What it's like to own an electric car - <AUTHOR> http://www.robertjacksonbennett.com/blog/what-its-like-to-own-an-electric-car <comment><USER4> I bought a used 2017 Leaf a few months ago, and it's been great.

I commute 75-90 miles per day depending on the route I use. There are no chargers at work (which is a military installation). The Leaf is technically rated at 95 miles range, but I am getting 120 out of it. However, the Level 1 charging wasn't going to cut it. I would fully charge the car over the weekend, but I'd never quite get back to full during the week, and would have to track down a DC fast charger on Thursday. Which are quite expensive, actually; the cost is equivalent to the amount gasoline would cost for the same number of miles you get. Installed a Level 2 charger (for $2000) and since then there's been no problem.

I do have other vehicles, but given how much less expensive the Leaf is to drive than my previous ride (a Honda Fit) if I didn't it would absolutely make financial sense to rent a car the five or six times a year I make road trips. The car is so inexpensive to drive that it actually makes more sense for us to park my wife's fully paid off F150 and get her a Leaf as well. The amount we're spending on gas and repairs on the truck is more than the monthly payment on the car loan for the Leaf plus the electricity.

<comment><USER5> Why do you buy a F150 if you can manage with a Leaf?!

<comment><USER4> Because I have a farm. We have to have a truck regardless. But at the moment my wife is commuting in the truck.

<comment><USER6> You will be happy to learn that electric pickup trucks are coming real soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The most important takeaway is not all the rambling on the EV, but the conclusion.

I live in one of those dense cities (Paris), with bike lanes and good public transportation, with several micromobile electric transportation offerings, and it's great! For most people living there, buying a car just wouldn't cross their mind. Parking is hard to find, stupidely expensive (as it should be), roads are congested, and shrinking (thanks to our mayor actions), and cars upkeep is prohibitive.

Most people do take public transportation to vacations as well. I'm in the minority, borrowing (I'd loan otherwise) an ICE vehicle for holidays, and I'm very happy with that.

While some people think EV are the second coming of cars, I'm starting to question their ecological benefits. Sure, they aren't burning fossil fuels to move every single day. But they still need batteries, in high quantities, for which the current method of production isn't exactly ecological. Plus they need lots of metal/plastics. Not ecological. Then you still need roads and those roads maintenance. Not ecological as well.

While I love EV for their low pollution and low noise, I still think we should probably focus on not using cars in the first place unless there really isn't any other choice.

<comment><USER6> Last year about 70 million automobiles were produced, and there are something like a billion of them in the world. They must be replaced with EV's as soon as possible. It would be great to get people off of cars, but that would take decades, and EV's are here already. Also for many applications like trucks you have to have individual vehicles, and they need to be EV's rather than ICE's. Any damage to the environment from EV's is outweighed at least 10 times over by the damage that ICE's do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I live in a small european city, and thus we bought a second hand "Renault Twizy" with my SO.

It's a small car: 2 seater, 80km of range, and a top speed of 110 km/hour (when modded) on the highway.

People always think it's a stupid choice: "But it's slow; but you can't go far with it".

The reality is that it's perfect for us: there's no maintenance (apart from the wheels, as the regen is top notch) and it fits everywhere. We rarely do more than 80km round-trip anyways. And when we do (maybe twice a year), then we rent a car for ~80CHF. The charge is quick (3hours), and cheap (1CHF for 6kWh).

I love it

<comment><USER9> A lot of people would not buy an electric car if it meant they would have to rent a car to do long trips. Why would I pay for a car and then have to rent another car?

My wife and I need a car that can travel 6 hours (350+ miles\550km) 3-5 times a year. There is a super charger out of the way where my wife's sister goes to college. It would make a 20-30 bearable so we can make the journey with some charge leftover. One of our vacation spots has a destination charger at an Embassy Suites nearby. Its likely too busy on holidays to use.

Tesla Model 3 is the only one that fits our needs and budget. I'm very carious about a Tesla and we might end up with a Q5 instead.

<comment><USER10> > Why would I pay for a car and then have to rent another car?

I had a miser of an uncle that did lots of long road trips, but always rented cars for them, once impressionably do a back of an envelope costs breakdown of putting long road trip mileage on a personal vehicle versus per-trip rentals. Even assuming both cars got equivalent mileage (my uncle was doing math with comparable ICE sedans two decades ago or so), the maintenance subsidy of dipping into a rental fleet was much cheaper than the long term maintenance cost on a personal vehicle.

Even if you think my uncle's math was off one way or the other, I feel like it should be pointed out that "rent a car for long trips" isn't a new attitude unique to electric vehicle owners, and people have advocated it for a long time.

Similarly, my current employer and at least one of my past employers highly discourages using personal vehicles for long work trips, and beyond just the obvious liability issues, such employers have made sure to point out very similar logic to my uncle's that the increased miles on your vehicle is rarely worth the long term maintenance costs when rental companies have cheaper maintenance costs, because they scale maintenance across a fleet rather than a single vehicle charged "retail" costs.

<comment><USER11> I routinely take day trips on the weekends that are in the 150 to 250 mile round-trip range, often two in a weekend. Doing that routinely in most electric cars I've seen wouldn't be feasible. Trying to rent a car for these trips would be a headache as well, and expensive. I think I've had one weekend in the last two months where I haven't made at least one of these trips. Until electric cars can make these kinds of trips commonplace, I won't be getting one.

I don't live in a city, I live in the country where everything is far away from everything else.

<comment><USER10> Congratulations on being in the very long tail of car users.

For what little it is worth presuming you are exploring more than just excuses: Tesla Model 3 can do 325 miles on a single charge. Even assuming there is not a single way to charge on that day trip, it is do-able with current technology, and maybe even two of them if they are both closer to the 150 side of your range possibility. Tesla superchargers add more possibilities, but so can even just any old outdoor outlet at a destination or interesting stop along the way.

<comment><USER11> Maybe I am in the long tail of car users, but so is everyone else where I live. Driving longer distances is the norm here.

EVs are getting closer and I've been waiting for them to get to where I can use them. I only have one vehicle, and don't want to buy another one just to drive around town. But getting stuck somewhere in the middle of the forest because I misjudged the range is not something I want to have happen.

<comment><USER10> That's largely what I meant by "long tail". You clearly aren't an outlier, there are lots of folks in the long tail as is the nature of most long tail distributions. I may have been a bit flippant because there _are_ lots of people in the long tail and almost every thread very easily devolves into (obviously valid and personally meaningful) anecdotal discussions of lives out in the long tail. I certainly sympathize, I learned to drive while living in a rural American house that was 30-70 miles from practically anywhere at all.

