Living Off the Grid Under the Sun - <AUTHOR> http://sdbr.net/post/Living-Off-the-Grid-Under-the-Sun/ <comment><USER2> I'm somewhat curious as to why he's not collecting rainwater and using that rather than getting water trucked in; especially since he mentions it rains "a LOT". A quick Google suggests that area receives 200-300mm of rain a year, that would be enough to sustain two people.

As for being off the grid; I grew up on a cropping farm which was fairly isolated, ~100km from the nearest large (>1000 people) town. Pretty similar weather conditions 45-50C max in summer and 200 - 300mm of rain per year. We had a family of 4, a few dogs and 2 workmen during seeding/harvest (4 months). We lived completely off rainwater, except for drought years, then we'd have to truck water from bores either on our farm, or somewhere nearby.

Power was from the grid, except for outages (which could last a few days) or when poles caught fire and burnt down.. then we were looking for more than drinking water, as you have to fight your own fires. If the power wasn't back on after a decent chunk of time we'd get a generator running.

Currently we're using solar panels, and hopefully we can start using something like a Powerwall fairly soon.

We had dialup internet for quite a while. That only changed when a mobile tower was built nearby (5 years ago?). Then we had slow internet with a fairly bad cap. It used to be 10GB/month, it's 20GB/month now.

The most off the grid I remember being was when we would sometimes have no power, internet, mobile or home phone. If you got into an accident/emergency during that you could be in a bit trouble.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here: Hi there. Yes, I agree, I am not sure why the house wasn't built for collecting rainwater. It is something we have considered doing right away when we moved here, but at that moment we couldn't afford the investment. Long term it will be a valuable investment. On average it rains here for 10 days a year or so, but when it rains, it's really coming down. So all of the 200mm or so of rainfall come down within a period of about 2 weeks, usually around May and some times in August. So, the collection tank would have to be really large, 3,000+ gallons, to be useful.

As for the internet, take a look at Satellite as a secondary connection, if you need it. I know Exede has some unlimited plans, but only in some parts of the country, the parts that are exposed to their newer beam. We are still on the old satellite, so we aren't that lucky.

</comment></comment><comment> mike-cardwell "Completely off the grid"

"Water is delivered to us on a truck every 6 weeks or so"

I always thought "off the grid" meant that you were completely self sufficient. What's the difference in relying on water being delivered by pipe and water being delivered by truck?

[edit] Yeah. You know somebody is being very liberal with the usage of "Completely off the grid" when they have Internet access.

<comment><USER3> What is your definition of off the grid? I can't help but think you are being pedantic here. He mentions he could dig a well, but it's more cost effective to have water shipped in. As far as Internet access I'm sure that he needs it for his job so he can afford to purchase things like water or pay property taxes.

At some point you have to interface with the rest of society, it is impossible for an individual to be 100% self sufficient.

<comment> mike-cardwell I don't think I'm being pedantic when he says he is "completely" off the grid. If you're going to claim to be "completely" off the grid, then you should be completely self sufficient.

Re digging a well. Is your definition of "off the grid" related to how much something costs? If it costs too much, we'll just pretend it's not included in the definition?

<comment><USER3> How would he be completely self sufficient?

He needs water and food at least. How do you dig a 200 foot well by yourself? Farming at the level actually needed to sustain someone year round is going to take more technology than my backyard garden.

Is paying someone to come dig a well really that different than buying water? What if he was hypothetically able to purchase and store the amount of water that would be required to live the rest of his life? What happens when the well dries up? He gets someone that is on the grid to drill a new one? Doesn't that put him by proxy back on the grid?

<comment><USER4> Well, with this line of reasoning I do live completely off the grid already. I could build a water turbine or even a hand crank, but buying power from utilities is cheaper. I could start a farm, but going to grocery store every other day is cheaper as well. I could move far from civilization, but living in a 1M city is much more fun.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Google cache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mQPgnfO...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mQPgnfOug8sJ:sdbr.net/post/Living- Off-the-Grid-Under-the-Sun/&strip=1&vwsrc=0)

<comment><USER6> Well at least the website is apparently off the grid :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep :( Another server, a victim of HN. Actually this is just my private tiny VPN. Never expected it to get any meaningful traffic, so it was running a very restricting Apache setup. I am going to migrate over to Nginx, it's about time any way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> While I found the article quite interesting, the stuff he writes about his electrical work makes me think that he shouldn't really do electrical work in the first place: <quote> But when you are pumping 30 AMPS of current through an extension cord, you can't just use any extension cord, you have to use the heavy duty, 8 gauge, super thick type. (...) But those who know me well, know that I am a cheap bastard, and I wasn't about to spend $150 on what amounts to a bunch of wire.</quote>

So to save money, he just parallels three cheap cables off Walmart using a splitter.

 _Please_ _don 't_ _do_ _this_ _without_ _putting_ _fuses_ _in_ _each_ _individual_ _cable_ to make sure the rating is not exceeded.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here: I tested this system with a IR thermometer. Unplugging 2 out of 3 cables does make the remaining cable get warm after an hour of operation, but it doesn't burn, melt, or smoke. Running with just 2 cables, the system remains nice and cool, the third one is there for backup. In case of failure, if resistance on one of the cables goes up, the electricity will naturally flow through the other 2 cables with less resistance. Any short in any of the 3 wires will instantly trip the 30 amp fuse. If, for some reason, 2 out of 3 cables get unplugged, but not shorted, for some reason. The last remaining cable does have a potential to overheat after hours of operation, but the fuse should blow way before any significant problem could occur. It's just as unlikely that someone will come and neatly disconnect 2/3 extension cords as it is that 2/3 of the strands in the thick extension cord will be damaged, causing it to also overheat.

<comment><USER7> I really salute your diligent testing and the thought you've put into it, most people won't do that much. Then again, I also don't want to scare you by suggesting that your solution might burn down the house and kill the dog, and personally I might as well do the same if it's urgent and a one-off job for a day or two.

But for what you describe, a semi-permanent solution expected to be put to use a few times a year, I personally would try to find the proper parts, used off eBay if necessary, and make a pretty cable run to the garage with the mobile home/generator, wiring boxes and properly rated sockets on both sides. Makes me sleep better, makes me not hunt for 1 of the 3 cables which I've misplaced because I've used them for mowing the lawn, and in the case of the very unlikely freak accident happening makes the electrician called to clean up the mess not ask stupid questions.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that's going to be the plan at some time in the future, maybe this winter. What I really want to do is run a conduit under ground to where the RV is parked and connect an 8 gauge wire through it, and also an ethernet cable. This way I can wire the RV generator's start button directly to the electrical system. The control unit has an auto start function, so when the batteries get to critical level, rather then shutting down, it automatically starts the generator and charges the battery until they reach ~ 80% capacity. This way I don't have to worry about it and have to turn it on manually. I already found all the manuals and figured out the connections, just have not gotten around to implementing it yet.

The 3 extension cords were a temporary workable solution, something I could implement that day, when we run out of electricity for the first time. I had the tools, and tested it with one cord, and 2 and 3, it worked well enough to where I could sleep at night, not that you can really sleep at night with the generator running, that thing is loud. :) Now, with more resources, and more time to plan it out, I think I am going to make a more permanent solution. But you know how what they say about temporary solutions: "There is nothing more permanent then a temporary solution" :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sounds awesome but I am wondering since you say you need 2,500 gallons of water every month and a half, is there a way to save some water?

I always imagined an off-grid home making some minor sacrifices or adjustments to be more conservative in water and energy usage.

Props for making the investment in the off-grid thing and actually doing it.

But this is far from my sort of ideal when I think of off-grid. Although easy for me to talk when I take long showers and flush the toilet 4 or 5 times a day.

The minimum you guys would need to survive would probably be like 3 gallons of water per day right? So you're using like 1600 gallons per month, versus the sort of 'ultra-conserve' minimum of no showers or toilet flushing etc. which might be 100 gallons per month (I know no one does that, but if they only use the bare minimum for drinking and cooking it is possible).

So question is, do you have low-flow toilets and showerheads? Have you considered a composting toilet like Nature's Head or another one with peat or wood shavings delivery?

Also as far as heating/cooling, that is probably the biggest energy usage. But my understanding is construction techniques (earth-ship, 'passive house' etc.) can reduce heating/cooling energy requirements by a massive amount, like 75% or more.

To what degree is your house constructed using these energy saving techniques (number of windows, window placement, thick/insulated walls, thermal mass, airtight construction with heat recovery ventilator, etc.) and what percentage of your energy usage goes to air conditioning?

Anyway congratulations on the conservation and efforts you are making for sustainability.. its easy for me to be critical and compare it to some fantasy idea I had.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP Here: All of those are really good ideas. It's an experiment me and my wife are living, I wouldn't claim we got everything right. We do use a fair bit of water, it works out to ~35 gallons a day. Google claims that an average family in US uses 300 gallons, just looked it up. So I guess we aren't doing too bad.

All of our water features are low flow, of course. There are a few improvements which could really improve water usage. Our 2 biggest uses are showers and the toilet. If we could collect the shower water, and use it as gray water to flash with, it could be a good saving. We also wouldn't really need to go to a composting toilet. For instance, our RV toilet uses tiny amount of water to flash with, and it works just fine. Unfortunately, the way this house was designed, it makes it very difficult (basically impossible) to make plumbing changes. The entire house sits on a concrete slab, and all of the plumbing pipes are cemented in. The best way to go is to start collecting rain water, which just requires a big (2000 gallon or so) tank. We would need to place it below the house level, in the canyon to the right of the house. It's something we investigated, and intend to do as soon as we have the budget for it.

Drilling a well would be an option, and I didn't want to give an impression that we are not doing it simply because of the money. The other issue is that all of our neighbors wells are drying out at the moment, and it's not clear what's going to happen to them in a year.

