Skip Silicon Valley: Why Smart Startups Start In Europe - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/avidlarizadeh/2013/06/26/skip-silicon-valley-why-smart-startups-start-in-europe/ <comment><USER2> Yes VC is less abundant, but if your plan is absolutely dependant on VC, maybe something is wrong.

In Europe, you get other valuable things, like a vibrant place, health coverage, etc. I'd put Canada in the same bag.

IMHO, the ideal plan is a fully owned company (ala O'Reilly) which pays for its own growth. You'll still be able to find outside investment later- except _you_ will make the terms, instead of getting pennies.

Call me selfish (and that's a compliment to me :-), but I'd prefer the money to be in my pocket than in the VC pocket.

<comment><USER3> But if you're not European you're not going to get health coverage in Europe. To be honest, health coverage isn't a major concern for 20-something hackers who sit in front of computers all day.

I'd also spend a good bit of time studying the tax code of any country I start a business in. Some countries, like Australia, tax capital gains at the same rate as income, which is bad news for anyone who put sweat and tears into a startup for years. You'll get punished when you take a nice exit.

<comment><USER4> In England the health system is free to everyone, the private health insurance buys you very little.

<comment><USER5> If I get a travel visa to England, I can get free cancer treatment?

<comment><USER4> If you are entitled to live and work in England, you are entitled to free healthcare. Since the subject is about running a startup in London, you'd have to have those entitlements. This isn't a discussion about visiting England as a tourist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Counter-point: [http://english.martinvarsavsky.net/entrepreneurship/advice-f...](http://english.martinvarsavsky.net/entrepreneurship/advice- for-us-entrepreneurs-who-move-to-europe.html)

"Another legal obligation that is very common in Europe and unheard of in the USA is state-mandated severance pay packages. This is a direct impediment to start ups, the reason being that most start ups fail and in the USA there is an understanding of this. In the USA employees demand stock options as upside should the start up succeed knowing that there will be no severance package should the start up fail. But I have yet to find a place in Europe where employees or governments truly understand this. Not only are forced severance pay packages a problem because most start ups fail and they still have to pay them, but also because start ups are constantly trying out people and the concept of trying out people is very costly in Europe. In some countries like France, forced severance packages of people who have been with you say only half a year can be as high as double their earnings during that time. For most Europeans stock options are considered a scam to pay them less."

<comment><USER7> > _" For most Europeans stock options are considered a scam to pay them > less."_

I agree with your overall thesis, but bear in mind that in the US stock options _are_ frequently used as a reason to pay people less.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I can't get past the first paragraph of this article. Anyone who kicks off their argument with three sentences of continuous name-dropping is not worth listening to.

<comment><USER9> As a London based entrepreneur, I found the pretext to the article hilarious. Why would a Stanford educated, Silicon Valley pro even consider a backwood like little ol' London?

/s

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm European, but I think that the U.S. is (sadly) definitely better for startups, for an obvious reason - huge market. Expanding to other European countries requires lot of work and energy (different laws, language, culture etc.). In the US, no such friction exists. Another thing is workforce mobility, it's lower in Europe (because of laws, language, culture).

Lack of VC is not the core issue IMHO, I guess it's just the consequence of smaller markets. Biger markets = bigger VC money.

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't get the logic of trying to do something difficult (starting a business) while intentionally choosing to do things which make it even harder (starting in small countries in Europe which don't have a domestic market, without decent VC, and in a hellishly expensive city to boot (London).)

If I were, say, Czech, I'd seriously consider doing stuff in the Czech Republic for a while, if I could bootstrap, then raise capital globally (maybe with a small office in the US if that helped). But I sure wouldn't go from the US as a USAian to Europe to start something unless it was inherently a European-local business.

<comment><USER12> Fashion startups have fared better in Europe than in the USA.

The "whales" in that industry are wives of financiers, sheikhs and commodities barons, along with celebrities. The next best group to sell to are the financiers, sheikhs, and commodities barons themselves. The globalized Patrick Bateman. All of these groups are well represented in Europe, especially London.

The next tier down in customer is the highly urbanized 20-34 year old. Due to the constraints of urban living when this group has extra cash they tend to buy $400 bags and shoes, rather than put it into a car or mortgage payment. There are far more people in this group located in Europe and Asia than there are in the USA.

It probably doesn't make sense to start many other sorts of online business in London, but fashion is an exception.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm currently bootstrapping a startup in London [0].

The problem for technical people creating startups in Europe isn't just lack of capital. It's risk-adverseness and occasionally classism. Unless you're creating a pure internet startup you will need to work with other businesses and your first issue is in convincing them to take a risk on you; if you've not got an MBA from x University, some friends in the industry and a couple of entrepreneurship awards it's only harder to do this.

The other ways up are really silly. Incubators that want you to social proof yourself with a number of popular advisors, etc. Also known as "You have to be in to get in." Or the weird government schemes that will give you a nice loan to pay-off, or the very dodgy-looking startup schools which want you to pay a fee to have them parrot obvious advice at you "Be Lean! Be Agile! Fill Out This Canvas!" The only important things are the right connections and an opportunity to prove yourself and what's there is often about legitimising the institution above giving the player an opportunity to legitimise themselves.

But, as with all things, just because something's difficult doesn't mean you shouldn't try. Better to try, fail and learn than to continue as a bystander.

[0] [http://getawayapp.co](http://getawayapp.co)

</comment><comment><USER14> You can't scale a typical startup in Europe.

If you rely on pageviews alone, maybe, but your audience then is English anyhow, as local language stuff just doesn't bring enough eyeballs.

If you rely on selling shit, then any US startup has a homogenous market of 313 million people, one legal framework and (roughly) one tax framework. In Europe? You're quite literally fucked.

A startup, by definition, is supposed to grow quickly. Which is inherently harder in Europe. Not starting in the US is quite frankly asinine.

/European myself, working for US startup, moving to US

<comment><USER15> Following your argument, it is "asinine" to create a startup in the USA, when China has a homogenous market of 1.3 billion people... There are markets, there are opportunities, there are startups. Each locale has advantages and disadvantages.

<comment><USER14> ahh, but not all of those 1.3bn are a part of the economy that can be targeted by a web startup. you need internet access, demand and cash on hand.

but yes, outside of software, China is exactly for those reasons a great market (BMW sells more cars there than outside of China). however, it is hard to scale out of China, as the language kills you. once they embrace english, those web startups will start killing, no doubt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's a fashion company. Europe probably makes sense for fashion.

<comment><USER17> wut? Have you ever been to europe?

<comment><USER16> Yes, I live in Italy, where they do the Milan fashion week stuff. Not something that interests me at all, but Milan & Paris are pretty hard to beat for fashion.

<comment><USER17> Ok, I understand your bias then. But even Italy has some tech startups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "to build our fashion ecommerce start-up"

Well there's your reason. IMO it's important (or at least a factor) to be close to your domain. London or NYC or Los Angeles are your choices if you want to be part of the fashion community.

This article is applying that generally, when it's just a specific market choice.

</comment><comment><USER19> For most software-based startups it comes down to a few things:

* Ease of hiring (remote workers increase the pool of available talent)

* Infrastructure (including availability of payment solutions, ease of setting up a business, etc)

* Access to finance (which may not be necessary if bootstrapping, or bank loans are available, which is especially promising in the UK with the Enterprise Finance Guarantee)

Unless you're VC-hungry there aren't really that many barriers to creating and running a successful company in the EU. Perhaps the biggest drawback to Europe is the culture, which is less startup friendly and slightly more risk adverse compared to startup-centric locations in the US.

<comment><USER20> "Slightly more risk adverse" is a vast understatement, and goes hand in hand with the culture problem. The near permanent branding of anyone who has failed in a business venture is horrifying from an American perspective. A lot of American business success stories had failed businesses in their past.

Beyond that, another major bullet point is:

* Ease of firing (inability to fire creates an inability to hire, you get trapped with terrible employees)

<comment><USER19> Couldn't agree more regarding the attitude towards failure! There's little acceptance of the idea that failure is a learning experience and multiple attempts are required to be successful. But, I think culturally it's improving, slowly. Tell someone you're an entrepreneur and working on a startup however, and it's a strange stifled reaction that's usually encountered.

Firing someone isn't as difficult as you'd imagine. There are a few more hoops, but at least in the UK it's not really all that difficult and it's not like you're permanently stuck with a bad employee. Plus, this is why trial periods exist!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> To get a true perspective on the startup/tech scene in London then the next HN London meetup should be top of your agenda - [http://www.meetup.com/HNLondon/events/125382282/](http://www.meetup.com/HNLondon/events/125382282/)

</comment><comment><USER18> s/Europe/Boston/

</comment><comment><USER21> Sadly, there are too little VC's and angels in Europe. If you take a look at a startup map of Vienna (or most major cities), you are gonna cry. The biggest "startup" is dict.cc...yeah.

That's why I am considering moving to CA after I get my degree. Though I am not sure yet.

<comment><USER17> That is an odd conclusion. Vienna is a nice city, but even for European terms it is not exactly a hotbed of innovation and start ups. Try Berlin, London.

<comment><USER21> Yeah, I'll maybe go to Berlin in the end. Still, it seems everything is happening in the US. But what do I know :)

<comment><USER22> Fellow Austrian here. I was in your exact boat about 6 months ago. Startup "scene" in Vienna is sad. Immigrating into the US is hard so I looked at Berlin and London.

