AirBnB, one of its 'features' is that all of the renters and sellers are pre-vetted (and yes this doesn't always work but it keeps problem people in the system low). Look at the 'clear' system for pre-screening air travelers.

This sort of automated sleep spot is vulnerable to being trashed, so one solution is to create a signup process where the clients get some sort of identifying token, a key if you will, that allow them to use units.

The Sleepbox folks have a cool futuristic render but they don't seem to have an actual unit. That is a red flag for me but it only means that I won't invest in one until I see one actually 'in production.'

Resupply and restocking is a challenge too, but only if you want fast turn around and low employment costs. You can hire folks to turn over a unit when someone leaves and just be on site the whole time. Depending on occupancy rate and charges will determine if that is feasible.

So there are lots of variables but I don't see that there are any huge barriers to implementing this sort of scheme but I do wonder if there is a working business model in there somewhere.

<comment><USER30> Actually, it's already available in Moscow airports: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14514816>

<comment><USER29> Interesting, that is dated from August of last year (1 year ago). In fact there are several articles from that time, here is another one: [http://www.treehugger.com/sustainable-product- design/rent-a-...](http://www.treehugger.com/sustainable-product-design/rent- a-tiny-sleepbox-at-moscow-airport-for-sleeping.html) which has a bit more detail.

But there isn't anything since then. And to me its even stranger that their homepage they don't mention the installation. So my take on that was this was a 'demo' and not a real installation. Can you tell me if there are any being commercially operated ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> as much as i'd like this to be a reality there are some valid concerns on comments here.

Possible ways that this could work:

\- Make it subscription based with the regular credit card deposit liability. Any type of damage to the equipment would be accountable to the person who stayed there.

\- There would need to be persons responsible for maintaining these units 24 hrs a day. That person could be responsible for units in one space, or an area depending on use frequency. The unit would not be available until serviced after every use.

\- Make the unit more transparent. Use tinted glass instead of opaque walls. Tinted enough to block out bright light, but not opaque so that inhabitant(s) are not free to do whatever they want. this is just a more comfortable way to nap/relax and not an actual hotel.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> "Single, double and triple Sleepbox units are available at prices starting at EUR 7,000 ($8600). With an average annual income of USD 30,000 per unit, investments pay back in six to nine months, the company says."

From: [http://www.springwise.com/lifestyle_leisure/sleepbox- helps-t...](http://www.springwise.com/lifestyle_leisure/sleepbox-helps- travelers-catch-40-winks/)

<comment><USER4> Assuming a 100% load factor, and assuming someone is on hand to change the linen and keep it clean.

Being more realistic, it might be cash-flow positive from the start and turn a profit after the first year, _if_ you put it somewhere popular and get the cleaning/maintenance routine nailed down with decent cost control in place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I tried "Yotel" in the Gatwick airport, it's a similar idea but it's in a dedicated area.

<http://www.yotel.com/Hotels/London-Gatwick/Sleep>

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YOtel>

<comment><USER33> Was about to mention yotel - I loved my stay in my yotel at gatwick. Stayed in a similar 'tinyroom hotel' in Moscow last year - it wasn't as nice as Yotel.

My only complaint is not really with the concept itself, it's just that I'm generally using these things, I'm nervous I'll sleep too long and miss my flight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is not a new idea. <http://www.yotel.com> seems a direct competitor. Also, in the extreme we have the Japanese <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsule_hotel>.

<comment><USER35> Capsule hotels are not available in Japan airports, as far as I know...

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> The biggest issue with this is, how do you keep it clean? I wouldn't want to sleep somewhere that wasn't kept clean. Sure you sleep on train seats that are publicly shared with hundreds of different people daily. But here we're talking about actual beds, with pillows and sheets - I wouldn't want to put my face on a pillow that I knew was used previously by someone else without being properly cleaned.

</comment><comment><USER37> Please: every restaurant install one of these. How many times have I finished a meal and just wanted to lie down for 15 minutes??

<comment><USER38> You can't wait to drive her home first?

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Cool idea, but website needs significant work. For example, the font changes from sans serif to serif mid-page, for no explicable reason.

I'm assuming you'll require a credit card to use, which should cut down on a lot of the unsavory activities people are discussing.

</comment><comment><USER40> As an architect by training I find it really exciting to see something like this. The business of architecture is an incredible mess. Although I see a lot of big challenges in getting this to work well it's a great way to make a positive intervention in spaces that are often quite negative. Architects think about this kind of stuff all the time, but they rarely implement it.

All that being said these things look really overwrought, made from a strange collection of materials, and seem unlikely to be as clean as they should be. The rounded corners are driving me crazy.

<comment><USER41> /How interesting... a fellow Cooper architect (and one who appreciates circuits) on HN!

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Keeping these things clean would be very hard. Perhaps a better target market than single-night-guests is medium-term-guests.

I could see myself renting one of these things for a month in a city I visit on holiday.

</comment><comment><USER43> If these are a reasonably soundproof, they would be awesome in airports.