As for the heating and cooling, this house is really good in that regard. The walls are very thick, and very insulated. They are at least 80% thicker than what I used to have in San Diego. The house maintains heat very well. In the summer time we use a swamp cooler (another water using device). We do not have an air conditioner. The swamp cooler does the trick by blowing outside air through a water impregnated paper membrane. It's basically a huge humidifier. Electrically it's very efficient, only using around 150-200 watts. It can bring the temperature down by 15° - 20° F. We also have fans all over the place. The roof top solar panels also add to the cooling of the house by blocking some of the direct sunlight.

The house has lot's of windows, with wooden shutters to block out the sun. All of the windows are double panel, insulated, with aluminum frames, so there isn't much heat leaking out there. The doors do need upgrading however, and that's what we are doing now.

I really love some of the ideas that I have seen when googling "earth-ship." Thanks for the reference! In any way, it's an experiment in progress, we are about 1 year into it. If we were designing this house from scratch, we would have made different design decisions. Such as gray water system, 12V DC as a secondary electrical system around the house, a rain water collection system, permanently installed backup propane generator, a green house, etc. For now we will work with what we have, and slowly upgrade some of these things, as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Even though we do live in the desert, it is the high desert, and to my > surprise, it rains a LOT out here

Unless the climate has drastically changed since I was stationed in Twentynine Palms (about an hour away), it barely ever rained there. And it rarely snowed, it snowed one time in the 3.5 years I was there and it was quite a shock to people that had been there for far longer than myself. It did hail fairly often though even though it never stayed on the ground for very long (if at all).

<comment><AUTHOR> I have been to 29 Palms a few times, and the climate does differ quite a bit. It doesn't rain in Yucca a lot of the time, only about 10 days a year, I would say, but when it rains, it pores. Those pictures in the snow were taken in Joshua Tree National Park, about 5-8 miles from 29 Palms. But I do have to say that crossing into 29 Palms, you can feel the temperature going up. Not sure why, maybe it's lower.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> As someone who does not enjoy city life: Congrats, awesome.

Why did you do it?</comment>


PeerServer: A Server in a Browser with WebRTC - <AUTHOR> http://www.peer-server.com/ <comment><USER2> I built PeerServer with a friend in 8 weeks last spring for our Stanford senior project -- it's a pleasant surprise to see it on HN six months later.

We are planning to open-source the code and create a brief video showing off its abilities this weekend, as well as fix some of the issues you may be having in more recent versions of Firefox. The WebRTC DataChannel spec has been changing, so it works in FF 22 (beta at the time we developed it) but breaks for some later versions where the API changed. It'll be fixed over the weekend for FF and the latest Chrome -- sorry for the issues some are having now.

Thanks for the great comments and enthusiasm!

<comment><USER2> Also @sophiawestwood on Twitter if you'd like to chat about it

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Won't connect for me (Fx 25, Linux). Blank white screen and this in the console:

TypeError: Not enough arguments to mozRTCPeerConnection.createOffer. @ [http://www.peer-server.com/shared/lib/peer.min.js:1](http://www.peer- server.com/shared/lib/peer.min.js:1)

<comment><USER4> Same on FF 28, also Linux.

<comment><USER5> FF 25.0.1 Windows, same :(

Awesome idea though, I can't wait till it works cross-browser!

<comment><USER4> Yeah, this is very exciting stuff, and bugs and problems are expected with something this cutting edge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Quite interesting idea.

On this we could have a distributed web server that scales as new ppl load the (site??). I can see this hurting akamai. People now have 10Mbps-20Mpbs up on DSL and cable; even before widespread FTOH this could become potent. It would also simplify a Tor alternative implementation, would'nt it?

<comment><USER7> > People now have 10Mbps-20Mpbs up on DSL and cable; Are you talking about the > bay area? I have never seen such an connection in a private home. (central > and southern europe)

<comment><USER6> We have it here in Mtl Canada. It's fiber to the neighbourhood and a new hi- speed DSL link for the last 200-300M.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Congrats, I have been waiting to see someone build something like this for a while. This is truly a glimpse into the future :)

Edit: I should have vetted this a little harder before commenting. I recognized the idea immediately, but the implementation here is rather lacking. Still, props for pushing the envelop.

<comment><USER8> Erm, you guys did disable TURN right? (because otherwise the security value here is fairly decreased)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Firefox 25 (Linux):

"[22:21:01.082] TypeError: Not enough arguments to mozRTCPeerConnection.createOffer. @ [http://www.peer- server.com/shared/lib/peer.min.js:1"](http://www.peer- server.com/shared/lib/peer.min.js:1")

</comment><comment><USER10> Reminds me about Opera Unite.

</comment><comment><USER11> Using profanity for needless shock value is not an effective way to get people to click your link.

<comment><USER11> (original title was along the lines of "Here's WebRTC, because F--K Servers.")

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nice! Why not chrome, exactly?

<comment><USER13> Last I checked Chrome's DataChannels implementation was flakey and missing support for several attributes

<comment><USER14> This should no longer be true. Chrome v31 ([http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/2013/11/stable- chan...](http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.com/2013/11/stable-channel- update.html)) added SCTP support for reliable DataChannels and allowing compatibility with Firefox.

<comment><USER15> Chrome and Firefox DataChannels cannot connect with each other. Chrome and Firefox media connections can interop though</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to structure JV for SaaS given upfront salary/costs - <AUTHOR> I previously asked a question here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23640125) about a former colleague wishing to extend a platform I developed for them into a SaaS.
The joint venture has yet to gain traction. Mostly due to a lack of time & enthusiasm on my part. Partly because I am not sure the business idea has legs; this is not because the platform isn't useful - it really is. I've built the platform using existing technologies and I understand the underlying theory reasonably well. However, it would not be hard for a potential customer to hire developers and to re-create a similar platform with some time and effort.
All that said, I'm starting to get itchy feet in my day job and switching to something completely different would be good and I'd have greater control in what I'm doing. I'd also happily put a lot of creative energy into something I'd have ownership over (even if shared).
My former colleague is really keen to get the idea off the ground and has recently asked what it would take for me to get fully on board. They touted a fixed amount that would take me from my day job for 2 years. It was a round number and amounted to approximately 85% of my annual salary (excluding discretionary bonuses). They also offered to cover hardware/cloud service costs.
This is quite tempting to me and I'm exploring the idea. I'm not sure how one would structure a fair contract in such a case. How could I argue to keep a greater percentage ownership of the new entity especially if I've been given a relatively large forward salary. What proportion of ownership would be fair in this case? 60/40? 55/45? Are there any other general thoughts or caveats I should be aware of? <comment><USER2> > _However, it would not be hard for a potential customer to hire developers > and to re-create a similar platform with some time and effort._

You could re-create a Google with some time and effort, too.

Jesting aside, that is valid for practically any product or service. Customers have other things to do; comparative advantage and all. Even if they have the ability and resources to re-create every tool they're using to accomplish their core tasks, doing so means they wouldn't be executing their core tasks. Where would they draw the line before getting to Czochralski and growing semiconductors crystals?</comment>


Google Reportedly Looking to Commercialize Its Spanner Database - <AUTHOR> http://www.eweek.com/database/google-reportedly-looking-to-commercialize-its-spanner-database.html <comment><USER2> Instead of commercializing it's unique technology, it should cloud host MongoDB because some arbitrary ranking says it's more popular?</comment>


Pandas and Lobsters: Why Google Cannot Build Social Applications - <AUTHOR> http://ifindkarma.posterous.com/pandas-and-lobsters-why-google-cannot-build-s <comment><USER2> Quote:

 _Google's culture has no respect for successful social applications. YouTube's office is still far from the Google campus to avoid the toxic attitude described by a former Orkut employee, "[Google has] an environment that viewed social networking as a frivolous form of entertainment rather than a real utility, and I'm pretty sure this viewpoint was shared all the way up the chain of command to the founders."_

I am not social networking's biggest fan - far from it. But the totally weird thing for me has been how Google has stepped away from even search-related functions of social utility, eg. withdrawing Public Calendar Search. The above statement would go some way towards explaining that - I'm still so baffled by the whole thing.

<comment><USER3> Maybe they worry about causing a privacy disaster?

<comment><USER2> You had to jump through hoops to make your calendar public and searchable (it was not the default option), so I doubt it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article misses one big point. Social is all about generating noise whereas google products are all designed to cut through all the noise and bring you something that you need by filtering all the noise. There has not been a single social network I have been able to stand for more than 10 minutes because of the noise problem whereas google products are a joy to use for somebody that wants to get things done.

<comment><USER5> Buzz? wave? you call these designed to cut through the noise?

<comment><USER4> Wave certainly since it's a collaborative tool for people that want to get things done. Buzz is a twitter clone but we already have twitter so I didn't really understand why they launched buzz in the first place.

<comment><USER5> Wave is noise IMHO.

The very fact that you can go back in history and replay, have multiple people talk together and the way that it's built up is not what I would consider cutting out the noise.

But that might just be me.

<comment><USER6> Would you say that's more or less noisy than the email chain that exchanged and integrated as many changes and additions?

A busy wave _is_ noisy. But I think it can be quite an improvement over plain email.

<comment><USER5> I think the problem is that Google does great when it comes to behind the scene filtering.

For instance their spam filter in gmail is almost flawless at least from my experience.

Anything that's about algorithms being part of the design they are great.

But they fail completely when it comes to allowing people to interact with each other. They simply don't have the design principles for that. It's not part of their DNA.

<comment><USER6> I don't think that's fair at all. Google docs, gmail, gchat - these are all inherently about interaction and they're great.

What Google doesn't do _successfully_ , is frame those interactions to make their own network "sticky". It's those second-order interactions ("likes", "reblogging", "fans", "mayor", etc) that Google doesn't seem to get traction with.

But that's a very different thing than enabling interaction.

<comment><USER5> There is absolutely nothing elegant about the interaction of googles products IMHO. What is elegant is the stuff that goes on behind the scences.

