New YC Partner Investment Policy - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ycombinator.com/new-yc-partner-investment-policy <comment><USER3> "This should fix the problem. If it doesn't we'll try something else."

That's an interesting phrase. This should really be implicit in everything we say or do. It stands to reason, if something doesn't work, you try something different.

But when you're famous and have thousands of people who constantly try to undermine you or misquote you or take something out of context, you start to need to be explicit in calling this out. Otherwise next month's tech rag headline says "YC partner recants failed investment policy".

<comment><USER4> Oh I'm sure it'll happen, they'll just ignore the existence of this policy altogether when they do: "PG Prevents Partners from Investing in Minority- Founded Startup"

<comment><USER5> Come on, mocking straw men just makes things worse for everyone.

<comment><USER6> That's not a straw man, it's satire.

<comment><USER7> satire is a subset of a strawman

<comment><USER8> If either of those is a subset of the other then strawman would be a subset of satire.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, subset wasn't the right term. The sets intersect. Exaggeration (a form of satire) is a strawman.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That's smart. When we did it (Summer 2007) investors we talked to still didn't even know you guys did that. A couple asked, most didn't. I won't lie, we used it to our advantage.

I'm sure it only took a couple rounds before people started noticing you (and some alums) in the cap tables and realizing what's going on. Word spread. I have no doubt that now it is considered a signal.

Investing is like dating. You need to be right for them, and they need to be right for you. Just because you don't want to invest in someone doesn't mean they're a bad investment. Smarter angels & VCs probably realize this, but there's plenty of perfectly good money that would not go to companies who might be a good fit amongst the less savvy.

<comment><USER10> Super interesting story, and thanks for sharing. I think you're referring to your time at DraftMix, right? Admittedly that was a really hard connection to find online [see below].

That said, quietly using partner/alumni investment as a signal for VCs doesn't quite fit the "Startups are a perfect meritocracy" narrative I'd prefer to believe...

[below]

Interestingly, searching for "Matt Maroon" (on Google, Crunchbase, AngelList, etc) yields results like [0] that only mention Blue Frog. Same for your blog. Wouldn't care otherwise, but I wanted to know if your story _could_ be true or to dismiss as an internet rant.

However there was one interview-like-thing [1] still hanging around the Google Index that connected DraftMix [2] with a "Matthew Maroon" as the CEO [3]

[0] [http://www.crunchbase.com/person/matt- maroon](http://www.crunchbase.com/person/matt-maroon)

[1] [http://en.wikioffuture.org/DraftMix](http://en.wikioffuture.org/DraftMix)

[2] [http://www.crunchbase.com/company/draftmix](http://www.crunchbase.com/company/draftmix)

[3] [http://www.crunchbase.com/person/matthew- maroon](http://www.crunchbase.com/person/matthew-maroon)

<comment><USER11> For some reason this strikes me as kind of creepy.

<comment><USER12> ...and people talk about the death of privacy like it's no big thing. Remember, the real creeps don't post their research on a public forum (unless it's for harassment).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am assuming that "YC partners not able to invest till the start has raised atleast $500K or 3 weeks after demo day" will mean YC founders follow the rule in letter and spirit i.e. no pre-discussions with YC partners leading to pitching claims like "One of the YC partners has committed to investing after first $500K" ...

<comment><USER14> We're small enough that we can enforce things easily on our side. We can't control what founders say to investors. But experienced investors wouldn't believe a YC partner had agreed to invest without being able to confirm it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is interesting, and actually similar to a policy that a lot of elite high schools in the US follow: not ranking their students. If you have good unis accepting 50% of your class, ranking your students unnecessarily makes your 50th percentile weaker candidates than the 95th percentile at schools that rank (often even if those schools only have 2-3% getting into top-flight unis).

However, the downside of not ranking is that your top 1-5% of students are not clear to the extreme elite (Harvard, Stanford, MIT) schools, meaning there is no one who is "guaranteed" those positions, as even your top 5% has to compete with students in the top 20 or 30% for admittance. For high schools that couldn't hope to admit more than 5% of their class in top tier unis, it makes sense to rank (as then you get to showcase your top students as being exceptional). If you expect 20% or more to be competitive candidates though, it's usually better to stay quiet on relative success.

<comment><USER16> This is a nice example of what's wrong with elitism in higher-education, mis- applying metrics to "rank" students.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, it's funny. A friend of mine got one B in high school and ended up outside the top 5% of his class (which matters for some scholarships) because there were twelve kids with straight A's. If he had been a year younger he would have been second in his class.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, my high school stopped publishing class ranks in transcripts as of my graduating class because something like you got down to 50 or 60 out of a class of nearly 300 before you got _below_ a 4.0 GPA and it was hurting kids on college admissions.

<comment><USER19> 20% of the student body had straight A's? Sounds like grade inflation to me.

<comment><USER18> Liberal arts magnet school that only took the top students in a metro area of 250k people. You had to test in to be admitted and failing any one class meant you went back to one of the area's non-magnet high schools.

So not inflation, just that the student body was limited to kids that were going to make high grades anyway with very heavy AP course loads (which push GPAs over 4.0 since they're weighted).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Kudos. This was an issue in my batch. If you didn't have YC partner money you weren't necessarily a black sheep, but you definitely weren't awesome.

<comment><USER21> Getting YC Partner Buy-In sounds like pledging a fraternity.

<comment><USER20> It isn't, at all. It's not some popularity contest. The best companies do in fact tend to have YC partners invested in them. It's just because they are..the best companies.

The only reason it's bad is because there are lots of great startups in the batch that can be hurt by it, which is obviously not what the partners intend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think the most interesting bit is that it decreases a sort of self fulfilling prophecy.

Investors "treat investment by YC partners as an accurate sign of how promising we thought a startup was." So then, the company raises more money - and appears to look more promising.

Sure, partners may have less incentive immediately (as mathattack said) - <USER2> the real winners will be more clear to the partners after demo day (and three weeks).

They will have a list of winners (in their mind) before demo day. Then, investors at demo day will pick a list of winners (who they invest in). And YC partners will see the overlap - those who are picked as winners by YC Partners and independent investors.

<comment><USER14> The reactions of investors after Demo Day don't change our opinions much. We've just spent the last 3 months working closely with these companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> For what it's worth, 500startups has done this for long time. They don't tell companies whether they are going to provide follow-on funding (even though it's in the original terms as an option) until significantly after Demo Day, for the same reason.

<comment><USER24> That's not the same, YC has _never_ provided follow-on investment and this doesn't change that.

This policy affects investments made by _individual partners_. I'm sure 500 startups does not stop it's mentors from investing right after demo day, or does it explicitly do that?

<comment><USER23> It actively encourages mentors to invest. The reason is because a) there are so many that most companies can raise a little from at least one mentor, b) all companies in a batch are encouraged to raise a small amount of money prior to demo day, and c) mentor investment isn't typically seen as a signaler as they aren't 500 partners. It helps, as any outside investment helps, but 500 following on is the real signaler, at least in my experience.

<comment><USER25> Does Dave McClure wait to invest personally? I could see his investment having a similar signaling effect.

<comment><USER23> He actually has a rule of not investing personally. Granted I don't know if that's explicitly true, but I haven't heard of him investing personally since 500 was founded.

<comment><USER26> Partners can't invest. 500startups mentors != YC partners - the closest to that is basically 500startups investing a follow-on, it has the same signal as YC partners investing in YC companies during the accelerator program.

P.S: I'm the co-founder of a company who was in Batch 6 of 500startups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Is this a common policy in the VC world in general (prohibiting personal investments by general partners in the firm's companies)?

<comment><USER14> It is in VC funds in the narrower sense, because their LP agreements often forbid any individual investments in startups. VCs' LPs don't want the VC partners siphoning off the best of the firm's deal flow for themselves.

<comment><USER28> Long long time ago when I was a kid and my dad was buying real estate I asked him why the realtor didn't buy the property if it was so good. He answered by saying that if he did that you might then infer that the properties that he didn't buy were not good.

I also point this out because what I've found in business is that so many basic principles end up repeating themselves in different situations. Things that you don't learn in school or in books but by listening to others and real life experiences. One reason that certain people who have grown up in business families have a nice advantage over those that don't. [1] You have a seat of the pants feel for things because everything is just a variation of something that has already happened.

[1] But it's not just growing up in the family but also interacting and listening and thinking. My siblings grew up with the same parents but are vastly different than I am in their thinking and understanding even given the same trough of water.

<comment><USER16> Any realtor who knows a good investment becomes an investor, not a realtor.

<comment><USER29> This sounds nice rolling off the tongue, but there is clearly no truth to it. Did you just make it up?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Interesting snippet: "... a startup's fundraising trajectory is almost always established, one way or another, by 3 weeks after Demo Day..."

I never knew fund raising worked so quickly.

<comment><USER31> It really doesn't anywhere except after that particular event.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> It sounds like YC serves as a vehicle to bring deals to YC partners, who make a killing funding the most promising candidates from the YC batch. This has made so much money for YC partners that they still want to continue to pick winners, but they don't want to kill the golden goose, so they withhold their blessings for three weeks. YC companies will still prefer the partners for funding over some random VC, so they still get the deals, but now the relative losers from the YC batch will get more funding from the more clueless VCs.

<comment><USER33> That's not true. An angel investment after demo day is worth a lot less equity than the YC investment. Most YC companies raise their seed rounds at $5 million - $20 million valuations, so it would take many hundreds of thousands or even a couple million to end up with the same 7% that YC gets.*

That kind of money would usually be put in by a larger fund. Most angels write checks for $25k-$100k.

* One difference being that the demo day investors will have preferred shares upon conversion and YC takes the same common shares that the founders and employees get.

