Stats on volcanic eruptions show pattern called Benford's Law - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2012/04/fun-with-numbers-volcanoes-obey-benfords-law.ars <comment><USER2> Benford's law is not odd if you are believer in the Bayesian interpretation of probability theory.

The shape of Benford's distribution actually follows the shape of a maximum entropy, most uninformative distributions (the "flatest distribution" in an information theoretic way) for a _magnitude_ value (a value that can only be positive).

For example: sizes, lengths and volumes. These units can't go in the negative. Alternatively, positions can go in the negative, the ignorance distribution for position is flat horizontal line and numbers representing a position generally do not follow benford's law.

It is not that unintuitive. Take street lengths. Assuming that they follow Benford's law (a log prior) simply means that, for any length of street L, if you pick another random street, you are as likely to pick a street within the length range (L/2 to L) than (L to 2*L).

From the original street length, to get a street twice as short, you need to subtract much less than you would have to add to get a street twice as long. That is why this distribution is not flat. Or rather it is flat on the multiplication or division operation, not on addition or subtraction.

If instead you'd assume that a street X meter longer is as likely as a street X meter shorter you would end up with impossible probabilities. For example, when picking a random street relative to a street of 1 km, a (1 to 3) kilometer street would be as likely as a (-1 to 1) km street??? If you assumed probabilities were equal for all lengths between 0 and infinity that would mean you think there are likely as many streets measuring a tredecillion billion km long as there are street 5 km long. This is simply not how things are sized in the universe. Smaller things are in greater numbers. Log priors are one of these areas where the math predicts the universe logically and the universe is mirrored by the math beautifully iff you do your calculations properly (Using Bayesianity).

</comment><comment><USER3> Of course they do. Benford's Law is just an artifact of how counting works.

Let's say we are measuring widget production. Right now we're making 1 widget per period. Each period we increase production by 10%. After a random number of periods, what do we expect the MSD (most significant or left-most digit) to be? After a random (large) number of periods, if we add up how frequently different numbers show up as the MSD, what will the distribution be?

Well, let's think about it. It takes 8 periods before our production number gets over two (and thus stops having an MSD of 1), and another 4 periods before our production number gets over three (and thus stops having an MSD of 2). If we keep going, the results look like this:

      1 -> 8 periods
      2 -> 4 periods
      3 -> 3 periods
      4 -> 2 periods
      5 -> 2 periods
      6 -> 2 periods
      7 -> 1 periods
      8 -> 1 periods
      9 -> 2 periods
      1 -> 7 periods
      2 -> 4 periods
      3 -> 3 periods
      4 -> 3 periods

And so on. If we were to stop there, we have counted 41 periods. The most common MSD is 1 (taking place 36% of the time), followed by 2 (19%), 3 (14%), 4, and so on. Benford's Law! Of course, you might say, that just shows up because I chose to stop there.

But actually, it works to a greater or lesser extent, pretty much regardless of when we stop (or where we start). It works regardless of the units being used. It also works if we're adding a flat amount instead of a percentage increase, or if we're adding a random amount, or if the number is not monotonically increasing. It also works in other bases. (In fact, thinking about the example of binary may be illuminating. The MSD is _always_ 1 for any number > than 0.)

It also works if we're generating random samples between 1 and some BIG_NUM. If you generate 1000 numbers between 1 and, say, 2^24, you might find that that the MSD of 48% of those samples is 1, while no other digit is found as the MSD in more than 7% of samples. Pick a different BIG_NUM, and you'll see a different distibution. 2^20 gives you a much flatter distribution; in the test I just ran I saw 16% with a MSD of 1, versus 9-12% for all other digits. But the point is, lots of potential BIG_NUMs produce samples which skew heavily towards having an MSD of 1, and thus a random BIG_NUM has a highly skewed expected distribution.

And so on. :) It's actually kind of fun to play with. But at the end of the day, this is just a product of using a positional number system.

</comment><comment><USER4> An excellent visual tour of Benford's Law: <http://www.datagenetics.com/blog/march52012/index.html>

My understanding of this law is that any collection of real-world data/metrics should follow this distribution pattern. There may be exceptions in which there are other factors influencing the data, but _most_ should follow this "law". In that case, I don't see what is surprising about volcanic eruptions following this law. I would have assumed it already did (well, I suppose you have to already know about this law first to assume that).

</comment><comment><USER5> Simple explanation for Benford's Law: When numbers expand out into an additional digit through doublings, a "1" is always present, "2" is usually present, and so on down the line. The law is present in proportion to the degree that the sample set possesses logarithmic distribution.

The distribution doesn't have to be limited to doublings. The law also applies to triplings, quadruplings, halvings, etc. The key is logarithmic/exponential/geometric distribution. Try it for yourself on the calculator and see how rarely 9s come up as the first digit for every x^n.

A good real world example would be the distribution of frequencies of musical pitch in equal temperament. In this case, the exponential multiplier (x) for x^n is 21/12, or about 1.059. Here's (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_key_frequencies>) a list of the frequencies; notice how the first digits have tons of ones and almost no nines.

</comment><comment><USER6> Benford's Law seems pretty obvious once you think about it. Though I love its application to "forensic accounting".

Do you think it could be used to judge the "truthiness" of media websites online? I don't think it works with rounded numbers that are more likely to be found in the news.

<comment><USER7> > Benford's Law seems pretty obvious once you think about it.

Nate Silver actually did a bit of analysis on it around the time of the 2009 Iranian elections and the Al Franken-Norm Coleman recount. In short, he explained that while it does hold in certain circumstances, it's not really a 'law' that can be applied very broadly, unfortunately, even if the idea makes sense intuitively. For example, I believe he said that the Iranian ballots did _not_ follow Benford's law, but that this was not necessarily very problematic, because election results in general have no reason to follow Benford's law.

(I don't have the link, but that should be enough to find it in the 538 archives for anyone who's interested).

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the tip! I think this is the link you were referring to: [http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/06/karroubis- unlucky-7s....](http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/06/karroubis- unlucky-7s.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As a side note, the main photo in the article is stunning! I need to find a desktop-size version.

<comment><USER9> <http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=6592></comment></comment>


Show HN: Automatically upvote downvoted comments on Hacker News - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/robgibbons/hn_upvote <comment><USER2> > Many useful comments on HN are downvoted without reason, or otherwise petty > reasons. This userscript automatically upvotes any downvoted/grayed-out > comments to counteract this phenomenon.

A script to make _arbitrary_ upvotes to counter _arbitrary_ downvotes fixes nothing.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not certain, but I assume HN attempts to detect bot-driven voting and that this script might get people banned. A sequence of posts being upvoted faster than would be humanly possible is an obvious sign that a human isn't doing the voting. I'd be careful using this from an account you actually care about.