But the actual interaction part could be improved quite a lot.

<comment><USER7> The proudly presented see-as-you-type Wave feature is a major example of what you are saying.

Real people hated it because it was distractive, annoying and embarassing but they never tought about that because it showed their big technical achievement: the wavelet syncronization in real-time. REAL-TIME!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One of the more colorful, stream-of-consciousness opinions to appear on News.YC. Some interesting observations in the prognostications.

> Google FAILED in acquiring and integrating other social products. Blogger, > Picasa, JotSpot, Dodgeball, Jaiku. None are their category leaders now. Some > are dead. Why?

Metaphorically, foursquare rose from the ashes of Dodgeball.

> Google cannot hire a Head of Social because no individual can change > Google's DNA of building applications for pandas, not lobsters.

I wonder what Marissa Mayer thinks about Google's role in Social. I'm sure they have something in the labs... but you can't grow a social network in a petri dish.

Now I can see why Facebook probably won't ever merge with Google. It would be like an arranged marriage.

Android is the wildcard wildebeast. Mobile phones are inherently social.

<comment><USER9> Someone will probably build a huge and successful social whatever on Android, and maybe even the one that dethrones Facebook.

But it won't be Google.

<comment><USER10> _But it won't be Google._

Then Google will buy them

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> An astute article.

 _"Understanding those concepts is not easy. It takes lots of practice, and lots of patience, and lots of learning."_

I think that's an important precis of the article. Google's engineers are used to designing and doing what's "right". They inherited the concept of search and have built a sophisticated algorithm around that established notion same with mail and their more successful products.

Social on the other hand is a fuzzy science, it's hard to know what works and why ahead of time. It's much easier to do it in hindsight, but by then it's too late.

</comment><comment><USER12> Let's see how many Google products with massive social components I can come up with:

      Gmail obviously
      Youtube obviously
      Earth has a huge community building layers
      Maps is used and embedded by every other social service out there
      Blogger of course
      Groups of course
      Knol, though I guess you can call it a failure
      Orkut is massive in Brazil
      Picasa photo sharing
      Reader has sharing
      Talk obviously

<comment><USER13> I'd say: (almost) none of these.

GMail is a utility. Same with Earth, Maps (we're talking about social components for users, not for developers), Blogger (Tumblr, that is based on a social component!), Groups, Reader and Talk.

Social sharing in YouTube is _extremely_ limited. I save my YouTube favourite videos on delicious, just to give you an idea, and never receive more than one suggestion a month about a video from the community.

Knol is a failure.

Orkut is strong only in Brazil (and India, perhaps) and is largely the (free) Brazilian AdultFriendFinder (you dive deep into it, and then you tell me).

<comment><USER14> Interesting point about Orkut. I wonder if there is a Google Dating in the works. It seems to fit their mission of organizing and helping people search-- one of the most important search tasks in most people's lives actually. It's also inherently a panda task since you have a clear, stated objective that you want to accomplish and then move on.

<comment><USER15> Love to see "I'm feeling Lucky" on that site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 _Consider this example: Google Answers focused on answers and failed; Yahoo! Answers focused on social and succeeded._

Is Yahoo Answers really considered a success?

And one-month-public Quora is "hot"?

Lots of hyperbole here.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm uncertain about how this article ranked so highly on HN. It is such a woeful, tasteless soup of mixed metaphors and trite aphorisms that it becomes almost impossible for any well meaning person to tolerate it, read it and extract new insights, if any, from it.

</comment><comment><USER17> I still think Wave is a cool idea :/

I wish people I knew used it.

<comment><USER18> I think Wave's biggest obstacle was a clunky, slow interface. The concepts are quality, it just needs a real UI.

<comment><USER19> When was the last time you used it? Wave is not slow currently.

<comment><USER20> I just logged in, it still lags behind as I type.

<comment><USER21> What browser?

<comment><USER20> It can be slow on FF3.6, fairly fast on Chrome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I haven't gotten around to reading the linked article yet, but the first link in the linked article is a great way to end a long day of hacking code and building businesses: <http://ifindkarma.posterous.com/what-do-pandas-do-all- day>

</comment><comment><USER23> >As opposed to Facebook, which hates whales because whales distract the lobsters from the traps.

I _agree_ with the article but I would never forward it on because it's so goddamn thick with unnecessary and absurd analogies and allusions.

<comment><USER24> I thought they were kind of fun and matching my temperament this morning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> "Facebook is literally filled with master baiters"

How can you go wrong with a quote like that.

<comment><USER26> The whole article was written for virality and news aggregators. Way too many interweb inside jokes, too many distracting links, way too much knowledge about flimsy websites, etc. I really felt tired reading it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Does Google need to conquer social though? I guess in a world of shareholders and delivering ever increasing profits they need to try. From the outside it seems it would just be smarter to consolidate a bit, focus on what they can do in the social based search space, do a deal with Facebook ect.

I think they spread themselves across way to many areas without perfecting the core, like better support for the advertisers driving their massive revenues.

<comment><USER28> Google doesn't necessarily need to conquer social, but they definitely need to understand it better. They wasted a lot on wave and pissed a lot of people off with buzz. Plus the way the gchat contact list and the greader following work is completely mysterious, and that's kind of an important aspect of their social backbone.

<comment><USER29> Buzz and Wave both still have potential though. For me, if they would just roll out a standalone Buzz site that lets me view Buzz's and post without going into my GMail inbox, I'd use it a lot more. But having to go through GMail just feels incredibly clunk.

Wave also has tons of potential, but they need to do a better job of explaining to people what it's useful for. And as somebody else pointed out, a better UI would be nice as well. Using Wave is still confusing to people who are used to different metaphors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> From the perspective of an investor owning or considering GOOG, here's what I think about:

Over the next 5 years which is going to be more valuable: leading in social apps or mobile OS (with Android)?

I don't know the answer to that question, but it seems like Google is placing their bet on mobile OS.

Which do you think is more valuable...the OS or the social apps?

<comment><USER31> Betting on the mobile OS seems old fashion to me. In a few years we'll have complete parity in mobile. It really won't matter what OS you use. Even today we're pretty much there. I don't think Android can Windows-ize SmartPhones. There's too much competition and already too much parity. Google has a big problem if people are buying Android devices to mostly spend their time in non-Google services with non-Google ads. They'll still have a lot of mobile advertising but it may not be in the same ballpark as more targeted ads closer to the services/apps people are sharing data with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Chrome makes me feel like lingering and luxuriating, in fact it's the way I linger everywhere else... so maybe they'll find a new niche with that sort of basic platform hardware and software.

</comment><comment><USER33> from tfa : google should be concerned because fb serves bazillion likes clicks a day.

so what? the department of water should be concerned because coca cola sells a bazillion cans a day?

who will ever go to Facebook to search how to buy some power tool? I already have ppl from the office telling me all the brand stereotypes. I want to see tables of rpms and torque. and price on stores. screw my friends opnions. I already got them offline. Facebook will only replace email (if ever) or IM.

how to search case insensitive in less? have you ever seen one question like that on fb? I just got my answer on google. and I don't want to look nerd or newb on Facebook while doing that.

so, great article on the initial reasons. but tried to stretch too far.

<comment><USER34> "the department of water should be concerned because coca cola sells a bazillion cans a day?"

That is exactly the point, Google is not a public utility service, it is for profit. Google should be concerned in the same way Coca Cola is concerned about Pepsi, they dominate a certain market, but a moment of hesitation, and oops, you just lost the young demographic.

When Google appeared, Yahoo ware an empire, Alta vista ruled certain searches, where are they now?

<comment><USER33> my point is actually the opposite of what you assume.

my point is that facebook does not supersede google. as you assume saying cocacola vs pepsi.

google search superseded yahoo search and altavista search.

coca cola also does not replace DWP mainly because as much as people drink soda instead of water, they will ever hardly cook and bath in it.

so, the article talks about two ways to lure users. but they aren't exclusively.</comment></comment></comment>


Crank.js - <AUTHOR> https://crank.js.org/blog/introducing-crank <comment><AUTHOR> Was mostly trying to find if there was existing discussion of this I missed, but I guess not! Oddly, I set the title of submission as "Introducing Crank.js" because that's the title of the post, but somehow HN edited it to just "Crank.js"? <shrug>

<comment><USER2> Here [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22887773](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22887773)

<comment><AUTHOR> oh, thanks, that links to getting started not blog post, so I guess different links for HN purposes, but also not much discussion there either... seemed like an interesting idea, though I'm not huge on front end stuff or React, use mostly out of necessity/still kind of prefer server rendering when its an option</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to promote social startup? - <AUTHOR>

Hi guys, let me make a little intro: we're making a dream contest platform - www.dreamise.com This is a public wishilst where all dreams have a rating, every month we realize top rated dreams. Anyone can post their own wishes, get votes and boos rating and receive what he/she want.<p>So the main question is what are the best ways to attract users to this kind of startup and how to promote it? <comment><USER2> make it useful first, social second.</comment>


StartChart - Growth metrics for 1,724 Australian startups - <AUTHOR> http://startchart.com/

<comment><USER2> Pavlova, Phar Lap, Crowded House and now Xero? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xero_%28software%29>

(You can keep Russell Crowe though...)

<comment><USER3> Xero is from New Zealand.

<comment><USER4> Exactly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not sure you can reliably measure the size of a business based on its social media engagement, nor Stumble Upon "views" for that matter. Some of the fastest growing companies (based on things like, you know, revenue, profit etc) are enterprise businesses which inherently have less social interaction than a recipe or deal sharing site.

Also, no offence intended to Guy (the creator), but is it a coincidence that his Lifx startup is #1, and that that is heavily due to the StumpleUpon views which have jumped massively in the last week? Looks a little too convenient to me ;)

<comment><USER6> "better then hype alone" was my philosophy. Yes I'm involved in the current #1 (and others on that page). I disclosed this on twitter, published the algorithm and made the metrics visible.