<comment><USER34> Yes it could be worth a lot less equity but you can still make a killing with those small investments in the right companies

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This seems to solve one problem, but does it create another? Does it diminish the incentive for partners? Or wind up penalizing the winners (better firms coming out of demo day) by reducing their exposure to firms most likely to invest in them?

My sense is net this is positive.

<comment><USER36> I can't speak for the other partners, but I love that we're willing to do whatever it takes to help our startups succeed. I don't work at YC for the money. I work there because they are the best at what they do and are always trying to do the right thing for their founders. It was my experience when I went through the program and it's reinforced by actions like this.

<comment><USER35> Ahh - I misinterpreted partners. I thoughts it was the coinvestors providing converts. This makes much more sense to me now, and is obvious in hindsight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Why not just prevent partners from individually investing?

</comment><comment><USER38> Maybe I have the wrong end of the stick but this seems unnecessarily forced. Surely, given time, the system should equilibrate. If YC partners investing in startups is treated as a signal of winners, investors will be able to derive their own conclusions in time about whether this is a trustworthy metric.

If it is trustworthy, then surely this would mean that great startups prosper faster and those that aren't that great know it even earlier, meaning that they can pivot after spending much less time on building their business.

If it is not trustworthy, the numbers will show that to be the case, with investors being able to directly assess which companies backed by YC-partners actually make it big. In this case, surely investors will wise up and not go by YC-partner investments as a signal of success.

If I'm missing something, I'd appreciate it if someone could point out where my logic falls short. Otherwise, I stand by my conclusion that this seems unnecessary.

<comment><USER39> The problem isn't really whether or not the YC partners are good investors, it's really more of a question if they know something that the startups aren't telling everyone.

Early investment by any of the YC partners after a startup has been accepted to YC could give the impression that the YC partners may be doing some sort of insider trading based on the meetings that they had with the company. That probably isn't an issue at all, but the perception is there.

<comment><USER38> I don't really understand the issue with that perception, cause surely it is true that YC partners have the inside scoop. Isn't that the wonderful deal of being involved with YC in any capacity? I don't see what the "insider trading" part of the deal is. To me it just makes common sense that YC partners reap the rewards of the clamour that exists for people to get into the system.

I think I might just be missing the point entirely. We are not talking about publicly listed companies, so if you're smart enough to have fashioned a position as a YC-partner for yourself, then kudos to you and surely that just challenges external investors to get better at picking YC winners even earlier.

<comment><USER39> It's in YC's best interest for every company accepted by them to succeed and get funding. When a YC partner funds startup A instead of startup B, the perception(which, again, probably is not reality) is that startup A has _something_ better than the ones that aren't funded. So it puts startup B in a disadvantaged position from startup A.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> " Which meant we were now making it harder for the startups that partners didn't invest in to raise money."

An analogy to this is what happened during the financial crisis when they got all banks to agree to take money so as not to send a signal showing what banks were the weaker ones.

</comment><comment><USER40> It looks to me like this is going to put pressure on the window size (currently 3 weeks). Folks can now wait for 3 weeks if they really want the YC signal to kick in, unless other forces are working to counter act the waiting.

Think of it as a star which is trying to explode because of all those gases burning away, and gravity is keeping it together. The size of the star is the equilibrium point of the differential equations describing this dynamic.

One of the signals that was keeping the 3 week window to 3 weeks could have been the YC investments (gravity), but now that gravity has been set to a lower level, the 3 week window will expand..to account for this.

<comment><USER11> That's not how things work. Most YC companies tend to be oversubscribed, anyway, so what keeps the window small is competition between angels/VCs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> YC company approaches VC and says we have a soft commit from a YC partner. VC calls the YC partner and invests. I am not saying there is anything wrong in the old world. It is what it is. When its your company and there is money involved people get creative and work around rules. Some companies raise successfully and some others dont. If VC's (with all their resources) are taking their cues from YC Partners then something else is broken not the entrepreneur.

<comment><USER29> Obvious answer: YC partners are not allowed to soft commit either.

<comment><USER41> Not realistically enforceable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Impressed that this issue is recognised and a mechanism created to mitigate it. However, doesn't this merely _delay_ the signal (which is mentioned) so it may simply defer the problem down the line. If after $500k you _haven 't_ had a YC partner join, raising more becomes difficult (assuming you were trying to raise more than that to begin with).

Curious whether this will actually matter in the long run but I guess they'll adjust if needed.

</comment><comment><USER43> This might impact startup fundraising trajectory. Investors may prefer to wait out for 3 weeks if VC partner's investment is a strong enough signal for them.

</comment><comment><USER44> But then isn't this just the other way around? Now will YC invest in the company if they see that they're not raising much from outside investors?

</comment><comment><USER45> Question for PG: Do the partners commit to fund companies in secret immediately on demo day or do they now make decisions based on how well external funding goes? In some ways, it sort of seems we have the same problem, but now the partners are the ones to take advantage of 'signals'.

<comment><USER29> If a YC company could no longer get a personal investment from a YC partner, it doesn't matter much. If they can't get funding from _any_ VC, they almost certainly die. So even if one thinks that the comparatively low-value signal of a VC investment is now going to be exploited by a partner, YC is not worse off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Seems like a great idea, PG. Are the partners prohibited from signalling to favored investors their intentions? What's to stop someone from giving a wink to a friend?

<comment><USER47> Partners who decide that they are not going to follow the rules to the detriment of the founders, and therefore YC and other partners, would likely be excluded from participating in future batches.

YC is in a strong enough position that they are likely not dependent upon one particular partner, and most partners would prefer to have access to future batches. They probably don't need to have a contract that slaps on additional legal damages, because at such an early stage the small gain for favoring their own investments does not outweigh the longterm gains from continued early access.

<comment><USER46> Theoretically your point makes sense. But in practicality, sounds like nothing prevents a partner from winking at their buddy in a VC. After all, who's to know? And how could it ever be enforced? Insider trading didn't stop just because it became illegal. This is not in any way meant to cast aspersions on the partners per se. Color me jaded when it comes to money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I wager the % of the YC companies that raise $500k within three weeks of demo day is <10% making this rule effectively meaningless.

</comment><comment><USER49> What's wrong with being a 'signal' to investors? There are multiform reasons why YC chooses to invests or not.

Those startups that join demo day realize that they're putting themselves on a public platform to be assessed, etc. If they don't get funded by YC, that's their problem; not YCs.

There's a problem with PGs policy since it rules out the possibility of YC being a first rounder. Which is a huge reason why VCs exist in the first place.

<comment><USER50> Seeing has how YC has an equity steak in every startup, how is a startup who can't receive funding not a problem for them? From an investment point of view, they want ALL of their companies to receive funding. If signaling is negatively influencing how investors evaluate every company, than this policy makes a ton of sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> You think this might cause startups to close their funding later as investors all wait around to see who pg chose? :)

</comment><comment><USER52> this seems really smart, although I worry that it could affect many startups ability to raise the initial $500k.

<comment><USER24> True, perhaps even more than the first $500k, I worry about those that are trying to raise $100-$250k.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Seems good.</comment>


Virgil Griffith arrested over North Korea: engineer arrogance, on the blockchain - <AUTHOR> https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2019/12/01/virgil-griffith-arrested-over-north-korea-visit-engineer-arrogance-but-on-the-blockchain/ <comment><AUTHOR> Nick Johnson from the Ethereum Foundation tweets what he thought the guy was doing - Virgil Grififth seriously, literally, thought that he personally could, singlehandedly, through the power of his own intellect, bring peace between North and South Korea ... if only those dum-dums in the US Government would let him apply ENOUGH BLOCKCHAIN.

[https://twitter.com/nicksdjohnson/status/1201212127945605122](https://twitter.com/nicksdjohnson/status/1201212127945605122)

<comment><USER2> That kind of use of 'Peace' is pretty standard communist regime verbiage, though. Maybe Griffith thought that but the word in the talk title is not that strong a basis on which to draw this conclusion. Maybe Nick Johnson knows more - the tweet doesn't say much beyond musing on the title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I knew Virgil and considered him a friend long ago when we were both very into evolutionary inspired AI research. I met him at one of the ALife conferences (in Bloomington, IN at IU) and he later attended a group I helped found in Boston called Grey Thumb.

Our archives are still at greythumg.org including many talks on ALife, genetic programming, and theoretical biology.

Anyway a few years ago I watched him get sucked into the same vortex as many others I knew back then. I am not talking about cryptocurrency but... I guess I'll call it "alt-right" for lack of a better term. His feeds started featuring race-and-IQ material and such and I heard stories about him behaving like a misogynistic asshole which is not the Virgil I met in the 2000s. Seems like a ton of people got their brains sucked out around 2012-2016. I know many others including a once brilliant writer and artist who now sounds like Vox Day and has done nothing but rant about it for years (and zero artistic output of course).

Virgil understands a lot about evolution, so I spent some time working on a letter intended as an attempt to deprogram him. I took the approach of explaining from first principles why I reject this ideology for not only moral but also practical and theoretical reasons. (I now feel motivated to turn it into a blog post if I can find the time, but I have a startup and am time poor these days.)

When I saw him get into Ethereum stuff I congratulated him and hoped it would give him something sufficiently interesting to do.

Anyway I wish I had some Earth-shattering point or revelation here, but this just saddens me.

Virgil had a misanthropic streak I can empathize with as someone else who grew up as a geek having an awful time in public school. Underneath that he struck me as a basically playful person with a powerful mind who could have done great things. I wish he would have found something more productive to sink his brain into like AI.

Now I'll have to listen to the media trash him too, calling him a "techbro" when he was anything but that.