But the article here makes a good point that to some extent no other transportation system in history has been so subservient to the long tail, and no other transportation transition so completely weighed down in every discussion with anecdata from heavy users and/or nostalgic fondness for high- sigma deviations from personal mean trips.

So my apologies for being curt in my previous reply, as I didn't perceive your argument from anecdote a useful addition to the discussion. Which isn't to say that I don't understand your point, but that it's one of many that comes out of the woodwork all the time in these discussions (you aren't an outlier, you are one of many in the long tail).

My real point was, "What are you planning to do about it?" You have related your status quo. You have provided enough evidence that changing that status quo is a step change that will require good consideration and possibly plenty of effort. That status quo is your "normal", certainly, but it's also not the "way it has always been" that it feels to be. What would someone's ancestors in that region have done before the invention of the car? Before gas stations were dependable/reliable infrastructure in that region? That wasn't as long ago as it seems (especially when cultural long term memory elides "short term problems" like the 70s oil crisis; the current "reliability" of ICE vehicles is a fascinating blip in history).

Are you bringing up your dependency on ICE vehicles to lament a status quo you don't think you have the power to change (in which case, why bring it up at all?) or to figure out what that step transition might entail in personal trade-offs versus your current dependencies?

(It's not entirely unfair to compare modern America's dependency/addiction to ICE vehicles versus it's long and many, recurring dependency/addiction cycles to nicotine smoking. So far you have told us, you only own one vehicle and don't believe you can go "cold turkey" on gas. Do you really feel that you need to quit or are you happy with your addiction? Or can you find middle ground that isn't just "cold turkey"?)

Apologies for such a lengthy digression into what may feel to you to perhaps be rhetorical questions. My curiosity here is genuine now that I'm over the initial anger that you immediately went to argument by anecdote, and my suggestion was very genuine in the immediately previous post that there are ways to "get better" if you came into the discussion in good faith looking for solutions _today_ rather than just complaining about some status quo you don't think you can change.

<comment><USER10> If you will excuse answering an anecdote with another anecdote: I had a really cool conversation once with someone that does roadside assistance in rural Idaho/Montana. They were telling me about a guy that had them on speed dial because he loved his Tesla and his favorite drive to visit friends and family he drove two or three times a year obviously didn't have enough superchargers along the way. This guy decided it was cheaper to pay for a tow at the end of the range of his car to the next nearest charge spot than to reroute. He was doing it often enough that he would often call ahead by a week or two and the tow truck would just be there waiting in his usual spot. He was doing it often enough that the roadside assistance folks were even looking into ways to do some sort of mobile charging for the guy as just another assistance service they could provide not just to that particular Tesla owner but maybe even for other future users, as that would presumably be a growing mini-industry in rural Idaho/Montana.

There are stories if you look for them of the same sorts of "early adopters" needing tows between gas stations in those same exact areas. It isn't a "new" phenomenon with electric cars, and there are all sorts of industry solutions if we work together to solve such things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The point about the range of most cars meeting maximal needs reminds me of when some people buy a vacation home vs renting.

People are willing to pay a premium to know for certain that something is available for them to use on a whim, even if they would never do so.

There's something about the increased flexibility and redundancy afforded by long range capability.

<comment><USER13> But people make huge strategic mistakes in their life because of "might". Basically it's hoarding behavior.

I might need this kayak, so it'll take up space in my life as I move it from apartment to condo to home for the next 20 years. Storage units are full of these mistakes.

I think some EV manufacturers (Fiat?) tried to alleviate this by offering rental cars for a certain number of days per year to people who bought their cars.

(that said after driving an electric car renting a gas car seems sort of like copping out - silly strategy)

<comment><USER14> _that said after driving an electric car renting a gas car seems sort of like copping out - silly strategy)_

If you meant "they should rent high range bigger battery stack cars" I agree. The heinous cost of owning huge kWh battery for occasional use is silly. But fits MAKE ice cars so a cheap coverage for range is rental of an ice for the agency doing this model.

<comment><USER13> > The heinous cost of owning huge kWh battery for occasional use is silly

I thought like this in the beginning, and there's a fallacy in there.

Think not about huge kwh battery, think of (range of a battery in miles) * (battery cycles)

That gives you the projected car mileage.

First generation evs from other manufacturers with ~20kwh batteries will have to replace their battery in just a few years. They might cycle their battery once a day while a tesla might be once a week or more. Many many leafs got new batteries after their range decreased significantly 50% within 5 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> From just the headline, I thought to myself, "aww, isn't that cute, someone got a new electric car. Let's read the insights they gathered that us old- timer EV owners already know."

I've owned a Leaf for eight years, and it was worth a read. The first half, if you already own an EV, is blah, blah, blah. But there were some good insights in the second half, including that you might not _need_ a Level 2 charger in your garage, a (US 120V) Level 1 might do. I will say that one might be capable of installing a 240V outlet oneself and save $2000.

But most insightful were the observations of how the whole system is "rigged" (for lack of a better word) for ICEs. A lot of the poo-pooing of EVs would go away if we didn't build a system that assumes one will plop their ass in a emissions-spewing two-ton wheelchair to go get a quart of milk.

<comment><USER16> >I will say that one might be capable of installing a 240V outlet oneself and save $2000.

It took us fifteen minutes (excluding the run to home depot for the socket, breaker, wire and a steel pipe) to run a new 240v socket from our electrical panel in the garage to a few feet away from it. I can't imagine ever spending $2000 on the installation of a single 240V socket right next to the panel.

<comment><USER15> _I can 't imagine ever spending $2000 on the installation of a single 240V socket right next to the panel_

You can't? Here, I'll throw you a softball: service panel upgrade because your 6Kw charger is way more than your 1960s house can handle.

Most common case, of course, is run a piece of conduit from panel, some wiring and a plug, sorted in 30 minutes. But not everyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Long range is a must for me. I live downtown so don't need to commute, but drive out to the mountains at least a dozen times per year. Long-range driving is probably 2/3 of my total KMs, most of it in places with no EV infrastructure. Hell, I've had range anxiety before with an ICE vehicle (topping up at the 'last' gas station even if I'm 3/4 full).

I really wish hydrogen-electric or EVs with an on-board generator caught on. Having a city-only car is a waste of time when you don't commute, or if you commute with public transit (which I did when living in the suburbs anyway).

<comment><USER18> Sounds like you could dispense with owning a car and rent/carshare for those dozen trips per year.