</comment></comment><comment> hn-miw-i Is bugmenot and retailmenot Australian? I can find references to an American company whaleshark. The rest I find of dubious value as I am not in their target market. I find the Australian startup scene as mostly a poor copy of US projects from 6m-2y ago. New ideas don't stay down under for long.

<comment><USER7> Yes. They sold to whaleshark.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd like to see a startup specializing in web fonts that aren't completely unreadable on Windows. Seriously, most of the letters on that page are literally in multiple pieces.

</comment><comment><USER9> What are the metrics based off of? What is fast growth vs big growth? I couldn't find it on the site and I even downloaded the CSV data but it only had the aggregated numbers.

<comment><USER6> I'm the creator...

Fast growth: Given the last 14 days, score = log(day_14_sum_of_metrics / day_1_sum_of_metrics) - 2 * sqrt(1 / day_1_sum_of_metrics + 1 / day_14_sum_of_metrics)

Big growth: Given the last 30 days, score = day_30_sum_of_metrics - day_1_sum_of_metrics

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Another Australian startup to follow would be <http://OneSaas.com>, I think they will grow fast in 2013.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> If you're curious about the algorithms used, hover over the column headers. Click any of the rows to see the data sources and individual stats.

<comment><USER10> I think your algorithm puts too much weight on StumbleUpon "recommendations" which are really StumbleUpon "views".

I was happy but surprised to find my startup <http://taskarmy.com> in the list, and having a closer look at the metrics taken in account, it seems that it is because of the StumbleUpon stats.

<comment><USER6> Fair point- I've tried not to make any arbitrary decisions on how the data is used but I'll take a look at what the results look like sans stumbleupon.

<comment><USER6> Top 20 when I remove the StumbleUpon metric:

        [lifx.co] => 97.942429714246
        [kickfolio.com] => 89.598662998513
        [shebusiness.com] => 84.413930181291
        [netcomber.com] => 83.758506325309
        [readershop.com.au] => 71.445369888231
        [nameterrific.com] => 71.375673413085
        [bugcrowd.com] => 71.328010040444
        [shop2.com] => 71.228983543186
        [serviceseeking.com.au] => 68.308687033257
        [righttoknow.org.au] => 67.654116949018
        [theiconic.com.au] => 67.28062258823
        [kogan.com] => 67.173702738231
        [retailmenot.com] => 65.963267045507
        [startlocal.com.au] => 65.922497275844
        [social-medicine.org] => 65.833298346458
        [kaggle.com] => 65.616138632997
        [manageflitter.com] => 65.551656760889
        [freelancer.com] => 65.455719109403
        [harris.com] => 65.150296026706
        [freelanceswitch.com] => 64.742373047548

Doesn't feel like a substantial shift (good).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> this is kinda unrelated, but a highly ranked startup is shebusiness? If i made a manbusiness startup business club i would be shot.

<comment><USER12> There are plenty of startup business clubs for men.

Pretty much every club such as Rotary, Freemasons etc only admitted men until relatively recently.</comment></comment>


Defining A Growth Hacker: Growth Is Not A Marketing Strategy - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/20/defining-a-growth-hacker-growth-is-not-a-marketing-strategy/

<comment><USER2> It seems like people are constantly trying to get this new job title of "growth hacker" to stick by defending and redefining it over and over. Usually that's an indication that the title is superfluous and ultimately pointless.

Marketing is marketing is marketing, stop renaming it. Also, growth is absolutely a marketing strategy...in fact, it's one of the main goals of marketing.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is the first time I've read anything about what defines a "growth hacker". The people quoted in the article seem so eager to assert that they are not marketers, yet they seem to have a tenuous grasp on what marketing encompasses.

Although I work as a developer now, I did an entire business degree and had to study a fair bit of marketing along the way. From day one, it was made very clear that marketing isn't just amount advertising and promotion. Instead, we were taught to view marketing as something that is integral to product development.

It begins before the product even exists, to research the market and talk to potential users before development begins. This continues throughout development, and feedback and hard data are used to shape development of the product. The article,s assertion that marketing typically ends after user sign up is also incorrect, at least in any company that has been doing it properly. Marketers love hard data, and aren't going to stop paying attention once someone becomes a customer. They know very well, and have for decades, that current users are a key source of data needed to drive ongoing product development decisions.

Of course, that is how it works in an ideal company. Perhaps in the kinds of companies that TechCrunch focuses on, marketing has traditionally been done very poorly, so there isn't much recognition of what it really is. The risk in reinventing the wheel in this case is that it will be done poorly, ignoring hard-won lessons and repeating mistakes.

I'm all for advancing the state of the art in marketing, but I'm just not sure that calling yourself a growth hacker and pretending marketing is something that it really isn't is the most effective way to do it.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm pretty much convinced that the GH movement is merely a recognition that us product management folks now have a deeper pool of data on which to base our decisions. This is, in the bigger scheme of things, a recent development and not available to product managers across _all_ industries.

I welcome the controversy. Eventually GH as a buzzword is going to fade away; those left standing will have simply added GH to their personal toolbox. 'nuff said.</comment>


Noun noun noun noun noun verb - <AUTHOR> http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=279 <comment><USER2> Any time I see language hackery like this, I can't help but think about the perennial favorite "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo."

(I'll save you a trip to google: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo) )

Another one for the linguistic jihadists is [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_while_John_had_had_had_ha...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_while_John_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_a_better_effect_on_the_teacher)

<comment><AUTHOR> Classics! And the Wikipedia pages do a great job of explaining them.

I have a real life example. A friend in college was helping a girl prepare for her english-as-a-foreign-language exam. They were looking over English verb tenses and he wanted to correct a mistake she had made. Without thinking about it he said, "If you had had 'had' here, you would have had to have had 'have' there." She freaked out.

Edit: can't figure out if that last "had" belongs in there or not. :)

<comment><USER3> It does. Although to make slightly more clear:

"If you had had 'had' here" => "If you would have put 'had' here"

"you would have had" => "you would have needed"

"to have had 'have' there" => "to have put 'have' there"

That is the kind of really amusing sentence we say every day without thinking about it. I've caught myself saying similar things while speaking to non- native speakers, and it's always a crapshoot. We really are lazy and use the verb 'to have' a lot.

Nice example.

<comment><USER4> It's probably used considerably more in _spoken_ English, where intonation can help with the ambiguity. I have a hard time believing somebody would use "had" so many times together in writing without trying to rephrase themselves.

'Have' is also an interesting case, because aside from meaning the act of possessing, it is also a kind of case/tense modifier for other verbs. ("I _ate_ " vs. "I _would have eaten_ " + "the whole tub of gelato.")

In the writing above, you put the third had in single quotes, which implies you're discussing the word usage itself rather than trying to use it again. Similarly, your intonation would probably be elongated. Granted, a non-fluent speaker may not yet pick up on these cues, but they are there.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Zenimax Sues Oculus - <AUTHOR> http://www.zenimax.com/press/ZeniMax_Media_Inc._and_id_Software_LLC_File_Suite_Against_Oculus_VR_Inc._and_its_Founder_Palmer_Luckey <comment><USER2> From the discussion on Reddit: [http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/2655hh/zenimax_sues_o...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/2655hh/zenimax_sues_oculus_vr_for_misappropriation_of/chntzyk)

        Throwaway because zenimax is sue-happy and I work
        at id Software, and I don't want to lose my job.

        A while back there was an artist here who made
        some artwork for Valve's Team Fotress 2 Hat
        contest in their spare time. This artist ended up
        winning and received a large amount of money from
        royalties. Zenimax got pissed off that this person
        was earning money from what they felt like was
        "Their property". The rumor was that they were
        about to sue them, but ended up backing off. I'm
        not sure why.

        This individual left the company shortly after. I
        don't blame them.

        We've been loosing top-notch talent left and right
        ever since the Zenimax purchase, but more so after
        RAGE didn't do too well. We're alright now, but I
        really believe that this is no longer the place
        that it was when I started years ago. The office
        culture sucks ass, and unless you're keen to
        sticking your nose up certain people's asses, or
        have been here since the days when we could
        actually ship games, then you're not going to get
        very far.

        I think Zenimax is mostly to blame for this. Fuck
        them.

The moderators of /r/Games verified that the above comment is from a current Id employee. The reason I'm crossposting it here is because it's an interesting datapoint about the mindset of the people at Zenimax.

</comment><comment><USER2> What a shortsighted move. Who would want to work for Zenimax after this? Whatever Zenimax gets out of this lawsuit will be overshadowed by the goodwill they've lost.

EDIT: Who would want to work someplace that will aggressively assert rights over your personal projects?

Let's assume Carmack happened to work on VR within a Zenimax office. We're talking about someone who created Armadillo Aerospace. If Carmack felt like developing VR outside of Zenimax offices, he obviously could have. So it must be true that Zenimax didn't actually help VR in any substantial way. Carmack's VR development just happened to take place within a Zenimax building. And now they're going after him for it, while playing it off like VR wouldn't have existed without Zenimax's contributions.

EDIT2: What convinced me was a thought experiment: imagine Zenimax without Carmack. Now think of all the ways that our imaginary entity could possibly contribute to the development of VR. At best, our entity provided a building for Carmack to pursue his personal interests in (a "mad scientist lab," as the Complaint calls it). Maybe some marketing, but who would deny that the hype would have rolled in regardless of whatever Zenimax did to help it along? Two seconds looking through a Rift is enough to transform anyone into an evangelist. The VR ball began rolling due to the efforts of Carmack, not Zenimax.

So, let's say you're Zenimax. You have Carmack working for you, working on all kinds of cool projects; whatever interests him. Choose your adventure:

\- Stand to benefit by the halo effect of having a living legend on your payroll; a legend who gets the entire gamedev industry interested in projects happening at your company. Attract top talent by virtue of the buzz, and a creative's natural desire to be a part of cool projects. Your new top talent goes on to create many millions of dollars of value for your company.