Like I said I was hoping Ethereum would be that but that was before I saw how toxic that world was becoming.

These events make it look worse than I thought. Honestly I partly blame whatever weird nexus he fell into. I feel like someone brainwashed him and strapped a bomb to him and sent him off to do their dirty work. None of the other high up bag holders in Ethereum went to the DPRK and now they are washing their hands of it. Anything to pump the token value I guess. I hope if that's the case someone is held accountable but they won't be. I bet they won't even contribute to his legal defense fund.

I also wish I was less time poor. There is something deeply toxic that has infected our community. I am still not quite able to see it in its entirety, though I can see its edges and when people get infected by it its obvious. For years I've been straining to compose some magnum opus to deprogram people but I can't grasp the essence of the thing quite well enough. Maybe this is how people felt when Scientology took over Hollywood.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know other people who know Virgil (surprised how many), and they talk about him getting "rat-pilled" \- getting into LessWrong Rationalism, neoreaction, race and IQ theories.

There's lots of LWers in Ethereum, but (of course) most are much more on the ball than to get into scientific racism.

<comment><USER3> I remember being in the same circles circa 2012. I found LessWrong to be a bunch of not very interesting wank and pseudoprofound bullshit. I couldn't decide if neoreaction was serious or some kind of many layered satire (later learned it was 100% serious). I know too much about actual evolutionary theory to buy into the IQ cult much. When Gamergate hit my reaction was "this is the stupidest thing I have ever seen... why would anyone actually care about this?"

Then they dropped like flies. Vast numbers of very bright people that I knew got "pilled" in one way or another. As it goes in the poem "Howl" I saw the great minds of my generation... something something something. I personally know at least a dozen formerly smart and creative hackers, scientists, and artists who got their brains sucked out in that era.

I still don't get it. I feel like a survivor of some kind of zombie plague slowly making contact with other survivors.

It's so weird its enough to make me consider the strongest versions of the Russia / underground Reich conspiracy theories and think we were hit by some kind of scientifically designed mind control project... but Ockham's razor suggests simpler explanations unless I see evidence to the contrary.

It was most likely just an outbreak of contagious nonsense that happened to spread virulently through a certain population. I think the hooks were male insecurity (common among male nerds) and a very catchy form of pseudoprofound bullshit that felt like deep thought and profound insight.

<comment><USER4> It's because, just like with Objectivism before it, once one start to accept neoreactionary tenets, then their conclusions seem unavoidable. They're less illogical than one would hope or imagine.

The biggest inoculant, personally, was reading "Guns, Germs, & Steel" in my late teens. Other important concepts that have helped me to design arguments against bullshit:

* Pedigree collapse (undermines race realism and Great Replacement)

* Sex chromosomes/allosomes (undermines binary sexual theories and pre-queer gender theory)

* (Computational) complexity theory (undermines classical analysis of Chinese Room, Simulation Arguments, Newcomb's Paradox, other LW favorites)

* Plate tectonics/basic geology (undermines space denial)

* Worryingly: History of the USA (undermines Lost Cause, Deep State, etc.)

There is a big underlying current that I have noticed: Those who committed to classical liberalism were the ones swept away, while neoliberals, metaliberals, feminists, and Marxists were not moved. This is the big change in the shape of the left wing, to the extent that such a thing exists, and probably a large part of why it seems so much further to the left than it used to be. The alt-right tide washed in, and washed out a large part of the center of the beach when it went back out.

Also, as you point out, people aren't getting laid. It is depressing to ponder whether the _real_ inoculant may have been the fact that I had a girlfriend in high school.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I also learned to talk to other humans in my late teens and had girlfriends (and friends in general both male and female). I think a lot of this bollocks preys on people with severe social issues. Unfortunately it sucks them into hate and resentment circle jerks and keeps them from finding actual escape hatches.

BTW I have lots of issues with Ayn Rand but IMHO Objectivism is less loony than this stuff. She once wrote that "racism is the lowest form of collectivism," and I agree. She wouldn't be a friend of this stuff if she were still around, but she died in the late 80s. I actually think reading Rand in my teens and early 20s was an inoculant for me. I do think she was an original and very often misunderstood thinker even though I don't think she was ultimately successful. I consider her a liberal heretic rather than a right- winger and oddly enough I compare her to Marx as someone who had brilliant insights but whose prescriptions don't quite work.

This podcast is worth a listen:

[https://parallaxviews.podbean.com/e/ep-8-jeffrey-a-tucker- on...](https://parallaxviews.podbean.com/e/ep-8-jeffrey-a-tucker-on-murray- rothbard-the-libertarian-critique-of-the-alt-right/)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Major depression on the rise among everyone, new data shows - <AUTHOR> https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/major-depression-rise-among-everyone-new-data-shows-n873146?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma <comment><USER2> Color me unsurprised: life sucks for most Americans. The country is divided against itself. Our economy favors a few professions the members of which guard fiercely against entry by outsiders. Pollution, climate change, rising costs of living & healthcare, poor regulatory practices: all of these and other factors combine to ravish the average American's wallet and soul.

<comment><USER3> What you say is true, but I suspect it's more lack of social connection because we spend so much time with screens. In the old days you at least watched TV together but now we can go in our own rooms and watch Netflix by ourselves.

I remember visiting my grandparents and people actually went for walks in the evening and chatted with others sitting on their porches. They were poor by today's standards, but seemed happier to young me. That life sounds amazing now.

<comment><USER4> The trouble isn't screens or social interaction, it's that there's this existential threat to _everything_ that didn't exist outside of nuclear scares in the 1960s. The wild-eyed optimism that tomorrow would bring about something better and brighter lasted until the 1970s, but is completely and utterly dead now.

Millenials are the first generation to have _worse_ job prospects than their parents. If you want to know why they spend so much time on social media it's because it's the only thing that matters. Everything else is beyond their control and, honestly, utterly depressing.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure. To me the threats you mention seem more cerebral since we have to think about them, but don't feel them (well, I guess one feels pressure from one's economic sitation). For example, irreversible global warming is a huge concern, but I don't walk around thinking about it all day. But feeling lonely and disconnected is something that is hard to escape. Lack of human connection is hugely emotional. And in my experience, depression is emotional.

But to be honest, I'm an armchair quarterback here so I'll see what others have to say :)

<comment><USER4> You don't have to be actively thinking about something for it to weigh on you and drag you down.

I think people are more connected than you think. Where you used to _have_ to converse with a handful of people in your immediate environment you can now maintain connections with people world-wide.

That also introduces additional stress since we share the pain of others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Rise in incidence or rise in diagnosis?

ex: highest incidence of breast cancer is apparently in Marin County. Incidence or diagnosis?

<comment><USER6> Probably actual rise -- access to the internet and news has increased to nearly e everyone and it's all depressing. You can view the constant stupidity and ignorance of the nation and get upset or ignore it... Those are pretty much your only options. I choose to mostly ignore it...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Some of us who lived in the 1970s have been subjected to unrelenting psyops for 40+ years, mostly in the service of selling things, including political products.

It surprises me every day that we aren't in full-throated, Molotov-lobbing anarchy or mass suicide.

And that was before 2016.

</comment><comment><USER8> Meanwhile, Vitamin D levels keep dropping:

[http://www.newhope.com/research-and-insights/vitamin-d- level...](http://www.newhope.com/research-and-insights/vitamin-d-levels- dropping-dramatically-study-finds)

<comment><USER9> Ok, but infinetely many other things are happening meanwhile... So wihout further context your statement has zero information actually. [http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious- correlations](http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations) ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If I may suggest one more cause for this, to the list of all the other causes suggested by everyone:

I think this rise in collective depression may also be due to the fact that more and more people live their entire life inside cities, from birth to death, with little or no contact with "nature" at all.

All we ever get to interact with are artificial institutions, created by other humans just as fallible as us..

Like building ever smaller boxes inside existing boxes, few people ever get the chance to break out and discover their true potential, let alone achieving that potential.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think it's about a sense of freedom. Everything we do is monitored now. Look at a country like Denmark, where everyone is supposed to be happy. The level of surveillance for the sake of bettering society is at DDR level spy operations (just with letter steaming rooms replaced by Mongo databases etc and a consensus that if you don't do anything wrong you don't have anything to fear).

</comment><comment><USER12> The fact no one has mentioned diet baffles me, food, sugar and the imbalance of gut bacteria as proscribed by Hindu Sages in the field of Ayurveda explains everything, Pitta Dosha as its called, the messing up the balance of our system due to basically rubbish food and how it impacts our mood. Google the gut brain axis.</comment>


Ask HN: What's a fair price for an "app" website, and related blog? - <AUTHOR>

I'm currently writing a music app ("Infinity -- the looper that knows your song") for OSX, and I'm at the point where I need create a website and blog. The website should be single-page, essentially displaying screenshots and/or screen capture as a banner, along with the typical 3-column "major features" thing below. Also, the site should have the ability to accept payments via credit card or PayPal (i.e. you should be able to buy and download the app).
I was thinking that both the app page and the blog could be done with Wordpress. So essentially, the work involved would be:

  - designing a custom theme
  - configure Wordpress so that I can easily upload new content to the main page (e.g. banner and feature parts) and blog (posts)
  - configure the e-commerce solution
 I'm interested in knowing a ballpark figure for a) the design and b) the implementation of such a site.
For reference, I've been quoted a price between 450 EUR and 1500 EUR ($600 to $2050,  depending on time taken) only for the design, for each of the blog and site (i.e. twice the that range for total!). I think that's a bit steep, but it's the first time I've commissioned design, so I don't have a good reference point. At that price, I would have done all the Wordpress configuration myself, since it's not really that hard.
UPDATE: I had the wrong figures for quoted price.
Many thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> If it's "not really that hard" why not just do it yourself?