</comment><comment><USER4> There are definitely comments with merit that get downvoted for no reason, but there are also a lot of comments that absolutely deserve to be downvoted. Do you theorize that those will still be adequately penalized despite people theoretically using your script?</comment>


Dagen H: the day Sweden switched from driving on the left to the right (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://drivemag.com/news/dagen-h-the-day-sweden-switched-from-driving-on-the-left-to-the-right <comment><USER2> > The actual change took place at 4:50 AM and vehicles driving on the road at > that time were instructed to change from right to left as they were driving.

This makes it sound haphazard. In practice, traffic stopped at 04:50, everyone had 10 minutes to carefully change side, and traffic resumed at 05:00. Also, all non-essential traffic was banned between 01:00 - 06:00.

</comment><comment><USER3> Instead of a heavy-handed centralized government mandate like this they should have used a tax incentive to encourage people to drive on the other side.

<comment><USER4> This event is the perfect example of "heavy-handed" centralized government doing things right. In fact, I'm really scratching my head how you think it could be improved. edit: oh wait, this was sarcasm, right? Since obviously a tax incentive is a terrible tool for this. Sorry if I missed something.

<comment><USER5> It's not your fault, Poe's law strikes again. People are out there with pretty extreme beliefs about the power of tax cuts, so it's hard to satirize them.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Across the bay we have some jokes about this. My favourite goes something like this:

The Swedes decided to make the switch gradual to make it easier to learn. Heavy trucks switched driving directions one week before rest of the traffic.

</comment><comment><USER7> A couple of years before we had an election about what side to drive on. The right side actually lost the election. The politicians promptly (and legally) ignored it and went ahead anyhow. And that is a good thing.

<comment><USER8> Why have an election if there is no intention to respect the outcome?

<comment><USER9> Yeah, Sweden has referendums, and we do one every 1-3 decades, but they're only "advisory".

Power rests 100% with parliament.

You ask "why?". It's a good question. The system is hard to defend logically, but it is respected nonetheless.

<comment><USER10> It's naive to assume referendums are inherently more democratic.

The Brexit situation is one good example why. They posed the wrong question and arrived at an answer the majority of both the voters and the parliament are already deeply unhappy with...

If I wanted to grab power and rule as a dictator, I would hold referendums every month. You just wouldn't like the questions or the rules...

<comment><USER7> Strictly speaking though, UK also only have advisory referendums. If parliament wanted to they could just ignore Brexit. Politically impossible even if legal, though.

<comment><USER10> The British parliament seems to be ignoring Brexit just fine, it's just that only the prime minister can stop it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just a fun fact: my father had to go to the hospital by ambulance that day to take out his appendicitis. So for my own sake I'm glad it was so well planned!

</comment><comment><USER12> In Finland there was a joke that in Sweden they changed from driving on the left to the right by steps. Trucks and other heavy vehicles changed first and others one year afterwards.

<comment><USER13> That's a funny joke. It reminds me of how Sweden actually tried changing to the Gregorian calendar in steps, by skipping leap days for 40 years. Yes, that would make the Swedish calendar to be different from the rest of the world for four decades and the difference to the other world calendars would be changing every four years...

It did not go according to plan. But it's the reason February of 1712 in the Swedish calendar did have 30 days.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Incredible episode about this from 99% Invisible: [https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/h-day/](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/h-day/)

</comment><comment><USER15> A TV station commissioned a song contest for a jingle for Dagen H. Here's the (very catchy) winner: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ODZtwkBYPs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ODZtwkBYPs)

<comment><USER16> Never heard of this, but my last name (and my dad's) is Svensson. Will tell him this next time I'm in the car with him on the highway and he's driving in the left lane, and see if he gets the reference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The (2018) in the title makes it seem like this happened just last year. The article describing it is from last year. Dagen H was in 1968.

</comment><comment><USER18> I found this really intriguing, and unfortunately can't understand the linked video in Swedish, but I'm really confused about how they did this with the huge amount of physical infrastructure that would have needed to change. After all, there are a lot of road features (e.g. many styles of ramps and turn lanes) that aren't symmetrical, so switching sides would have required a ton of construction. How did they accomplish this so quickly?

<comment><USER16> Buses, trams etc. would also have the doors on the wrong side, so cannot just switch side one day without any planning.

<comment><USER19> And indeed, the article tells that they had to replace their trams by buses with the right doors (pun intended) in some major cities, presumably until they could fix the trams.

<comment><USER20> What actually happened in most cities was that the trams were shut down, which was really unfortunate with hindsight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Too bad the others didn't follow suit. Just dangerous having two sides to drive.</comment>


Optimised Ubuntu Desktop Images Available in Microsoft Hyper-V Gallery - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ubuntu.com/2018/09/17/optimised-ubuntu-desktop-images-available-in-microsoft-hyper-v-gallery <comment><USER2> Unfortunately, there seems to be no way to get at this optimized image from Windows 10 Enterprise (which doesn't yet have Hyper-V Gallery), even though that's where a big chunk of people who would want such a thing are. Oh well.</comment>


Show HN: Clojure DSL for pattern-matching, parsing and generic programming - <AUTHOR> http://scattered-thoughts.net/blog/2012/12/04/strucjure-motivation/ <comment><USER2> This is why I feel like hn needs the ability to, on occasion, double upvote. Like maybe you get one double-plus-up-vote per week for when you come across an article that screams "THIS IS WHY I READ HACKER NEWS".

<comment><AUTHOR> This comment makes me far happier than the extra vote :D

<comment><USER3> This. I think the simplicity of HN is brilliant, especially since everything is geared toward encouraging thoughtful, productive discussion.

If you think something is especially interesting for some reason, or that a certain kind of content should be featured more, say so! And give a convincing argument for _why_! That's far more interesting than a double upvote, or trying to somehow limit content you deem inferior, and you _will_ actually influence people in the long run.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How does this compare to <https://github.com/clojure/core.match> ?

He mentions that core.match is better at efficiently compiling complicated patterns, but little else is said as to exactly why strucjure was made rather than just using core.match.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here.

Strucjure has much more expressive power. Strucjure views are first-class values and can call other views (or recursively call themselves). This allows them to recognise eg context free grammars. Most of the examples in this post cannot be expressed with core.match

Currently, this power comes at the expense of speed but I hope to be able to get reasonably close to core.match for simple patterns. Core.match will always be somewhat faster because it can reorder decisions and eliminate redundant tests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This has some similarities to Bondi <http://bondi.it.uts.edu.au/> by Barry Jay (but implemented in Clojure rather than being a Binary.)

I'm interested to hear your thoughts on Bondi and/or Barry's work.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm vaguely aware of Bondi but I haven't gotten around to trying it out. It definitely influenced me when deciding to make patterns first class instead of sticking to OMeta's OOP design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> was this influenced by the famous [well, back in the day] regexp in scheme post by that gun guy? [if not, you may find it interesting]

[edit: ok, so forgive my slow memory. it was olin shivers and ended up as <http://www.scsh.net/docu/post/sre.html>]

[edit2: gun context [http://www.wanderings.net/notebook/Main/BitterAcknowledgment...](http://www.wanderings.net/notebook/Main/BitterAcknowledgmentsOfOlinShivers) (cannot find original); meant only in fond, amused recollection, although not personal, having never met him, of course.]