For now I'm living in London. I considered Berlin, but I think the English practice here is invaluable. My English was already quite good when I came here, but it's improved LOADS. Also there's much more going on in general (culturally, socially), and there's more and bigger startups here (e.g. compare HN Who's hiring / startup city rankings).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to keep our readers safe and anonymous? - <AUTHOR>

We run a politically sensitive website. Users can submit complaints anonymously. We have done things like<p>- No logging of ip in our app - No access log on apache - No 3rd party javascript - No third party flash embeds<p>I am still not very sure. What else can I do keep my users really safe and anonymous. <comment><USER2> Who are you trying to keep them safe from?

You, that app owner? That's easy enough to convince yourself you're doing "enough".

Whoever runs your app's hardware/network? That's harder - if you let other people have access to the hardware, you've lost the game. Traffic analysis on the network give a lot away too, even if you trust SSL sufficiently to secure the content of the communication.

The police? That's harder - what're you (or your colo/cloudprovidor/isp) gonna do if guys with guns show up at the door?

The "government" (choose whichever FBI/CIA/NSA/TLA)? Ummm, good luck with _that_.

One thing you're not going to be able to do is protect them from themselves. Nothing you can do about internet idiots swaggering around with an "Oh, yeah? Wanna come round _here_ and say that?" attitude.

</comment><comment><USER3> Teach them how to use Tor.

<https://www.torproject.org/></comment>


Steve Ballmer email to Microsoft employees on Nokia acquisition - <AUTHOR> http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/Press/2013/Sep13/09-02email.aspx <comment><USER2> This is classic Microsoft strategy.

Note, as per a few people Microsoft trying to "build everything for everyone" might sound like "lack of focus" but this has worked for Microsoft and will work for them in the future.

In countries like mine(India), the common guy on the street buys things that are cheap and durable. Which is why Nokia phones were such a huge hit for more than a decade, anything Nokia launched would sell like hot cakes. You cold buy a mobile for ~2000 rupees which wouldn't die for years. My dad used his mobile for a decade, and then we had to buy a new one for him after it got wet in the rain. He insisted we buy him Nokia and Nokia only. That's the brand power Nokia holds in India.

You will see memes all over Facebook, depicting Nokia as Thor's hammer. That's what Nokia is known for- ruggedness, durability, quality and amazing value for money.

And now if they can really come up with something similar for tablets and smart phone for the common market it will be a huge success. Apple makes very delicate phones, which are also very expensive for consumers in developing countries. And now with Steve Jobs gone, within a few years it will be price wars all over again.

Though I appreciate what Apple has done on the usability end. I believe things like price, durability and ruggedness are a big part of good engineering. And this is where Nokia scores above Apple.

With the Windows mobile OS, Nokia can great traction in markets like India. Especially if they can keep the price in check.

I just hope Microsoft doesn't mess up with Nokia, the last thing I would hate to see is Nokia lose its hardware edge.

<comment><USER3> The ruggedness part is very true, and I miss that. Some of my carpentr/fishermen/boatbuilder friends still use old Nokias they buy used because they can handle the rough conditions they work in. an Iphone wouldn't last a week.

Back in the day I often used my Nokia 3210 to stir drinks and open bottles. It would take an incredible amount of beating and still just work.

<comment><USER4> These rugged Nokias you speak of .. these weren't all-glass-front/touchscreen were they?

I feel all the new smart phones out there are a bit weak on the ruggedness department. I recently lost a Nexus S (with a protective case!) to a drop of just a few feet. I was actually surprised that the phone wasn't able to take it.

If a touchscreen-based smartphone was truly rugged yet consumer-grade, it would really have my attention.

<comment><USER5> I dropped my Nexus 4 from the window ledge, it bounced off the arm of a leather couch, and hit the carpeted floor. The screen broke near the bottom (so the phone is still somewhat usable). Compare that to the Lumia 920, which is classic Nokia quality. I dropped that without a case down a flight of tile stairs, and it only slightly scratched the plastic on the back of the phone.

I've linked (months ago) Youtube videos of people trying to destroy a Lumia 920. One man used the screen to pound a nail into a piece of wood, tossed it across a parking lot, drove over it with his car, and only got it to break when he threw it screen-first into a concrete wall. It's still a smartphone with the downsides of a giant piece of glass, but it's got the benefit of a solid and shock-absorbing chunk of plastic surrounding it. You can't get it wet, but you don't have to worry about it falling.

The Nokias might be thicker and bulkier than an iPhone, but an iPhone needs a thick and heavy case. The Lumia doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ugh...

"Clearly, greater success with phones will strengthen the overall opportunity for us and our partners to deliver on our strategy to create a family of devices and services for individuals and businesses that empower people around the globe at home, at work and on the go, for the activities they value most."

Corporate beige-speak at its worst. How can anybody be inspired by this?

<comment><USER7> Well, it seems more human than anything Ray Ozzie could have every written, even this phrase

<comment><USER8> That doesn't help. This sort of bs is mind poison. It's like saying that MS wants to be a company that does stuff and sells things.

It is literally that vague and useless.

<comment><USER7> Well, I agree. Of course it is.

There's also an aspect of being a "mandatory blurb" for "market analyst (drones)" because it hits the right keywords.

It still feels they don't have the slightest idea of what they're doing

<comment><USER8> Because they don't. At a division level people know what they're doing and have more well defined goals at least, but that only helps so much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9>
        In fact, Nokia Windows Phones are the
        fastest-growing phones in the smartphone market.

It's easier to grow by 78% YoY when you started off as low as they did. They jumped from under 3mm devices in 3Q12 to just over 7mm in 2Q13 (slide 9).

For comparison, in April 2013, Google was reporting 1.5 million Android devices activated _every day_. [http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/16/eric- schmidt-google-now-a...](http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/16/eric-schmidt- google-now-at-1-5-million-android-activations-per/)

<comment><USER10> Better comparison would be "Samsung Android Phones", is the figure you quoted for all Android devices?

Granted they are a long way behind regardless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "...our strategy to create a family of devices and services for individuals and businesses that empower people around the globe at home, at work and on the go, for the activities they value most."

So Microsoft's "strategy" is to build everything for everyone, everywhere, all the time. Hilarious. This sounds less like a strategy, and more like a sentence concocted to justify an inability to focus.

<comment><USER12> I love the way people laugh at Microsofts services and devices proposition. It is pretty good; way better than Google and way more stable. Seriously. It also spans desktop, mobile, online services, private/public cloud and you can integrate anywhere.

While people were slagging them off, they got their shit together.

The strategy is simply: _everything_ because they are big enough to do it.

<comment><USER13> Wait, their shit is together? I don't really think so. Their mobile situation is zombie-ish, they still haven't really done much on the web, and as far as I have heard nobody is using their cloud services. How is their shit together?

<comment><USER14> Azure is in fact a bright spot for MS; no it's not as big as EC2 but people _are_ using it. Where their cloud is not doing so well is on the private side, I don't hear a lot about people running Azure private clouds in their own data centers; contrast VMware, Eucalyptus and OpenStack.

<comment><USER15> Is that available?

When I read ScottGu's (a fantastic manager at Microsoft!) blog I always think: If I was ever using cloud, that would look nice.

I was not aware that I could run all this stuff on our own servers!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Apple: * Fire Steve Jobs * Randomly follow pundit advice for twelve years * Jobs goes and builds second billion dollar business and fantastic technology no-one uses * Get Jobs and bis technology back at hour of need * Become incredibly successful

Microsoft: * Elop leaves of his own accord * Microsoft continues to make money but fails to create any new markets * Elop runs Nokia into ground with Microsoft's conspicuous help * Get Elop and his now shattered company back at Microsoft's hour of need (?) * ???

<comment><USER17> Elop worked for Microsoft just for two years before leaving for Nokia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Now is the time to build on this momentum and accelerate our share and profits in phones."

Do they even have profits to accelerate on?

</comment><comment><USER19> Seems mostly everybody agrees that this is a great move for Microsoft, and it might really be. But, what I'm really interested is how this is going to play out for both companies in the long run. Specifically the integration of their managerial cultures.

Now Microsoft being on top has an important decision to make. To force itself onto Nokia, or learn their ways. In other words, they can suffocate Nokia's engineering culture, or relearn it from them.

The later would be the best option for everybody including us all. However, I don't have much faith in the managerial class to play this right.

<comment><USER20> In manager land its mostly jockeying for free and spending budgets anything threatening that in any slight is met with extreme prejudice as far as I've seen in the corporate world.

So I have to agree I don't see Nokia staff in a great position regardless of how Steve spins it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> "... and IP" \-- I wonder if that's the main reason.

<comment><USER22> In tomorrow's news, Nathan Myhrvold as new CEO. Watch out.

<comment><USER23> His vision would be to lead Microsoft from "Devices and Services" company to "Patents and Copyrights" company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> At least they never got their paws on Qt.</comment>


Quantum "spooky action" approaches the human scale - <AUTHOR> https://theconversation.com/experiment-shows-einsteins-quantum-spooky-action-approaches-the-human-scale-95372 <comment><USER2> Approaches the human scale? This experiment was done on 10^12 supercooled atoms in a vacuum. That is at least FIFTEEN orders of magnitude away from the scale of the average human body, which is not supercooled or in a vacuum. This experiment is very interesting and an extension of previous work with massive oscillators, but the title is absurd.

<comment><AUTHOR> Human scale because it's approaching the range of normal human experience (width of a hair).