Just remember that a web site is more than a place where you put your product. It's a salesman and a showcase for your product. I'm not sure why you would want to throw up a crappy $20 theme and do it yourself if you have no experience.

The site is much more than a theme too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Because I'm writing an app in Objective-C/C++ at the same time, and I'd like to focus on that :)

<comment><USER2> That's kind of what I was getting at and I don't blame you because it makes a lot of sense.

But it sounded like you wanted someone to make this nice custom solution for you at below minimum wage rates because that is what you perceived the value to be at.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would do it yourself then hire a "landing page conversion" company. Once you have a baseline.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's kind of the direction I'm leaning -- anyway, there are pretty good pre- made templates, so I could always use on of them.

Thanks for your advice.</comment></comment>


Bill Gates says crypto-currencies cause deaths - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43239781 <comment><USER2> In the same vein of logic, cash causes death, gold causes death, diamonds cause death, etc.</comment>


Microsoft Cognitive Services: Introducing the Seeing AI App [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2mC-NUAmMk&feature=youtu.be <comment><AUTHOR> This [1] seems to have a bit more information on the Seeing AI project.

[1] [http://www.pivothead.com/build/](http://www.pivothead.com/build/)</comment>


Why I'm no longer talking to white people about race - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/30/why-im-no-longer-talking-to-white-people-about-race <comment><USER2> I sympathize with the author as a believer in structural racism that's dealt with those same conversations with white people. However, I have to call the author out for not mentioning black people do _the same things_. As always, this article pushes The Narrative where only whites are racist and only minorities are victims of racism. Like the author's troubles, I have similar troubles describing to minorities (esp black people here in the South) what it's like to be a white minority in black school, business, or city. This is really Dominant vs Non-Dominant group stuff rather than White vs Black which is just the instantiation that plays out the most in this country. It goes the other way, too, any time a "minority" becomes the majority in an area or institution.

Quick examples from my time in black institutions, esp school. We're excluded by default from social activities unless we become more like them (white style is wrong/inferior/lame) but not too much since then we're posers (or wiggers). We're told we're inherently imperialists, rapists "going after their women," responsible for all their problems, and so on. In businesses, the racists ones will hire, promote, or (food place) even sometimes serve their own ahead of us. If we disagree on a topic, they're more likely to unite in a mob of sorts to shout us down in class. They'll physically attack us in school usually in greater numbers since we're the minority. In government, it's common for them to try to reward their people over others with many businesses straight-up leaving over it in one of my cities. The list just goes on and on w/ a lot of whites coming out of these areas with conditions ranging from becoming racists themselves to PTSD-like effects from the beatdowns. Irony is I've seen black people accuse several people of racism for getting anxious when the blacks approached them during a verbal conflict when it was actually racist attacks by blacks that created permanent anxiety they can't control. They were reliving the attack to some degree during the approach since the body language looked similar to when the attacks happened.

Now, just try mentioning this to writers like the OP. There's some people that will agree structural racism goes both ways. It's uncommon, though, with most blacks saying things so similar one would almost think there was a class giving out specific instructions on what to say to white victims. (Same goes for most whites on racism in fairness.) When I ask for black activists to help white victims, here's the responses I almost always get in some form: (a) structural racism against whites doesn't exist & my experiences were simply isolated acts of discrimination; (b) black people have been through more shit and experience it more often so greater good is to focus on them first; (c) we have it coming because someone somewhere else is victimizing black people in similar or worse ways.

Well, ain't that great. Might as well stop talking to black people about race since they'll reject even the existence of white victims of structural racism. Definitely ain't going to start campaigning against or suing black-controlled schools, companies, and governments to help us. They'll go after white ones to help blacks, though. It's too bad because the greatest threat the racist establishment ever perceived was a guy, MLK, that defended oppressed of all colors trying to unite them. He scared the power-mongers so much they straight-up murdered him in my hometown before he did his Washington march. They thought it would be game over for them. Kind of a hint of how we need to approach social justice today if we want the government scared, giving concessions, or showing their true colors.

Pieces like I just read are just politics. They don't care about equality or justice. They just care about (benefits or punishments here) going to (preferred groups here for each). The moderate realists who would recognize and help both groups are rare. They'll also get out-shouted by political movements on both Left and Right. That's not metaphorical: I'm talking a room full of black people screaming at the white person until they shut up or leave as happened numerous times at our local university. The right wingers do something similar but with accusations toward black people instead citing all the worst stuff in media. Also citing their personal experience which didn't have racism as in original article. Dissent is simply not allowed by either group. That's why both sides are part of the overall problem that can only get better in tiniest, incremental ways and often gets worse for opposing groups in some way. And people in my camp are totally screwed since almost nobody will help white or male victims of oppression.

Ok, now off to my leaning-toward-mostly-black establishment to put in a long shift possibly hearing a guy making more and with more privilege talk about how the company is holding him back because he's black. Usually only every other week but who knows. Maybe I'll get lucky & we all be peaceful today like last shift. ;)

EDIT: I dont upvote these kind of articles to front page since a lot of people just start fighting with throwaways and discussion quality drops too low. I am respondjng since submitter has an interest and my not have encountered this perspective. Just clarifying that if anyone was interested.</comment>


Why it will be hard for Microsoft to "win" the future desktop/tablet/Win8 race - <AUTHOR> http://www.brianmadden.com/blogs/brianmadden/archive/2012/01/06/5-reasons-it-will-be-hard-for-microsoft-quot-win-quot-the-future-desktop-tablet-win8-race.aspx

<comment><USER2> "And even if you have an existing traditional Windows app, if you have to rewrite it, are you really going to choose the Windows platform? Probably not. You'd just go with Apple or Android."

Um, why? If you're rewriting it, why would you choose the others? Android tablet sales haven't exactly taken off, and simply starting over on iOS isn't necessarily easy or cheap if you're used to Windows. If you're rebuilding it for Windows 8, both tablet and desktop users benefit.

<comment><USER3> But there won't be desktop Windows 8 ARM users, so you'll have to re-engineer it twice? Unless there's some quick and easy way to write code that compiles to both architectures without fuss. But even then you essentially have to build two UIs.

I wonder to what extent any under-the-covers code is shared between apps that run both on iOS and OS X (like Pages, for instance) and whether there's any economy of coding scale there.

<comment><USER2> If you use the new WinRT runtime to build a Metro style app, you get both architectures without any extra work.</comment></comment></comment>


SpaceshipTwo crashes shortly after Mojave test flight - <AUTHOR> http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/virgin-voyage/virgin-galactics-spaceshiptwo-crashes-during-flight-test-n238376 <comment><USER2> What this weeks events show us is that space travel is hard. Really hard.

Most systems operate in extreme conditions, sometimes bordering on the improbable. Thousands, sometimes millions of horsepower in an engine smaller than a car, cryogenic liquids at -200 degrees celsius cooling a nozzle that is 3000 degrees celsius 5 millimeters away, heatshields designed to absorb obscene amounts of heat, the list just goes on and on.

Most people don't realize how hard this is. The physics, the engineering, the design.

Yet we have made great strides, especially over the last few years, and Virgin Galactic is a part of this. There is a new era of cheap spaceflight on the horizon, driven forward by fearless men and women that want to go to space no matter what the cost.

This is commendable, and is what drives the human race forward. Without these fearless men we wouldn't have gone to the moon. We wouldn't have explored the depths of the ocean. We wouldn't have flown the skies.

Today it appears we lost one of these fearless men, but he now rests in peace assured that others will take his place, that he was not alone in his longing to drive mankind forwards into the unknown, that his dreams live on to inspire others.

We have conquered the skies, and we will move on. Eventually we will conquer space and make it accessible to all mankind. A fearless man has given his life to allow us to some day leave the cradle that is mother Earth.

His ultimate sacrifice won't be in vain.

<comment><USER3> Some say this is an "inevitable" result of pushing boundaries. No. This is the result of a poorly managed program. What they are doing is much easier than the Apollo program, which was well managed and had no in-flight failures that resulted in loss of life, while accomplishing an infinitely harder task.

This is a tragedy, obviously. But the program is about six years behind schedule, been going for 10 years. The most stupid thing they've done is stay with an experimental rubber/nitrous hybrid engine this whole time, instead of switching to liquid/liquid engine, a well proven technology. I know first hand that groups with such engine expertise have approached Virgin and been turned down.

Seeing only the first paragraph, I already know that some rubber in the hybrid engine detached blocking the nozzle and causing the whole engine to explode. The pilots should have refused to fly until Virgin had 10 consecutive motor qualification tests at full duration, not ride on a ship with a half-baked motor that has seen constant modifications during the last year.

In the software development world, a "death march" in a program behind schedule does not result in loss of actual life, not so in manned spaceflight.

<comment><USER4> there's no need not in this day and age to have test pilots. If they use computers, they can debug the engine in flight conditions by running maybe ten times as many test flights.

Delays of months between flights are dangerous. Until you have a 1000-10,000 flights to build up operational data and envelope, this is a death trap causing unnecessary deaths.

<comment><USER5> Your forgetting the countless times that a test pilot has saved the aircraft/spacecraft from destruction. If it was unmanned and flown by computer, it would have been a fireball.

At least one shuttle flight would have been lost if the crew didn't fly manually to correct for a malfunction. STS-4 PIO'd on landing and would have crashed if auto-stabilization wasn't overridden by the pilot.

<comment><USER6> According to wikipedia, it was STS-3 that had (autoopilot-induced) oscillations during landing. The description on Wikipedia seems to imply that they were expected (the autopilot was being tested) and that the dangerous condition was due to the autopilot being left partially engaged after the test.