</comment><comment><USER44> This is bigger than my Tokyo apartment.

</comment><comment><USER45> I've been sleeping in my office a lot lately. My home environment is far too noisy. Now I would love a sleepbox but yes I question two things: hygiene and noise. Hopefully it's well ventilated and there's no bugs but oh how I'd love a showerbox attachment. Also, how well does it isolate noise? Airports are noisy places. Does it isolate low frequency as well? If it does, I'd buy one for my terrible apartment.

</comment><comment><USER46> They claim: "Design and functional elements are additionally protected by patents, including European patent No 001742719, Russian Federation patent RU2010501345, and US patent (pending)." I did a few minutes searching at the WIPO website because this really does seem like old art, and I was wondering if they simply did design patents. I could not find public documents on either the EP or Russian patents.

</comment><comment><USER47> It might just work if it's placed in a restricted "member" only area, like in an airport. After passing through security and check-in, the customer base has been vetted and pre-qualified. Travelers usually are relatively well off and well behaved, after passed through security. There're less chance of the place being trashed.

</comment><comment><USER48> I'm more interested in a portable version.

<comment><USER9> As am I. The issue is, how much space would the unfolded thing be, how would you ensure it's soundproof, and would you be able to carry it around normally? Presumably it'd be something that expands, maybe self-expanding. It wouldn't exactly be secure (someone would likely be able to cut through it) but it'd be easy enough to make it so if someone does so, it sets off some sort of alarm (to stop people cutting the thing open, and taking your stuff while you're sleeping).

I think the obvious thing would be to integrate it with a backpack (with the backpack itself expandable in size, probably), and have only the bed/matress there (so it's not very tall, even when expanded).)

<comment><USER48> Kickstarter? :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Many comments seemed concerned about the public perception that these will often be used for sex.

Since this is aimed at business travelers, it shouldn't be too hard to limit it to single occupancy.

Just add some kind of occupancy sensor--weight distribution on the bed maybe-- that alerts an employee when it detects more than one person.

<comment><USER50> That sounds like a completely unwieldy solution. Is an alarm going to go off every time I lift my legs up off the bed? What if I put a heavy suitcase on the bed next to me? Would you want your company to be known for refusing to allow a nursing mother and father to sit next to each other on the bed? What about a parent and a child?

Further, a hotel owner can't just barge in on a tenant. They have to believe someone is doing something illegal, disturbing other tenants or causing damage.

<comment><USER49> >Is an alarm going to go off every time I lift my legs up off the bed? What if I put a heavy suitcase on the bed next to me?

I think I could write an algorithm to filter out the vast majority of false positives. With enough pressure sensors under the mattress, and maybe passive IR it really shouldn't be too difficult (face recognition with automated deletes and no long term recording or viewing capabilities would probably be easiest, but people would find it creepy). Suitcases don't move the way people do, pressure distribution is different (also who's traveling with 100+ pound suitcases) etc...

Moving your legs shouldn't be too hard to filter out either. Btw if anyone wants to pay me, I'm up for the project ;)

Now that I think about it Volvo made a heartbeat sensor, I think using an acceleration to detect minute vibrations. That could work as well.

>Would you want your company to be known for refusing to allow a nursing mother and father to sit next to each other on the bed? What about a parent and a child?

This is only for single occupancy business travel pods, no room for 2 people, no children allowed.

>Further, a hotel owner can't just barge in on a tenant. They have to believe someone is doing something illegal, disturbing other tenants or causing damage.

That depends on local laws, in many places breaking house rules (having more than one occupant) is enough to allow them to enter.

In any case it doesn't matter, if they have reason to believe you are breaking the rules they can keep knocking on the door until you open up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> This is a great idea if not too expensive and implemented correctly. (Clean and wakes me up for my flight). I was trying to get my fairly liberal school to put hammocks in. I had a lesson at 9am and then at 2pm, sometimes I had little to do and left and returned.

</comment><comment><USER52> "They will enjoy hotel level of security and comfort at a hostel price. Suggested night rate 60+ USD."

I always thought hostels were cheaper than that, per night. Is that pretty accurate though?

</comment><comment><USER26> That's nice but for airport what about fixing the real problem, which is that it is so hard to sleep during the flight. More silent planes and hamacs could be the answer.

</comment><comment><USER53> I foresee as much use for short naps as for quickies.

</comment><comment><USER54> Wow, what a pleasant surprise to see this familiar (to me) business on HN. I researched Sleepbox extensively while working to found a startup called "NapTime" that would operate napping pods in high-sleep-demand areas (same pain point, different design). Yotel, Metronaps, MinuteSuites, YeloCab, FirstClass Seats (arguably), and several other businesses are similar in concept.