<comment><USER2> If I call something "Elephant scale" and then claim I meant "an elephant's hair" you'd laugh at me, and rightly so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Does resonance have anything to do with it? (I guess in a classical sense)</comment>


FDA grants Roche coronavirus test emergency green light within 24 hours - <AUTHOR> https://www.fiercebiotech.com/medtech/fda-grants-roche-coronavirus-test-emergency-green-light-within-24-hours <comment><USER2> Further information from a German paper:

\- Roche has been working on this already for weeks with high priority.

\- These are tests that run on high-throughput machines, namely the Roche Cobas 6800/8800 systems:

[https://www.dialog.roche.com/pk/en_us/products_and_solutions...](https://www.dialog.roche.com/pk/en_us/products_and_solutions/molecular- lab/cobas-6800-8800-systems.html)

\- One Cobas 8800 is able to perform 4100 tests per day in a fully automatic fashion.

\- There are roughly 800 Cobas 6800/8800 in Europe, US and Asia combined.

\- One test costs about 15 CHF (which is roughly 15 USD) (EDIT: This is what _Roche_ gets per test. The overall laboratory cost is probably much more expensive).

\- Roche is pretty much the only manufacturer for machines like these.

Source (German):

[https://www.faz.net/2.1690/pharmakonzern-roche-neuer- schnell...](https://www.faz.net/2.1690/pharmakonzern-roche-neuer-schnelltest- fuer-coronavirus-16678244.html)

EDIT: More exact numbers in the linked article: Cobas 6800 can do 1440 tests/day, Cobas 8800 4128 tests/day.

<comment><USER3> The cobas 8000 is huge: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aht-L4BMyN4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aht-L4BMyN4)

<comment><USER2> Yes, these machines are insane. See also

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6P-jaC3_d3o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6P-jaC3_d3o)

The dramatic trailer music is quite adequate, IMHO.

<comment><USER4> That is a very well produced video, it doesn't contain a single spoken word and yet it tells the story perfectly. Incredible machinery. Any idea what these cost?

<comment><USER5> Looks like around 400k base [0], but a full system with service appears like it would run over a million in a year or two

[0] [https://www.gsaadvantage.gov/ref_text/V797P7347A/0UZLK9.3QPY...](https://www.gsaadvantage.gov/ref_text/V797P7347A/0UZLK9.3QPYM1_V797P-7347A_V797P7347A.PDF) , page 13

<comment><USER4> That is amazingly cheap, I expected an order of magnitude more.

<comment><USER6> The video above (at least one of them) was showing an entire automation line built on Roche technology-- easily an order of magnitude more than 400k. The Cobas 8800 is just a component of that entire line.

<comment><USER4> Ah ok, that makes more sense. I figured a 100K or so per unit would be cheap the way it has been engineered. That's a whole robotic laboratory and what with the normal price of cleanroom equipment it would be ridiculously cheap if that setup was a few hundred K.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Dozens of labs came up with diagnostic tests in February, but the FDA+CDC placed huge bureaucratic roadblocks.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/why- coron...](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/03/why-coronavirus- testing-us-so-delayed/607954/)

Several states like Colorado use these alternative tests calling results 'presumptive'. The Roche machine is a welcome addition.

<comment><USER8> Are there signs of favoritism towards Roche?

<comment><USER9> Probably big corp has dedicated teams that handle the complex paper works / processes needed for FDA approval.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wish they would say test 50000 people completely at random in one of the hot spots and check out the real number of cases for 1000 people instead of this "you get tested if you have symptoms". I feel we're being deceived about the actual rate of death and how widespread it really is.

<comment><USER11> The reason for targeted testing is that everybody has limited testing capability. If we could wave a magic wand and instantly test tens of thousands of people, I'm sure we would.

Health care strategists know the testing has limitations and have pretty sophisticated models to extrapolate population level statistics from known test results. For example in the UK they reckon the prevalence in the population is from 10x to 20x the number of positive test results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The test kits from SK cannot be used because of supply, approval and logistical issues. So each country pretty much need to get them made in their own countries because of red tape

<comment><USER13> Not just red tape. The advantage of this test is that it can be run on testing machines that US labs already have, which obviously isn't the case for something designed to run on South Korean machines.

<comment><USER14> I assure you, the machinery is pretty damn standard on the whole Earth.

<comment><USER15> I imagine US machinery being nonstandard with the rest of the world, given the imperial units

<comment><USER16> Basically anything even vaguely scientific in the US still uses metric units.

<comment><USER17> Anything vaguely engineering in the US uses imperial, pounds and decimal- inches everywhere.

<comment><USER18> I think it varies from field to field.

For example, the US auto industry has mostly moved to metric for designing new cars.

From what I've heard, the vast majority of civil and structural engineering in the US is still on customary. (A few state highway departments tried to move to metric, but actually ended up moving back, since using metric when the rest of the industry was still on customary was costing them more money.)

US aerospace is still mostly customary, but NASA has been encouraging greater use of metric in space applications (due to the Mars Climate Orbiter debacle). And you'll notice SpaceX's webcasts all have metric units for telemetry – I believe SpaceX prefers metric wherever possible.

<comment><USER19> At NASA the standard seem to be SI units for anything in space and Freedom (English) units for anything inside the atmosphere. It is bizarre.

The funny thing is looking back at Apollo documents from the 60s is that many of those were in SI, but for Shuttle they appeared to have switched the launch and land portion fully to English.

<comment><USER20> likely because aviation is still on ft and nautical miles worldwide, i would think

<comment><USER18> The choice of units to display to the pilot (feet vs metres, nautical miles vs kilometres, etc) doesn't have any necessary connection with the choice of units for engineering drawings, engineering calculations (e.g. calculating forces on various components during flight), etc. You could keep the former in non-metric and do the later in metric.

Actually, many planes support displaying metres for altitude as well as feet. This is because, while most of the world uses feet for altitude, a handful of countries (China, North Korea, some ex-Soviet states) use metres instead. On an international flight, pilots can even change the units displayed on their instruments as they pass from non-metric airspace into metric airspace and vice-versa.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> These people made the UK national news (channel four) with their claimed simple test kit. After three days it detects antibodies supposedly. [https://www.biopanda.co.uk/php/products/rapid/infectious_dis...](https://www.biopanda.co.uk/php/products/rapid/infectious_diseases/covid19.php)

</comment><comment><USER22> How do you assemble false positive false negative statistics for a new diagnostic in the presence of exponential growth ...?

Is this actually possible to do — my instincts say that any exponentially transmitting contagion will make it impossible to assess such stats with any confidence for quite some time ...

<comment><USER23> Retest negatives and positives as random samples from both pools. Differential shows which has higher tendency to falsity. Continue as volumes of test rise. Track.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> What would testing easily available for all mean for the control of the disease? When vaccines or even treatment is still a while away, could this help?

E.g. if a country could test 10% of the population in a month, wouldn't that help the "everyone is a potential bearer"-lockdowns we see now and help achieve some normality? Or is mass testing too expensive or wasteful? Or would the information not be valuable enough to do it?

<comment><USER25> RTPCR has way too high of a false negative rate to do anything of the sort. It's about 70% sensitive on a nasal swab of symptomatic patients-- in other words 30% false negative rate. Asymptomatic patients may have even a lower sensitivity.

Some of this may be sensitivity of early tests, but it's mostly that not everyone who has the virus has copious amounts of it in their snot all of the time.

<comment><USER26> Isn't this why they run tests twice?

<comment><USER25> There are patients that are even negative on multiple test runs. Each measurement is not an independent measurement. We can't really solve this problem by testing multiple times, even if the measurements are spread in time.

The point is, testing everyone may be useful in slowing spread-- may be able to prove people as __infectious __and needing isolation. But it is not useful in proving people __safe __.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> All government decisions, quick or slow, are driven by self interest

</comment><comment><USER28> Being trying to figure out how many of these machines are deployed in the U.S.

</comment><comment><USER29> their machine is fascinating but something I learned about with all the talk about tests is this one that scans for 21 illnesses in one test, they had been using it to eliminate most everything else and imply covid19

[https://www.biofiredx.com/products/the-filmarray- panels/film...](https://www.biofiredx.com/products/the-filmarray- panels/filmarrayrp/)

while covid19 test is critical, and would have had more time to come to market if the president had just accepted WHO kits instead of refusing them for US profit, just a reminder if you have flu-like symptoms and fever regardless of virus strain you should not being going out in public anywhere anyway (but pointless to say, people coughing up lungs in stores, at schools and around my apartment complex)

<comment><USER30> > if the president had just accepted WHO kits instead of refusing them for US > profit

I haven't followed this very closely, so my impression was that that was the CDC's decision/regulation - is that not the case?

<comment><USER31> The president is in charge of the CDC.

<comment><USER32> The President appoints certain people within the CDC and can make budget recommendations (although the budget is ultimately set by Congress).

Regardless of which political party is in power I would say on-the-ground decisions are made by the non-partisan staff at the CDC within the bounds of all existing regulations.

The red tape and disaster declarations are the key levers that the Administration has control over, and it appears to me that they are taking unprecedented steps here to clear the way for testing which was impossible based on existing FDA regulations preventing private and even state run public labs from deploying their own testing.

What sounds like a good idea in general ("FDA approval is required before you can offer any diagnostic health test") doesn't work very well during a crisis which requires extremely widespread deployment of a relatively simple but _novel_ test.

<comment><USER33> We are in one of those classic scenarios where it's not clear if you should congratulate them on taking the right action or put their head on a pike for doing it too slowly.