<comment><USER5> Correct. There was also an pitch stabilization system that malfunctioned due to the misconfigured (partially engaged) autopilot. Point remains that the pilots flying skills in the cockpit saved the orbiter.

<comment><USER7> And in this case the craft killed the pilot. Shouldn't we be designing pilotless craft?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is very bad. Not just for the family and friends of the poor guy who died, but for commercial manned spaceflight in general.

SpaceshipTwo is considered the 'simplest' and 'safest' of all the upcoming manned commercial vehicle. It has many features that should help keep it reliable. For example, instead of a real liquid rocket engine, it uses a hybrid engine; it has almost no moving parts apart from a valve or two. No turbopumps or gimbals or much mechanical stuff to go wrong. It only goes suborbital, so it does not need a heatshield because there's no re-entry. The landing system uses wings & wheels similar to any commercial jet. This stuff is mature and tested.

In fact, the only novel thing about SS2 is it's wing-feathering system. It's lets the craft to descend vertically still under the pilots control. I wonder if (and this is complete speculation) there was a problem restoring the wings to their 'atmospheric' flight position which prevented them from landing normally.

The consequences for commercial manned spaceflight will be quite severe, I think. I imagine that many Virgin Galactic customers will cancel their pre- orders. The flight test program is dead in it's tracks at this point; even those who don't cancel will be unlikely to fly for many more years while investigations and improvements are concluded. Other manned providers such as SpaceX and XCor will likely be extra cautious before allowing people to fly in their vehicles.

The image of manned commercial spaceflight will take a hit. If the 'Safest' of the commercial vehicles can crash before it even enters service, I worry that many potential customers will be put off. It never hurts to remember that Spaceflight is a dangerous business.

It's a sad day to top off a bad week in spaceflight. :(

<comment><USER9> All of those you said are very true. It's also worth mentioning that that very 'safe' engine has already killed three people, and injured three others during a cold-flow test. Very tragic.

see for details: [http://www.knightsarrow.com/rockets/scaled-composites- accide...](http://www.knightsarrow.com/rockets/scaled-composites-accident/)

or the "Test program accident" at the wiki: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RocketMotorTwo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RocketMotorTwo)

<comment><USER10> How do you even manage to kill not one but three people with shrapnel during a pressure test? Proper safety procedure demands that anything potentially shrapnel-producing is contained within an enclosure and that engineers are outside the area while testing takes place.

The whole incident indicates a lax safety culture.

<comment><USER11> Precisely. An absence of proper safety procedures is how.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a time when you re-read Gene Kranz's famous speech to the flight control division after the Apollo 1 fire.

Gene Kranz is the gentleman sitting in the flight director's chair in the Apollo 13 movie, wearing the white vest. He helped create the Mission Control organization at NASA.

"Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect. Somewhere, somehow, we screwed up. It could have been in design, build, or test. Whatever it was, we should have caught it. We were too gung ho about the schedule and we locked out all of the problems we saw each day in our work.

Every element of the program was in trouble and so were we. The simulators were not working, Mission Control was behind in virtually every area, and the flight and test procedures changed daily. Nothing we did had any shelf life. Not one of us stood up and said, 'Dammit, stop!' I don't know what Thompson's committee will find as the cause, but I know what I find. We are the cause! We were not ready! We did not do our job. We were rolling the dice, hoping that things would come together by launch day, when in our hearts we knew it would take a miracle. We were pushing the schedule and betting that the Cape would slip before we did.

From this day forward, Flight Control will be known by two words: 'Tough' and 'Competent.' Tough means we are forever accountable for what we do or what we fail to do. We will never again compromise our responsibilities. Every time we walk into Mission Control we will know what we stand for. Competent means we will never take anything for granted. We will never be found short in our knowledge and in our skills. Mission Control will be perfect.

When you leave this meeting today you will go to your office and the first thing you will do there is to write 'Tough and Competent' on your blackboards. It will never be erased. Each day when you enter the room these words will remind you of the price paid by Grissom, White, and Chaffee. These words are the price of admission to the ranks of Mission Control."

Video re-enactment by Gene Kranz: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zjAteaK9lM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zjAteaK9lM)

<comment><USER13> ...and then it was Enterprise, Atlantis etc. No matter how tough and competent the organization is, failures cannot be eliminated when we are talking about so complex systems/operations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> While I can't imagine how tragic this must be for the families of the pilots, I just want to say that one of the pilots has given his everything for this cause: that one day we will not be a one-planet species.

For that alone, all involved are heroes.

<comment><USER15> Totall agree. These people are the modern day seafarers. Heading out into unknown waters.

<comment><USER16> Someone dying is devastating. Trying to conquer space a handful of people at a time is the slow and dangerous way of accomplishing this task. We should be building machines to explore the solar system. This can be done for a fraction of the cost, time, and it will allow him to allow us to iterate quickly.

In 100 years, more humans will live off earth if we iterate with machines, etc now than if we move slowly trying to reduce the risk in order to keep humans safe.

<comment><USER17> Its sad, sure. Sorry for their loss.

But people take far greater risks for far less reason. Monster Truck rallys. Motorcycle racing. Skiing. We don't change national priorities every time somebody dies at those activities.

SO lets keep it in perspective, and salute the brave folks who are trying to expand human boundaries.

<comment><USER18> Those aren't really fair comparisons as they are several orders of magnitudes less dangerous than space flight. My quick estimates say that roughly 1-3% of people who try to get to space die during some point of the journey. Some quick Googling put the fatality rate for skiing at roughly .00002%. If 1% of people who tried skiing died, you could bet there would be national discussions about it.

<comment><USER19> About 0.4% of people working in the Alaska crab fishery die on the job, and people seem to be relatively okay with that. And it's much, much better than it was years ago. I know people who were crabbers in the 80s --- stories that would curl your hair (or straighten it, if it's already curly).

[http://money.cnn.com/2003/10/13/pf/dangerousjobs/index.htm](http://money.cnn.com/2003/10/13/pf/dangerousjobs/index.htm)

<comment><USER16> I think you're kind of missing the point. The Alaska crab program doesn't come to a complete stop for a couple years while there's an investigation and an attempt to make it safer. It won't be on the cover of the NYT. You don't need to go to Congress and request an additional $1.7 billion for another ship.

We are moving into Space at a snail's pace because we keep insisting on spending lots of money to try and send humans there "safely", and that's not really working out so well for us.

<comment><USER19> "x The Alaska crab program doesn't come to a complete stop for a couple years while there's an investigation"

Neither will Virgin Galactic.

"You don't need to go to Congress and request an additional $1.7 billion for another ship."

Neither does Richard Branson.

<comment><USER16> Perhaps, you haven't noticed but I'm using this accident to discuss our national space program. Virgin Galactic has a plane that goes to 62 miles/100km. While this is great, in the short-term, it doesn't help our space program.

Btw, you don't think they need to revisit safety to assure their customers that it's not a one way trip? Do they even have a second plane? There's not a chance that there will be a commercial flight carrying paying customers within the next 2 years. Branson was saying this year just a month ago.

<comment><USER19> "Btw, you don't think they need to revisit safety to assure their customers that it's not a one way trip?"

Not from what I'm seeing. No one is planning to cancel their reservation. I wouldn't, if I had one.

<comment><USER16> Ok, let's revisit in 2 years to evaluate the setback this event turned out to be. Perhaps I'm overstating it.

By the way, the spacecraft cost $500 million.

[http://money.cnn.com/2014/10/31/technology/virgin- galactic-s...](http://money.cnn.com/2014/10/31/technology/virgin-galactic- spaceship-crash/index.html?iid=HP_LN)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Test pilots? In the 21st century?

I find it absolutely reckless and inexcusable to require live humans riding on a prototype rocket when you have all the processing power needed to automate/remote manage the vehicle literally in your pocket.

EDIT: To those downvoting, you should really check that all current spaceplanes have the capability to fly and land autonomously--Boeing X-37, Dream Chaser, even Buran was fully autonomous and that was 25 years ago. There is simply no excuse for Virgin for being sloppy.

<comment><USER21> I think armchair quarterbacking is reckless and inexcusable. These people has been working on airplanes and space crafts for some time now and I would trust their judgment. Especially given that they put their own lives on the line.

<comment><USER20> "These people" that designed the spaceplane didn't put their lives on the line, they put the lives of the pilots on the line. And I would trust the judgment of the engineers at Boeing, Sierra Nevada, SpaceX, Lockheed-Martin and the entire Soviet space program over theirs.

<comment><USER22> Really... You are going to trust the entire Soviet space program compared to the engineers behind this project? I really don't think they were being reckless with having pilots. Ultimately, their plan was to take other patrons up to space. You will need personal (experienced space flight attendants) while conducting the flight. This is obviously tragic and my thoughts go out to the families affected. However, when you are trying to do something as complex as space travel and leaving earth you will unfortunately have mishaps and deaths.

Please have a look here - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_space_program#Incidents....](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_space_program#Incidents.2C_failures.2C_and_setbacks)

<comment><USER23> So the pilot died in order to make Richard Branson's space tourists have a safer and more enjoyable weekend. Cool.

<comment><USER17> The pilot died trying to make a cheap, reusable orbiter a reality. The tourists are there to help pay for it.

<comment><USER20> It's not even that; it's suborbital.

<comment><USER24> Gotta establish a suborbital trajectory to reach orbit, though.

One step at a time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Nasaspaceflight.com has reports saying one pilot has been found alive and another didn't make it.