I worked on this startup for about 7 months with 3 other grad students (at the time) and thus have spent way too much time learning about this problem, the challenges involved in addressing it, and prior/existing attempts to do so. We directly interviewed over 100 potential customers for it, managed to track down and talk to other founders in this space, wrote a full business plan, etc. Here are some of my insights:

\- Far and away the #1 most commonly asked question we got was: "But won't people have sex in it?" The #2 most common (arguably a corollary) was "How will you keep them clean?" But that's not the interesting part... the fascinating thing is that you ONLY get these questions when people are envisioning something similar to the Sleepbox (frequently mocked as "Sexbox" or "Sleazebox" in online comment sections and the like). Neither Metronaps (i.e. high-tech recliner) nor Yotel (i.e. super-compact hotel room) seem to inspire this "ick" factor. Why? My hypothesis: Imagine a spectrum from "chair- like" (zero enclosure, zero privacy) to "room-like" (total enclosure, total privacy). On the "chair" end, it doesn't really occur to us that some stranger might have sexed on it, even if it's totally possible. On the "room" end, we know full well that strangers probably HAVE sexed there, but it doesn't bother us because we consider a private room to be an acceptable, non-sketchy place to do such things. It's only at some point in the middle that the perceived "wholesomeness" of the design plummets dramatically... we are squicked by the thought that some stranger may have sexed _somewhere they are not SUPPOSED to._ This effect was so predictable that I started calling it the "Unwholesome Valley" (like the "Uncanny Valley," but with a different x-axis) For NapTime, I had some ideas for how to get safely to the left, "chair" end of the Unwholesome Valley while still providing a sense of security (highly important to most people we interviewed) and making access restriction a possibility (essential if you want to make any money.)

\- People often think of airline travelers as the most lucrative market for a sleep pod business, because they're always tired, they're a captive market, and travelers are often willing to spend more money. However, there are a few major hurdles that make airports a difficult place to make money (most of these I learned from talking with a founder who had tried to do an airport version of their napping business, without success). Perhaps the most non- obvious is this: airports are _empty_ most of the time. Most airports have four "spikes" per day when it is crowded; the rest of the time, it is almost totally deserted. Most of us perceive airports as being busy all the time; this is because we, as travelers, are only there during those spikes. Businesses who sell to airline travelers know otherwise. The "spiky" nature of airport occupancy is a particular problem for a napping pod business because 1) Most of the time, there are no customers around and 2) When you are suddenly surrounded by customers during a spike, you have limited ability to take advantage of it, because each pod only holds one person (unlike an airport coffee stand which is limited only by how quickly they can perform each transaction). However, I do believe success is possible if you account for the challenges while designing the business model and the pod itself.

\- Despite the technical challenges, I believe that it is better to have a "vending" model where each pod is independent and self-service, rather than a "sleep salon" model where the pods are grouped together in a lounge with an attendant. The primary reason (again, according to founder interview) is that tired people are extremely reluctant to walk ANY distance to get their nap, so you need to locate the pod _exactly_ where the demand is (demand is spread out within the building, and so too must your pods). I would also hypothesize that tired people would prefer not to interact with a human attendant and deal with the self-consciousness of sleeping in his/her presence.

Long post, I know, but this was practically my whole life for the better part of a year, so I have lots to babble about. My cofounders ended up ditching the project upon graduation despite seeming very gung-ho about founding up until that point. I put the project on ice, but I would love to pick it up again someday under the right circumstances and with the right people. Who knows... if you're interested, contact me. I live near Mountain View.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I think it would have a good market in replacing shared hostel/dorm room accommodation for backpackers.

</comment><comment><USER55> Did this thing catch on? I remember reading about it a couple years back.

</comment><comment><USER56> How do they hedge against bed bugs?

That's a solvable problem. I still love the idea.

</comment><comment><USER57> you could potentially integrate physiological sensors to monitor for occupant numbers and elevated heart and breathing rates to detect for sexual activity, then have some sort of warning, alarm and deterrence system if you were interested in preventing it from happening. or customers who use the pod for sex could automatically be billed a premium/fee (assuming credit card use). molecular sniffers might be possible to monitor for drug use. but the best strategy to ensure would probably be deploying them in limited-access environments. or perhaps fixing the roots of anti-social behaviour and mistrust in our societies.

<comment><USER58> What's wrong with sex in the box? Why not just install camera then?

<comment><USER9> I read that as "why not just pay the premiums of sex by selling a recording of them going at it, as amateur porn?".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> nice, but at what point can we get over associating radically new living space ideas with the design ethos of "2001 A Space Odyssey" ?

</comment><comment><USER60> I love this :)

</comment><comment><USER61> Please try "Settings -> Show advanced settings -> Web Content" in Google Chrome and set the font size to "Very large". Then visit your page again.

gz

</comment><comment><USER62> looks cool, but the website is kinda meh. that currency picture on the bottom is super-pixellated.

</comment><comment><USER63> did anyone else think this was a bufferbox parody?</comment>


LISA Pathfinder: From Gravitational Waves to Space Dust - <AUTHOR> http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/lisa-pathfinder-gravitational-waves-space-dust/ <comment><USER2> The precision this needs is mind boggling. Same for LiGO where they have pick up movements a fraction of the size of a proton.</comment>


Python (2.7.9) Plus – Claims to have improved threading by 30%.  Thoughts? - <AUTHOR> http://cosmicpercolator.com/2015/04/07/pythonplus/

<comment><USER2> "Thoughts" is such a nebulous question.