<comment><AUTHOR> No, but I will go read that. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Awesome, great work. I'll have to play around with this later and dig into the source. I'm looking forward to that - I'm just beginning to dive into this area.

What are your thoughts on implementing reversible patterns?

<comment><AUTHOR> > What are your thoughts on implementing reversible patterns?

I'm thinking something like this

        (defprotocol Pattern
          (extract [this input] "=> bindings")
          (replace [this input bindings] "=> new-input"))

This should obey some rule like:

        (submap? (extract p (replace p input bindings)) bindings)

That would make the data-grammar/generic-traversal experiments much nicer and also cleanly delineates patterns from views. It may also help when I try to do things like generative testing.

Not quite sure how that would work for (or ...) and (not ...) patterns, so it still needs more hammock time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is an example which turns infix math expressions into sexps. Could Strucjure be used to write a Computer Algebraic System (CAS)? I would guess that most algebra is probably simpler than the Red/Black tree example.

<comment><USER9> The math that goes into making a useful CAS can be beautiful, but "simpler than red-black trees" is not a description that springs to mind. A toy CAS might be pretty easy, though.</comment></comment>


Traders Seek China's Masks to Help U.S. Hospitals Battle the Coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/business/coronavirus-china-masks.html <comment><AUTHOR> "In the former French Concession neighborhood of Shanghai, some of the traders who handle masks gather several nights a week at a Western bar that specializes in grilled-cheese sandwiches."

It feels like we're living in a cyberpunk movie.

</comment><comment><USER2> I find it very suspicious that all those art dealers and bankers etc. are suddenly "trying to help hospitals" instead of doing their former job. I Call BS. They are shady characters that try to make money on a crisis and every single one of them should be punished. Sadly in an ultra-capitalist system these people will float to the top rather quickly instead of sinking to the bottom as they deserve. If these dealers did not exist there would be way less problems in ordering respirators and masks in my opinion. I also find it extremely distasteful that so many countries including the US try to outbid, out-maneuver and out-threaten others to get more masks.

A crisis really does show the real character of people and nations.</comment>


Snel: SQL Native Execution for LLVM - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.09449 <comment><USER2> Hmm, interesting concept, and an article is nice, but.. why not release the code?

<comment><USER3> _Snel is still under development, it won't be publicly available yet, but we hope to improve code base, add support to multi-tenant over a distributed network and more cool features, so it will be open-sourced in the future._

[https://medium.com/grandata-engineering/introducing-snel- a-c...](https://medium.com/grandata-engineering/introducing-snel-a-columnar- just-in-time-query-compiler-for-fast-on-line-analytics-9cf561f82526)

<comment><USER4> That's from October 2017 - would be great to see an update.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't know if it is intended but "snel" is the Dutch translation of "fast"

<comment><USER6> It is.

 _We called this new engine "SNEL" as an acronym for "SQL Native Execution for LLVM". Well, that's the excuse, actually we chose Snel because that means "fast" in Dutch and the name seemed right to us._ from [https://arxiv.org/pdf/2002.09449.pdf#page=6](https://arxiv.org/pdf/2002.09449.pdf#page=6)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ooh this seems really cool, wonder if you can take SQLite bytecode and convert it to LLVM bytecode and execute natively. Edit: oh that's what they do haha

</comment><comment><USER8> Sounds pretty much what Postgres is doing since v11

<comment><USER9> Actually this is quite a bit different. This is more a columnar-store version of SQLite, basically an embedded OLAP database, which is pretty cool. I'm not aware of other column-stores in this niche, most are distributed systems meant for big data and so are much more complicated to setup and manage.

<comment><USER10> Have a look at duckdb, it's is another interesting tool that's columnar and embedded.

It would be amazing if the world of open-source column stores matured a little bit relative to where we are today...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I understand SQL, and I kind of understand LLVM, but I don't understand why SQL on LLVM?

<comment><USER12> Because an RDBMS need not be I/O-bound. It might be compute bound (e.g., if the dataset fits in memory), so optimizing the compute-side can help. RDBMes generally compile queries into a "plan" that is then interpreted to execute it (SQLite3 compiles queries into bytecode, while PostgreSQL compiles them into AST-like tree structures). JITting certain portions of a query plan can help it go faster.

<comment><USER13> In fact, I'd say it's extremely common for database workloads to be compute bound on modern hardware.

For one, storage bandwidth has increased massively (my laptop's NVMe drives can do 2 x 3.2GB/s reads, you can get quite a few into even small servers). While memory latency and CPU throughput have not increased to the same degree.

To benefit from the increases in CPU throughput, one needs to take advantage of superscalar execution. Which isn't significantly possible with interpreted execution.

> SQLite3 compiles queries into bytecode, while PostgreSQL compiles them into > AST-like tree structures

FWIW, expressions are compiled into bytecode in PostgreSQL as well. While there'd plenty benefit of doing that for query trees as well, there are not quite as much raw execution speed reason for it as there is for expressions (as the individual "steps" are much coarser, so the tree walk overhead is proportionally smaller).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is it open source ?</comment>


How we misprice used cars - <AUTHOR> http://priceonomics.com/how-we-misprice-used-cars/ <comment><USER2> In Robert Cialdini's _Influence_ , he describes a scheme his brother used to pay his way through college. Basically, he'd buy a car at the bottom of its fair blue book range, clean it up, and then place an ad for it at the top of its price range, with a well-worded ad, asking people to call for an appointment. The sneaky bit is that he'd then schedule all of the interested buyers for exactly the same time. They'd arrive minutes apart, but he'd only let them look at it on a first-come-first-serve basis, making the late-comers stand and wait. The pressure created by the competitive atmosphere would always ensure a sale.

If you combine this with the information in this article, you could potentially never pay for a car (or even major maintenance) again, and even make a profit in the long term.

1: Find a popular and reliable model of car that doesn't require any standard maintenance in the 25k-45k mile range other than oil changes.

2: Write some generic ad copy for this car. Make sure to research this and make sure you're advertising as effectively as possible.

4: Buy this car used, but in good condition, near the bottom of its price range and just over 30k miles.

5: When you hit 39k miles (if you're driving an average of 60 miles/day, this will be about 5 months), sell it using the scheme above. You've already got the ad copy; just tweak it to fit the specific car you have.

6: Goto 4.

<comment><USER3> This scheme will probably work, and make you some money. In general, there's a word for doing work for money, it's called a job.

<comment><USER2> That's true, but for the average person, it would be worthwhile, even with zero profit.

According to my cursory internet research, the average US household spends 1.5% of their annual income on car repairs[0]. The average adult works 1,300 hours per year[1]. The average household has 2.1 adults[2]. So in a five month period, the average household puts about 17 hours into car maintenance.