[http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=35117.270](http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=35117.270)

What a terrible week. :(

<comment><USER26> Looks like that thread has moved out of the general discussion thread:

[http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=35974.60](http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=35974.60)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This person is claiming to report from the scene: [https://twitter.com/spacecom](https://twitter.com/spacecom)

</comment><comment><USER28> Here's some background after reading a little bit of Wikipedia...

\- Virgin Galactic has ordered a total of 5 SpaceShipTwos from the aptly named "The Spaceship Company".

\- There are 2 built, the VSS (Virgin Space Ship) Enterprise and VSS Voyager.

\- Only the VSS Enterprise has been flown, so I assume that is the ship which crashed today.

This is a sad day, indeed.

</comment><comment><USER29> Condolences to the friends and family of anyone who may have perished in this event.

While this is a major set-back and bummer, at the same time it is far better that something like this happen during a test than during a commercial flight. Whatever the design, manufacturing, or process issues are, they will now be sussed out reducing the chance of a failure later on.

I sincerely hope this is not such a huge set-back that it totally derails Virgin/Scaled's approach as I love the fact that we have competing commercial concepts working at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER30> From [https://twitter.com/virgingalactic](https://twitter.com/virgingalactic)

> Virgin Galactic's partner Scaled Composites conducted a powered test flight > of #SpaceShipTwo earlier today.

> During the test, the vehicle suffered a serious anomaly resulting in the > loss of SpaceShipTwo. WK2 landed safely.

> Our first concern is the status of the pilots, which is unknown at this > time.

> We will work closely with relevant authorities to determine the cause of > this accident and provide updates ASAP.

</comment><comment><USER31> The ship came down in pieces and there's debris littering the ground. It's not sounding like they all made it.

[https://twitter.com/spacecom](https://twitter.com/spacecom)

This is awful. I hope that problems like this don't result in more regulations and barriers to private spaceflight. It's about as dangerous of a job as they come and we have to expect companies will lose men. Every astronaut is a hero for humanity and progress.

</comment><comment><USER32> Tangent: I think it's safe to say that HN -- on this thread in particular -- is populated by many people who are deeply interested in space travel.

I'd like to recommend everyone select as their next book for pleasure reading Andy Weir's "The Martian".

Here's my GoodReads review:

It's not high-brow literature by any stretch. But it's not about the writing per se, it's about the story. I challenge anyone to read it without caring what happens to the protagonist. I recognize that he (and perhaps by extension the author?) may be borderline juvenile on a few occasions... but for me it hardly detracted from the reading experience. On the contrary, I was sufficiently immersed in being on Mars in the shoes of this bold and lonely astronaut that the book per se disappeared nearly the entire time I read it. Pausing to re-read a noteworthy turn of phrase or analyzing it as literature might well have detracted from the author's intent. The story is the thing. For me, the writing got out of the way. And I'm glad it did. This is an extremely well-researched, gripping, exciting page-turner. If you are remotely interested in space travel, imho it's a must-read.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Most information seems to be on Twitter at the moment. Only official statement from Virgin is that the flight experienced an in-flight anomoly: [http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/virgin-voyage/virgin- galact...](http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/virgin-voyage/virgin-galactics- spaceshiptwo-suffers-flight-anomaly-n238376)

<comment><USER33> [https://twitter.com/hashtag/SS2?src=hash](https://twitter.com/hashtag/SS2?src=hash) for reference

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This reminds of studying the Space Shuttle Challenger as part of my Engineering training at school. We studied it as part of an ethics in engineering lesson. The Space Shuttle labels certain components as "Criticality 1". A Criticality 1 component means there is no back up system and failure can lead to catastrophic consequences during Space Shuttle operation, especially at launch. As you may guess the O-rings on the Space Shuttle rocket boosters were graded as Criticality 1. The Space Shuttle had over 700 components graded as Criticality 1.

[http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1986-03-18/news/860120045...](http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1986-03-18/news/8601200450_1_o- ring-seals-nasa-officials-shuttle-components)

Space vehicles and space exploration is a very dangerous and high risk endeavor. This week we are unfortunately reminded of this fact. Thoughts go out to the families of the brave pilots and those with the Virgin Galactic program.

</comment><comment><USER35> China launches 3 rockets in one week[1]. Russia launches a resupply of the International Space Station, ready to fly just _9 hours_ after yet another space vehicle crashes here[2].

Say what you want about "cheap spaceflight", there is something dysfunctional going on here. This latest disaster makes me wonder if the US even has a current capability of space flight. Pinching a few pennies isn't worth it.

[1] [http://spaceflightnow.com/2014/10/27/china-launches-third- sp...](http://spaceflightnow.com/2014/10/27/china-launches-third-space- mission-in-a-week/)

[2] [http://spaceflightnow.com/2014/10/29/russians-launch- progres...](http://spaceflightnow.com/2014/10/29/russians-launch-progress- supply-ship-to-space-station/)

</comment><comment> jack-r-abbit With regular flight in regular airplanes being so common and safe these days, it is easy to forget the lives that were lost so many years ago when brave men and women were testing the new technology of the time. Always pushing for faster planes, longer flights, higher altitudes. Lives were lost every step of the way. But it got us here. Today. We can cross oceans in a matter of hours rather than days (weeks?). So we continue to push the limits. And lives are lost each step of the way. Will _I_ ever reach space? It is _possible_... but not likely. But I see no reason why my children won't. And it will be all because brave men and women, like the man that died today, continued to push the limits.

</comment><comment><USER22> First image of the crash. Looks like one of the tail wings. Unfortunately it seems that one of the pilots did not make it.

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B1S-bKRCMAEOMsl.jpg:large](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B1S-bKRCMAEOMsl.jpg:large)

</comment><comment><USER36> I was lucky enough to attend the first public flight of SpaceShip One; it was one of the most inspirational things I've ever witnessed. Very sorry for the family of the pilot who died and generally everybody involved.

</comment><comment><USER37> Can we get a black border on HN for this?

</comment><comment><USER38> This is a pretty significant and sad setback.

Virgin Galactic was set up so eventually the average person can experience the wonder of space flight. The company didn't have Elon Musk type aspirations, but it is a big part of the process that will eventually allow us to colonize the stars.

These type of events show that even though we have the smartest scientific wizards in the world working on these things, there is still so much we have to learn, almost a half century after we landed people on the moon.

</comment><comment><USER39> My thoughts are with the Virgin Galactic team. Spaceflight is difficult, dangerous, and I believe crucial to the future of humanity. Test piloting is always dangerous, more so with space vehicles, but that doesn't make it any less heartbreaking or impactful when you lose someone. I'm sure they will learn from this even as they mourn the loss.

Virgin Galactic, especially those you lost today, you have my deepest respect for Daring Greatly.

</comment><comment><USER40> I am really sad to hear about this crash. In case anyone is interested in the technology behind SpaceshipTwo here is a brilliant documentary about Burt Rutan, Scaled Composites and the development of SpaceshipOne:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz8wlcUPz90](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz8wlcUPz90)

The documentary includes a very touching interview with a test pilot.

</comment><comment><USER41> The question is : Why don't they use an unnamed vehicle for testing new fuels?

In lots of ways unmanned is actually simpler than maned, as the US army knows.

Using pilots for testing new things looks to me as extremely outdated, from the old macho days.

In the old macho days you had to sacrifice people for learning things as simple as how to control the aircraft over the speed of sound.

But today it is totally unnecessary.

</comment><comment><USER42> This highlights how important crew escape systems are. The issue isn't just crew survival, but also the effect that loss of crew has on the program. If crew loss is a real danger, it will happen, and after it does the PR often kills the public will to press on.

</comment><comment><USER43> Innovation can't happen without risk - it's a damn shame that pilots lost their lives in this, but it's an inevitability in the course of human progress. Best we can do is learn from the mistakes that happened here and try again.

</comment><comment><USER44> Yet another disaster for Branson: [http://newslines.org/richard- branson/](http://newslines.org/richard-branson/)

</comment><comment><USER45> I'm not an expert, merely curious, but didn't Tesla do a test firing for their engine for the unmanned rocket? Couldn't they have done so too?

</comment><comment><USER15> Its very sad but inevitable. At this cutting edge of technology and human endeavour, accidents are bound to happen.

<comment><USER46> It's not inevitable, as evidenced by all the other accidents that have been... evited. You just don't hear about those. (Yes, evited is a word, it's just weird.)

<comment><USER47> I believe the OP here meant not that this specific incident was inevitable but rather that the death of a private astronaut at some point was statistically inevitable.

<comment><USER48> As zepolud said elsewhere in this thread:

> current spaceplanes have the capability to fly and land autonomously--Boeing > X-37, Dream Chaser, even Buran was fully autonomous and that was 25 years > ago. There is simply no excuse for Virgin for being sloppy.

The point being there shouldn't have been human pilots in those seats in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> What crashed?

The mother plane part, or the spacecraft part?

<comment><USER50> The spacecraft part.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Software needs to up its game. Systems should have prevented the requested parameters.

Jet fighters do the same thing: convert control to the flight systems within an envelope.

Both incidents seem to involve ignition, so that seems to be an issue.

</comment><comment><USER52> It's a shame that somebody had to die just so billionaires could one day take vanity space flights.

<comment><USER53> Oh bullshit ! Everything is at first expensive but eventually reaches down to the masses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Outsource all this to India / ISRO.

</comment><comment><USER55> Url changed from [http://www.kerngoldenempire.com/news/local/story/d/story/spa...](http://www.kerngoldenempire.com/news/local/story/d/story/spaceshiptwo- crashes-shortly-after-mojave-test-fli/11401/64VdLqg21EWpK1vuptvTsg) because this one seems to have more information. If there's a better url, we can change it again.