\- Try to assert control over whatever Carmack makes. Make it abundantly clear that no personal projects will be tolerated by any employee on Zenimax's payroll. Show the world that no one can work for you unless their sole ambition is to be a Zenimax employee. Convince every young hotshot college grad that it's a bad idea to go work for you. Lose whatever momentum you would have gained by attracting top talent.

<comment><USER3> I would.

I don't understand why you're so surprised that a company sued after they were turned down for a settlement from a company they gave a bunch of key technology to under an agreement.

I don't find that behavior to be unreasonable at all.

<comment><USER4> _" I would."_

Then you're a sellout, and an enemy of labor. Enjoy your pieces of silver.

Had the tech come from a line employee, maybe--but it came from somebody with a long history of helping others in the community, of developing technology as a default idle process, and who basically invented the field.

That you'd honor Zenimax's position here is very unfortunate, least of all because you'd be supporting the position that anything you do while employed belongs to your employer, especially after a precedent is set to the contrary.

I'm not shocked that Zenimax is suing, because they're a bunch of money- grubbing assholes and probably sad they missed out on the cash from the Facebook acquisition. That said, I don't pretend for a minute that what they're doing is anything other than that: being money-grubbing assholes.

<comment><USER3> According to the lawsuit filing (page 8 of the PDF linked above), Carmac was researching VR at id under ZeniMax.

So yes, I think projects you undertake at work for money belong to your employer, and that this is a reasonable standard.

> least of all because you'd be supporting the position that anything you do > while employed belongs to your employer

My position is that work you do for hire belongs to the person paying, not anything to do with side projects.

> 25\. In 2011, ZeniMax actively pursued that research, including experiments > with various off-the-shelf headsets. However, none provided an experience > sufficiently immersive and responsive to be commercially successful. A > significant limitation was "latency" – the delay between a user's movement > and the corresponding change in the displayed image.

> 26\. By 2012, ZeniMax employees, including Carmack, had amassed valuable and > confidential know-how and trade secret information about how to develop, > combine, and optimize hardware, firmware, and software for an improved and > competitively advantageous virtual reality experience (the "VR Technology").

> 27\. ZeniMax planned to demonstrate its VR Technology at the E3 Convention > in June 2012, using one of its leading brands, "DOOM 3: BFG Edition." On or > about March 7, 2012 – a month before ZeniMax obtained a prototype Rift or > had any contact with Luckey – id Software's Creative Director tested a > virtual reality headset in ZeniMax's offices using ZeniMax's VR Technology, > as shown in this photograph posted online by id Software at that time: > [Photo Omitted in Quote]

(Pages 9-10 of lawsuit PDF)

As can be seen, ZeniMax was actively pursuing VR outside of Carmac's work with Oculus, and hence his work on the Oculus project would fall under rather reasonable IP assignments - see the inserted image of the contract clause from page 8 of the lawsuit.

<comment><USER4> So, your examples show an issue that recurs elsewhere in that document:

> 45\. Luckey used ZeniMax's VR Technology that he acquired through the FTP > site and otherwise to create and promote the modified Rift headset.

> 46\. Around the same time, ZeniMax also sent cables and customized sensors > to Luckey and disclosed – pursuant to the Non-Disclosure Agreement – > additional hardware design improvements regarding optics calibration and > sensor mounting.

I keep seeing Zenimax used (presumably) in place of Carmack--probably because their arrangement was more "let the father of desktop gaming graphics do whatever he wants", and it looks really good in this filing if it isn't him but Zenimax and Zenimax employees.

My issue with your excerpt of 26 is that how to "developm combine, and optimize hardware, firmware, and software...for virtual reality" is a completely broad description _which can apply to any sort of 3D work whatsoever_. It sounds impressive as hell, sure, but the fact is that tweaking a shader on Ogre3D would fall under that category. It's stupidly broad.

By conveniently switching around when they refer to what--in other words, by being lawyers--they manage to sound really damning when pretty much anything would fall under their claimed work.

<comment><USER3> The point of my quotation is merely to show that as part of work activities, research on VR was being done at id (ZeniMax) prior to contact with Oculus, and that Carmack's work on the subject would thus fall under the IP assignment clause from page 8.

Do you disagree with that analysis?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Starting on page 20:

        57. On July 26, 2012, Luckey again asked for
        ZeniMax's help with the Kickstarter video,
        specifically asking Carmack to provide a clip
        "talking about the Rift/VR in general/whatever
        else you think would be a great thing to have."
        Luckey further acknowledged: "Your reputation has
        really helped the credibility of this project, and
        having that credibility in the video would make a
        big difference for alot [sic] of people." Carmack
        declined Luckey's request to appear in the
        Kickstarter video.

        58. At about that same time, Carmack advised
        Luckey: "It is very important that you NOT use
        anything that could be construed as Zenimax
        property in the promotion of your product. Showing
        my R&D testbed with the Rage media would be bad,
        for instance."

        59. Luckey replied, "I will make
        sure we do not show the Rage demo in the
        Kickstarter, but is there any chance we can
        mention support/show a quick clip from Doom 3/BFG
        Edition?" ZeniMax turned down Luckey's request,
        instructing that Luckey rely on publicly-available
        information for Kickstarter promotional material.

        60. On August 1, 2012, Luckey launched the Oculus
        Kickstarter campaign. The funding target was set
        at $250,000. The Kickstarter page featured a
        five-minute video describing the modified Rift
        headset.

        61. In blatant disregard of ZeniMax's rights,
        Defendants used ZeniMax's intellectual property in
        the Kickstarter video. The video features multiple
        clips showing "DOOM 3: BFG Edition," displayed on
        the modified Rift headset. The video also used
        "DOOM 3: BFG Edition" to promote the modified Rift
        by displaying, without authorization, ZeniMax's
        logo for "DOOM 3: BFG Edition" as the first
        Oculus-Rift ready game. Further, despite the lack
        of any commercial agreement with ZeniMax,
        Defendants promised that certain backers of the
        Kickstarter campaign would receive copies of
        ZeniMax's game "DOOM 3: BFG Edition" with support
        for the modified Rift.

Context: at this point, Luckey has executed an NDA with Zenimax, in writing, with a "proper use" clause. Carmack has demoed the Rift at E3 to thunderous response. Luckey subsequently, Zenimax alleges, shifted from planning to offer "$500 worth of optics as a hobbyist package" to "launching a commercial product". Zenimax has, it alleges, made overtures to Luckey for a joint venture, but Luckey has ignored them. Then, after being warned by Carmack not to do it, Luckey creates a Kickstarter that prominently features id games.

Could be ugly.

<comment><USER6> I hope everybody who comments on this story reads the complaint. There's some really damning stuff in there and some of the more damning claims come with evidence, including Oculus demanding exclusive licensing of IP "shared by Carmack" during negotiations (paragraph 77). That stands in contrast to public statements from Oculus that ZeniMax contributed nothing.

ZeniMax knows that Oculus holds the stronger public opinion, for two reasons: (1) people love Oculus, and (2) Minecraft fans are still stinging from ZeniMax's trademark claims against Mojang re: _Scrolls_. Very good play on ZeniMax's part, dropping a release and an extremely well-written complaint at once. They want to control the narrative.

<comment><USER5> The whole complaint is interesting. The tricky thing about citing claims about ZeniMax's IP is that those claims hinge on the IP actually belonging to ZeniMax. Oculus and Carmack may be able to make a case that the VR work Carmack did isn't bound up in Carmack's work-for-hire agreement with ZeniMax.

But directly using ZeniMax properties to promote the thing while working under a cloud of IP ownership uncertainty was probably not a great move.

<comment><USER7> While Oculus surely shouldn't have used ZeniMax's stuff in their demo, and should definitely pay some kind of damages for it, it seems like a small part of what's at play.

Or is it supposed to show how fast-and-loose Oculus was with other people's stuff?

 _Edit_ At least reading through the rest, and taking ZeniMax at their word, it looks like ZeniMax has a credible claim that it's their software that got the Rift working. But if true, it feels like there should be some discrete evidence of that by looking at what's running on the Rift.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here is a copy of the complaint [1]. Originally posted here [2]. Interesting reading...

[1] [http://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/assets/4490157/1-main.pdf](http://cdn0.vox- cdn.com/assets/4490157/1-main.pdf)

[2] [http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/21/5739086/oculus-vr-and- its-...](http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/21/5739086/oculus-vr-and-its-founder- sued-by-zenimax-and-id-software)

<comment><USER9> I was expecting Carmack's name to appear in the press release. I cannot say I'm disappointed after reading the complaint.

The whole piece reads as if ZeniMax felt that it has somehow acquired possession of Carmack's knowledge (or any other of its employees), which at least for me seems to be totally absurd.

<comment><USER10> It's not that absurd. A lot of the VR demos used Zenimax games, and many of the videos and interviews were _filmed right inside Zenimax offices_. Code was written on Zenimax time and file transfers, emails for advice, and more were made over Zenimax email addresses.

Carmack obviously re-wrote all code once leaving Zenimax, but there's a case to be made that Zenimax giving Carmack free reign to work on Oculus while at Zenimax significantly benefited Oculus.

Oculus agreed at some point — offering Zenimax a 2% stake. Zenimax asked for more (amount not specified in the complaint). Oculus response was that the "figure was so far out of the ballpark, we believe there is little hope" — negotiations broke down there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Zenimax is based in Maryland, and Oculus in California. How strange that they filed the case in a north Texas court!