So if you live in an average household, you'll come out on top with this scheme as long as you spend less than 17 hours on the process each time.

[0] [http://auto.howstuffworks.com/under-the-hood/cost-of-car- own...](http://auto.howstuffworks.com/under-the-hood/cost-of-car- ownership/auto-maintenance-cost.htm)

[1] [http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-05-13/how-average- america...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-05-13/how-average-american- adult-spends-24-hours-each-day)

[2] [http://www.popcouncil.us/pdfs/wp/144.pdf](http://www.popcouncil.us/pdfs/wp/144.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> On maintenance intervals: If all cars really did get scheduled maintenance done on time, then cars that have just over X0,000 miles should be worth _more_ because they just had this expensive maintenance done.

That is a car with 51,000 miles will just have had its 50,000 mile maintenance done while a car with 49,000 miles will not have.

So scheduled maintenance cannot explain these jumps, since it would predict jumps in the opposite direction.

<comment><USER5> The bias discussed in the original article is pretty well documented. It also has nothing to do with the other inefficiencies in used car pricing that we've been discussing here :-) Of course, there's also nothing automatic about getting schedules maintenance done when the odometer rolls over to some mileage that ends in 000.

<comment><USER4> I'm aware of the original articles point, my post was of the form "even when you account for X, their analysis is still valid". And neither did I mean to imply that people actually get maintenance done exactly on schedule.

A more relevant question would be how much dead weight loss this bias results in. I'm guessing not that much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cars often have specific expensive maintenance at specific intervals. My car is worth maybe $2k more if I HAVE completed the timing belt replacement at 115k than it was at 114k before completing it. Warranty expiration also might influence value -- I'd far prefer a car with 1000 miles left on a comprehensive warranty, to know I could deal with undisclosed issues, than just expired from warranty.

<comment><USER5> In general, there are just a lot of information asymmetries associated with buying used cars that make it difficult for a seller whose high mileage car has been well-maintained and is running well to get what is perhaps objectively the "right" value for a car. In your example, you'd be crazy to do your scheduled maintenance at 115K if you were planning on selling your car in the near future. You'd never recoup that $2K you spent.

The reality is that this well-maintained car that doesn't have problems (and/or which has cosmetic problems that you've learned to accept) is probably going to be worth more to you than to a random buyer who just sees "high- mileage car" (that they're only looking to buy because they need a car and don't have much money).

Some of the information asymmetries can be mitigated by buying from a dealer with an add-on warranty but then the prices are such that they often don't look like a particularly good deal relative to a new car.

<comment><USER7> It would seem a pretty rare situation that a new car would be financially a "good deal" compared to a used car at a dealer, regardless of warranty or financing differences.

Most new cars are bought for psychological reasons, not financial reasons, IMO. (Nothing wrong with that, as long as you aren't confused into thinking you're "saving money" buying new.)

Need a "new" car and want to save money? Buy a late model (3-5 years old) car with higher than average miles on it. It will be cheaper than the average used car, because people are inordinately "afraid" of miles on cars. Late model, as it will still "look kind of new" (so scratching that itch), will likely have recent safety advances, and in areas of the country that salt the roads, it will have fewer years of salt exposure than a similar miles at an average rate used car. High miles in 3-5 years probably got a lot of highway use and surely got a lot of regular use. Those miles aren't as hard on cars as the "creampuff", low miles, sat in traffic for hours each day cars.

Once you've bought it, find a good independent mechanic for that brand (or a general independent). Will be way cheaper than the dealership, and in my experience, just as good. I do all my own maintenance (ex-tires and ex- exhaust), but a good indy will save you a bunch of money as well.

My car ('98 Mercedes E300) just flipped over 210,000 miles on the way into work today. It will be retired in 1-3 more years due to rust, not mechanical malady. I paid about $6000 about 4.5 years ago, and I've got an additional $650-ish worth of parts into it over the 4 years. Brakes will be good for the duration, and if it lasts 3 more years, I'll need tires, but if I retire it next year, it won't. That'll mean more than 5 years of service for $5000 in depreciation and out-of-pocket maintenance expenses, as I'll be able to sell it for $1500 or so running but rusty.

That's a little bit of an extreme case as I do all my own work, so the $650 number would be more than double that (glowplugs, brakes all around, and two window regulators would be the labor needed), but I've driven a pretty decent- looking, mid-sized diesel Mercedes for 4.5 years and over 30,000 miles for under $100 per month in purchase and maintenance costs. I paid almost as much in diesel as I paid for the car over its life. (I get just under 30 mpg, and diesel is a hair under $4/gal.)

Buying the new equivalent of my car? $51,400 base MSRP. [http://www.mbusa.com/mercedes/vehicles/model/class-E/model-E...](http://www.mbusa.com/mercedes/vehicles/model/class-E/model-E250BTC)

Drive that 4 years and 30,000 miles and it's likely worth $30K, or a per-month cost of around $500/mo, five times as much. (Granted, that's for a brand-new car, which has some appeal, even to me, but it's not worth 5x as much, IMO.)

<comment><USER8> Well, much depends on exactly what sort of car you're buying and when you're buying it, too.

I bought my first car in 2006. It was a GM product, about a year old, and with about 12,000 miles on it. I paid just over _half_ of what it would have cost to buy it new. That was a good deal.

I bought a new car this past summer from Toyota. I would have saved a couple of thousand dollars going used, which just wasn't worth it to me compared to getting something with a known provenance. The price difference wasn't very big, in any case.

Between the brand (GMs depreciate like mad, Toyotas not so much) and the economic climate (I get the impression that Cash for Clunkers took a lot of used cars off the road, and demand for used cars is higher in a weaker economy anyway), the difference between the two cases was massive.

<comment><USER6> I bought a Lincoln LS in Dubai, UAE for $22100 from the ford dealer with 300 miles on it in 2007 (2006 MY); it was $45k list price. There were 8 in country and it had just been cancelled. Extra bonus is I found a $1k satellite phone under the seat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's also a matter of scheduled maintenance: If you buy a car right before a bunch of critical components are replaced, expect a repair bill of $500-1K at the appropriate time. Although a lot of cars at say 60,100 miles will probably not have their 60K done - at which point you can use that as a bargaining point. If it's a high-activity auction, it might be hard to get the exact details on each car for sale

</comment><comment><USER10> I have found this can be pronounced in RVs as well. Totally trashed RV with < 10K miles selling for much more than a expertly maintained one with 50K miles.

<comment><USER2> That's not the point. What the article is talking about only applies to the difference between vehicles at the bottom of a 10k mile bracket, and vehicles at the top of the same bracket. It's independent of maintenance, and doesn't have anything to do with cars differing by 40k miles.

<comment><USER10> I would love the priceonomics guys to do the same survey on RVs. My experience shopping for RVs is that RVs have a price co-efficient that is strongly correlated with "mileage" and poorly correlated with "condition." This was exactly their point on cars when a 79,900 mile car was $210 more expensive than a 80,100 mile car. I read the article to say that people use mileage rather than condition to price cars.