You could be asking about if it's true. In that case, you should build it yourself and run some tests, since it might or might not be true for your requirements.

Or you could be asking about the author of that fork. He was a long time developer at CCP, and worked on low-level details of the Python and Stackless Python implementations. Eg, he made changes so that Python could fit into consoles, like the Playstation. But the internal evidence in the blog post looks solid, so I don't think you really need to consider reputation as well - download the code and test it out.

Personally, my thoughts are "hey, I didn't realize Kristján left CCP. I wonder what he's doing now. I haven't seen him for years. I should visit Iceland again."

But I suspect those weren't the thoughts you were looking for.

<comment><USER3> Hi Andrew! Forever looking for low hanging fruits, I think I did stumble on something. However, the tests are deliberately artificial, designed to emphasise the effect. Unless someone does it for me, I need to set up a real linux box and run the tests on that.

<comment><USER2> With decades of people looking for low hanging fruit, they do get harder to find. Lycka till med ditt nya jobb!</comment></comment></comment>


Tencent surpasses Facebook in valuation a day after breaking $500B barrier - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/21/tencent-surpasses-facebook-in-valuation.html <comment><USER2> The first time I heard of Tencent Holdings was earlier this year. They are holding company with business across many verticals. I heard of them because one of their businesses had copied a game for the Chinese market without giving the original developers their due. And it turned out they were quite notorious for it: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent#Copying_claims](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent#Copying_claims)

Here's their presentation on how they protect/respect IPs: [https://www.tencent.com/legal/html/en- us/property.html](https://www.tencent.com/legal/html/en-us/property.html)

And this is just tip of the iceberg.

If people think EA is bad with it's monetisation policy, wait till they try one of Tencent's games.

And if someone thinks FB is bad and addictive, try reading about this company and it's grasp in China.

</comment><comment><USER3> General trends in past year have seen Chinese comapines Temcent and Alibaba shoot up from below top 10:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_public_corporations_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_public_corporations_by_market_capitalization)</comment>


Swish (YC W13) Makes Selling Simpler For Inventors And Creators - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/01/yc-backed-swish-makes-selling-simpler-for-inventors-and-creators/

<comment><USER2> There's definitely room in the market for several players (in terms of the whole crowd-design/manufacturing space), but I think that down the road, there will be one clear winner. At the end of the day, this industry is a network effects game. Inventors/sellers will always flock to the service with the largest user base to increase their chances of getting their ideas to market. Right now, I'd say the frontrunners are Kickstarter and Quirky, although I've personally seen inventors shy away from Kickstarter because of their increasingly stingy policies. Quirky probably has the most unique model by partnering with big box retailers and tapping into a much broader distribution bottleneck.

<comment><USER3> I don't think there will be one clear winner in the crowd-design/manufacturing space, I think there is room for a site for each niche.

For example, <http://www.unbrandeddesigns.com/> is gaining traction as "Quirky for furniture". I see many advantages. The submissions and participants are more focused and passionate since they're only dealing with the type of product they care about. And the team can source, build, sell, and distribute more effectively because they are only working within one industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The site itself is a bit weird. Most of the content looks like it's loaded in via AJAX, and on a slower connection it's pretty jarring. Clicking on "See All" initially shows the "About Us" section of the page, which caused me to think I clicked the wrong link, and went back. It wasn't until I clicked it again that I noticed what was going on. At least throw some kind of AJAX spinner/placeholder or indicator that the page content is still loading.

Cool idea though.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the input! We're AJAXing in the product data, and then the browser fetches the images from CloudFront. I'll add a spinner asap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sounds like a great concept. But 35% of markup is too high. Margins for hardware goods are low enough already. Then you take 35% of that. I think you'll end up with a bunch of overpriced items with inventors struggling to make a profit.

<comment><USER7> I can see why you might think 35% is high. Compared to Kickstarter or Esty who only charge ~5%, we do take a larger percentage. But at the same time, we are not just a platform like they are. We are actually a retailer, and we take care of payment processing and fulfillment to consumers. Most retailers charge 50% of the retail price for these services (which cost real money).

Though Kickstarer only takes 5%, you pay another ~5% in payment processing fees, and then you must set up and pay for fulfillment yourself, which is time consuming and expensive! We think it is inefficient that every Kickstarter or Etsy creator has to come up with a solution on their own, often at a large expense. We want the creator to focus as much as possible on building the best product they can, not on fulfillment, website, video, PR, etc etc.

You can read more about our wholesale pricing thoughts at: <http://swish.com/wholesale>

<comment><USER6> I understand where you're coming from, but I would argue that your true value add is discoverability or customer acquisition.