</comment><comment><USER56> test

</comment><comment><USER57> Another symptom of the United States' inability to compete in STEM.

<comment><USER58> Yes, because private space flight industry is thriving with success in all the other countries, right...RIGHT?</comment></comment>


Nokia and Microsoft: good for Finland, risky for Redmond - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2011/02/nokia-and-microsoft-good-for-finland-risky-for-redmond.ars <comment><USER2> This guy's like a John Gruber for Microsoft. If you believed everything he writes you'd think that Microsoft was selflessly sacrificing itself in all sorts of markets, saving rivals and helping consumers way above and beyond the call of shareholder duty, on its way to corporate Martyrdom.</comment>


Show HN: Distro.tools - Scripts for lazy Linux users - <AUTHOR> https://distro.tools/ <comment><USER2> This spooks me a little. Common sense says you should never, ever run "curl something | sh" (or equivilant), especially not with elevated privileges.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that's good common sense. But you can check the source code on GitHub (it's deployed directly via GitHub Pages) or first download it and then execute without pipe from curl.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, or just host it yourself once reviewed. That's what I do usually (not with this haven't heard of this before), but with scripts I find now and then).</comment></comment></comment>


The difference between Apple and GM - <AUTHOR> http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2010/0302/Apple-vs.-GM-Ayn-Rand-knew-the-difference.-Do-you

<comment><USER2> I was about to say 'Astonishing, a blogger that grasped the point of Atlas Shrugged' - and then I noticed it was written by Yaron Brook. False alarm, everyone.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Meanwhile, today's real-life Boyles constantly lobby for government restraints on their more able competitors. Remember when the überproductive Bill Gates started giving away free Web browsers to his customers, and Netscape ran to Washington demanding that Microsoft be shackled via antitrust laws?"

I was starting to think that this guy was onto something until I came to that sentence. It's nice of him to propose his own counterexample though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Netscape imploded for internal reasons just as much as from competitive pressure from Microsoft.

Do you remember Netscape 4? It was awful on every platform I had to run it on (IRIX, NT4 and System 7.) Microsoft didn't make it awful - only Netscape could do that.

I still remember downloading the first IE4 release on my NT machine in the fall of 1997. It was much, much faster, more capable (CSS), nicer looking - and most importantly - more stable than Netscape.

So Brook's example stands.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been avoiding reading Ayn Rand because the whole thing just seems so cultish.

However, this summary echoes a lot of what I've been thinking lately: there are "businessmen" who create value and there are others who try to make a percentage.

I may end up reading _Atlas Shrugged_ yet.</comment>


Airbnb's preferred smart lock vendor accidentally bricks 500 door-locks - <AUTHOR> http://boingboing.net/2017/08/14/airbnbs-preferred-smart-lock.html <comment><USER2> I've pushed dozens of OTA updates to WiFi devices (telepresence robots), and it's always terrifying. We'd test thoroughly, and we'd always start with devices in our office, and wait to see them reboot before pushing to customers. In addition, we had a scheme where we'd push an update, it'd reboot, and if it didn't connect to our server within 20 minutes it'd revert to the previous version and reboot again. WCGW? We never bricked one in the field, but I can think of a million ways it could have happened.

The scariest times were pushing updates that affected WiFi connection for customers with unusual network configurations. In particular, we had one with a multi-campus Cisco WiFi system with WPA-Enterprise, which requires logging into a RADIUS server to get WiFi. We were running on FreeBSD which had a half- assed port of the Linux WPA authenticator. We never managed to replicate their network perfectly for in-house testing, so pushing updates to them was always nerve-wracking.

<comment><USER3> _we had a scheme where we 'd push an update, it'd reboot, and if it didn't connect to our server within 20 minutes it'd revert to the previous version and reboot again_

Was this handled in userland? Or with something lower level (e.g., a hardware watchdog)?

I'm asking because the question has come up a few times recently about making FreeBSD recover (unattended) in the event that an unbootable kernel is installed.

<comment><USER2> Userland. Basically during upgrades we installed a shell script in /etc/init.d:

      sleep 1200
      if ping -c 5 central-services.anybots.com; then
        rm <this file>
      else
        cd /home/dist && git checkout STABLE && make install
        reboot
      fi

(We used git to distribute binaries, so we could checkout and install a previous version easily).

This was a last ditch recovery. I could imagine lots of things that break, but which still allow ping. And installing a previous version over a newer version is flaky, because a newly created file won't be deleted.

An unbootable kernel is a whole different kettle of fish. I believe GRUB can be told to fallback to a safe mode.

<comment><USER3> _I believe GRUB can be told to fallback to a safe mode._

I'd assume so; FreeBSD's loader can also do that. The problem was that if a kernel hanged during boot, we wouldn't get back to the loader until someone power cycled the system, so the "try the other kernel" logic wouldn't run.

<comment><USER4> This will be the time where setup HW watch dog should help.

After the upgrade, before the reboot, setup the HW watch dog for 2-5 minutes. Setup the boot-old-kernel flags as default in the uboot/EFI/grub/or your system boot loader.

If the upgrade the successful (connect to back to the server) and function correctly, disable the "boot-old-kernel" flags in your bootloader.

As always, do a lot of testing and automate those tests. You will be surprise how often a simple boot/reset/power cycle can fail if you repeat it over and over again in a weekend.

<comment><USER3> Hmm, you can set a watchdog before rebooting? I assumed that it would be cleared automatically.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Stuff like this is why I don't own any "smart" devices.

I never think about my deadbolt unless I am opening my door. I never think about my smoke alarm unless starts to chirp because of a low battery. I never think about my light bulbs unless they burn out.

Any "smart" features, like notifications or a phone app, are going to make me spend more time thinking about these products than I care to, even if they are working perfectly. Failed OTA updates make things even worse. That door lock is going to need to introduce an extremely compelling new feature to convince me to spend time thinking about such a basic component of my home's infrastructure.

<comment><USER6> I think the feature is fairly compelling in this case. Smart locks allow airbnb hosts to grant limited entry to guests without sharing their house keys. Any frequent airbnb renter runs the risk of their keys being duped and used for illicit access later on. While the implementation still needs work (obviously), the core idea is sound.

<comment><USER7> Worth noting that nearly every hotel has used smart locks for years. This is essentially the same.

<comment><USER8> Every hotel has on-prem staff for dealing with faulty locks and keys.

Many Airbnb owners do not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've worked with embedded device makers that had better ideas about building redundancy and failsafe procedures into their products

While software mistakes do happen, it seems any moron these days thinks they can put out an IoT product because they know how to flash a led on Arduino and they make _no effort whatsoever_ in thinking how to make their devices have minimum reliability

Have a user accessible USB port (from the inside) from which a signed payload can be loaded for cases like these. Would have saved several days for their customers and several shipping fees.

<comment><USER10> You could also do A/B partition booting. Whatever partition is currently running, the other one gets updated. When the update is complete, the system reboots to the updated partition. If it doesn't survive the reboot (like if the system never reaches the app and the hardware watchdog timer stops being reset), then it reboots again, back to the first partition.

<comment><USER11> This is the common (and correct) solution.

In this scenario, the biggest problem is updating the bootloader, which cannot do this type of fallback.

Generally people avoid updating the bootloader (for good reason) but it is necessary sometimes...

<comment><USER12> Of course, the good thing about the bootloader is it is less likely to need updates in the first place, and it's also likely easier to verify an update with a high level of confidence, as its functionality is so tightly bounded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I own 2 of these smartlocks (for my theater and my speakeasy, it's nice to be able to let performers/crew in on set schedules with SMS confirmation). They have both been down since last week. It's been hugely annoying, especially considering we paid over $600 per lock. They overnighted us new circuitboards that we have to manually replace, but the timing was horrible as both me and my partner were out of town all weekend and couldn't do the repair, so it impacted load-in for a show on Sunday.

These locks have some nice advantages but sometimes I feel like they are way too internet-reliant and a bit outside my control. Furthermore the company isn't exactly the picture of professionalism (their IOS app has actually gotten worse during the year+ I have owned the locks) and I wonder if there will be any functionality left in my $600 locks if/when they go out of business someday.

</comment><comment><USER8> I hate just posting because I have an axe to grind here but wifi locks for airbnb are an incredibly stupid thing to have for all sorts of reasons.

Just get normal locks and hire a damn property manager. When I used to work for an ISP in a resort town, our support desk would get tons of calls when power went out (a frequent issue there) or our service went out.

It was always property owners who lived multiple states away who couldn't get their renters access to their property. Always furious. Always without someone local who could let someone on to the property.

<comment><USER14> What prevents someone from copying the key?

<comment><USER8> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15012746](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15012746)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I had a flight get delayed due to needing an OS reinstall on a 737-800, the OTA update failed and they had to send someone out to connect to the USB port to recover the OS. The plane was bricked essentially and couldn't take off. Fun.

<comment><USER9> They don't do ota updates for planes

<comment><USER16> Seems like it would save a lot of time, energy, and money if they did (assuming they had the procedure worked out). Push out an update while it's sitting at the gate, powered down, instead of taking it out of service and having to bring it into a hangar (where space is already limited).

<comment><USER9> This is a plane, not a consumer device

Nothing gets changed unless it's for maintenance or airworthiness reasons (or fuel economy)

Updates can be done during scheduled maintenance if there's a good reason for it (see above) or if it's really something urgent it is done overnight if possible or the plane gets scheduled for this specific maintenance

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> From looking at the product website, it looks like these locks have traditional keys as well, so I would hope that nobody is locked out of their own house while waiting for their lock to be fixed. The article didn't provide much detail, so I was picturing people getting locked out (or worse, locked in) to their own apartments.