So far the closest I've seen on that topic is this entry [http://blog.priceonomics.com/post/32944888191/living-in-a- va...](http://blog.priceonomics.com/post/32944888191/living-in-a-van) which talked about the Westfalia RVs.</comment></comment></comment>


The 30 day free trial is mostly broken - <AUTHOR> http://blog.clinchpad.com/post/48920850979/the-30-day-free-trial-is-mostly-broken <comment><USER2> Test against your own audience, but I would bet heavily against the conclusion "Usage limited trials outperform free trials" for the majority of SaaS apps. Dropbox's case is different with a capital D because the trial/invite mechanic is code to their viral adoption.

One powerful reason why you generally want to avoid having a meter running is you are really making two related but distinct sales: you are trying to convince them to pay, yes, but you are also trying to convince them to use your thing versus their existing way of doing business. That is often the harder sale. Putting a marginal cost, even in free quota, for using your thing puts friction in the adoption process, which you KEENLY do not want.

While it may be the case as a bootstrapped entrepreneur that your business has not yet spent the sum of $600 on everything put together, the overwhelming majority of businesses are not like you. Many businesses will spend $600 _today_ on one line item, for instance virtually any company which employs 3 or more college graduates. Many of these businesses also have habits with regards to buying software which are more beneficial to SaaS companies than your habits are, for example a) having predictable positive ROI on integration costs and b) never attempting to optimize for $150 expenses by switching providers on a whim.

<comment><USER3> How much better is a free trial for making that harder sale? If I know that any work I put into switching to your thing might get destroyed after thirty days, I'm less likely to bother at all. Whereas if it's a partially-free- forever thing like Dropbox, I don't have to commit as much to either the new way or old way. If I hate it, I don't have to rush to get out before the trial ends, I can just wait until I can't take it anymore.

Partly it depends whether I actually need the "full version" just to evaluate, or if I can get by on the free version, for now at least. Didn't you have a similar issue with BCC, where people would get all they needed from the free trial? I don't remember how you resolved that.

<comment><USER4> Not speaking for patio11, but I would guess the free trial allows businesses to evaluate whether the software meets their requirements.

Companies have budgets to pay for what they need. Their concern is that the software meets those goals, then they are willing to break out the checkbook. They know they have a problem, they have a budget to solve it, and they just need to know your software solves it.

Consumers, OTOH, may need to have value proven over time. Thus, the dropbox usage limits make a lot more sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Another thing I don't like about 30 day free trials is that they usually start right away. Before I know it, I'm getting an email saying that the trial is almost over, and I've barely used it. It takes time to develop a new habit and explore a product or service. This is worse if it requires some integration, setup, training, or data import.

I wouldn't say the 30d free trial is broken, or even mostly broken, but it's not always the right solution.

<comment><USER6> Yeah -- I really thought about providing a "4 hours of actual usage" trial instead of a 14-day trial for a product of mine -- thinking that they could sign up _immediately_ , not worrying that they don't need to fully try it within the next 14 days.

But the problem is, users don't understand it. The think it's 4 hours from when you sign up. The amount of text it takes to explain that it's actual cumulative usage, is so much that they don't read it. They just see 4-hour trial, and think, that's weird, and I don't have time for that right now.

<comment><USER7> Here is an idea - Pause/freeze the trial period. Initially give a 14 day trial period. If the user does not come back after 2-3 days, send them an email that you have paused their trial for now and it will start running again when they login next time.

<comment><USER8> The problem with this is that we're all in the business of making money. You want to put constraints on your customers to give them urgency to complete their trial, so they can then become paying customers...thus keeping you in business.

With any business that requires configuration (like setting up tracking on your site or entering candidates in a CRM), you need to push your users to get over that initial hurdle. A short time constraint forces them to act quickly to try to get value out of your product. They can always sign up for the trial at another time if they're not ready to really commit to setting it up and using it right now.

The added benefit of all of this is your sales team then works with more qualified leads and spends less time talking to people that would fit into your "paused" category, which can often become a deadpool of unactivated users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It sounds like the author is complaining that some products aren't priced right for people who aren't willing to pay for them. If you don't have much money, you can't afford nice things. The 30 day free trial isn't broken just because you can't afford the end product.

That's like saying a free test drive on a Ferrari is broken because you can't afford it. You knew you couldn't afford it when you took the test drive. Would it be better if they never let you have the test drive simply because you couldn't afford it?

<comment><USER10> I don't think he is complaining as much as saying you can get a greater conversion rate if you give the person more time, but limit based on usage when it is used effectively as a non-trial.

A ferrari is too extreme of an example, because they are trying out a few services, potentially developing some business with that service.

A better car analogy would be to let you drive around any cab of a truck to get the look and feel and how everything works at your own pace, and then when you want to hook up the trailer they start charging.

<comment><USER11> But he's still asking to get something more than he can afford for free until he can afford it.

As an analogy you don't get to have a free Ice cream truck for a few months until you can get your ice cream business going and are dependent on it. You have to pay for it or get something cheaper you can afford such as a push bike ice cream cart. The ice cream truck company is not in the business of funding new ice cream companies hoping one day you'll be able to make it

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I couldn't disagree more. I've done 30 day trials and unlimited Free plans. Free plans convert much less often and require much more user support time.

Now, do I think a bootstrapped startup should seek out free plans and betas? Of course. Just dont do that with your app.

</comment><comment><USER13> A survey we ran at <https://starthq.com> confirms the points the post brings up. We are looking to add pricing and trial duration info to our SaaS directory, but I was wondering: what does everyone think would be the best way to display this information & how should we go about collecting this data?

When it comes to displaying the info, I was thinking of using two sets of tags, one for the pricing model, i.e. "Free", "Freemium" or "Trial" and the other for the starting price per month once you do start paying: "<$5", "<$10", "<$20" etc. perhaps with an option to say that you pay per use such as when sending transaction emails or infrastructure.

As for collecting the data: the only thing I can think of is that we either do it ourselves, which would be time consuming for the 700+ apps we've got in the directory, or get the SaaS providers to register and do it themselves. Perhaps there's some way to automate this or crowd source it, but I can't seem to think of anything sensible.

</comment><comment><USER14> I find myself in two conditions.

One is that I really need the product RIGHT NOW in which case I am going to pull out the credit card.

The other is that it's one of the many things I'd like to evaluate someday and sure let's start that 30 day trial but there are so many other things I need to do RIGHT NOW that I never get around to finishing it.

</comment><comment><USER15> A usage-based trial is really just the same thing as a time-based trial. There is a certain pace at which users are going to use up their usage quota, and that translates to a time period. Generally, though, you want the time period to end after the user has seen the benefits and before they have exhausted their initial enthusiasm or encountered any bugs. Giving a user four months to make their choice probably puts you on the wrong end of all those considerations.