<comment><USER32> Personally while it was a bit painful watching Trump (try to) speak in his typical style yesterday, I thought it was extremely compelling to see the lineup of CEOs from Walmart, Walgreens, CVS, Quest, Labcorp, Roche, etc. each of them announcing their support and dedication to serving their communities and fighting COVID.

"While any other day we are competitors, today we all have a common competitor, and that is COVID" was a beautiful line.

It's emblematic of the US approach (I won't say a Republican approach) to instead of showing a lineup of government officials to show a lineup of corporate officers saying that they are making this their mission.

My own political leanings gives me more faith seeing these CEOs commit yesterday to fighting this than anything the CDC or the FDA could announce.

So I personally give the Trump Admin a lot of credit for orchestrating that, and I'm excited to see them deliver on their promises in the next couple weeks. I think they moved quickly to close the border with China, and then we lost precious weeks when the CDC failed.

Certainly I would not expect any Administration to revamp FDA guidelines on testing _before_ it became clear they were an obstacle. Overall we've moved incredibly fast in getting to a National Emergency declaration (e.g. compared to H1N1).

Honestly it may have been his "9/11 moment" and I thought he nailed it. Not with eloquent speech to be sure. But in the actions being taken.

<comment><USER34> I don't understand all the negativity and downvotes around Trump's actions.

They are holding press conferences daily. Adjusting to the situation. Daily. He has changed course multiple times regarding his position on things.

Fail fast and course correct. That's the whole "agile" thing, and it seems to me the country is doing a pretty damn decent job of it.

Testing has been the main shortfall so far in our response. It's getting fixed as we speak. That should make people happy.

I saw a clip today of the Surgeon General basically saying "Stop nitpicking and start helping." This is a national emergency. Time to start acting like it.

<comment><USER35> This is the same surgeon general that was saying we should limit testing to people with symptoms

<comment><USER34> We also at the time had a severe shortage of tests. If you have enough tests, sure test everyone. If you only have a couple, then your hands are basically tied. What do you do when you use all your available test kits on people that come back negative and then a real case shows up?

<comment><USER35> He was saying this in Baton Rouge on Thursday.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Why wasn't this developed in January when the need was clear?

<comment><USER37> It wasn't a national emergency in Jan. WHO had also not declared it a pandemic yet.

<comment><USER38> Everyone serious knew it was coming in January. Once it's declared a pandemic, it's already arrived. People have to stop pretending that "no one could have known". Everybody knew. We were all yelling about it at the time.

<comment><USER39> Damn, you must have made billions on the stock market since you already knew in January what was gonna happen.

<comment><USER38> Why are people like this? Everyone knew more testing (the subject at hand) was needed. The second the first case was detected in the US (January 22) there was _instant_ coverage of the inability of people in Seattle to get tests. And there were no tests. And there remained no tests. And only now, as the US clusters have started to spread out of control, are we seeing a significant acceleration in test availability (c.f. the linked article, about quick approval for a new test mechanism). And we know this wasn't impossible, because many nations (South Korea, Taiwan, Japan) got this right and managed extensive testing.

Why are people resistant to this argument? We. Fucked. Up. It's maybe not productive to argue about recriminations at this point, but if so it's even worse to try to excuse it away or pretend that it didn't happen. It was a terrible mistake, and right now it looks like lots of people are going to die because of it.

<comment><USER40> The State of Oregon lab can process 80 samples a day. Every person gets at least 2 samples taken. They are waiting on >150 samples to be tested...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


MNT Reform DIY Laptop - <AUTHOR> https://mntre.com/reform/ <comment><USER2> Hi,

this is where I regret not having updated that particular page in a longer time. While the goals remain the same, we have almost finished a complete redesign of the project.

Here are some updates: [https://mntre.com/media/news_md/2019-05-20-reintroducing- ref...](https://mntre.com/media/news_md/2019-05-20-reintroducing-reform.html)

In the flesh:

[https://mastodon.social/@mntmn/102903623346043604](https://mastodon.social/@mntmn/102903623346043604)

[https://mastodon.social/@mntmn/102872674526072643](https://mastodon.social/@mntmn/102872674526072643)

[https://mastodon.social/@mntmn/102720152037379092](https://mastodon.social/@mntmn/102720152037379092)

There are many work-in-progress pictures when you go to [https://mastodon.social/web/accounts/35156/media](https://mastodon.social/web/accounts/35156/media)

If you prefer Twitter, I also post a lot of updates about the project there (@mntmn).

Updated technical specs:

CPU: NXP/Freescale i.MX8M with 4x ARM Cortex-A53 cores (1.5GHz), 1x Cortex-M4F core

RAM: 4GB LPDDR4 memory

GPU: Vivante GC7000Lite GPU with

Display: Full HD (1920x1080 pixels) 12.5" IPS eDP display. Optional HDMI port

USB: 3x USB 3.0 external, 2x USB 2.0 internal (for input devices)

Networking: Gigabit Ethernet port. Optional miniPCIe WiFi card

Storage: Internal M.2 socket for NVMe SSD. Full size SD Card slot

PCIe: 1 miniPCIe port

Keyboard: Slim Mechanical USB Keyboard with Kailh Choc Brown Switches, FOSS Firmware

Trackball (Option): Reform Optical USB Trackball with 5 Mechanical Switches (Kailh Choc Brown), FOSS Firmware

Trackpad (Option): Reform Capacitive USB Trackpad Enclosure: Modular case from CNC milled, black anodized aluminum 6061 and semi-transparent acrylic (bottom cover, bezel)

Sound: Wolfson ADC/DAC (WM8731), Stereo Speakers, 3.5" headset/microphone jack (no internal microphone) Camera: No camera

Battery: Safe LiFePO4 battery technology. Owner serviceable 8x 18650 cells totalling 12Ah/3.2V. Estimated 5h battery life.

System Controller: NXP LPC11U24 ARM Cortex-M0 chip with FOSS Firmware and hackable expansion port Manual: Printed Operator Manual incl. system schematics and full parts list

Sources: KiCAD sources for motherboard, keyboard, trackball, trackpad, STEP/STL/FreeCAD files for case parts, C sources for all firmware (input devices and system controller), build scripts for boot & system image

OS: Preloaded with Debian GNU/Linux 10, Linux 5.x mainline kernel

Weight: ±1.5kg (TBD)

<comment><USER3> The MNT Reform seems to have open sources for the case and boards but a proprietary SoC and modules. There is also the Teres-I laptop from Olimex with open sources for the case and boards but a proprietary SoC and modules. The Librem 5 from Purism will have open sources for the case and board but a proprietary SoC and modules.

It is good that we have at least the choice to buy a device with a blackbox from China (Allwinner A64, Teres-I) or from Europe (NXP i.MX8M, both MNT Reform and Librem5). But I think we would benefit from reusing common components in hardware just like in software.

What do you think about cooperating with other developers that have similar goals to yours? Are you already?

<comment><USER2> Yep I'd like to see an open SOM for Reform. If we are successful enough (re: cashflow/funding), it's possible to do our own.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is fantastic. It looks like we're approaching the territory of being able to easily build our own laptops from scratch. That will go a long way to preventing lock-in!

</comment><comment><USER5> I think if a specialised workshop can assemble a better laptop will be nice. It can open in business for those specialist who can use machining and specialities skills to quickly assemble a laptop for customers based on their choices and design.

Like in the good old days corner stores and shops can assemble pc's. Larger assemblers like HP, Dell and Apple killed that market but I feel it will be a good time to restart it. Like vinyl took over CD sales representing going back in time.

Hopefully this can be done for mobile phones as well with advancement in technology and standards. We need IBM PC kind of open and free as in freedom standards in laptop and mobile phones on hardware level.

<comment><USER2> Yep, I believe that indie/boutique hardware that gives you some independence from the big corporate gardens will be an important thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Reclaim your privacy and security: No microphone, camera or management > engine

The nice thing about Libre laptops is the camera + microphone have a hardware switch, so it's not either/or. They also claim to have neutered the management engine.

Regardless this project looks cool and is obviously a different approach to Libre.

<comment><USER3> Do you mean the Librem laptops from Purism?

<comment><USER6> Yes too late to edit comment thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The beta units were 600 euros, while the chipset is $87.

Meanwhile an Acer Aspire E 15 for $600 gives you a $297 CPU and $70 graphics card.

I guess there is some overhead because the beta was 10 units not a hundred thousand units, but still. You might as well get a Raspberry Pi and a portable screen and stick them in a box. It's half the price and you can use the components for other things after you get bored.

<comment><USER3> Can you get the sources for the board for the Raspberry? Can you run it without blobs?

<comment><USER7> It doesn't look like those are available. But CPU chips are just compiled Verilog at this point, if you want sources for every last thing you'd have to move away from ARM entirely since it's a proprietary ISA. Maybe SiFive will release a fully open laptop sometime in the future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> To what extent have you consulted the mechanical keyboard community? There is a tremendous amount of knowledge and experience about keyboard layout, electronics, software, hardware, etc. and it is not obvious to me that a community design would closely resemble what you are using. I recommend posting to [https://reddit.com/r/mechanicalkeyboards](https://reddit.com/r/mechanicalkeyboards), [https://geekhack.com](https://geekhack.com), and [https://deskthority.net](https://deskthority.net), and possibly reaching out directly to some of the most experienced individuals, if you have not already done so. The keyboard has been an important part of the success of at least one major laptop brand.

<comment><USER9> >The keyboard has been an important part of the success of at least one major laptop brand.

Which one?

<comment><USER10> Likely ThinkPads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why have mSATA or MiniPCIe on a 2018/2019 design? M.2 replaced both of those as of literally years ago, and anything remotely modern is only available in that format. mSATA is flat out dead and MiniPCIe has very few modern offerings.