What will it take to get IoT device manufacturers to adopt development practices that prevent this kind of thing happening? It's bad enough that most software is bug-ridden and poorly tested, but it's inexcusable for IoT software if they ever expect IoT devices to replace traditional alternatives.

<comment><USER18> Probably stiff regulation.

I wonder if a certification body (like UL) could work though. Probably is it is hard to boil "works good" down to a set of clear requirements.

<comment><USER16> Agreed. I don't see any major changes happening (WRT IoT insecurity) until there's regulation that requires it. The industry certainly isn't trying to solve this on their own (if they are, they're hiding it very well), they're only worried about getting to market as quickly and cheaply as possible.

I expect this to continue getting worse. At some point, hopefully, things will change and begin to improve. I think we'll see many more -- and worse -- incidents like this before that happens, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why are they even pushing out OTA updates for a deadbolt? Who designs a deadbolt that locks/unlocks via expiring codes and thinks "we're going to need to release so many updates for this that we should use OTA updates instead of the customer manually applying an occasional patch."

</comment><comment><USER20> Frankly, this is why OTA updates for critical infrastructure (locks, heating, phones, vehicles) always scares me. It's too frequent an issue that someone's device gets bricked as a result, leaving folks with no practical remedy in many cases.

<comment><USER21> The users should be the ones updating it, and the ones paying the ISP bill if it gets hacked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is why I always look extremely carefully at companies that operate machinery (cars, machine tools and other connected devices) and do OTA updates. This sometimes leads to interesting discoveries and blind spots. Who ever thought that updating software connected to the cars' buses without first checking that the car is stationary was a good idea?...

</comment><comment><USER23> Ouch. Clearly someone missed a possible outcome on their OTA update flow. Worse, they didn't devise a way that you could locally get the device sane enough to do another OTA. Counts as a double fault :-(

</comment><comment><USER24> Lockitron locked me out of my apartment. Danalock jammed in the middle of unlocking and made it very difficult to get inside. You know what works 24x7? My car's door. Why is this so hard?

<comment><USER8> Where are we going to put a car battery and the means to charge it in your door frame?

Are you going to operate a crank to recharge the battery? I'm not too keen on wiring mains power up to something connected to my door handle.

<comment><USER25> _I 'm not too keen on wiring mains power up to something connected to my door handle._

This is a solved problem: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolation_transformer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolation_transformer)

<comment><USER8> They can fail though (and I've seen it happen, overload, excessive moisture, etc.,). How do you know this before you touch the doorknob and get the (possibly final) zap of your life?

If the failure mode is potentially "you die", then we're probably better off low tech.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> 14 days for a replacement is an atrocious amount of time.

<comment><USER7> I can't understand it. You can mail them the guts of your lock, have them fix it, then mail it back to you, all in a week or less. Or they can just send you a new one, and it takes at least two weeks? Do new ones come by courier snail from China, or is this just a scheme to discourage people from opting for a replacement, or what?

<comment><USER27> It says 14 days lead time. I'm guessing they don't have the parts in stock for 500+ devices affected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've pushed OTA updates to smartphones before: there is a rigorous certification process that the software has to go through before reaching the customers. We've had times where we had to push emergency OTAs soon after, but never a time where we had to do any sort of recall due to an OTA.

I'm certain that these vendors don't have nearly the same amount of checks compared to smartphones due to much less overhead (like we had from carriers, Google, SoCs), but it's still astonishing how this could happen, but it's a good lesson for them, mistakes happen and I hope they implement a system where this is not possible to happen again.

</comment><comment><USER29> Happens to Google Chromecasts kinda often, by a quick Google - and you can't reflash them via USB. Same for phones, especially cheap ones tend to brick themselves on updates, and it's a hassle to get them reflashed.

The solution is simple, though: Use U-boot, two partitions for firmware and a tiny script using a boot counter/flag. Only after successful boot set the flag "do not boot back to old firmware". But doing that well requires recent versions of U-boot, and people are STILL shipping devices with 2012 or earlier versions...

</comment><comment><USER30> We/the media really should have picked a word other than "smart" for these devices.

<comment><USER31> I think "connected" would be a good replacement term.

Smart implies some sort of intuitiveness or responsiveness, which is often not the case.

<comment><USER32> Not bad. Could go further and call them "dependent" to make it unambiguous that they are not standalone devices but out of your control and potentially worthless if the connected services close or fail.

<comment><USER16> The Marketing Department would never approve using that term!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Does anyone here have experience with Mender or similar? I'm looking to do some IoT work and over-the-air updates are still my biggest unsolved problem. I'd love any guidance on any good tools to research & investigate.

</comment><comment><USER34> This type of headline is why large enterprises are often careful about working with unproven 3rd parties. And consequently why the enterprise sales cycle feels so slow and bureaucratic.

LockState makes the mistake, and AirBnB takes collateral damage.

</comment><comment><USER35> Tesla's doing OTA pretty robustly. Maybe there just isn't enough space in a door lock to do it properly.

If a system can go back the last working version if the latest fails to work, even a bad version shouldn't brick the device.

<comment><USER36> > Maybe there just isn't enough space in a door lock to do it properly.

Doubtful, dead simple OTA with recovery requires a 2x allocation of space. $2 or so of parts covers it for 99% of embedded scenarios, and if the product doesn't have enough storage to do a recovery OTA then the product wasn't spec'd properly. More clever but just as robust systems can get away with less (however much a recovery partition takes up, if doing WiFi that can be a lot).

> If a system can go back the last working version if the latest fails to > work, even a bad version shouldn't brick the device.

Knowing when the current version has failed can be hard. If the system comes up 99% of the way but one driver fails, that can be hard to determine programmatically. Obviously the manufacturer here didn't have that robust of tests running at startup to determine if there was a need to rollback.

To be fair, most software updates don't have that level of rigor. Pre-release testing catches the majority of issues, as it should. Now days, phased rollouts to opt-in beta testers is standard to try and catch any remaining issues.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Nordgigs – Freelance Projects for Developers in the Nordics - <AUTHOR> https://nordgigs.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hello!

Today I am launching my new project Nordgigs.

Idea: A projects match-making service for freelance IT professionals in the Nordics.

I would love to hear your feedback! If you are a freelancer, I hope you find this helpful.

Its just a one person company so no big cooperates here! :)

P.S: This is intended for people who are living in the Nordic region (Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark & Iceland)</comment>


Don't learn how to write code - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@karimjdda/don-t-learn-how-to-write-code-247e02ab5a8d#.nkln4gbta <comment><USER2> I just logged to write: The sad part of that article is a lot of people will believe that bullshit! Learn how to programming if you want to develop software: [http://programming-motherfucker.com/](http://programming- motherfucker.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Oh look, advertising for a product camouflaged as a helpful blog post.

<comment><USER4> Seriously. I have no idea how this kind of stuff gets posted on here.

<comment><USER2> Neither I, It's hard to believe :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sometimes I wonder about DRY culture :

 _" It took me 20 hours tops to develop the customers solution, because all the code was available online. I just had to find the right bits, squeeze them together and present them in an usable format."_

So many people put "non commercial" subclauses in their code that this sort of habit will bite you. Here is a "cooker" type developer, pulling random bits of "recipes" and tying them together into a project, without much knowledge of how they work or why. And someone will have to come along and fix it later. Or deal with someone sending legal cease and desist letters because they "ripped off our code".

</comment><comment><USER6>
      I believe that in the future we won't have to code as we think of it today.
      Coding will be replaced by designing, structuring and working with available
      technology to create new solutions."

I remember thinking something similar back in the 80's (remember RAD: rapid application development?), and this is probably still true for quick one-offs. When you have to live with the code you write, this sort of view takes on a much different perspective.

<comment><USER7> In fact I even used a game engine based on RAD in the 90s: 3DRAD which is terrible by today's standards but was huge attempt at WYSIWYG for the game dev environment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> How is it that only people so far off course are conceited enough to tell others how to do it?

Attitudes like the one displayed here are the reason for the tremendous amount of nonfunctional software out there. Just do what you like best, pushing bitmaps around, and leave the unpleasant part (a.k.a. actually making it work) to some masochist who enjoys it.

</comment><comment><USER9> One more script kitty thinking that they've already mastered all there is to coding because they can use wiziwig tools. Congratulations. Every "program" you could write in 20 hours could be built in excel in 2. Anything more complicated will be entirely out of your grasp.

</comment><comment><USER10> " I found out what colors would work together and how I could articulate my idea of a subscription box. Here's how it looks:"

whitespace follows.

</comment><comment><USER11> It feels like a big chunk of context is missing in this blog post.

It's pretty clear the author is talking to a specific audience instead of people at large. I have an inkling, but I would have liked to know who he thinks he's talking to.

</comment><comment><USER12> This might work for non-trivial CRUD applications but good luck building something more complex.

</comment><comment><USER13> tldr: You don't have to do programming and coding if there's an existing solution out there that has the building blocks to build a website without programming. One such authoring solution is... Bubble.is.</comment>


Fujitsu's Esprimo Green PC First to be Zero-Watt - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/kit-eaton/technomix/fujitsus-esprimo-green-pc-first-be-zero-watt <comment><USER2> _Fujitsu still says the machine is "administratable." Which presumably means it'll do wake-on-LAN actions, or perhaps Bluetooth wake-ups-- whichever it is there must be some circuit inside running off a rechargeable power source that's busy watching the ports to see if it needs to perk up the rest of the machine._

Umm, If you recharge a battery so that you can stay powered in standby, that's _worse_ than just using the power in standby. If this is really how they plan to make their PC "zero watt" then its nothing more than a dirty trick.

My laptop is "zero watt" half the time I'm running it.</comment>