<comment><USER12> I've noticed this trend also, I asked google and got this response from wikipedia:

> An individual case often begins with a perfunctory infringement > complaint,[31] or even a mere threat of suit, which is often enough to > encourage settlement for the nuisance or "threat value" of the suit by > purchasing a license to the patent. In the United States, suits are often > brought in United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, > known for favoring plaintiffs and for expertise in patent suits.[53]

Source: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll)

<comment><USER13> That doesn't really check out. Surely, if they were forum-shopping, they would have brought it in the Eastern District, which has a 57.5% success rate, instead of the Northern District, which has a 40.6% success rate. (The national average is 32.4%.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I originally thought (based on the text of the agreement between Zenimax & Luckey, but absent the other details in the complaint) that Zenimax had a poor case and would see the agreement voided on technicalities. But these new details seem to show Luckey acted in rather bad faith from early on, which makes for a very different case. Now I'm wondering if Facebook bought a pig in a poke.

</comment><comment><USER15> I did not realize that Zenimax was in such dire straits. Although after losing its star coder I expect that made things harder for them.

For what its worth, these sorts of lawsuits come out of the woodwork when ever a 'liquidity event' happens. From folks suing companies about to go public, to targets of large acquisitions. Always interesting to read what they have to say when they try the 'appeal to the public' angle.

<comment><USER16> Zenimax spent about $200MM on The Elder Scrolls Online, and they're expecting to take a serious hit financially.

Of course they launched another AAA game this week and I can't say with this news i'm particularly interested in supporting Zenimax financially in their lawsuit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Who puts out a press release announcing a lawsuit?

<comment><USER18> A company whose chairman and CEO is a lawyer.

<comment><USER17> And, as I've learned after a quick Wikipedia jag, is married to Wonder Woman and used to be CEO of FriendFinder! Which used to be the Penthouse Media Group!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Filed in the northern district of texas, of course, where every other IP troll goes to file suits. Really all you need to know about the merits.

</comment><comment><USER20> This lawsuit reminds me of John Fogerty getting sued for plagiarizing himself.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm really interested to see how this plays out. Zenimax definitely has a case when you read the filing. So who knows, they may have some grounds.

</comment><comment><USER22> It seems to me that Facebook would have found out about that NDA during the acquiring process of Oculus, and are likely prepared to deal with it.

<comment><USER23> I sense a multi-billion dollar acquisition of zenimax coming if the case has merit

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting: the URL no longer takes us to the announcement, and the link on their press page supposedly to their press release is now broken.

</comment><comment><USER24> Lawyers lol</comment>


Sedans Aren't Dead, American Sedans Are - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-11-29/chevrolet-sedans-suffer-while-toyota-and-honda-hang-on <comment><USER3> Any article on why US manufactures of vehicles focus on trucks instead of cars and does not mention the chicken tax [1] has not really done their homework. In 1965 a 25% tax was put on imported trucks due to a trade fight with Europe on chicken imports. This 25% tax is still in effect today. SUVs were also put in the truck category for some time and it is not clear which truck like vehicles will be taxed. This is why almost all trucks and SUVs made by non-US companies are manufactured in the US.

Profit margins on US made trucks have been much larger than autos for a long time(mostly due to this tax) and I imagine that all the marketing of the US auto companies over 40 years to get people to buy them instead of sedans has had quite an effect. Once a large number of people are driving tall trucks and SUVs, driving a car is much less comfortable, as you can't see past the truck in front of you from a low sedan.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax)

<comment><USER4> Most manufacturers have already figured out how to game the chicken tax. For example, Ford installs seats that are removed and destroyed after each Transit Connect reaches the US [0]. I've heard other stories about Subaru doing something similar so that their CAFE metrics weren't screwed.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Transit_Connect#Tariff_ci...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Transit_Connect#Tariff_circumvention).

<comment><USER5> I'm more interested in learning why there's a lacking feedback mechanism for "hey, that's not what we wanted, let's revisit the regulations for what we were trying to achieve".

<comment><USER6> First we need to put carseat-destroying subsidies in place so that hard- working American carseat-destroyers aren't put out of a job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> They killed the Chevy Volt, the only interesting sedan in GM's entire line-up. Incredibly short-sighted. Love it more than any car I've ever driven, despite it lacking in many of the 'creature comforts' of other cars. Fun to drive with excellent acceleration, I drive it 91% electric, and when I flip over to gas it's an excellent performing highly efficient hybrid.

Sad.

EDIT: I should add that really the Volt is not a 'sedan', but a 'liftback'. Far more utility out of the trunk than a typical sedan. My medium sized dog even fits back there.

<comment><USER8> Even sadder: the Bolt is the affordable electric car that the Tesla Model 3 promised to be but isn't. And yet no one is excited about the Bolt. In fact, probably most people are not even aware that the Bolt exists. Sad indeed.

<comment><USER7> They made odd choices on the body styling. It's a Chevy Trax but squished horizontally. And the naming sucks. The drivetrain is amazing.

They also just don't seem to want to make enough of them or ship them to markets where people want them. Canada was starved for inventory all last last year. None went to Europe. Asia, where they'd make a lot of sense, got only a smattering. And they don't seem to be improving on this.

The fate of the Volt and Bolt together makes me entirely skeptical of GM's claims to making a transition to EV production. I used to be a big advocate of GM's EV designs -- they're technically excellent -- but I don't think I can get behind the company at all. I'm somewhat tempted to sell my Volt and get a Honda Clarity PHEV.

<comment><USER9> > The fate of the Volt and Bolt together makes me entirely skeptical of GM's > claims to making a transition to EV production

Couldn't agree more.

To add - my parents were in the market for electric cars and were evaluating the Bolt as a serious option. GM turned them away, including refusing to take a reservation and said "check again in 6 months when the new model year comes out". Seems like the production was very intentionally capped, and there was little effort to retain their business.

<comment><USER10> The cars probably lose money by themselves, only being profitable when looking at the big picture. (due to CAFE and similar) They are costly to make and typical car buyers are uninterested.

The cars exist because various governments have made electric/hybrid/whatever quotas that need to be met. The minimum required number will be sold. In some jurisdictions that number is zero. Each one of these cars is sold at a loss, until you consider that the manufacturer is able to avoid fines or being entirely banned from selling vehicles.

<comment><USER11> Or GM just hates electric cars. Look at what they did with the EV-1, a vehicle they were apparently only making under duress. They had an exit plan in place from day 1, and it did not involve people commuting in electric cars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The car market in its' totality has always struck me as being irrational.

It takes a large amount of number crunching to determine that an old small Japanese car has the cheapest TCO.

The same follows across the categories (e.g. the article's specific focus on sedans).

A whole bunch of mid-market brands seemingly exist for no reason other than for some groups of not-wealthy people to waste money in an attempt to impress other groups of not-wealthy people.

e.g. the German cars which seem to exist as some sort of indicator that someone can afford to burn money maintaining a depreciating asset.

It's basically the (non-smart) watch market, right. You wear a Casio-level watch if you don't care, a Rolex-level watch if you're signalling, and other stuff is basically an enthusiast market.

<comment><USER13> Well, this assumes that it's all about TCO or status.

But have you ever driven a Mercedes, BMW, Porsche or Audi? The driving expierence is superior to everything else! Tesla gets close...but I can't think of any other brand that does.

<comment><USER14> I think it's fair to say this falls under grandparent's "enthusiast" category. Nothing wrong with being an enthusiast, but I think the characterization as "irrational" is probably correct.

<comment><USER15> Few human decisions are rational if you start taking that approach. You can always live in a smaller dwelling, wear worse clothes, eat cheaper food, avoid all paid entertainment, etc.

It would be better to state that the car market is not primarily based around the simple act of transportation. Which should be pretty obvious anyway.

<comment><USER16> > You can always live in a smaller dwelling, wear worse clothes, eat cheaper > food, avoid all paid entertainment, etc.

Indeed. And the more of these you can check, the happier and more satisfying your life is likely to get. Why maintain an unused mansion when a small, cozy place will do? Why follow the latest fashion trends when your four year old OCBD is in fighting form? Why eat lobsters all the time when beans are so nutrient-dense and cheap?! Why sit on your ass wasting away at the behest of a mediocre film when you could read a book instead?

The other major difference, of course, is that there are few irrational decisions quite as expensive as buying an idiot pickup truck to show off. Maybe a boat or an aircraft, but not much more.

<comment><USER15> Why have a small, cozy place when you could live in a van down by the river? Why buy clothes when you can drape yourselves in discarded blankets? Why eat beans when you can haunt the dumpsters behind the local restaurants?

<comment><USER16> Reductio ad absurdum

<comment><USER15> Yes, exactly. Calling it "irrational" to spend resources on pleasure leads to absurd conclusions. Reductio ad absurdum is not a fallacy.

<comment><USER16> Of course it's a fallacy. One has to draw a line at some point. To me that line would be a way, _way_ cheaper expense than a big, polluting truck. But it seems that to you, if I can't own a truck, I must go all the way to living in shanties/favelas and dumpster diving.

<comment><USER15> How do you decide where to draw the line? What's the rational way to put some pleasures under the "rational" category and others under the "irrational" category?

<comment><USER17> You calibrate on what people were satisfied with thirty or a hundred years ago, eliminating modern status-seeking. You ask yourself "Would I be horrified to live like that, or do I just think I'm too good for it?" Like there's no way I am going to live as a boarder with another family, but I can definitely make my own lunch.

<comment><USER15> Why thirty or a hundred? Why not two, or ten thousand?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> A key passage from the article.

"Once Americans began driving Hondas and Toyotas, they discovered that these cars had a lot more going for them than just gas mileage — they broke down infrequently, could last for hundreds of thousands of miles, and were even fun to drive."

If the US sedan makers can't compete then they should deprecate those cars. Why make something that people aren't buying? Cars are too expensive these days to have to pay for frequent maintenance or fit-and-finish issues. Never mind the fact that "American" cars are not as American as they used to be and the Camry isn't distinctively Japanese.