<comment><USER17> Maybe, but it's paid off and my current costs are ~3k/year. A rental wouldn't be any cheaper and would be far, far less convenient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The Twizy is vey nice, but it is not an electric car (it is of course, but not one would think of that being an electric car).

[https://www.renault.co.uk/vehicles/new- vehicles/twizy/dimens...](https://www.renault.co.uk/vehicles/new- vehicles/twizy/dimensions.html)

It is more like a bike with 4 wheels, or if you prefer it is _as much_ a car _as_ the Isetta was a car:

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

While it does surely fulfill the needs of someone living in a small EU city (and that needs not to commute for work) it is not IMHO really comparable to a car.

BTW, I guess it depends on the country, here in Italy you surely cannot get on highways with it (as much as you cannot get on them with an Isetta or with an original FIAT 500), but the issue - at least in theory - is that a number of "main" motorways have the same highway limits AND that a number of city by- passes are categorized as "urban highway": Italian but understandable via Google translate:

[https://twizyblog.wordpress.com/2012/07/09/limiti-di- circola...](https://twizyblog.wordpress.com/2012/07/09/limiti-di-circolazione- con-twizy/)

<comment><USER20> An electric car homage to the Isetta:

[https://microlino-car.com/en/microlino](https://microlino- car.com/en/microlino)

Notably states "this is not a car" about half way down.

<comment><USER19> Nice and (unlike the Twizy in its default configuration) it doesn't rain inside it.

And additionally it says "THE IDEAL MIX BETWEEN MOTORBIKE AND CAR."

From the FAQ's:

What number plate do I need for my Microlino?

The Microlino is an L7e vehicle and therefore requires the same format as a motorcycle.

Though it seems "borderline" with weight, I seem to remember that - <USER2> there is some new norm/exception for electric vehicles - the limit is 450 Kg (which is what the Twizy weights):

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

The Microlino is seemingly produced by Tazzari in Italy (they make other smallish electric vehicles):

[https://www.tazzari-zero.com/gamma-citycar-elettriche/](https://www.tazzari- zero.com/gamma-citycar-elettriche/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > Would I recommend buying an electric car? This is a bit like asking if > someone should buy a computer. The answer is, "Probably – but what do you > need it for?"

I'd say it's more like recommending to buy stock in something you're already invested in. "Hey, the stock is going up, but it will go much higher if you (and your friends) buy it too!"

The more people buy/use EV the better the infrastructure around us, the better the market, prices and models to choose from. And better for the environment. Besides, trust me, driving an EV feels like "the future", if you're into that kind of thing.

My wife and I have invested in a PHEV vehicle, a Kia Niro (55km e-range, plus a ~40L gas tank), for the next 5 years (a lease) and we put a charger in our front door. We live in a townhouse with no garage but we park it on the street in front. She drives it everyday 45km to-from work and it works great, 98% of the time all-electric except for the long range roadtrips where the gas kicks in. Still, the Niro is a quite efficient hybrid when the battery runs out. We are saving about 1500€/year on gas compared to her previous tiny compact car.

</comment><comment><USER22> I find it very similar to the experience I had with a digital camera around 1998 or so. It was often less convenient than film; you couldn't just buy more film at every corner store. The photo->computer download process was honestly a bit of a pain, as was buying enough storage space. Many people in those days wanted prints, which was much less convenient. But it was pretty clear that it was the future after a few months of living with it. Peak film was around 2001; I suspect peak ICE will be 2025 or so.

(There's a further analogy to be made here with smartphones and autonomous ride sharing EVs)

</comment><comment><USER23> I got halfway through and thought, "good lord, cars are kind of a dumb idea when you think about it," so thumbs up to the author. Cars mostly solve the problems created by everyone else having cars.

<comment><USER24> I read an article on the ill effects of cars dated from 1967. I thought it would be very dated but it was spot on. A car is great when you're one of the few that has them. They suck when everyone does. But then not having a car sucks worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Lost me at "Most people do not need a 270 range car."

Most people where? We're in the US. Weekends frequently include short road trips, up to 150 miles each way. I've put 30,000 miles on my M3, with 325 mile range, usually gets me there and back without charging. And even for daily commuting, once in a while I forget to plug it in when I get home. The range means 'no penalty' as I can get there and back 2x on one full charge.

Anyway, for those who love to drive and like to roam on weekends, a 135 mile range would kind of suck.

<comment><USER26> Have some citations which I randomly found - [https://newsroom.aaa.com/2015/04/new-study-reveals-much- moto...](https://newsroom.aaa.com/2015/04/new-study-reveals-much-motorists- drive/) and [http://www.solarjourneyusa.com/EVdistanceAnalysis7.php](http://www.solarjourneyusa.com/EVdistanceAnalysis7.php)

My question to you is - how often do you drive for three hours without stopping? Either for going to the toilet, or just to stretch your leg. I occasionally drive > 200 miles in the UK. Literally every motorway service station here has a rapid charger (50kW+) which will fill your battery in 30 minutes.

<comment><USER25> You are correct that I seldom drive 3 hours without stopping.

However, as a real example, I'll drive from San Jose to Healdsburg on a day trip. That is 114 miles each way and I can make the round trip without charging at all. I pay 12 cents/KWh at home. 26 cents at a super charger. With 325 mile range, I get the savings and no anxiety about finding a charger and then finding something to do for 30 minutes. I could likely optimize it by trying to find a charger near an eatery or place of interest, but it's nice to not have that additional thought and research process. Just determine it's within easy round trip range and forget about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I just got an e-Golf on a really good deal (thanks to slickdeals pointing out you can get 10k off the price). At first was worried, but that's all gone away. I've gone this whole week without even charging it and the included 120v charger over the weekend works just fine for my use case.

I've only used a public charger once and that was the first day owning it since the charger at the dealer wasn't working right.

</comment><comment><USER28> "But I would say that our family makes a 200+ mile trip, oh, about 6-8 times a year, 400 miles round trip. So that's, at most, 3,200 miles of long-distance driving a year." Wow, I took a leasing car 3 months ago, done 9600km since. Living in a not so rural area outside of Aachen, Germany.

</comment><comment><USER29> The most impactful way municipalities could encourage EV adoption would be to subsidize the installation of chargers at work. For most people - <USER3> if they have an ICE at home for the weekend - this would eliminate the need for costly home installation and charger hunting

<comment><USER30> How much does a home installation cost?

<comment><USER29> Around $2600 plus the cost of electricity. Not viable for renters or apartment dwellers, and not a good candidate for subsidy since it would be used by 1-2 cars at most.