It's not like there's a meaningful hardware difference, it's just a different slot pinout for the same technologies, but one's the modern standard and the others are outdated trash.

This should have two M.2 B-keyed and one M-keyed slot rather than the three legacy slots it has. And really, if I were in charge, it would have two M-keyed slots and only one B-keyed for WWAN. The SSD slot should be a M-keyed PCIe slot, not SATA nonsense. SATA is for spinning rust, PCIe NVMe is for SSDs.

<comment><USER2> SATA got eliminated for M.2 M-keyed (for NVMe SSD) in the redesign, see my other comment. mPCIe is still useful, because there are a lot of WiFi cards available in that formfactor that don't require firmware, for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Crowd supply campaign: [https://www.crowdsupply.com/mnt/reform/updates/re- introducin...](https://www.crowdsupply.com/mnt/reform/updates/re-introducing- reform)

<comment><USER13> Wow. Directly using easily-sourced 18650 cells for power is a killer feature. The trackball seems nice, too. Reminds me of my old Powerbook 180.

<comment><USER6> A lot of old laptop batterus are a bunch of 18650's wrapped in a black case.

[https://imgur.com/gallery/Fywq0](https://imgur.com/gallery/Fywq0)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBE7-LEPDSk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBE7-LEPDSk)

<comment><USER13> I'm aware. In many batteries, though, those cells are welded together and the cases are additionally glued or welded. This makes it much more difficult to repack those batteries with new cells than it needs to be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Does anybody know the expected price point? This is quite exciting and is exactly what I'm looking for, but I imagine the price point will be too high to justify replacing my high-spec working laptop with this lower-end device.

<comment><USER2> My target price is around 900 EUR.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> More libre hardware. Excellent!

</comment><comment><USER15> The chrome browser on the screenshot makes me suspicious :) Otherwise cool project.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, nowadays I wouldn't include that anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Will you be at FOSDEM 2020? Would be nice to see a presentation and the actual hardware. [https://fosdem.org/2020/](https://fosdem.org/2020/)

<comment><USER2> I imagine I could go to FOSDEM again yeah.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I would rather gouge my eyes out with a spoon that look at that eye-sore of a "computer". This is 2019, not COMDEX 1988. C'mon people.

<comment><USER18> " _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something._"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)</comment></comment>


3D geometry toolkit for ClojureScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/thi-ng/geom/ <comment><USER2> Literate programming with the source code in Emacs org-mode.

Example of raw source: [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/thi- ng/geom/master/geom-ty...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/thi- ng/geom/master/geom-types/src/bezier.org)

Shows up on Github as: [https://github.com/thi-ng/geom/blob/master/geom- types/src/be...](https://github.com/thi-ng/geom/blob/master/geom- types/src/bezier.org)</comment>


The Ugly Side of Bike Sharing - <AUTHOR> https://www.yahoo.com/news/amazing-drone-photos-abandoned-bikes-slideshow-wp-184518716.html <comment><AUTHOR> ironic that bike sharing is supposed to help the environment by reducing the reliance on cars, but the stark reality in china is that the copy cat clones are causing massive competition through aggressive funding and trying to displace each other by means of being the company with the most reach i.e. most bikes. i am abhorred by the waste of resources on such a massive scale, backed by vc's who are in it for money only, what happened to changing the world? i live in shanghai and i see these damn bikes encroach on every sidewalk, users park these damn things anywhere and everywhere they please, and there are a lot of mobike, ofo, etc just sitting there being unused, orange, yellow, green, blue, white. for companies' whose premise is being green, the hypocrisy is too blatant, everyone's just trying to get rich quick. one could argue that the number of cars would be increasing faster if not for these bike sharing services, which makes bike sharing the lesser of two evils, but come on, if just one bike company were to stand and say, enough of this crap, i don't need mass coverage of a city with my bikes, i win by having principles and creating an innovative experience that separates me from my competitors, i would jump on that in a heartbeat!</comment>


Mars Curiosity's first images - <AUTHOR> http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/ <comment><USER2> From a screen recording I took: <http://i.imgur.com/C5Y6P.jpg>

I actually shed a tear. That was beautiful.

Edit: Raw images being put on Twitter by NASA:

<http://p.twimg.com/Azl6LRUCMAAU1GK.jpg:large>

<http://p.twimg.com/Azl9hyXCEAE5_Hw.jpg:large>

<http://p.twimg.com/Azl7LXOCUAAJT5z.jpg:large>

<comment><USER3> Is that... a Tcl/Tk app being run in GNOME?

<comment><USER4> That was my thought as well as I was watching the coverage. Not surprising given there are a lot of old school engineers at NASA/JPL.

<comment><USER5> Here is the answer, it was written quite a while ago judging by the missions it has been used on: <http://www.techbriefs.com/component/content/article/5697>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I took those during landing sequence..

<http://i45.tinypic.com/353eemc.jpg>

<http://i46.tinypic.com/ej95s5.png>

<http://i49.tinypic.com/2qicoqq.png>

<http://i50.tinypic.com/2hd8j13.png>

edit: its just fun to watch those. also, according to NASA there is 500,000 lines of code behind those 38 steps.. would love to see some parts of it!

<comment><USER7> That's really cool. Would love it if they had some video, or alternatively made a visualization of the entire landing sequence using received data. Like for instance a video of the telemetry you took screenshots of.

<comment><USER8> An excellent, data-rich visualization was done for the Huygens probe that landed on Saturn's moon Titan as part of the Cassini-Huygens mission: [http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/pia0811...](http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/pia08117.html)

<comment><USER7> Exactly something like that I am looking for, thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I can't help but share the headline in The New Yorker's _Fake News & Political Satire_ section: "Mars Rover Should Not Get So Much Attention, Say Higgs-Boson Scientists."[1]

Humor aside, this is a sign that we're living in interesting times: two major human achievements occurring within a few weeks of each other. All I can say is, wow. I love it.

\--

[1] [http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2012/08...](http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2012/08/mars- rover-should-not-get-so-much-attention-say-higgs-boson-scientists.html)

<comment><USER10> Extend your time window just a bit, and the number increases to 3:

\- Mars rover

\- Higss boson

\- First commercial docking with ISS

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> My god, the energy in that room was amazing. Just watching how happy they were was worth staying up late for.

<comment><USER12> "Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life? Or do you want to come with me and change the world?"

<comment><USER13> I figured a paraphrasing along the lines of "Do you want to sell shiny phones..." or "Do you want to work on ways to share cat pictures..." would be more appropriate.

<comment><USER14> My shiny phone has added enormous value to my life. Cat pictures not so much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Far better it is, _to dare mighty things_ ,

to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure

than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much

because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat."

<comment> sean-duffy Fantastic quote, I think that symbolises what NASA have accomplished, and what inspiration it should bring to everyone who knows about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> In 3D: <http://i.imgur.com/PyxeK.jpg>

Edit: colorized version as it might look on Earth, with significant artistic license taken (the Martian sky is less interesting [0]): <http://i.imgur.com/oRCVX.jpg> (updated with wheel colors)

I've distorted and level adjusted the images to my aesthetic taste, and assembled the rear hazcam images into a stereo pair for RDS-style viewing. Zoom _out_ in your browser or image viewer, get close-ish to the screen, then look _through_ the monitor until the red dots (or any other parts of the images) are in alignment. Continue to zoom in or out until your eyes are somewhat comfortable.

It is a privilege to be one of the first human beings to see this section of Mars in 3D photos.

[0] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_surface_color>

<comment><USER10> Correction: I used the _front_ hazcam images from <http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's times like this that I think everyone can be proud to be part of the human race.

<comment><USER17> Personally, I think the tax payers of the United States deserve a round of applause from the rest of us for funding such a mission. It's not that other countries can't do this - we just don't want to pay for it...

<comment><USER18> Don't clap too long, NASA has long been on the funding chopping block, and there are far too many who would like to see it eliminated completely. They don't care that they are putting vehicles on Mars. They're too myopic to even think about what the future might look like.

2.5 billion dollars to put Curiosity on Mars. That's is a little more than double of what NBC paid to air the Olympics[1]. Imagine what they could do if we doubled their budget from half a percent of the federal budget[2] to 1%.

1\. [http://sports.yahoo.com/news/olympics-fans-ways- circumvent-n...](http://sports.yahoo.com/news/olympics-fans-ways-circumvent- nbcs-online-control-010417267--oly.html)

2\. [http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/622643main_FY%2013%20Budget%20Presen...](http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/622643main_FY%2013%20Budget%20Presentation.pdf)

<comment><USER17> So the UK could have had 6 Curiosity rovers for the price of the Olympics....

NB I do think the Olympics has been a good thing - but I do wonder about the value for money....

<comment><USER19> That the price was 10 billion does not mean the cost was that. They might even make a profit since they sell the sponsorships, broadcasting rights and tickets not to mention the stimulus of the local economy.

Sinking 2 billion into something that yields no direct monetary profit, that's a bold move for any country. They did not even sell broadcasting rights!

<comment><USER20> > Sinking 2 billion into something that yields no direct monetary profit, > that's a bold move for any country.

Correct that there is no direct return on investment. However, some experts have claimed for every dollar spent on the Apollo program, we got $10 back in public benefit. It's really difficult to measure this stuff accurately, but the point to take away is that there is quite a lot to gained in technology, PR, and cash by doing inspiring & challenging science.