<comment><USER19> The sad thing is that American automakers can't, even if that is they won't, make good cars. I don't get it. Why can't they make a fuel pump that lasts 100k miles? It's obviously possible since Japan does it. What's holding us back? Is the engineers? Is it the labor assembling things? Why can't we compete? Management being stupid and chasing this quarter's numbers above all else?

<comment><USER20> Totally speculating, but from the outside it seems like stagnation & resistance to change. The Corvette still uses leaf springs. All three of the Big Three hung on to SOHC & other relics for far longer than Japan. I also remember as a shade-tree mechanic, Japanese engines were always precise, intricate, and sharp (suggesting computer design & milling) while the Fords of the same decade were not, and frequently the arrangements were irrational. Rangers needed the intake manifold removed to access the spark plugs. This always suggested to me more casting & hand drawing.

American automakers seem to make some great stuff when they are actually pushing the envelope- the EcoBoost line I hear is very solid, and the aluminum frame in the F150 seems to be doing great (notice: lots of FUD when it launched, silence ever since). The Volt & Bolt have had many great things said about them.

Whether it's conservative engineers, or tight purses, or unrealistic schedules, or even just myopic American Exceptionalism, I do not know.

<comment><USER21> Corvette uses a tranverse leaf spring, which isn't the same as most people expect. Chevy does it because it works well (it's a top handling car, held the lap record at Nürburgring for a while) and allows for extra cargo space in the rear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I can't help but to believe that GM and Ford are making the same mistake they made in the early 70s and the 90s. Piling on the big cars when gas prices are low, then watch their share of the market collapse when gas prices get higher as they always have in the past.

To GM's credit they claim they'll be putting a lot of the short term savings into EVs and AVs, but time will tell.

</comment><comment><USER23> Japanese sedans are dead too. It'll just take a bit longer.

Sedans simply do not offer enough utility or fun per dollar to stay relevant. In France, where I'm from, sedans have been utterly dead from as long as I can remember. People just buy hatchbacks instead.

Sedans stayed alive in the USA thanks to wider roads, larger parking spots, and a persistent notion that hatchbacks are tiny cheap econoboxes that you wouldn't want to be seen in (which, to be fair, is often the case, even though there are very good hatchbacks like the VW Golf).

CUVs and SUVs have overcome this stigma and are set to accomplish what hatchbacks failed to do in the US market: kill sedans. I expect very few people to go back to buying sedans after having owned CUVs or SUVs, unless it's a somewhat niche sedan like a BMW M3, Mercedes S-Class, Tesla Model 3, etc.

<comment><USER24> > Japanese sedans are dead too. It'll just take a bit longer.

> Sedans simply do not offer enough utility or fun per dollar to stay > relevant. In France, where I'm from, sedans have been utterly dead from as > long as I can remember. People just buy hatchbacks instead.

That's one side of the story and France is just a fraction of the market for sedans. The road configurations, parking styles, etc.. probably favors hatchbacks but that's not the case in Canada (for example) and that definitely doesn't mean that sedans will be dead.

Where I'm from, it's the same as France for reasons related to utility and fuel consumption but even so, people who wanted 'fun' went for the German large sedan or for the Japanese small but souped-up sedan.

<comment><USER23> I agree that France is not very representative of the general automobile market, but in Canada for example I would expect most households to start buying a CUV or SUV as their first car (possibly with AWD).

The point is that a classic three-box four-door sedan is not super practical as your only car, and I believe that's true for almost all markets. Americans still bought sedans because the alternatives (wagons, minivans, hatchbacks) were seen as uncool, but CUVs and SUVs don't have this problem at all.

So, yes, sedans will still exist but with a fraction of their previous market share, and in this sense sedans will be "dead" (since that's how the article uses the word).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> My hard-working parents bought a new Ford during my childhood, in the 1970s. The car was a lemon that broke down a lot, they hated that car. I've never forgiven Ford either, in our extended family today there are no Ford owners and never will be.

</comment><comment><USER26> American sedans are dead because the Big 3 American automakers never invested in making sedans. They always borrowed tech from other companies.

Just about every Ford sedan platform and engine was built on top of Mazda or Volvo designs. It's not surprising that Ford lost access to those designs when it sold off Volvo and then Mazda.

Similarly, GM designs were from Suzuki and Opel. They've been divesting from Suzuki and Opel for a better part of a decade now. It seems like they also reached the point where they've been cut off from platforms and engines.

Chrysler luckily still has Fiat to borrow car platforms and engines from. They also have partnerships with Hyundai group. So I think they'll keep making sedans, just because they still have access to that tech.

The American sedan is being killed off because they were never American in the first place.

<comment><USER27> > American sedans are dead because the Big 3 American automakers never > invested in making sedans. They always borrowed tech from other companies.

In the 80s a lot of US-Foreign partnerships sprang up as domestic manufacturers scrambled to develop competitive products to compete against the Japanese. But GM had an ownership stake in Opel from the 1960s IIRC (they just recently sold it to the French PSA group) and Ford has been experimenting with bringing over cars designed by Ford Europe since the 80s (look up Merkur).

Chrysler is really no more; the shots are called by FIAT and aside from Jeep and Dodge trucks everything else is an import (the Jeep Renegade and the FIAT 500x are the same under the skin and are built in the same factory in Italy).

Ford made a big bet on "global cars" in the 90s, and we see the benefits of it today. The Escape and the EcoSport were both originally designed for Europe.

GM and Ford did learn to make great cars for the US market, but too late. The Impala & CT6, for example, are on a platform designed for the US/China market (no way the European market would want a car that big that isn't an S-Class, 7-series, or A8). And they're great cars. But as the original article said consumers demand for big American sedans has been in decline for almost 50 years. Ford/GM can't seem to stop skating to where the puck just was.

<comment><USER26> The Ford Escape might be designed for Europe, but it's still designed on top of Mazda designed platform for the Mazda6, primarily using the Duratec/EcoBoost inline-4 engine that's based off a Mazda MZR engine design. EcoSport uses a Ford designed engine, but it's still using the Mazda2 platform. Ford's been partnered with Mazda from 1974-2015 which predates and outlasted Merkur.

The Imapla is on GM's Epsilon platform, which was originally designed by Opel. CT6 is on a completely homegrown platform, which is probably why it's the last car in GM's discontinuation lineup to be discontinued.

They may have had platforms that were designed for the US market, but they weren't the designer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> How is it that the cycle of cheap gas = people buy gas guzzling SUVs, gas goes up = people go back to gas sipping cars, keeps repeating? I swear in my lifetime I've seen this cycle repeat three times now.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm a city boy so mind the ignorance, but who is buying up all the trucks? I get the allure of a nice SUV/crossover, my next car will probably be one since I think the space is useful for when thinking about starting a family, but a truck never seemed that feasible for non-commercial use.

<comment><USER30> TBH, I think a lot of it is just about presenting an image.

I grew up in a rural area, and a lot of the trucks in town rarely carried anything of note in the bed, because their owners didn't want the paint to get scratched.

<comment><USER31> I see lots of pickup trucks (which are common in urban Atlanta) slowing to 3mph before a speed bump that can easily be taken at 12 in a sedan. It's obvious that the truck can handle the bump with alacrity, but the drivers are very cautious about risking the slightest damage.

<comment><USER32> The suspension is much stiffer in an underloaded pickup. That speed bump will launch your head into the ceiling if you take it too fast.

<comment><USER31> So you have to soften the suspension before taking it on a rutted road?

<comment><USER32> No, you have to drive slower.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> It's odd that this article doesn't mention Tesla.

<comment><USER34> Unclear if this is a joke - tesla's cost much more than most sedans - <USER2> market for most us sedans is not the same.

<comment><USER35> Average Transaction Price for "light vehicles" (which seems to include luxury sedans, luxury SUVs, pickups, etc) was was $36,270 in January 2018.[1]

It's not nothing, but a ~$46k medium range Model 3 is not so terribly far from that, and in fact hits that on the nose if you manage to buy one in the next 14 hours in California (or a state with even better state-level incentives like Colorado). :) (Tesla is 'promising' delivery before end of 2018 if you order in November; I only know this because my in-laws are looking at it right now).

[1] [https://mediaroom.kbb.com/2018-02-01-Average-New-Car- Prices-...](https://mediaroom.kbb.com/2018-02-01-Average-New-Car-Prices-Rise- Nearly-4-Percent-For-January-2018-On-Shifting-Sales-Mix-According-To-Kelley- Blue-Book)

<comment><USER34> The ASP for light vehicles is 36k, when including a bunch of expensive vehicle classes, which should indicate what the average low end sedan costs to bring the overall ASP price down:

* ASP for pickup: 47 fullsize, 32 "mid" size

* ASP for an SUV: 60k

* ASP for luxury SUVs 44k for a compact (wtf is a compact SUV?) up to 80k.

* ASP subcompact SUV is 24k

Vs. the low-end cars:

* 15k for a Kia Rio * 19k for a Toyota Corolla * 12-17k for a Nissan Versa * Honda low end 19k, the top end plugin: 33k * Hyundai 16k-22k * Mitsubishi 14.5k * Ford Fiesta 14.2k, taurus: 27.8k * Chevy cruze: 17-24k * Buick starts at 25k

This ignores compacts/hatchbacks which seem to be on average around 5k less.

So a Tesla isn't a few grand more expensive. It's 2-2.5 _times_ more expensive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I've driven a Chevy Impala. It drove OK, but it looked and felt really cheap inside. I've owned Chrysler, Chevy, and Ford. It was the Ford product -- that I bought new -- that drove me (in many senses) to the Honda dealer.

I've bought 7 new Hondas since. Why? Every American car I had owned got at least one tow-truck ride to get repaired. The Ford had to be towed to the dealer for service _three_ times.

The Hondas have never left me stranded.

</comment><comment><USER37> I've purchased several sedans before but will probably never buy another one. Sedans are really miserable for those of us who enjoy outdoor sports. Sure it's _possible_ to use a sedan to transport equipment for scuba diving, cycling, kayaking, skiing, etc but other vehicle styles are far more comfortable and practical.