<comment><USER31> How is it that much and where is it that much? I paid a fraction of that.

<comment><USER29> Austin, TX apparently. FTA: "Level Two is a 240 volt socket, which are the weirdo-looking ones you see for your washer or dryer or some kinds of ovens. This is a much faster connection, adding 20-25 miles per hour, but most garages don't have them, so you need to get an electrician to install them (that's $2,000 right there) and then you need to buy the charger itself (usually about $600, though there are often rebates for this sort of thing)."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> For an electrician to install an outlet in your garage is TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS?! If you paid that, you got mega ripped off. That's an order of magnitude greater than it should cost.

<comment><USER4> No. At least not in my case. The electrician had to install an extra breaker in an auxiliary box in the basement, then run 30 feet of conduit to get the 240v line out of the house. The price of having a charger installed varies tremendously depending on where it needs to go and where your house's breaker box is located relative to that.

<comment><USER33> You know, conduit is less than $3.50 for a 10 ft section last I bought some. Fittings are another dollar or so each, and I can't see 30 ft of copper wire costing 2 grand. So you are paying mostly for the electrification's time. If there is a lot more work involved, and if I lived in an area where I wasn't allowed to do my own electrical work, I'd at least dig the trench myself and take care of pounding a whole through the foundation wall if needed.

<comment><USER4> There's no question I was paying for his time. I'll do my own electrical, mostly, but not 240. That stuff will kill you.

<comment><USER34> That's a bit paranoid; plenty of Europeans with our 220V lines do our own electrical, and there are very few domestic deaths by electrocution.

<comment><USER35> Nitpicking: 230V +-10%, so on a good day it can be as high as 253V.

But yes most people will work on it for their own, but shy away from 400V outlets.

<comment><USER36> I think that's just familiarity.

I've used 400V outlets, as they're the standard outlet in a European datacentre (for the UPS or PDU). Most people don't use them, and can be a bit uncomfortable even touching them.

I can understand Americans also being fairly unfamiliar with a 240V outlet, taking more care with it, and preferring to employ a professional to install one.

<comment><USER35> It's just 3 phases with 230V each, which gives you 400V across individual phases. Same safety rules apply as on standard outlets, so yes, it really is just familiarity. Also lots of European households do have 400V outlets (we have 2 in our house, basement and garage). I even installed one temporarily in my living room for construction/remodeling and working with the required thick wires they are unconfortable to work with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As far as chargers go, new ones are being added all the time, and in 5 years max you will find them everywhere, including a lot of apartment building parking lots.

<comment><USER24> I think with apartments, there will be a tipping point where landlords will have to install them in order to keep their apartments competitive.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you have any rules of thumb for when to hire? - <AUTHOR> More specifically I am asking about the timing for specific positions. Obviously having the cash flows to hire is a key but what other metrics have you found valuable to look at? Has anyone found any useful heuristics or books for, as an example, deciding between another developer vs another sales person? The majority of the material I've read on the subject has been geared more for larger organizations and not a small series-blah startup. <comment><USER2> Hire when it saves money. And certainly hire before it gets too bad because every hire takes a while to learn.

One of the key ideas here is congestion. Nobody should work up to 100% capacity. When you pass a certain treshhold, their effectiveness drops sharply, similar to how traffic jams happen. For each person, and different scopes of work, the treshhold is different.

You'll want to hire when people are crossing that treshhold.

Also remember that by hiring someone, you're adding the workload of training, so don't do it too late.</comment>


Why the demise of companies is a good thing - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiehackers.com/@mschleiss/why-the-demise-of-companies-is-a-good-thing-1a502330dd <comment><USER2> Sadly, few constitutions require the elimination of old laws. I think a sunset clauses is needed, perhaps also one that would start at 1900 and sweep forward 5 years, with a pause vote on laws they want to endure.</comment>


Contributor Agreements Considered Harmful - <AUTHOR> https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/contributor-agreements-considered-harmful <comment><USER2> I don't know about CLAs, but the way the FSF asks for copyright assignment isn't as careless as Eric makes it out to be. The FSF does require a statement from your employer that you're able to do the copyright assignment. I know of at least one prof whose university wouldn't grant that assignment and therefore the copyright couldn't be transferred. There was no "legal voodoo"; everyone was aware of what needed to happen and understood that it couldn't because the university didn't want it to.

Whether the FSF getting copyright assignments is helpful or not, I'm not sure, but it seems that it is: Hellwig's Linux GPL enforcement case against VMWare has so far hinged on him being able to ascertain copyright over the bits of code that VMWare allegedly violated, and last I heard, the court threw out his claims because they decided that git blame logs are not enough proof of his copyright ownership. If all of the Linux devs could collectively enforce copyright over their code as a single legal entity with single ownership, this particular obstacle wouldn't be there.

 _Edit_ : Just checked. Hellwig decided to no longer appeal. A second court decided to also not hear the case, on "purely procedural grounds", which I think again is about the question of copyright ownership:

[https://sfconservancy.org/news/2019/apr/02/vmware-no- appeal/](https://sfconservancy.org/news/2019/apr/02/vmware-no-appeal/)

On the other hand, it's good that VMWare has decided to become GPL-compliant anyway.

So, yeah, I think the FSF has a good reason to have copyright assignments, to avoid this particular obstacle.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Eric S. Raymond is a wandering anthropologist and trouble-making > philosopher. He's been known to write a few lines of code too. Actually, if > the tag "ESR" means nothing to you, what are you doing reading this > magazine?

Seems unnecessary and gatekeepery.

<comment><USER4> When I was getting into Linux as a teenager in 2008 esr came up a lot, but apart from writing The Cathedral and the Bazaar and a few shorter essays and contributing to relatively-minor opens source projects…what has he actually done? Especially recently? He frequently feels like someone who's famous because he's famous.

I'm not trying to slander the guy; he's definitely contributed more code and ideas to the open source community than I have. I just don't consider him to be anywhere near the same level of hacker as Linus or rms.

<comment><USER5> I'd say I'm a fan and I'd agree he's not a hacker in Linus or rms class. His utility is explaining hackers, their actions , and the reasons for those actions to non hackers in a way that everybody doesn't disagree with too badly.

 _I_ couldn't articulate why I wanted to release software under an Open license to my boss, but ESR's writing helped them understand as far as they were able.

<comment><USER6> He certainly believes he's the most famous programmer in the world.

At least Terry Davis could write code.