After the time-based trial, there are going to be different packages based on different usage quotas anyway. KISSmetrics is probably catering to very different and more established customers than the author, and their pricing model is structured accordingly.

<comment><USER16> Slightly tangential, but the KissMetrics 14 day trial makes little sense to me regardless of their target customer base. With an Analytics package you need time to set it up, then time to gather data, then time to analyze it to see how beneficial it is. 14 days just isn't enough to do anything of the sort. That said, I am a satisfied user of KissMetrics. Both their sales and their support team are incredibly helpful and responsive.

The author compared KissMetrics to MixPanel, two services that offer relatively the same thing. MixPanel gives a free account up to 25000 events instead of a 14 day trial. This is a much, much more useful way of introducing the product to a new user.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> 30 day trials are prospect-hostile because they force customers onto the service provider's timeline, not the prospects. That said, I'm sure time- limited trials do force the decisioning process in a way freemium does not.

My opinion on SaaS plans is that the no/low-cost plan should be more or less fully functioning, without even some sort of limit such as number of leads (ex: Yammer, Zendesk, Eventbrite). When companies really start using your product, the features that make up a paid tier will become obvious and said companies will be more than willing to pay up.

</comment><comment><USER18> I definitely agree that you should have some kind of usage limitation so that if the person doesn't decide in 30 days they can come back and try the product still. However, what I've done for my product is given away the full product for 3 weeks and then limit usage after that. What I've seen, is more people buy my pro version instead of just the basic because they can test out all the features. They can also still come back and test the product and aren't shut out if they miss the time trial window.

</comment><comment><USER11> I look as the difference in your example that one suction cost $600 at the initial stages. Which to me indicates that you're very price sensitive. Maybe this is how the other company weeds out people who want to pay as little as possible. They basically don't want to fund startups. It's just a different business model.

Too many times I hear here people saying startups should charge more, get paid for your efforts. But then if you do you're critized for being too expensive for startups. So what's the option then?

</comment><comment><USER19> I was expecting this to refer to how easily most software trials are bypassed. Some simply by changing your clock, others require uninstallation and reinstallation or change registry settings (I have yet to come across trial software on linux), and some even go so far as to have rootkit behavior, modifying your boot sector. For website services like this, it's trivial to just use multiple accounts. Not that I'd want to do this, I just think it's an interesting subject.

<comment><USER20> If $20 is worth more to you than the hassle of creating a new account and having to re-enter all your data every single month till the end of time, you are probably not somebody the provider should be optimizing their sales process for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think the very big problem with trials is that the majority is not by day of usage, but days in a row. So, when I really need to use, the trial has expired.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is a good reminder to think creatively about trials. Would be great to know what testing was done to show the 100 leads trial was the best.

</comment><comment><USER23> The ____ is broken headline is broken.

</comment><comment><USER24>
        > However, more SaaS applications should also consider a usage limited trial.

it depends on the product , but for Saas that makes more sense. Even if the offer is really limited. However , what i dont like is services that has a free limited offer , but the first paid offer is just too expensive for those who want an entry level but paid service.</comment>


Ask HN: Besides HN, what websites would you recommend routinely reading and why? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I recently got myself an invite to [http://lobste.rs](http://lobste.rs). It's a _lot_ less active than HN, but part of that is no doubt because it's invite only.

The big thing for me (and I suspect others given the recent discussions about it here on HN) is that the voting system is much more transparent and specifically aims to solve the issues found on several other sites with voting, i.e.: down votes require a _reason_

As my inviter did for me, I'll happily invite active HN members who'd like to join lobste.rs

<comment><AUTHOR> I sent an email to your @me.com email address :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I used to love Quora, but lately I've found it really hard to enjoy. There's a lot of crappy content. I heard they're trying to change this somehow, I'll wait to see.

There are some subreddits that are pretty great: /r/askhistorians, /r/credibledefence and /r/neutralpolitics are all pretty good.

LessWrong.com has some good reads, and so does ribbonfarm.com.

</comment><comment><USER4> [http://hackaday.com](http://hackaday.com)</comment>


Why we won't be selling Genuino or Arduino any more - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pimoroni.com/why-we-wont-be-selling-genuino-arduino-any-more/ <comment><USER2> Serious question: what are people building with these boards? The recurring projects I've seen are controlling lights, doors/locks and monitoring water in plants. I don't find these particularly compelling, am I missing something? How is this the next big thing?

<comment><USER3> Because they're much friendlier to get started for the novice, most of the widespread examples seem extremely trivial to someone with experience.

Now- I'm DEFINITELY not an expert, probably barely mediocre with the EE fundamentals, but I did take a lot of EE and some robotics at Uni to get my degree in Computer Engineering. I am nothing more than a hobbyist but some of my cooler projects have been:

\- Autonomous 4WD robot

\- Quadcopter

\- A USB nerf gun that shoots at the developer who broke the Jenkins build

\- Used an electronic photo frame as a display to show happy birthday tweets and Facebook posts to my wife from all the friends and family on her birthday

\- WiFi/Proximity garage door opener (before they were cool)

\- Garage freezer monitor (after an accidental unplug that spoiled a season's worth of salmon and elk)

\- A vending machine that let you pay with your work badge from 'points' you earned (this involved a Raspbery Pi and a surface tablet as well, but the Arduino was what actually controlled the vending machine)

I've done a ton of random home automation IoT gizmos, mostly just for the fun of it, and a lot of robot builds for the boys. But the reason I use a lot of Arduino is that they are pretty friendly to use, there's a lot of help when I'm stuck, and I often don't need more. When I do, sometimes I just add another Arduino (or 4) and use serial or SPI communications between them. I've got some PIC chips for stuff, and some other random chips laying around, but I get more done quickly with the Arduino.

Now, if I ever got on to an idea I wanted to make more permanent I would look elsewhere, but for a hobby, everything else provides more friction and ramp up in the few hours a month I can free up to work on stuff.

EDIT: I'll add I've gotten some ESP8266 chips/breakouts that I've gotten more used to and I may start using them in a lot of places I've previously used Arduino + WiFi because the WiFi breakouts use a LOT of the available I/O and are usually the most expensive part of a build. I think I have 2 or 3 that I reuse.

<comment><USER4> >A USB nerf gun that shoots at the developer who broke the Jenkins build

Anywhere I can read any more about this?

<comment><USER3> I always mean to write up my projects but never do. The gist is really, through trial and error I was able to map developer's desks to coordinates and elevation angles to get to their seat and just made a flat file that had their username, X, Y, and Z values in it.

The main loop was just the standard socket server you'd find in a Ethernet module example and I wrote a Jenkins plugin that would connect on break and send the offending username over the socket.

There were at the time a number of examples showing how to control the USB launcher from Geekwire w/ an Arduino that I pretty much just copied.

<comment><USER5> You probably could have done some basic artillery calculations.

Then again, you might work in one of those weird offices where trying to measure the distance from your desk to theirs is more awkward than repeatedly attempting to shoot your coworkers while you fine-tuned the numbers.