<comment><USER21> That's why solving hard technical problems can be a good business move—it's not necessarily the solutions themselves, but the by-products of creating those solutions that have lasting value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This tweet reminded me of what's next:

"RT @DanielBrian: I love that @MarCuriosity launched Nov '11 but @NewHorizons2015 launched '06 & won't arrive @Pluto til 2015! Space is huge!"

[https://twitter.com/NewHorizons2015/status/23236225947574272...](https://twitter.com/NewHorizons2015/status/232362259475742720)

New Horzons is the spacecraft currently on its way to Pluto--it's expected to be in range in about three years or so.

</comment><comment><USER23> That's one small step for a robot, but a giant leap for robotkind.

</comment><comment><USER24> Images are up now on the raw feed. They're getting F5ed hard, so actually seeing anything may take a bit.

<http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/>

Images are grouped by Martian solar days (sol 0 == day 0, length 24h 39.6m).

<comment><USER25> What is "F5ed"?

<comment><USER26> Everyone refreshing their browsers by pressing F5. :)

<comment><USER25> People move their hand to F5 when they can stay close to home and hit C-r?

<comment><USER27> That only works with an Emacs pinky. ;)

<comment><USER28> For left-CTRL you can often just rest your hand on the CTRL while hitting the key with the index finger. :)

<comment><USER29> Hard to do if the keys on your laptop keyboard are flush with the palm rest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Great historic event; congratulations to all involved. As for the images, hate to be a party pooper, but wasn't this thing supposed to be state of the art technology? What's with the shitty image quality?

<comment><USER31> The fact that there were any images at all is a testament to the awesome engineering done on the MSL project. There was no guaranty that any images would be available from the Hazcams. The images were broadcast up to Opportunity orbiting above because the MSL was on the other side of Mars and does not have a direct line to Earth. The Opportunity was also about to go over the horizon so it also was going to lose contact. It was a masterful ballet of engineering and precision timing. What a great achievement.

<comment><USER32> That would be Odyssey, not Opportunity. Opportunity is the rover =)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> From the other thread: [https://dl.dropbox.com/u/76008/Screenshot%20from%202012-08-0...](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/76008/Screenshot%20from%202012-08-05%2022%3A38%3A06.png)

</comment><comment><USER34> Does anyone know how close to their target landing spot they reached?

<comment><USER35> I believe they said 232 meters at one point, not sure if that was 100% confirmed though

<comment><USER34> Wow. According to Wikipedia, their elliptical landing zone was 20km by 7 km. That puts them in the center 2% of that zone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> What a great achievement of heroic engineering! I can't wait to watch what comes next.

</comment><comment><USER37> And in a couple of days, if everything goes fine, we'll have a couple of color, HD pictures of Mars. I'm very excited about it.

</comment><comment><USER38> One I took as well. So fantastic <http://instagr.am/p/N-bAAmrEhM/>

</comment><comment><USER39> What are those pictures of? This one

[http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw- images/workspace/apss/ORT-1...](http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl-raw- images/workspace/apss/ORT-14/00000/opgs/edr/fcam/FRA_397504842EDR_F0010000AUT_04096Z_- thm.jpg)

Looks like a building with a garage door on it and some random pipes sticking out.

<comment><USER40> Seems the picture is down, any mirror?

<comment><USER41> [http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/?rawid=FRA_39750...](http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/raw/?rawid=FRA_397502305EDR_D0010000AUT_04096M_&s=0)

I see the same thing.

<comment><USER42> That image is taken with the front right Hazcam.

Here's an image of Curiosity, so maybe you can work out the shadow form this?

(<http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/news/msl20120803.html>)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> the Motif interface is a nice touch

</comment><comment><USER44> <http://pic.twitter.com/894ouNJt>

<http://pic.twitter.com/qSDmNS9H>

The page has not been updated yet as of now.

</comment><comment><USER45> As an aside, their Twitter account mentions that it was an observatory in Australia that was relaying the signals from Mars:

<http://twitter.com/MarsCuriosity/status/232337630711382017>

As it happens, it was an Australian observatory that relayed the first video of Armstrong walking on the moon. There was a fun movie made (made by the D-Generation/Working Dog guys) based on that:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dish>

</comment><comment><USER46> I've been watching for 3 hours, I accidentally closed my browser during the sky crane step, by the time I opened the ustream feed, they were already cheering... I missed out.

<comment><USER47> If it helps there wasn't really anything to see, so to speak. Watching it live was more of an emotional viewing than a technical one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> They're doing a live press conference now.

<http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/mars/curiosity_news3.html>

</comment><comment><USER49> I had the impression that the whole "control" room was nothing but show. Estimating the travelling times of a radio wave, nobody on earth could have had any control about the spacecraft, and none of the engineers in the control room could have done anything other than watch.

So if anybody is more involved into the mission than I am ... is my impression correct, or were there actual fallback mechanisms that these people could have decided upon?

<comment><USER50> What did you expect them to do? Go home and go to sleep and come back in the morning to check the logs? Come on. They'd hardly close their eyes for a second with all the excitement.

They're all there monitoring the various systems because they're all responsible for various components of an incredibly complex piece of equipment.

Assuming the landing goes well, they all still need to be there to continually monitor the operation of the systems they're responsible for and provide feedback if things don't like how they expected - it's not just about landing there.

This is normal even when releasing a tiny piece of software; it's hardly surprising NASA do the same for a multi-billion dollar project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Interesting quote from NASA about the cost of these images:

"This movie cost you less than seven bucks per American citizen, and look at the excitement we got," Dr. Elachi said.

</comment><comment><USER52> Did anyone grab the image with some purple on it in a grid pattern? I didn't get a good look at it.

<comment><USER53> I saw that too, I don't know what it was.

Best guess is, they talked about finding a flat surface to land on, so my guess is that's a grid showing the options.

<comment><USER52> I was figuring it was some sort of compression artifacts, but that makes sense too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> What innovations from this vehicle can we expect to see trickle down into the consumer space?

<comment><USER53> First you need a time machine.

These types of trickle down are not identified till much later. If you knew what it would be in advance you wouldn't need it to trickle down - you could just use or develop it directly.

<comment><USER55> I think the Curiosity team would object to your answer. They've been working on the project for almost a decade, have spent thousands (millions?) of man- hours on it, and have written 500,000 lines of code to control it. The dollar amount that has gone into building it is greater than the value of many fortune 500 companies!

There are probably some awesome innovations that came out of such a large project, it's a great question to ask.

<comment><USER56> Those 500k LOC are _just_ for the EDL. Wonder what they wrote it in, presumably C? [http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/news/press- releases/2012/ju...](http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/news/press- releases/2012/july/0726-ss-msl.html)

<comment><USER57> I've been hearing (sic: reading) a few folks suggesting actually python. This was in the ##curiosity IRC chat this morning during the landing

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> From NASA's twitter, you can see one of Curiosity's wheel in this one:

<https://twitter.com/MarsCuriosity/status/232354875189628929>

</comment><comment><USER59> Well done to the whole team who made this happen! Now go find some aliens!

<comment><USER60> I truly hope curiosity uncovers some new friends for us earthlings!

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> This is amazing. I hope that school children are given time to watch this. I hope that parents and teachers have the skills and knowledge to foster the Curiosity-driven curiosity of those children.

<comment><USER61> If I had kids, I'd definitely let them stay up to watch this and skip the first half of the school day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> The Curiosity rover runs on VxWorks. Does anyone know what gives VxWorks an edge over other (embedded) RTOS systems out there that qualifies it for tasks like this? Particularly open ones?

<comment><USER63> Not specifically, but it has been used for many years by NASA missions, so there is a lot of experience and knowledge behind it in this kind of thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Looks like the webpage was created by the Mars scientists themselves. They should entrust that job to a web designer.

<comment><USER65> Scientists were making web pages when you was in diapers, kid. I was there, working at Rockwell in '94.

<comment><USER64> That's what I'm saying, they were. They shouldn't. Like CERN announcement in Comic Sans.

<comment><USER65> The promise of the web was the democratization of publishing... anyone could do it, cutting out the middle-men. Now you tell us a "professional" has to be involved, no thanks.

As long as its readable I'm happy. I look at a lot of these professionally designed sites in the way you do this one, too much. I'd prefer the traditional black Times on a grey background.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Incredible, congratulations NASA, what happened today was nothing short of miraculous.

</comment><comment><USER41> Is everyone getting an Unauthorized response now?

</comment><comment><USER67> Two billion dollars and they couldn't put a color camera on it :-(

<comment><USER68> They have at least one color camera that "is like a consumer point and shoot" on the mast. The pictures released are from the very technically-limited hazard cams, which are really only for the drivers to see what they have to deal with.

Within a week we should see some full-color images coming in.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Please review my 8 month old bootstrapped startup - <AUTHOR>

I have been an avid reader of HN for as long as I can remember and I am truly grateful for everything this community has taught me. 8 months ago I decided to take the plunge in the B2C pool and we(team of 6) have been working on an app that solves a problem in the Social Media space. We are 100% bootstrapped and I would be most grateful for any feedback I can get on our startup( https://www.getStacker.com/early-access )
Long-story-short: We built Stacker because we found that Replying to incoming messages across multiple Social Media accounts was a major pain point and as a result most brands only use Facebook and Twitter to blast out messages rather than having meaningful conversations with their fans. We believe that Replying to incoming messages should be as easy as Publishing them and thats what we've hoped to achieve with Stacker.
1. At first glance, does our website convey what we're trying to achieve? 2. Do you think adding screenshots on the homepage would help? 3. Is the problem we're trying to solve something that you've faced personally? 4. What are your thoughts on our pricing? Would you consider using such a product? If yes, why and if no, why?
Thank you very much for your time! <comment><USER2> The landing page looks very well designed and inviting to scroll further

In my opinion to the fans part is missing from the messaging of the page. If this is something that you are pushing out than it needs to be a bit more flashed out on the page, in my opinion. I wouldn't necessarily see this app as a way to better engage with my fans/followers straight away so maybe the messaging could make it easier for the average user that visits the page to understand this

Thanks for sharing!