Payment processing can be added easily to any customer-facing website. One- time product fulfillment for any number of customers, for completed products all located at one place isn't too hard. Yes, packaging is a challenge, but there are dedicated e-fulfillment services like Shipwire that don't cost so much.

Assuming I have a product that I would like to sell for $100, after accounting for payment processing and order fulfillment (let's say at 3% and 5% respectively), that leaves around 27% for customer acquisition. So I have to decide if paying more than $25 to acquire each customer is worth it. If we're talking about Costco, Amazon, Walmart, maybe. Some inventors would give their first born to get on a Costco or Walmart shelf, probably for good reason too. I don't think Swish offers the same value proposition, at least not yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't mean to be a yes-man, but just to offset some of the other comments: The site is clearly an early (but totally functional) version. It will get better + prettier + more ajaxy as time goes on. Bravo on your launch!

</comment><comment><USER9> It's like a mix between Quirky.com and Kickstarter if I'm correct?

<comment><AUTHOR> We're a degree or two away from several businesses... I'd say we were closer to "Kickstarter meets Reddit".

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like little niche markets like this. If Roots didn't beat you by two weeks, I'd definitely get a cork wallet; seriously, a cork wallet! I like.</comment>


PC on a USB Stick for $25 - <AUTHOR> http://www.geekwithlaptop.com/pc-on-a-usb-stick-for-25 <comment><USER2> Yeah, saw that back when it was first posted. Nothing new in the linked article.

Better update, if you go to the site.

<http://www.raspberrypi.org/>

It looks like they've just printed some alpha PCBs.

Also, they are now talking about it being the size of a credit card rather than a thumb drive. Release target is end of 2011. Cost target is $35 for the full version or $25 for one with no LAN or USB and less memory. (Given the development stage, that could easily all change.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Ha, I love me some _Ubunto_. Really interesting device, though. It's good to see that it's going somewhere.</comment>


Hillary Clinton Plans to Campaign Against Uber's Contractor Economy - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/12/clinton-uber/ <comment><USER2> The reason airbnb and uber exist is because the prior business models are broken with regards to a big enough portion of their potential customers. A conversation with the average taxi driver will reveal the job is no ticket to the high life or consistent pay.

The way forward is to get rid of the concept of 'benefits' packages and just let people work for a gross pay and let themselves choose their own benefits from that.

Ultimate flexibility is what efficient economies are about. Unions don't like that future and understandably try and fight it. It's a futile fight in the end.

The reference to qualifying for a loan based on permanent work is not relevant. A history of stable earnings is enough to qualify for a loan. Permanent positions are no guarantee of enough employment to pay down most loans.

<comment><USER3> Without the bargaining power of large groups of employees, how will reasonable costs and levels of service be maintained? It's well established that people on their own without insurance get charged much higher rates than people with insurance get charged for the same procedures at the same hospitals. Presumably the same effects apply to individuals trying to obtain a price for insurance versus an employer bargaining for a group of employees.

<comment><USER2> Seems to work ok in many places around the world and in different products within the us. You don't need 'group buying' for auto or home insurance, or car or home purchases.

In fact group buying probably hinders the ability to get the right product/person match.

Of all the problems to solve, it seems pretty easy. Even if that just means groupon for benefits.

<comment><USER4> I'll bite. Where are these "many places around the world" that have your desired laissez-faire approach to health care? Are you talking about places like India or what?

Also, I would hate to see a health care system as badly managed as Groupon.

<comment><USER2> I live in Australia. I have private health insurance. It's an old policy from when I was employed with a package. The policy costs no more than when it was part of that package. That's maybe because the policy is priced based on me (age mostly) rather than the employer. I'm not 100% sure why there's no real difference between employer based policies and personal policies.

Anyway point is the problem is solve able.

<comment><USER4> I'm just getting this from Wikipedia, but: "Health care in Australia is universal. The federal government pays a large percentage of the cost of services in public hospitals."

I would happily have Australia's solution in the US. It would go much farther than Obamacare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As someone who loves Uber and who spends thousands of dollars a year on their app, and as someone who dislikes Hillary, I cannot be happier with Hillary's stance.

Uber will remain here and their rides will stay cheap. I am, however, very concerned about their drivers. Many of them are making huge investments purchasing new cars with the implicit (and sometimes borderline explicit, depending on the marketing rep you talk to at Uber) that they can have guaranteed work and a guaranteed wage. If über decides to cut driver wages in half and pocket the profits, drivers will be out of luck. This can be catastrophic for poor families, which will be basically be forced into wage slavery. This will have huge effects on the community as Uber gets bigger.

We can all point to how Taxi unions and their lobbyists are evil (as a colored man, it's difficult for me to get picked up by one), how awesome Uber is w/ their investments in autonomous cars, and the free markets are great...but we need real employee protections in this country.

We need real protection for drivers who are making a huge investment. This doesn't have to hurt consumers either, as über can still remain insanely profitable while maintaining lower prices.

Edit: Removed the umlauts

<comment><USER6> I am not sure if uber has the umlauts.