[https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/archive/show-them-the- code](https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/archive/show-them-the-code)

[https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/archive/moral- compassed](https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/archive/moral-compassed)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13147038](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13147038)

tptacek on Dec 10, 2016 [-]

I think we're all pretty sure ESR is not in fact a god, and that nothing could have occurred with ESR or his magic flute to have demonstrated to him that he was. Rather, the story is more broadly illustrative of a pretty extreme narcissism and --- challenging --- variant of self-awareness. For a more down to earth example, consider how many of us would non-ironically write the following passage:

I'm wondering about this because my wife Cathy asked me a simple question last night, and I realized I didn't have an answer to it. "Are you" she asked "the most famous programmer in the world?"

This was a question which I had, believe it or not, never thought about before. But it's a reasonable one to ask, given recent evidence – notably, the unexpected success of my Patreon page. This is relevant because Patreon is mainly an arts-funding site – it's clearly not designed for or by techies.

It goes on in this vein. Here, by the way, is a link to his Patreon page:

[link redacted]

Apparently we value "the code that makes our digital world work" a bit less than we value the person who fries our french fries at McDonalds. If that sounds mean, well, it is, but it was also Eric Raymond who put forward the idea that his Patreon page may indicate that he's among the most famous programmers in the world.

For a nerdier take on ESR's merits, hunt down Terry Lambert's take on fetchmail. (You should know who Terry Lambert is, if you don't already).

[link provided to "A tangential diatribe on the unsuitability of fetchmail"]

[https://markmail.org/thread/pmoqk6tuybncu2is](https://markmail.org/thread/pmoqk6tuybncu2is)

armitron on Dec 10, 2016 [-]

Not to mention that ESR was, at some point, a multi-millionaire. Pretty sure he still is, in which case that Patreon page of his would be nothing but a con.

<comment><USER7> > _He certainly believes he 's the most famous programmer in the world._

This raises an interesting question: who actually _is_ the most famous programmer?

(Obviously it's a fuzzy standard, but I'd broadly want to say "famous largely for coding work". I don't think Brin or Page were household names until they were in executive roles. Whether Zuckerberg counts, or rather when his fame stopped counting, is tricky. Snowden, Assange, Swartz, etc. I'd discount for the same reason.)

Offhand, the same-generation names that I think beat esr are Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, and maybe Knuth. The overall winner might be Sir Berners-Lee, who regularly gets mainstream press coverage - unless we're including Turing.

<comment><USER6> He's not that famous outside of hard core geek circles, but I am a huge fan of James Clark (not the SGI guy, but he's awesome too for different reasons), who wrote the Expat XML parser, Relax/NG XML schema language, and many other widely used standards and bodies of code that drive the Internet.

[http://www.jclark.com/](http://www.jclark.com/)

[http://www.jclark.com/bio.htm](http://www.jclark.com/bio.htm)

He has such clarity of thought and mastery of diverse languages (some of which he invented and implemented). He saw exactly what was wrong with XML Schemas, and addressed it practically and elegantly with TREX, which he and others refined through humble constructive collaboration into Relax/NG. And he's a big proponent and creator (not just a talker like ESR) of free open source software.

[https://relaxng.org/jclark/](https://relaxng.org/jclark/)

Here's a fascinating insightful DDJ interview of James Clark, "A Triumph of Simplicity: James Clark on Markup Languages and XML":

[http://www.drdobbs.com/a-triumph-of-simplicity-james- clark-o...](http://www.drdobbs.com/a-triumph-of-simplicity-james-clark- on-m/184404686)

>A Triumph of Simplicity: James Clark on Markup Languages and XML

>If you peek under the hood of high-profile open-source projects such as Mozilla, Apache, Perl, and Python, you'll find a little program called "expat" handling the XML parsing. If you've ever used the man command on your GNU/Linux distribution, then you've also used groff, the GNU version of the UNIX text formatting application, troff. If you've ever done any work with SGML, from generating documentation from DocBook to building your own SGML applications, you've undoubtedly come across sgmls, SP, and Jade.

>Whether you've heard of him or not (and mostly likely, you haven't), James Clark (below right) has made your life easier. In addition to authoring these and other widely used open-source tools (see [http://www.jclark.com/](http://www.jclark.com/) for a complete list), Clark served as the technical lead of the original W3C XML Working Group and as the editor of the XSLT and XPath recommendations. He recently founded Thai Open Source Software Center ([http://www.thaiopensource.com/](http://www.thaiopensource.com/)). His latest project is TREX, an XML schema language. Clark sat down with Eugene Eric Kim to discuss markup languages, the standardization process, and the importance of simplicity.

[...]

>DDJ: You're well known for writing very good reference implementations for SGML and XML Standards. How important is it for these reference implementations to be good implementations as opposed to just something that works?

>JC: Having a reference implementation that's too good can actually be a negative in some ways.

>DDJ: Why is that?

>JC: Well, because it discourages other people from implementing it. If you've got a standard, and you have only one real implementation, then you might as well not have bothered having a standard. You could have just defined the language by its implementation. The point of standards is that you can have multiple implementations, and they can all interoperate.

>You want to make the standard sufficiently easy to implement so that it's not so much work to do an implementation that people are discouraged by the presence of a good reference implementation from doing their own implementation.

>DDJ: Is that necessarily a bad thing? If you have a single implementation that's good enough so that other people don't feel like they have to write another implementation, don't you achieve what you want with a standard in that all implementations — in this case, there's only one of them — work the same?

>JC: For any standard that's really useful, there are different kinds of usage scenarios and different classes of users, and you can't have one implementation that fits all. Take SGML, for example. Sometimes you want a really heavy-weight implementation that does validation and provides lots of information about a document. Sometimes you'd like a much lighter weight implementation that just runs as fast as possible, doesn't validate, and doesn't provide much information about a document apart from elements and attributes and data. But because it's so much work to write an SGML parser, you end up having one SGML parser that supports everything needed for a huge variety of applications, which makes it a lot more complicated. It would be much nicer if you had one SGML parser that is perfect for this application, and another SGML parser that is perfect for this other application. To make that possible, the standard has to be sufficiently simple that it makes sense to have multiple implementations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> FTA: " _If it ever comes to a court case, one of the first things [sic] the judge is going to look at is community expectations and practice around our licenses. A jurist is supposed [sic] to do this in contract and license cases; there 's some famous case law about the interpretation of handshake contracts among Hasidic Jewish diamond merchants in New York City that makes this very clear and explicit._ Where there is doubt about interpretation _and no overriding problem of of equity, the norms of the community within which the license /contract was arrived at should govern._" [Emphasis added.]