</comment><comment><USER38> [http://www.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3022-autosales.html](http://www.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3022-autosales.html)

The above contains relevant numbers.

I'm seeing a lot of cars on the road that fit the wheel-base of a sedan, but are larger. Here are a few models that come to mind: Hyundai Kona [0], BMW X2 [1], Nissan LEAF (though this is an all electric offering) [2], and I'm sure there are more.

My point is, there are vehicles that are roughly the same size that fill the needs of people who would have purchased a sedan.

I'm guessing that if we refactored the numbers in terms of wheel-base and interior volume we'd see people are buying similar wheel-based cars with more interior volume.

[0] [https://www.hyundaiusa.com/kona/index.aspx](https://www.hyundaiusa.com/kona/index.aspx) [1] [https://www.bmwusa.com/vehicles/x-models/x2/sports- activity-...](https://www.bmwusa.com/vehicles/x-models/x2/sports-activity- coupe/overview.html) [2] [https://www.nissanusa.com/vehicles/electric- cars/leaf.html](https://www.nissanusa.com/vehicles/electric-cars/leaf.html)

[edit] AND it looks like I missed a crucial piece of the title, so here are some 'murican cars that fit the description above: Chevy Trax [3], Buick Encore [4].

[3] [https://www.chevrolet.com/suvs/trax-compact- suv](https://www.chevrolet.com/suvs/trax-compact-suv) [4] [https://www.buick.com/suvs/encore-small-luxury- suv](https://www.buick.com/suvs/encore-small-luxury-suv)

[/edit]

<comment><USER39> Agreed. Another way to personalize these data is this observation: 10 years ago, my friends and family all drove cars with separate trunks. Now none of us do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> The article says that Americans never really regained trust in American manufactured sedans since the 60s/70s. But then doesn't explain.. who exactly was buying all those sedans.. while not trusting them? There definitely were a LOT of American sedan sales for a while there.

<comment><USER41> I grew up in rural Iowa, and the concept of buying something not made by the big three was pretty exotic. The dealerships weren't around, so people didn't even consider them as an option.

Now most of the small town dealerships have gone under as part of the restructuring from the recession, so people are going to cities to buy cars anyway now. When they get to the city, there are dealerships for the foreign car makers, so I'd guess people end up more likely to buy one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder when the press will realize that there are not just three American car makers anymore.

Looking at the best selling vehicles in the US for October 2018, there's an American sedan in the top 20, but it's not made by the Big Three.

</comment><comment><USER42> I looked at a Fusion a few years ago before deciding to buy an Accord. There was a $10K price differential in favor of the Honda. This was mainly because all American sedans at the same price point had far lower reliability scores and were much smaller cars. There were no "American" sedans other than the Fusion worth considering for reliability and non-shoebox size. The third factor was resale value.

I simply got more for my money buying the Honda. I wasn't the least bit interested in an SUV or pickup truck.

</comment><comment><USER43> > Meanwhile, the American automakers raced to come out with their own small, > fuel-efficient sedans. But their products were often shoddy, poorly designed > and technologically deficient

I wonder if this wasn't intentional. That is, were there bean counters at Ford etc. that were worried that sales of the small sedans would cannibalize sales of their higher-margin autos? Seems to be the way of things in the past four decades or so....

<comment><USER27> It takes years to bring a new car to market. And in the early 70s the Big 3 had zero, zilch, nada in the way of platforms and powertrains suitable for small fuel efficient cars. So the first generations were built in a hurry, and to a price, because the economy was in the toilet. And it showed!

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> It's also customer service:

I bought a Japanese vehicle that ended up being a lemon. The dealerships were generally polite to me when I brought it in for repairs.

(Against my better judgement) I bought an American plug-in hybrid that randomly stops charging. The dealership is flat out rude and constantly blames my charger. (The charger worked fine for 4 years with my old Leaf)

</comment><comment> mark-r The last American sedan I owned was a 1974 Dodge Dart. Terrible car, but my sister's 1980 Dodge Aspen was much worse.

I've looked at American cars in the intervening years but I haven't seen anything to change my initial bad impression. They always seem like they're a step below in both form and function.

</comment><comment><USER45> Sedans Aren't Dead, the market has segmented into sedans and liftbacks/4-door coupe. See BMW 3 and 4 series. It's p much the same car. People prefer for 4 because it's a bit more practical, but 3 series has large marketing so BMW maintain 2 models.

</comment><comment><USER46> > Of course it doesn't hurt that most Japanese cars sold in the U.S. are made > in the American South.

And it's not just Japan. My 2 most recent "foreign" sedans, one Hyundai and another VW – were manufactured in the US.

</comment><comment><USER47> What's the difference? Sedans are dead in America, else where Saloon lives on.

</comment><comment><USER48> I still like my Ford Tempo

</comment><comment><USER49> If I ever end up in a position where being able to drive and owning a car is feasible for me, I'm going to get a Kia Stinger GT. It tickles my fancy in a way that no other 4/5-door car below $60k does. I can't think of a single American car that even comes close, and good European cars are too expensive (I mean, I wouldn't turn down an Audi S7 if someone gave one to me... but I'd never be able to afford one either).

(of course, there is my pipe dream of importing a mid-'90s Toyota Chaser Tourer V from Japan, but I _know_ that's a pipe dream)

SUVs are a total hard pass for me. I have a bad ankle, and when it's flaring up, there are almost no SUVs I can climb into, not even most crossovers. I have a friend with a 2018 Equinox, and getting into and out of his vehicle was physically painful. The only crossover I've been able to deal with when my ankle is acting up is my coworker's Jeep Cherokee (and from some Googling, it appears the 2WD models of the Cherokee have the lowest ground clearance of any crossover sold in the US).

Because I use Lyft all the time, I have something of an interesting perspective, because I've ridden in a much wider variety of cars than someone who just drives their own car most of the time. I've been in _a lot_ of different sedans and SUVs, and I know what I like and what makes me extremely uncomfortable.

I tend to cancel on pickup trucks nowadays when I get one on Lyft. Even when my ankle isn't painfully flaring up, entering and _especially_ exiting one makes my ankle feel like it's about to collapse. Crossovers aren't quite as bad, so I don't cancel on them unless my ankle is flaring up, but sedans and hatchbacks are far more comfortable.

I'm also afraid of heights, The elevated seating position in SUVs really bothers me. It's not high enough to completely induce a panic response in me, but it's high enough that I'm constantly on edge and nervous the entire time I'm in the vehicle.

The upright seating position really makes me uncomfortable. This is because A) SUV seats are elevated off the ground more than sedan seats and B) the seat bottoms are level in SUVs but tilted back in sedans. I cannot stand sitting upright. I am very uncomfortable sitting unless I'm tilted backwards, and I prefer having my legs splayed forwards instead of hanging down. When I get an SUV on Lyft, I pray it's a fully-loaded model (or a luxury brand) with a 6-way or better 8-way power adjustable passenger seat. The first thing I do when I get one of these is to lower the seat as much as possible and then if it's 8-way adjustable, I tilt the bottom of the seat all the way down. With an 8-way seat adjusted the way I want it to, it feels like riding in a sedan, but SUVs with 8-way seats are extremely expensive and I only see them on Lyft very rarely.

Also, I despise how SUVs are designed to expose valuables to thieves. Sedans have a trunk area that's not visible through any window. If you put valuables in the back of an SUV, they _will_ get stolen because any chucklefuck can see what you have back there and perform a quick smash-and-grab. It's for this reason that unlike most other SUV-haters I'm not fond of station wagons, either. I do love me some liftbacks, though (like the aforementioned Kia Stinger GT), as liftbacks tend to have shelves that slide into place when the hatch is closed, and they serve to obscure the cargo from view (and it honestly pisses me off when someone makes a liftback that doesn't come with a shelf, because it defeats the whole point of having a liftback).

</comment><comment><USER50> In defense of American cars - the Corvette can't be beat for the price, period.</comment>


Activating circadian clock reduces brain cancer without side effects in mice - <AUTHOR> https://cen.acs.org/articles/96/i3/Activating-circadian-clock-kills-cancer.html <comment><USER2> Pretty sure I have cancer. Context: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15889203](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15889203)

FWIW I also have narcolepsy, which took until adulthood to diagnose and had far more devastating effects on my life: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10984478](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10984478)

Didn't want to make this about me, but the coincidence between sleep problems and cancer is interesting enough that it seemed worth chiming in.

<comment><USER3> I developed narcolepsy in my teens and I can absolutely relate to how you feel. Everyone just thought I was lazy, malingering or, in the case of my general physician, depressed. It took years before I could even see a neurologist, after which an official diagnosis was quickly made.

If you're not already on sodium oxybate (Xyrem), I can't recommend it enough; it's the only thing that puts me in a sound, restorative sleep for more than a few hours.

I'm in the UK where prescriptions for Xyrem are almost impossible to obtain. Fortunately, the precursors for its active ingredient, GHB, are inexpensive and easy to acquire, so I just synthesize it myself. Technically it's illegal, but it would take an especially brave magistrate to convict me for having to overcome deficiencies in the NHS.

<comment><USER4> What do you mean synthesize? If you're starting from GHB, then you just titrate up with NaOH to ~neutral?

<comment><USER5> He's saying GHB is virtually synonymous with Xyrem and GHB isn't hard to make.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The actual paper is paywalled. Can anyone tell what the sample size of the stud(ies) was?

<comment><AUTHOR> It looks like between 4 and 9 per treatment group, depending on the experiment.

<comment><USER6> Doesn't that seem extremely small?

<comment><AUTHOR> It does.. I didn't notice that before posting the article here. But, possibly helping their case, at least some of the experiments were done on ears, so double the biological replicates.</comment></comment></comment></comment>