<comment><AUTHOR> Any input on how we could improve this would be much appreciated. Right now we detail this in the "Universal Inbox" section but that needs to be after the "Multiple social accounts" and the "Auto scheduling" snippets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The landing copy and flow is very good. It is pretty clear what all features are available in the app from the copy. I think the Universal Inbox is a plus over Bufferapp and I'm sure the app is far more easy to use than Hootsuite.

However, just Twitter and Facebook isn't enough. Our Bufferapp account has Linkedin Pages and Google+ Pages also integrated (plus some people might want Instagram and Pinterest too!).

Good luck, I'm sure it'll be a great tool!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much for the kind words! We decided to start with just Twitter and

Facebook. Will soon be adding in Linkedin and Google+ as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I disagree that this app is catered towards a B2C market. You'll find it tough as this market is already saturated. The limits you've imposed on the plans are somewhat silly, "album images" really? You're adding a limit to an existing technology which never in the past had one.

Add support for more social platforms, integrate with SMS and MailChimp, pivot, expand.

<comment><AUTHOR> Many thanks for the feedback.

I'm not sure I agree with "You're adding a limit to an existing technology which never in the past had one.". Right now you cant create/upload Photo Albums from any of our competitors' solutions so other than opening up Facebook to add in a photo album there's no way to Schedule the posting of an album. Support for additional Social Platforms is coming soon. Just wrote a blog post covering this one [https://www.getstacker.com/blog/5/everything-we- are-working-...](https://www.getstacker.com/blog/5/everything-we-are-working- on-1#)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Lots of competitors in this space... \- Hootsuite \- BufferApp \- SproutSocial \- Hubspot \- Circular.io

<comment><USER6> Agreed - but I think unified inbox is a rare feature. Also, his pricing is pretty simple and user-friendly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! The unified inbox is a big technical challenge at scale, I'm guessing that the reason why none of our competitors are doing it yet. Pushing out updates is relatively much easier (which the Stacker Outbox does in addition to the Inbox functions)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Quick question - are you offering any analytics? If you're, it's missing from the Pricing ([https://www.getstacker.com/pricing](https://www.getstacker.com/pricing)) page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes we do, in-depth Analytics. Thats the "Reporting History" section. We've used the word "Reporting" throughout the site instead of "Analytics". I'm concerned that non-techies may not get "Analytics" (although that was the first thing I wanted to call it...aka Google Analytics...being a web developer)

<comment><USER7> just a thought & playing devils advocate, but maybe think of it the other way? Non-techies might want analytics to feel more techie? Analytics isn't a rare term nowadays, especially for anyone interested in your product. AB test every think you think you know, track it, bet on it internally with the team ...

re: other stuff

Site clean, main image clearly shows what you do in 0.5 seconds

maybe more 'meat' on the right side you integrate with, even if its 'beta','coming soon','planned Q3' etc (remember - the time saving value your product adds goes up with the number of sites a customer needs to manage.. integrate more = more savings)

Newsletter/want to stay updated on our progress? (ask for my email address on page 1)

site metrics, where are folks clicking, where do you lose them? (checkout crazyegg)

conversion? email campaigns?

blogging & guest posting? - need more than one! even if its weekly release stats (my favorite is [http://blog.foreflight.com/](http://blog.foreflight.com/) as they mix news with tutorials and 'did you know's)

Any case-studies / testimonials?

screenshot to show ease or walkthrough to show time savings? (screenflow software)

best of luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Epic reply! Thank you so much for taking the time to put that down. Will review each of the points you mentioned with the team first thing tomorrow and have the site updated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is this like [http://bufferapp.com](http://bufferapp.com)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Stacker's Outbox offers similar functionality to Buffer(scheduling,timezone targeting etc). Stacker additionally pulls together all Comments, @replies and @mentions from your Facebook and Twitter accounts into a single universal Inbox so that you can Reply from one place.

<comment><USER5> Hmm.. doesn't Twitter API has a rule where you can't mix tweets with other social messages like FB?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not aware of such a rule. I think thats a bit of a grey area. As long as you are adding value to the network and not being a spammy-bot I dont think they will have an issue here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> People like photos. You should consider putting a couple product photos on your site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Many thanks for the feedback. My initial idea was to add product photos, but almost all the successful startups I see don't use product photos on their main page ( eg. asana, dropbox, basecamp, box). Also I wonder if photos would make the product seem more complicated than it actually is, since a visitor would be looking at data that hasn't been generated for his/her account.

<comment><USER10> I'd like to see photos too

<comment><AUTHOR> Noted, many thanks for the feedback!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you know any free bootcamp for Python? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Might not be quite what you are looking for, but Learn Python the Hard Way was a great resource for me when I was getting started - [https://learnpythonthehardway.org/](https://learnpythonthehardway.org/)</comment>


Physical Key Extraction Attacks on PCs - <AUTHOR> http://m.cacm.acm.org/magazines/2016/6/202646-physical-key-extraction-attacks-on-pcs/fulltext <comment><AUTHOR> I was surprised that the researchers were able to obtain keys quickly with most of these methods and, apparently, with other processes running on the machine (though, in the case of the acoustic, "coil whine", attack, they acknowledge that a non-idle machine results in reduced signal fidelity).

Does anyone know how they are able to take spectral analyses of, e.g., em signals, and turn them into data? I imagine the software is fairly complex. I'm not sure how I'd even approach this kind of problem!</comment>


Show HN: YouTransfer – Self-hosted file sharing - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtransfer.io <comment><AUTHOR> You can see a demo at [http://demo.youtransfer.io](http://demo.youtransfer.io)

<comment><USER2> This looks good. Please email us at email@example.com if you would like us to send you a repost invite. This is an experiment we've been running to give good stories an extra chance at attention on HN.

<comment><USER3> Good stories? Do you mean good projects? Or perhaps "good submissions" if you're looking for more generic verbiage.

<comment><USER2> I just meant story posts as opposed to comment posts.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: STOMT for Unity – Collect feedback in-game and manage it on STOMT - <AUTHOR> https://stomt.co/unity <comment><AUTHOR> What is unique here compared to other bug trackers and feedback solutions is that all the feedback is collected in a social network for feedback. This is an example use-case: [https://www.stomt.com/empires-of-the- undergrowth](https://www.stomt.com/empires-of-the-undergrowth)

It prevents bad reviews and combines feedback management with community building in a simple way. Basically like a Twitter for feedback.</comment>


White House Drafts Order to Look into Google, Facebook Practices - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-22/draft-order-for-trump-would-crack-down-on-google-facebook <comment><USER2> Does anyone believe the Republicans are doing this because they believe in trust busting and regulation, or more likely, that they don't like the outcomes about how their political messaging is handled or received on the internet.

Note that for years progressive voices have complained about censorship in media and lack of representation but they never had the political power to investigate anything.

Moreover, after the communications act of 1996, consolidation in media allowed the likes of Fox and Clearchannel to build conservative media empires, and while progressives complained and demanded a fairness doctrine or FCC regulation to prevent too much ownership, there was no zeal by GOP to do anything about it.

This looks to me to be a pure political play to the base and IMHO it is cause for concern that an administration that frequently attacks media and calls them an enemy is constantly attacking tech companies, not for the kinds of economic arguments economists would make, but for politically vindictive reasons. It looks like using government power to advance the interests of a political party.

Basically, opposing Trump or the GOP paints a target on your back, so expect corporate interests to fall in line and suck up to avoid a shakedown.

The GOP now controls all three branches of government, a majority of state governments, despite consistently losing the popular vote. Can they really claim they're being harmed by tech companies, because if there is some conspiracy to silence their message, somehow they're still winning like gangbusters.

<comment><USER3> This makes me happy that I never worked for your employer, Google, despite many unanswered emails from their HR. I do like the diversity of thought.

<comment><USER4> What does diversity of thought even mean?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I find the republican stance on this a little ironic, considering the places that are the easiest to get banned from on the internet are right-wing. Just try posting that you like Hillary Clinton on the infowars or Breitbart forums.

You can make a Trump support group on Facebook just fine.</comment>


Ask HN: What to do next in my career? - <AUTHOR>

TL;DR: Where could I find a decent balance between paycheck/technology/career progression/work-life balance in London?
Hi fellow HN's,
I'll have to move to London soon, in the next months. I'm a senior software developer (8+ years) with some experience with Scala. I do some coding in my free time (small things and one side-project I expect to publish soon) and I collaborate in a small open-source project for the community of a framework. I'm married, so some family responsibilities here.
I've spent my career in boring Java shops, not as much innovation and usage of new technologies as I'd like. London offers a lot of choice in IT and a couple of talks I recently had made me doubt where to apply.
I'd like a company where I can use interesting state-of-the-art technology.
I'd like real career progression.
I'd like to have a decent life-work balance, don't mind some extra time but I run away from 60h/week as a standard or 20% travel, I have a wife.
I'd like decent pay as London is not cheap (I've already had a bad experience with an offer of £45k/year. I was expecting more like £55-£60 from what I've seen and my experience)
I'm not sure whhich kind of company should I apply to: financial related companies, big companies (like O2) or something smaller like Mind Candy?
I initially discarded financial as I assumed it would be long hours and legacy code (and I don't dig suits) but a recent oconversation mention that it may be normal hours (37.5h/week), very decent pay and benefits and interesting technology. Is that true?
On the other hand, big companies may have better benefits and may be easier to get a promotion, but they may use "boring" technology; while a smaller company may give less benefits but a better work environment, although I'd fear the pay check differences.
So: Where could I find a decent balance between paycheck/technology/career progression/work-life balance in London? <comment><USER3> You sound like you're centering a big decision in your life around language choice because it sounds like 'interesting technology'. I'd recommend skipping this - the technology isn't the important part, it's what you're doing with it.