The first two sentences of this quote are flat-out wrong and give false hope about the supposed willingness of (U.S.) courts to rescue people from "unfair" contracts. Only in the italicized part of the final sentence does ESR get it right, and even then only partly so.

1\. In American law's protocol ("subroutine") for interpreting contract language, a judge will never get as far as looking at industry standards _unless_ the judge first determines that the language is ambiguous, that is, capable of two or more _plausible_ interpretations, _and_ that evidence of industry standards can be helpful in resolving the ambiguity.

2\. "Equity" generally doesn't enter into contract interpretation or enforcement, at least in U.S. law. The normal governing principle here is "freedom of contract" — as in, you're free to make a really dumb deal, and (with rare exceptions such as "unconscionability") the court won't rewrite the contract for you just because you come to regret having entered into it.

3\. If the judge does get as far as taking industry standards into account, then: (A) Evidence of just what those standards _are_ will need to be presented; (B) the finder of fact — possibly the jury — might have to weigh the evidence and "decide" what those industry standards are, for purposes of deciding the case; and (C) the industry standards won't necessarily be controlling in any case.

Source: I teach business-contract drafting as a part-time law professor; my relevant course materials, with links to additional reading, are at [https://toedtclassnotes.site44.com/#AmbigTop](https://toedtclassnotes.site44.com/#AmbigTop)

<comment><USER7> Thank you for this. The claim that community expectations are relevant in the face of a clearly-written contract sounded bizarre to me, but it's nice to have some actually informed confirmation.

As an aside, do you know what case law he's talking about with the diamond merchants?

Not only can I not find any such "famous case law" with a quick search, I'm instead finding articles like this which specifically claim those handshake contracts _aren 't_ enforceable, and analyze how they function in the absence of legal protection: [https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer...](https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1719&context=faculty_scholarship)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This seems like making a mountain out of a molehill.

To get an ICLA all legit while you are employed, run it by the legal department of the company you are employed by, and they can give you an idea if any changes to the agreement is needed (and of course, if you are allowed to spend company or private time on the project), and get it signed legally and on file for all parties involved. Done.

Many of the issues outlined here can be resolved by properly communicating all the concerns before signing a legal document (which is recommended practice).

It seems like ESR is treating these contributor agreements as static one-way agreements rather than things that can be changed as needed.

<comment><USER10> >To get an ICLA all legit while you are employed, run it by the legal department of the company you are employed by, and they can give you an idea if any changes to the agreement is needed (and of course, if you are allowed to spend company or private time on the project), and get it signed legally and on file for all parties involved. Done.

IME company legal departments are unlikely to indulge this kind of thing unless they owe you a favor.

Where they do, their blanket response is usually "no, now go away".

Ideally any solution to this problem should take account of corporate legal departments' aversion to extra work and risk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's so sad this guy is still getting airtime and attention.

<comment><USER12> Could you elaborate on why you hold a distasteful attitude towards this person?

Just curious.

<comment> rodan- Eric Raymond has some questionable beliefs in my opinion, and this is likely what OP is referring to.

I'm a big fan of The Cathedral and the Bazaar. But currently Eric Raymond has come out as a climate change denier, a racist, and also has pushed some odd conspiracy theories.

<comment><USER6> And he hijacked the Hacker's Dictionary and proceeded to inject a bunch of his ideological words and definitions in, that in no way represent the hacker community around the early ARPANET and MIT-AI lab from which it came.

[https://medium.com/@donhopkins/mit-ai-lab-tourist- policy-f73...](https://medium.com/@donhopkins/mit-ai-lab-tourist- policy-f73b77075631)

And as if hijacking the Hacker's Dictionary wasn't enough, he tried to hijack and corrupt the very meaning of the word "hacker" itself, by presuming to define what a hacker is, by preaching to people about how to become a hacker, by blatantly misrepresenting himself as a great hacker and respected leader of the open source community, even though his programming chops are lackluster and outdated, his social skills are deceptive and manipulative, and his hacker spirit is mean, vindictive, and envious of RMS.

And then there's his death threat to Bruce Perens that he tried to excuse by explaining that he was only trying to "defame" him.

In 1999, Debian developer Bruce Perens published an "email threat" that he allegedly received from Raymond. Raymond then "clarified" that he only meant to defame Perens. From this we can assume that he is batshit insane and will fucking kill and or write to anyone that says anything about him or his software. If you are lucky you might get an O'Rielly book about you.

[https://lists.debian.org/debian- user/1999/04/msg00623.html](https://lists.debian.org/debian- user/1999/04/msg00623.html)

        To: email@example.com
        Subject: email threat
        From: firstname.lastname@example.com
        Date: 5 Apr 1999 22:48:42 -0000
        Message-id: <firstname.lastname@example.com>

        Today I received the following threat in e-mail from Eric Raymond. The message
        was copied to the Silicon Valley Linux User's Group officers, who you may
        consult regarding its authenticity. The police have been notified.

        Because I know that Eric is a firearms enthusiast, for my own protection,
        I feel the best strategy is for me to publicize the threat widely.

                Thanks

                Bruce Perens

        > Damn straight I took it personally.  And if you ever again behave like
        > that kind of disruptive asshole in public, insult me, and jeopardize
        > the interests of our entire tribe, I'll take it just as personally --
        > and I will find a way to make you regret it.  Watch your step.

The irony of Eric S Raymond threatening someone else for behaving "like that kind of disruptive asshole in public" is rich -- very rich.

[https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/archive/bruce-perens- dead](https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/archive/bruce-perens-dead)

[https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce- perens](https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens)

[https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce- perens/page/2](https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/2)

[https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce- perens/page/3](https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/3)

[https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce- perens/page/4](https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/4)

[https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce- perens/page/5](https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/5)

[https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce- perens/page/6](https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/6)

[https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce- perens/page/7](https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/7)

[https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce- perens/page/8](https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/8)

[https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce- perens/page/9](https://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/cat/bruce-perens/page/9)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Yeah, these got popular with GitHub on bigger projects. It's like lawyers for these organizations aren't sufficiently well versed enough in the laws around open source to realize they're already protected, so they apply contracts law, which is what they learned in law school.

What's kind of ironic is that I wonder if these are even valid contracts.

Contracts are required to have 5 characteristics: an offer, acceptance, consideration, competency, and legal intent.

Open source agreements that require disclosing source code changes may lack the ability to give consideration as you are, in a sense, required to contribute changes back.

Consideration means you get something in return for signing a contract. The thing you get for signing ULAs and the like are the ability to use a product.