Neat project!

<comment><USER3> Actually, having someone sit at their desk while I continued to shoot closer and closer to their face was probably the most fun of the entire project.

I tried some basic calculations, but as you could guess with a nerf dart, building HVAC, and all the other things going on it wound up being faster and easier (and again, more fun) just shooting until I was on target a couple of times.

After the first few desks it was pretty easy to get close on the first shot because you could generally know that 4ft left or right was about an adjustment value of +/\- whatever from the last coordinate you had dialed in.

<comment><USER6> Plus then they can build defense fortifications and start an arms race!

<comment><USER7> Precisely. I immediately started thinking about Arduino-powered counter- battery fire.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If this [untold Arduino history]([http://arduinohistory.github.io/](http://arduinohistory.github.io/)) link is true, it seems like Massimo Banzi is not only difficult to do business with but that he had a very particular way to give credit.

Better buy clones...

<comment><USER9> I was going to post the same link. I have no qualms buying clones what so ever since reading this story. I've had several now and there have been no issues with quality or stability. Not even been hit with any fake FDTI chips either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The whole thing is a sham really when you consider the heritage from the Wiring/Processing.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiring_(development_platform)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiring_\(development_platform\))

Arduino is a commercial version of somebody else's academic work.

<comment><USER11> _> Arduino is a commercial version of somebody else's academic work._

How is this a sham? The wikipedia page you link even says Wiring is LGPL (and thus allows commercial/proprietary use).

<comment><USER12> Well, I guess the point would be that the whole Arduino/Genuino vs. Arduino spat is about who "owns" Arduino. Which is kinda ironic given it's an open source product built from someone else's original work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is what happens when a company crosses the line from being a small, hacky, indie, startup shop to a corporation.

It's a line that can only be seen after you cross it, making it especially onerous.

</comment><comment><USER14> I really don't see the point of the arduinos when you can buy an esp8266 that is arduino compatible (you can use the arduino IDE and sketches).

You can get the bare esp8266 chips for $1-$2 from aliexpress, or buy a tricked out one from adafruit (the huzzah) for $9. They have a full wifi stack, support micropython, etc.

I think we're in a post-arduino age for microcontrollers. There are simply better options out there, of which the esp8266 is just one of the current better choices.

<comment><USER15> I don't understand the comments that ESP8266's can replace Arduinos. Don't you still need to wire the ESP8266 to a microcontroller?

I'm a hardware novice, and I love Arduinos. I'd appreciate any info to help me learn, seems like I'm missing something. To me the ESP8266 is a superior alternative to Arduino wifi shields, not the Arduino itself.

<comment><USER16> Also, don't you need weird hardware to drop the voltage and connect it to the PC? I've only managed to do anything with NodeMCU so far, which is basically ESP8266 glued to the aforementioned weird hardware.

<comment><USER17> 3,3V is a pretty common if not prevalent voltage level with this type of embedded Hardware, nothing weird. Also these USB to Serial converters are pretty common.

<comment><USER16> Weird from the POV of an electronics noob, who sees ESP8266 recommended as Arduino-killer. One of the two plugs straight into PC and doesn't require a soldering iron to use...

<comment><USER18> The NodeMCU is absolutely no different than an arduino. The ESP chips are the equivalent of the AVR chips that are on an arduino. When people say "use an ESP chip" they really mean one of the many ESP based boards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The local Microcenter sells Arduino Uno R3 clones under their Inland store brand for $10, currently and frequently on sale for $6. Ideally, I'd like to support Arduino LLC, but given how absurd this whole feud has been, I don't feel especially guilty when I buy a clone. I have bought a few Arduino brand 101 boards from Microcenter as well so I'm not a total sell out!

<comment><USER12> The Mega R3s are often down at $10 as well.

Inland brand hardware has always been pretty well-built too. I've never had issues in over a decade of purchases of their store brand stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> TLDR: Reseller is pissed that "Genuino" has to be sold as "Arduino" in the US and that they have separate SKUs. Also Genuino seems to have poor B2B/reseller support.

Is this post really that petty or am I missing something?

<comment><USER21> Engineers don't like needless restrictions.

Can't sell "Arduino" in the EU because of underhanded legal reasons? Ok, fine, that's life.

Can't sell "Genuino" in the US? I thought this painful brand switch was to fix stupid legal problems?! But Genuino did this to itself?!! screw it

<comment><USER22> I get the impression that they're probably trying to avoid further diluting the Arduino brand in the US with the expectation that they'll eventually prevail in the trademark dispute.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Cool. Now i can buy the cheap offbrand clones from Aliexpress without thinking i should have supported the actual creators.

<comment><USER24> Any recommendations?

<comment><USER25> My recommendation is a bit different, instead of that, try looking for a local manufacturer and support them.

Here in Brazil, people go for the cheap aliexpress clones to the point where some of our own manufacturers are closing shop. In these cases, strengthening the local ecosystem might be interesting and wiser in the long run.

<comment><USER26> Why? Your manufacturers could focus on something more profitable. What's the point in making another Arduino like board? Supporting non innovative shops is not good in short and long run.

<comment><USER25> It is like China and the shanzai spirit, first you clone then and make it sustainable then you innovate... (this is my personal opinion, I may be wrong).

I believe that supporting local non innovative shops is better than having no local shops at all.

<comment><USER26> But this is a result of that country politics. You should rather press government to make it possible to compete with Chinese (by for example lowering taxes, lessening the amount of bureaucracy - I heard this is a nightmare in Brazil). Throwing money at economy that is full of flaws will just delay the agony and not solve anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> So basically the Arduino the Software Company (IDE), and Arduino the hardware supplier broke ties?

I use the ESP8266 which I do believe is an Arduino (Hardware) Killer. However, the Arduino IDE has amazing support for the ESP8266 among other hardware components.

This isn't a bad thing, at least for consumers, since I feel like Arduino (the hardware) is a few cycles behind (eg. Particle, CHIP, bbc micro, pi zero, nodemcu/esp8266... etc)

<comment><USER28> I dunno about the ESP8266 being a Arduino killer- it doesn't handle analog very well last I checked.

But as for details over what happened, check this [1]hackaday article.

[1][http://hackaday.com/2015/02/25/arduino-v- arduino/](http://hackaday.com/2015/02/25/arduino-v-arduino/)

<comment><USER29> It has one analog pin, it seems to be very limited, I agree. But you can get an ADC breakout and talk to it via SPI.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> My conclusion in all of this is to buy Teensy instead. Lovely thing.

<comment><USER31> Agree 100%. Paul provides incredible support and he's a real engineer. Teensy family are amazing little machines, and I've used them for many small side projects. The latest one was a custom fight stick. Paul even provides support you if you want to make your own version of teensy, once you're out of the prototype phase.