Also, 'interesting technology' and '37.5h/week' are often directly at odds, especially in the financial industry. When you're using old, boring technology then you know it's been used to do what you're doing with it 100s of times before. This means no surprises, fairly easy estimations of work length, and most important for a consistent work week - lots of older developers and managers who are more interested in their next golf game than using their weekend to hack in new tech.

Basically what I'm getting at is that you need to decide your priorities - <USER2> you looking for an interesting job, or a stable job? Once you decide that, you can do some negotiation in interviews and culture fit to find where you want to work. Trying to optimize two things at once and still get hired is much tougher.

<comment><AUTHOR> you have a point here, thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How about Palantir? They've got a London office, do interesting work (and would value your Java experience), and definitely pay well. They tend to work with government or financial clients; I'm not sure which the London folks focus on. Also, they have a pretty interesting mix of 'boring' (Java desktop apps & server infrastructure) and more modern (HTML5 & mobile clients) technologies. And they work with some clients that have...interesting problems.

<comment><USER5> We focus on both, and you should definitely consider applying.

<comment><USER6> For the interview, is it possible to select only "Systems Design Interview" and maybe "Coding Interview"?

For the appropriate positions of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am a senior developer at O2 in our labs team, drop me an email firstname.lastname@example.com as we are hiring right now and its always good to chat.

<comment><AUTHOR> I will, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> How about Softwire? <http://www.softwire.com>

We tick all your boxes. Tech: We use interesting state-of-the-art and varied technology (I just finished a Rails project; I've done plenty of Java work at Softwire). Career: We are a small(ish) company growing fast so there is opportunity to define new roles and help us manage the transition into a larger company. Work/life: We don't work long hours; generally 38-40h/week. Pay: We pay very well (I don't think we can compete with some of the financial companies, of course).

Here's the official blurb from our recruitment manager:

Softwire is an extremely successful and vibrant software company offering bespoke software development services in a diverse range of sectors including media, security, online retail, travel, finance, publishing and insurance. We are currently looking for software developers with prior commercial experience to work in our offices based in London (NW5) and Bristol. We have placed in the top twenty of the Sunday Times Best Small Companies awards for the past three years running, and employees will tell you that this is a truly great - and probably unique - place to work. We combine a relaxed and friendly environment with a superb all-round package of benefits including:

\- Varied and interesting work that will keep you on your toes day in, day out. \- Great remuneration – all employees reap the rewards of our joint efforts, and a guaranteed 60% of profits is distributed to staff via annual bonus. \- Flexible working time and conditions and no pressure to regularly work long hours. \- Focused training, rapid personal development, and the opportunity to take on elevated levels of responsibility early in your career \- Frequent social events and company outings.

Applicants must have demonstrated excellence in previous employment and possess impeccable academic records - usually straight As at A-level (or equivalent) and a good degree from a top university. You will need stand-out ability and enthusiasm in order to be successful.

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems interesting, will check more about it, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's very hard to speak generally about tech in finance, you're talking about a sector that employs tens of thousands of developers in London. Some of them are going to be working on boring legacy code and working long hours others are going to be working on cutting edge technology with sensible work-life balance.

Even within different teams at an investment bank you'll likely see huge variations in tech and hours worked.

Speaking more broadly you can find all the things you want in all three different types of company (small / big / finance), it's more about the culture of the specific firm.

Something you might want to consider is becoming a contractor and contracting at a few different places until you find somewhere you'd be comfortable becoming permie.

</comment><comment><USER10> If I was you, I would think about Ontology. They are working on some really cool stuff related to be able to query multiple data sources as if they were one (much much more than this of course) and they are based in Kings Cross, London. I would imagine that their salaries reflect the kind of work that they do. If I was looking for a job similar to you I would be contacting them.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll check them, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I dont know much about london - but its rare and unlikely to find all of what you want in one place - there probably needs to be a compromise somewhere - the economy is not great and if you want something that pays well - but also doesnt want you working more than 40 hours a week (what job is only 40 hours a week any more other than checkout jobs at supermarkets or governement jobs?) - and will still promote you regularly enough (given that you're working 40 hours a week and not going over and above in your efforts). My concrete suggestion (because im not a big fan of just criticising without providing something concrete in return) would be to find a place that pays you well enough to look after your family - and lets you do something you like. IF you're doing something you like and are growing into newer areas - you'll thrive - and you'll be positioned to be exposed to further opportunities in those areas - one or the other of which might be that opportunity that ticks of all the boxes for you!

<comment><USER8> > (what job is only 40 hours a week any more other than checkout jobs at > supermarkets or governement jobs?

I think this is an American perspective. Plenty of very good jobs in Europe and London in particular are 40 hour weeks. Plenty of research shows that people are more productive in the long term working 40h/wk.

<comment><USER11> I wonder - Im speaking from a German perspective :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How about Google? <http://www.google.com/about/jobs/locations/london/>

If you didn't _have_ to be in London, I'd highly recommend looking at Red Gate. They're, by far, the best company I've ever worked with: <http://www.red-gate.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for answering. As much as I'd love to work there, I already applied but after going all the way to on-site interviews, I wasn't hired.

My mistake as I applied to SRE and probably I should have gone for Software Developer instead, but too late for that now.

It has to be London, a pity as I read fantastic things about Red-Gate :)

<comment><USER13> They would probably let you reapply for the different position. You should try.

<comment><AUTHOR> I asked and they said "try in 1.5 years" so... maybe then :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > I initially discarded financial as I assumed it would be long hours and > legacy code (and I don't dig suits) but a recent oconversation mention that > it may be normal hours (37.5h/week), very decent pay and benefits and > interesting technology. Is that true?

You can end up in finance doing SAP integration, spending most of your day thinking about the quickest way to get fired... or, you can end up in finance writing distributed real-time software for high-frequency trading, solving cutting edge technical problems while also raking in cash. The choice is yours.

(I mention this only because I once applied for a London based job. The description was almost exactly what I just wrote, with a salary of 150,000 GBP annually. Unfortunately I didn't get the job, but hey, worth a shot :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I may need to check those offers in more detail, I just wonder what kind of life-work balance there will be :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Don't rule companies out because they're in the financial space. If you refuse to work for finance in, say, NYC, then you'll be unemployed often because that's a lot of what's out there.

Code quality problems aren't limited to finance and the people in finance are, on average, somewhat better than (at least) the NYC startup crowd. (There are good people in each, of course, and bad.)

I don't know the UK scene, but if you're certainly moving to London, you shouldn't rule out finance. Even though there are some terrible financial firms out there, I don't think that the whole set of financial companies is, as a category, any worse than other businesses (including startups). Those blue-sky R&D jobs (to which finance might compare poorly) are so rare and inaccessible to our generation that one can assume them not to exist in the corporate world (at least, not in the U.S.).

<comment><USER16>
        If you refuse to work for finance in, say, NYC, then
        you'll be unemployed often because that's a lot of what's
        out there.

Nonsense. NYC has a blossoming startup scene. Many prominent startups (Tumblr, Etsy, 10gen, Foursquare, Kickstarter, OkCupid, Mashable, BuzzFeed, SecondMarket, ZocDoc, Fab, Birchbox, Gilt, Seamless) are based in NYC, and many large tech companies (Google, Facebook, Twitter, eBay) have growing NYC offices.

List of tech companies in NYC: <http://nytm.org/made-in-nyc/grid>

Map of tech companies in NYC: <http://mappedinny.com/>

<comment><USER15> The startups are there and they pay well for someone in his 20s, but by the time you're 35 and looking to raise a family, you've priced yourself out of non-financial jobs (if you need to stay in NYC) unless you're independently wealthy or extremely well-established.

This is much of why I think the future is elsewhere. Not NYC, not the Valley. It's going to be somewhere where it's possible for a normal 40-year-old to have a career as a programmer (not a manager who occasionally codes) because it genuinely takes decades to become great at this stuff. Most of these "social" apps could be built by anyone, but if I needed a medical device, or an extremely high-performance numeric library, I'd rather the code be written by a seasoned gray-haired guy who understands technology at a deep level than by the sorts of people in charge at a lot of the startups where I've worked.

<comment><USER9> The median household income in NYC is $48,631, as an average software developer at an average startup you'll already be earning significantly more than most families.

Sure if you work in finance you can earn more, but it's about funding a more lavish life-style than a necessity. Pretending anything else is insulting to the millions of families who are living on less.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Stop making career and start making a life. (Finally try that idea you always wanted to do)

Do that for 2 months and then get a contracting job where you charge £60/h if you need money.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I'd like to believe career and life can both be achieved, it's all just a matter of managing yourself. That said, contractor life doesn't appeal to me too much right now. But thanks for the comment :)</comment></comment>