What are you getting in return for signing these agreements? The ability to contribute? Already that seems like a pretty weak consideration, but when you add in that you are required by some licenses to disclose changes and I think these contracts are completely void of any legal basis.

</comment><comment><USER14> The author seems to base his argument on:

1) assuming the reasons a project owner might want to mandate an agreement; and then

2) demonstrating why those assumed reasons are not fulfilled by an agreement.

However there exist other good reasons a project may want to mandate a contributor agreement or assignment. If I can demonstrate just one, then his entire claim is moot.

Here is one reason. A project owner may want to relicense the project in the future. This would require them to either contact every copyright holder (some of whom may be unreachable in the future), or to require a copyright assignment for all contributions, or to require an agreement permitting such relicensing in the future.

I'm sure some contributors explicitly do not want such relicensing to be possible in the future. That's fine - but the author has not argued that this makes such agreements or assignments a bad thing.

Here's a legitimate example: what if your project is licensed under the GPL but later you want to add SSL functionality by linking with OpenSSL? You'll need an "OpenSSL linking exception" from all copyright holders which can be extremely difficult to obtain. If you had a contributor agreement or assignment in place, then you wouldn't.

What about other things like this that would generally be accepted by the community in the future, but you haven't thought of today? A copyright assignment or suitable contributor agreement derisks you from these.

On his "work for hire" point, the same argument applies to any contribution whatsoever, since if the contributor doesn't have permission to assign copyright, that contributor may also not have the permission to license their work.

I'm not trying to argue for or against these agreements here; I'm just saying that it seems like the author's arguments are moot because of the very narrow scope of the assumptions that he's made.

</comment><comment><USER15> Beware this analysis. Intent can matter in copyright law in many important ways, even if not on the core question of whether there was infringement.[1] And the fact that a bad actor with a big legal budget can still make hell does not make something worthless. By that standard, all contracts are worthless. It's also worth remembering that not everyone is a bad actor. You can help secure good will and trust by making sure that the other guy has a full understanding and proper notice of your arrangement.

I don't know much about CLAs and I'm no expert in copyright law, but I'm just saying that this piece doesn't pass the smell test. It might still be the case that CLAs aren't worth your trouble—I really don't know—but I'd want better reasons that the ones in this piece.

[1] [https://www.trademarkandcopyrightlawblog.com/2013/12/innocen...](https://www.trademarkandcopyrightlawblog.com/2013/12/innocent- infringement-intent-and-copyright-law/)</comment>


Artificial Intelligence Anyone's Game - <AUTHOR> https://founderau.com/2017/03/10/artificial-intelligence-anyones-game/ <comment><USER2> What is this Super that's referred to in this piece?

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superannuation_in_Australia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superannuation_in_Australia)</comment></comment>


Font Awesome 5 has raised $620 000 in 15 days - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/232193852/font-awesome-5 <comment><USER2> That is really awesome to see such a great project be rewarded by the community.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can someone explain a bit more about this project?

</comment><comment><USER4> Just backed it, thanks for the link; I would have had no idea otherwise.</comment>


How many companies in the Valley develop software with tests? - <AUTHOR>

Hi, I just moved to "The Valley" from London to work for a startup. I am shocked that nobody in this company thinks that writing tests is a worth cause (or at least one that we can afford). I assumed that on this day on age the value of tests was a given. I am told by my peers that here in "The Valley" writing tests doesn't fly because the need to produce software fast and the ability to pivot within days. Is this REALLY the case? <comment><USER2> Yeah man. Tests take forever to develop. It's a lot easier to test manually, upon release. Sure, something is usually broken, but the time saved on rigorous testing is worth it.

<comment><USER3> If writing tests for your code is difficult and takes too much time, that is a pretty strong code smell that you're writing unmaintainable code or you are working within an unmaintainable system.

As to the OP's question, the only reasonable scenarios for not writing tests are weekend project style web apps and projects coming out of ad agency style shops where the lifetime of a given project is so short and rushed it doesn't matter whether the code base is maintainable.

The vast majority of places I've talked to in the valley, from three man startups to 100 developer shops, have reported some respectable level of code coverage. It is my opinion that you can read something significant into what is expected of your work and the priorities of the company based on their testing policies.</comment></comment>


The Trillion Dollar IQ Business - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.forbes.com/richkarlgaard/2010/09/07/the-trillion-dollar-iq-business/

<comment><USER2> My IQ is at least 155 (max on the version of the test I took) and I can tell you that bliss is better. That's why I drink(I'm drunk now).

Smarter is just a race. It's intangible for the most part. Feelings are here now and have an immediate effect. IQ is exclusive, feelings are inclusive. IQ promises something(happiness?) later, you can usually get that thing faster some other way.

I don't want to have to have Moores law in my head to keep up. I feel good now, so what.

</comment><comment><USER3> During the last 12 months, I have personally spent over $200 on Provigil, however I'm not sure it works. I feel smarter when I'm on it but it might be just a placebo effect.</comment>


Weiner's weiner or Meredith Baker's ethics, what deserves more press? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> Why do news stories such as Anthony Weiner's junk shot or Charlie Sheen's implosion last for weeks in America's news cycle?

But there's hardly any news coverage of NBC-Universal merging with Comcast or commentary on FCC Commissioner Meredith Baker cashing out to become Comcast's chief lobbyist right after approving the merger?

Doesn't it seem that the latter story is what the 4th estate should be doing in order to protect a functioning democracy?... or am I missing something?

</comment><comment><USER2> Please leave political gossip out of HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not political gossip, it's probably the most important question concerning the future of a free and open Internet.

Are you familiar with the implications to the future of the Internet regarding the merger between the largest ISP (Comcast) in the United States merging with the largest content provider (NBC-U)?

Probably not, because there was no real news coverage of it...

But I bet you can tell me a lot about Congressman Anthony Weiner... And that's my point.

<comment><USER2> From the guidelines: _Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon_.

Mind you, a lot of HN readers (about half IIRC) are not in the US. Please have some mercy on us. I completely accept that fact that HN news are biased to US, because that's where most web startups are. But I'm sure there are many other forums where you can discuss American politics.

For comparison, a series of uprisings in the Arab world is a very big thing. Even conceding the extremely large importance of US in world politics, yet another case of conflict of interest in American politics is not that new or interesting. The fact that people pay more attention to sensationalistic news than to important stuff is not new either.

<comment><AUTHOR> With all due respect, I think that you are missing the point.