While I am not great supporter of the taxi industry, I do think that you should not be too hard on the taxi drivers for not picking you up although I do understand your personal frustration. I am not sure how many uber drivers would be happy to pick up random people without knowing they had been pre- screened.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I stopped caring about how taxi drivers treat me. Ironically, it is because I can use uber now :)

<comment><USER6> As a good passenger you want a way of being able to tell the driver this. Uber lets you in effect do this, but there is nothing stopping the taxi industry copying the same process. If they did they would give uber a real run for its money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hillary sat on the board of Wal-Mart from 1986 to 1992 and there aren't many places that exploit their workers much more than they do. It would have been nice if she had done some campaigning on behalf of workers back then.

<comment><USER8> She's not campaigning for workers now, either. She's campaigning on behalf of lobbyists whose broken business models are being threatened by Uber and their ilk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "sharing economy" sounds so much friendlier than "contractor, no workplace protections economy"

</comment><comment><USER10> Labor market flexibility is one of the great strengths of the US economy. It's one of the reasons why unemployment is back to reasonable levels even after the Great Recession. The freelancer economy has some downsides but in aggregate it's a good thing, both for workers and the economy as a whole. The opposite end of the spectrum is the labor market regulations in a country like Greece, which has always been a drag on their economy (even before their debt crisis).

Anyway, this is a great opportunity for the Republicans to paint themselves as the party of progress and technology, though they need to clean up some of their backward views (climate change, etc.) before such a claim would be credible.

The NY Times had a somewhat more balanced article about Hillary campaigning against Uber: [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/13/business/rising- economic-i...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/13/business/rising-economic- insecurity-tied-to-decades-long-trend-in-employment-practices.html)

<comment> norea-armozel It would be fine if the price of housing, food, and healthcare weren't so far out of sync with the wages earned. This is going to lead to a permanent underclass where people are worse off than even serfs of the medieval period.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> ...so instead of refactoring your law so that contractors have the same social benefits as "full-time employees" instead, she wants to turn the contractors into more easily controlled full time wage slaves.

I _really hope you Americans don 't vote a president with such twisted logic!_ ...imagine how this warped way of thinking would be manifested in international politics

</comment><comment><USER12> I happen to agree that there needs to be a better understanding.

Personally I believe that ultimately we'll just expand unconditional basic income via a welfare state one way or the other, and people will choose to work if they want to. But until that happens...

It would be a good idea to define the difference between a marketplace that connecta people and one that sets the terms without the two sides having input.

Once again centralization causes the heavy hand of the central party, whether a marketplace, buyer or provider.

</comment><comment><USER13> David Plouffe, Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign manager (the guy who orchestrated Hillary's upset in the Democratic primary) is now the SVP of Policy and Strategy at Uber. This could get personal.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is why we have campaigns. We get to see the cadnidate's logic across a wide spectrum of topics.

This is practically a deal killer for me and Hillary. I think that W2 employment is a dying model. Piecemeal 1099 work empowers every participant to have clear and direct economic benefit and takes the power away from corporations to exploit labor with manipulation about how incapable they are to function independently. They rob the individual of identity, forcing membership in the ranks of the company as a sense of self.

Instead I think work will be distributed, scalable, and coordinated with great software. I think that work will happen based on real-time pricing and presence. I think that means having skills and a good reputation means you can always work when you want as much or as little as you want as long as you actually produce.

I hope that said great software isn't owned and operated by a for-profit institution, but instead is a community-driven, decentralized tool. I think this would pave the way for as close as possible 'frictionless' marketplace where the value of things and people's time are based on the value they bring, not based on slick sales tactics or lobbied regulations.

I seriously believe that government needs to empower and support independent work, or face a slow, 'Snow Crash' style extinction when mesh coordination brings about digital voting, etc.

I get a sense that Hillary will in many ways enforce the status quo and that simply isn't the kind of leadership that we need as we approach 2020 and all that comes along with it.

</comment><comment><USER15> Uber is a great service and a great idea. However, they encounter many legal problems. I am not surprised that Hillary Clinton wants to move this industry... a bit like the French government does.

</comment><comment><USER16> _CharityWatch says even a "minimally efficient" foundation spends 60 percent of its budget on programs. In the years 2009-2012, the Clinton Foundation devoted just 15 percent to charitable grants, according to an analysis of IRS filings by The Federalist. That fell to 10 percent in 2013. Forty-five percent was spent on salaries, perks and travel for staff._

[http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/05/31/clinton...](http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/05/31/clintons_corruption_126800.html)

Hiliary Clinton can be bought and is being bought through donations to her foundation.

</comment><comment><USER17> Regardless of what you think of the issue, that read like a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed. I know Techcrunch skews pro-tech, but at some point reading articles like that increases your filter bubble and ends up with the reader worse off. Instead of understanding WHY people feel so strongly enough about the issue that it's a political issue, a reader just hears essentially a diatribe of why Hillary Clinton is wrong and Uber is great...