Link: [https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/](https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/)

<comment><USER32> Dealing with PJRC, by contrast, has been basically frictionless :-)

Lovely fella too when I bumped into him at BAMF.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> It appears that greed and control issues were present right from the beginning of the Arduino project, given the experiences of Wiring's developer, Hernando Barragan, upon whose work it seems most of Arduino was branded, without recognition or recompense. I therefore would have very little sympathy for Arduino LLC.

[http://arduinohistory.github.io/](http://arduinohistory.github.io/) and HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11212021](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11212021)

</comment><comment><USER34> This article acknowledges over and over that Arduino/Genuino is following common business practices. They are complaining that arduino has become too big, and it's not nice for them, because pomoroni is also big. Kind of ironic, really.

Yes, they want to cultivate a new brand while defending the old brand. It's awkward and I'm sure they aren't happy about it either.

</comment><comment><USER35> Dear Pimoroni,

Please add a link to your store from your blog.

Sincerely, everyone who might actually want to buy from you.

<comment><USER36> Almost universally, these company blogs are on a subdomain and have no obvious link back to the actual site. I don't get it.

<comment><USER23> Pssshh. Dont tell them, we can use the SEO benefit for ourself if nobody knows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> So... asking on behalf of a friend ;-)... my local dealer stocks both Arduino and Genuino brand boards. Is this unusual or about to change?

I feel like a curtain of innocence has been torn away for me. Ignorance of the politics in the Arduino scene was bliss.

</comment><comment><USER38> I have a Teensy board, which is much cheaper and works pretty much exactly the same as Arduino and Genuino. The Teensy LC is great for small projects and is about 15 bucks IIRC. Never understood why you would stick to a more expensive brand just because of the name.

</comment><comment><USER39> Good response, and indeed the "maker vibe" seems to have been poisoned by commercial concerns...

Real makers tend to buy unbranded stuff from Chinese free-shipping places anyway. Branded Arduino is mostly a historic artifact...

<comment><USER16> Indeed, and I've heard of similar stories happening around Polish 3D printer scene few years back. Basically, it seems that when an open source project becomes popular, somebody wants to make money off it, and eventually shit like this happens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> > Everyone sells worldwide now.

Yeah.. no. Not even close.

</comment><comment><USER41> As far as cheap Arduino clones go, I've been pretty happy with the EDArduino ones from Electrodragon: [http://www.electrodragon.com/product- category/arduino-2/ardu...](http://www.electrodragon.com/product- category/arduino-2/arduino-main/)

</comment><comment><USER42> Anyone know of any small, low-cost, battery powered programmable boards for Bluetooth LE? I've got the Pi 3 and CHIP is ordered, but I'd love something smaller if possible. Thanks!

<comment><USER43> BBC micro:bit?

<comment><USER42> Nice! Hadn't seen that one before...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> It's really not that unusual for resellers to be given geographical territories within which they can/can't sell. Try looking up your favorite electronics on Amazon.com and see if they will ship to Europe - most times the page will say 'for US delivery only'.

It is a shame that the Arduino guys split up but I would argue the situation would be even more of a mess if both new companies were able to sell into the same territories with the same name + similar product.

</comment><comment><USER45> I'm sorry, but I don't buy it. Other stores, like Sparkfun, are quite able to do this.

<comment><USER46> You don't buy what? They didn't claim that it's impossible to deal with it, just that they won't.

And looking at Sparkfun's site, I see how stupid this is. For one model, both are available: 2 SKUs for technically the same board, one is out of stock. And a notice that buying either might be delayed for a few days due to address verification. Very consumer-friendly.

All others they sell as Ardunios only, and they either make them themselves (and license the US trademark) or buy from the european company, so they mostly sidestep the issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Why do you want an Arduino when the ESP8266 is half the price and has WIFI?

<comment><USER48> For applications that need Wifi, the ESP8266 is indeed a good and very competitively priced product.

However, all the wifi magic on the chip is closed source, and the datasheets / documentation are much less complete than chips like the ATmega328 (which the Arduino Uno is based on). The ATmega328 has a 660-page datasheet, whereas the ESP8266 has a 30-page datasheet.

<comment><USER49> People who can read data sheets tend not to use Arduino.

<comment><USER48> I can read datasheets perfectly well, and Arduino seems pretty good by the low standards of microprocessor programming tooling.

I mean, you can program in C rather than assembly language! And you don't have to pay £300 a seat for the compiler! It works on windows, linux and mac instead of being windows-only! If you open source your project, other people can contribute and they don't even need a £150 tool to download the program to the chip! Other people can compile your code and have it work without needing to know the details of 'linker scripts' and 'codesourcery toolchains' and all that stuff!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Bah! Arduino is way overpriced for the specs anyway. Raspberry pi and others are where it's at now. But I do think there is a massive power usage difference.

<comment><USER51> You're comparing a microcontroller (Arudino) with a computer (pi). They aren't the same thing.

<comment><USER52> Sure they are.

I mean, sure, you and I know the difference between an 8-bit micro with some friendly libraries and a 64-bit ARM SOC running a full OS. But for a lot of stuff they accomplish the exact same thing. So why not compare them by what most people do with them rather than their raw technical specs.

<comment><USER53> This is like saying a farm tractor and a pickup truck are the same thing because they both have internal combustion engines and wheels.

<comment><USER52> Yeah, but if the farm tractor was cheaper, faster, and could carry more cargo than the truck, why wouldn't you just use the tractor?

<comment><USER54> AVRs have much better sleep modes (single digit microamps) and predictable performance (to the exact clock cycle) by default. If you need long battery life or hard real-time performance then they're probably a better choice than the Raspberry Pi.

<comment><USER55> All reasonable responses in this thread to GP, but parent hits the nail on the head.

For non-hobbyist problems where you really need a microcontroller, it is selected by spec (in terms of performance, operational predictability, physical/material properties, power consumption), and then purchased in volume (~ millions). Employing a general-purpose CPU for said problem, while potentially alright when prototyping, would not be satisfactory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> > It's a real shame that Arduino LLC seem to have lost any of the Maker-vibe > it had

What "vibe" would that be? Supply shortage with undependable lead time? Having to piece together documentation from malware infected wikis that may or may not still exist 10 days from now?

<comment><USER57> Besides the obvious trolling occurring here, I'll answer your question on behalf of OP.

Arduino was (at one time) considered the holy grail of Makers. They had open source schematics[1] and were very easy to use while quickly prototyping something.

For Makers, once the prototype phase had finished and it was time to move to 'production', the ATMega and ATTiny chips were very easy to buy in bulk and use directly in the product, with the guarantee that the code written on the Arduino would (for all intents and purposes) work on the embedded chip.

Long story short, before they shot themselves in the foot by infighting, they had a respectable standing among tinkerers and makers.

[1] [https://www.arduino.cc/en/uploads/Main/Arduino_Uno_Rev3-sche...](https://www.arduino.cc/en/uploads/Main/Arduino_Uno_Rev3-schematic.pdf)</comment></comment>