Again, no judgement on whether or not Uber is great or HC is wrong, just a concern that articles like this enhance the SV echo chamber to our own detriment.

</comment><comment><USER18>
       Uber should have to follow the same laws that other taxi companies have to. I don't agree with the monopoly systems that are in place for taxis in most cities those should be removed. But at the same time many of these laws are so that taxis are available not just in the peak period but other times as well. So laws that force taxi companies to have part of the fleet available at all times should be also be enforced on uber and other such companies as well.

</comment><comment><USER19> I know my opinion won't be popular on HN, but looking at uber, especially, and similar companies from the outside (American living in Europe the last 6 years), the u.s. appears to be in a race to the bottom, with people competing to lower their own wages.

I like uber but I think they f*cked themselves over and deserve every bit of scrutiny they are getting. There are markets where they don't screw over the drivers, for example where I live in Zurich uber is the same price as a cab but it's more convenient because of the app.

If uber was truly beneficial to their drivers in the u.s. They wouldn't be under this scrutiny. They deserve whatever pain they receive and hopefully someone more responsible will take over the market.

Good luck fighting the political class. Uber will lose this fight.

<comment><USER20> Uber will fight the laws for at least a couple of years and by then be half way through replacing the entire labor force with autonomous cars. This is a political tactic designed to get Hillary points in the media. She's smart enough to know it'll have little to no long term impact.

<comment><USER19> Frankly I'm surprised she picked uber as a target as uber has a very strong, large, and sophisticated political lobbying organization. Granted, they focus on local politics more than national, so maybe this is a sign of Hillary being out of touch with the local level.

I don't think we'll have autonomous cars in 2 years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Just the other day someone posted a link about the "sharing economy" job of pretending to be a girlfriend. The service is promoted as a way to convince others that you're getting some.

In reality is is used for many things, for example the author's "boyfriend" wrecked his car and needed someone to talk to.

However the author found that she earned about one dollar per hour. The crowdsourcing company that she worked for points out that, as its workers are independent contractors, it is not bound by employment laws.

I hasten to disagree but that's what the company actually says.

I see the sharing economy as the problem not the solution.

</comment><comment><USER22> Hillary never needs to use anything like Uber or Airbnb.

Whether sharing/contract economy is good or bad, it is a complicated issue. Why would we need a president pretending knows everything?</comment>


Casting Light on Mystery of a Star That Vanished After 14 Days - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/30/science/nova-stars-korea.html <comment><USER2> Same star?

[https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/a-cosmic...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/a-cosmic- whodunit/538482/?single_page=true)</comment>


The Secret Of Being A Great Mentor - <AUTHOR> http://www.skorks.com/2009/09/the-secret-of-being-a-great-mentor/ <comment><USER2> Whenever someone mentions mentoring, I am immediately reminded of this good recollection by Prof.Kirk Martini about his mentor Prof. Randy Pausch

[http://people.virginia.edu/~km6e/Papers/pausch-mentor- essay....](http://people.virginia.edu/~km6e/Papers/pausch-mentor-essay.pdf) [Warning: PDF]

</comment><comment><USER3> This is just perfect, speaking from the other (lower) side of the fence. In my limited experience as a 'mentee' - I would say the best mentors have clearly articulated what is expected of me, then left me to think my way through.

The worst - even more so than the micro-managing types - are those who make lofty statements like "take initiative", and "be proactive", without much substantiation beyond that. Thus far, these have been the quintessential PHBs.

</comment><comment><USER4> Slightly related, but hopefully worth mentioning...

If anyone's in the UK and is looking for a mentor to help them with their IT- related entrepreneurial activities, then here's a really good scheme:

      http://www.itcmentoring.com/

It's where my startup found our absolutely wonderful mentor.

</comment><comment><USER5> How does this compare to advisor-student relationships in grad school?

<comment><AUTHOR> It is not quite the same thing, but some of the elements would certainly apply, such as confidentiality etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The idea of mentor/mentee and master/apprentice relationships is way overdue in the software industry. It's good to see an author try to get out what's involved in a good relationship.

I didn't find a lot of new material here and it seemed rambling, but since I'm in the business I'm not much of an impartial judge!

In the future, I'd rather see the top 3 key traits of a mentor instead of the dozen or more items we got. Also why these traits were chosen. It seems one of the qualifications for being a mentor is being able to give lots of options and bullet points. I think the harder part is filtering it out and making it easy for noobs. Just my opinion, though. Thanks for the article!

<comment><USER7> Sounds like it's time for you to write an article!</comment></comment>


Who's the real bully, Uber or New York? - <AUTHOR> http://pandodaily.com/2012/10/17/whos-the-real-bully-uber-or-new-york/

<comment><USER2> (Former NYer)

Uber is a fairly good idea. But the rules/laws in place that define how livery vehicles are allowed to operate in NYC are also full of good ideas (some bad ones too).

Travis fully knew his wrist would be slapped hard by the multiple stake- holders (including organized crime) involved in the taxi and limousine racket in NYC.

And... after living in Manhattan for 8 years, I've never had trouble getting a car when I want a car instead of the relatively effective (dirty) subway. Just keep the numbers of 10-12 limo drivers or gypsy cab drivers you like in your phone... one of them will always be available, they'll remember you, and it's almost always so close to the price of a cab as to be the same.</comment>


Armed robbers hit Apple store in Paris for 1.3 million - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/02/tech/france-apple-store-robbery/index.html

<comment><USER2> I wonder why won't Apple implement some stolen iPhone tracking. Imagine stolen iPhones displaying a "this iPhone was stolen" message during initial activation. This will make small stores owners (which I assume are a big part in sale of said stolen devices) actually care and check the source of their merchandise.

<comment><USER3> Verizon appears to care now

I was told there would be no issue activating my old iPhone4 on my mother in law's account as long as "no one reported it stolen"</comment></comment>


Difficulty in implementing tail recursive calls in C - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27596248/why-languages-such-as-c-pascal-cannot-implement-tail-recursion

<comment><USER2> Common Lisp has no stanadrd-defined support for tail recursion (though compilers do).

I was able to easily hack up portable tail recursion using macros and whatnot.

[http://www.kylheku.com/cgit/lisp-snippets/tree/tail- recursio...](http://www.kylheku.com/cgit/lisp-snippets/tree/tail- recursion.lisp)

No need to drop into the compiler level.</comment>


An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPAO-lZ4_hU

<comment><USER2> I do not know what is about his videos that give this profound feeling not of sadness or joy, but of beauty.</comment>


Coming Soon: DIY Solar Panels Made Out Of Grass Clippings - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcoexist.com/1679252/coming-soon-diy-solar-panels-made-out-of-grass-clippings <comment><USER2> If this turned to reality, then this would be a great help to lots of people. It can help to save money from the electric bill. For those who are not yet reach by electricity, they can have one without spending much on the commercial solar panel.</comment>


Show HN: AppGrid, macOS window manager with Vim–like hotkeys - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sdegutis/AppGrid <comment><USER2> I've built similar functionality using Hammerspoon, configuration described at [http://simonduff.net/hammerspoon/](http://simonduff.net/hammerspoon/)

However, I normally find myself lazy, and normally end up using the trackpad to drag windows to corners and edges to resize (also built with Hammerspoon)

<comment><USER2> Oh wow, I've just realised your _that_ Steven Degutis, author of Mjolnir, of which Hammerspoon is based!!!

Any reason you've built a stand-alone app for this, given Mjolnir (and Hammerspoon) can do this pretty easily?

<comment><AUTHOR> Coincidentally I answered this in a sibling comment at the same time you asked. Long story short this doesn't require configuration and is pretty lightweight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm a very happy spectacle user myself, and find it more than sufficient for me, I am wondering what are the use cases for more than 2x2 grid. I can see aligning 80x25 terminals edge to edge a very neat layout, but that's stacking AFAIK, not grid. When using grid, it would just resize them to grid and desirable 80x25 sizes would break. And apart of seeing a lot of terminals at once in alignment what are other useful work layouts for you?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks to everyone who encouraged me yesterday to polish this app and submit it. It may not be a big app, but I've used it every time I'm at my computer for probably the past 5 years straight. Hope some of you find it useful too!

</comment><comment><USER4> For anyone using Windows with vertical monitors, I made something in AutoHotKey that helps snap windows to top/bottom half or third of the screen. This is useful if you regularly use Win+Left/Right key to snap windows to the left/right screen on landscape monitors but miss the feature on portrait monitors.

[https://gist.github.com/sachleen/6ee644b25d77eac49b0b1f8ee4b...](https://gist.github.com/sachleen/6ee644b25d77eac49b0b1f8ee4be5c45)

</comment><comment><USER5> I use spectacle myself ([https://github.com/eczarny/spectacle](https://github.com/eczarny/spectacle))

<comment><AUTHOR> The main difference is that AppGrid allows slightly more flexibility (Spectacle can be considered a 2x2 grid in AppGrid) but without having to learn a disproportionate amount of keyboard hotkeys.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> >Keys default to Mash (cmd + ctrl + opt)

I'm an emacs guy, not a vim guy: what does this mean?

<comment><USER7> By default the key bindings are cmd+ctrl+opt+{h,j,k,l} to move windows around left/down/up/right respectively.

<comment><USER6> Why is that called Mash?</comment></comment></comment>


Sell While You Hire - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/unusual-ventures/sell-while-you-hire-3b11022fad09 <comment><USER2> I can't help but feel that if you want to limit your potential hires to those you can sell your vision to in interviews and get their commitment to and belief in that vision then you will be limiting your pool to the mainly naive and inexperienced.

on edit: fixed grammatical error</comment>


Google knew YouTube did evil, but bought it anyway (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/19/google_evil_ok/ <comment><USER2> And it paid off. So the question is, looking back, which way do you think they should have gone?</comment>