Yes, the uprisings in the Arab world is a very big thing. Which is very much connected to my point of criticizing the largest ISP in the U.S. merging with the largest content provider. And the lack of media coverage in not only American media coverage, but world media coverage. Keep in mind that the economies of General Electric (which owns NBC-Universal) and Comcast are larger than most nations in the world. Needless to say they weild a significant amount of political power outside of the U.S.

The Internet was invented in the United States and it was invented as an open medium (decentralized), this is the reason why totalitarian dictators in the Arab world have such a hard time blocking communication within their regimes that is critical of them. This construct is severely jeopardized by the merger of these two companies... and once this construct is altered in the U.S. it will permeate the entire globe, including the Arab world.

I do not want this to happen... but no one is talking about it... and that is a major problem. This problem is not just the United States' problem, it is the world's problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry nandemo, I don't mean to come off like an a-hole.

Watch this three minute video and I think you'll understand what I'm trying to say.

<http://www.vimeo.com/24632073></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Onboarder Test: 12 Steps to Better Onboarding - <AUTHOR> http://blog.onboarder.co/post/57470891273/the-onboarder-test-12-steps-to-better-onboarding

<comment><AUTHOR> We tried to put together something useful to help companies bring on new employees. I know I'm not Joel Spolsky, but I've always been inspired by The Joel Test.

I've also had some tougher experiences transitioning to new jobs. Lack of direct deposit and not having a laptop on my first day were some of those problems.

</comment><comment><USER2> If only new jobs could be this good hahah...

I'd add "do you get introduced around the office?", and "go out to a bar on day 1". Never done that second one, but think it could be either a really really good, or really bad idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> I went to a bar for one of my last days at a company. I felt like I really got to know my co-workers even better. I wish we would've done that on the first day.</comment></comment>


Suggest HN: what do you think about the UX of HN   - <AUTHOR>

I have joined Hacker News only a few months ago, but I am already totally addicted to it. I find the minimalistic layout really great.
The priority that is given to text over images and video is remarkable. I have even noticed that some posts linked to videos do not attract any attention.
There are some minor suggestions that I would like to share with you:
- The orange asterisk is of the same color as the headline box and some times my eyes are making it unconsciously difficult to locate my post(not many)
- I usually have the site minimized all the time but I want to check (I told you that I am getting addicted to it) if somebody has replied to my posts. It would be interesting if the minimized tab was showing the karma number and refresh itself once in a while.
- I find the background having a very close color to the text and it makes reading a bit problematic
- The down-voted comments literally cannot be distinguished from the background. I understand that this is a choice of the administrators, but what do you think?
With respect,
gsivil <comment><USER2> I love HN's less-is-more interface, but there are a couple things I would like, in a perfect world:

\- There's no way to change a vote on an article or comment. (Misclicks happen.)

\- I would love love love a way to flag an article or comment for later review (similar to reddit's "saved" feature).

<comment><USER3> Articles you upvote get automatically "saved" under news.ycombinator.com/saved?id=your_uid_here (there's a link from your profile page).

I think not separating "upvote" and "save" is on purpose, to try to encourage people to only upvote stuff they'd actually want to save also, but I may be reading too much into that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The topic you're looking for is

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363>

</comment><comment><USER5> "The orange asterisk is of the same color as the headline box"

This annoys me at times, too. Maybe grey would be better.

"and refresh itself once in a while"

Only if it did it without meta-refresh. Meta-refresh would be evil.

"I find the background having a very close color to the text and it makes reading a bit problematic"

Only for the OP's post, for me. The rest is fine. I think the OP's post is a little harder to read, but I don't mind much, as it is like that to distinguish it from the comments. The OP's post is typically not as interesting to most as the comments, which is why it is grey.

"The down-voted comments literally cannot be distinguished from the background."

If you want to read it, highlight it. I don't mind this one.

Basically, I like it the way it is for the most part. I really dislike what others have tried to do with it, which I think is a good sign.

</comment><comment><USER6> I love how HN feels, for the most part. The only issues I have are that the nav is a little opaque (I only recently discovered that "threads" is my recent conversations) and the edit profile is hard to understand in places (what is "showdead"?). I like that the UI doesn't get in the way of the actual meat- and-potatoes, though.

</comment><comment><USER7> I love the less is more interface as well, but recently it's come to the point where there are too many stories and I need to start filtering out those that I shouldn't be spending time reading but make for guilty pleasures.

The tech crunch gossip articles while interesting and a quick read I know I should go without.

I think anyone actually working on a startup on here would agree that it'd be beneficial to just see those articles that are useful for founders (user acquisition, lifestyle management, scaling, user experience, etc.)

I also think it would be great for each user to set their own from page threshold. Someone who is mildly busy may want to see the top 100 articles per day while someone who is very busy may only want to see the top 20 per day.

I think the ability to follow topics and people like Quora does is also very valuable.

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't like the lack of down-voting. If you're afraid of good things being down-voted too soon, why don't you do a nonlinear transformation from the number of down-voters to the negative score?

* example: until the 10th downvote, none of the downvotes count

* example: based upon a similarity score of people's upvotes, look for broad-based support for downvotes

Prospect Theory implies we need downvotes.

</comment><comment><USER9> My one UX qualm is that the "Sign in with OpenID" button is the last thing to load on the login/create-an-account page, and there's no alt text so you don't know it's coming until it's there. I doubt I'm the only person who was frustrated at the prospect of having to create yet another u/p, even if a few seconds' wait dispelled that frustration.

</comment><comment><USER10> I believe goal with the down-voting and shade adjustments is to "shun" the down-voted comments, such that they are given much less visibility, thus much less priority, over comments that offer value to the community. Brilliant, if you ask me.

</comment><comment><USER11> Perhaps instead of an astrix color change, highlight your comments with a slighly different background color. For me it's not the color, but the size of the astrix.

</comment><comment><USER12> I agree on the minimal layout being great, and on your points

1\. You can change the color of the title bar with enough karma (50 I think)

2\. Notifo will send you an email alert when a response to your comment is posted <http://notifo.com/hackernews>

3/4. If you highlight the text as if to copy, then you can read it

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. I like the orange for the title bar. But I still think that the orange asterisk is not so easy to spot.

2\. Receiving emails for the responses it a bit annoying. (We have Facebook playing the "Big Notifier" role in our inboxes I am afraid so as to have patience for another one :))

3/4: You are right and this is exactly what I do sometimes. But marking text so as to read it is still a bit inconvenient</comment></comment>


Creating a Microservice based architecture using Warewolf - <AUTHOR> https://warewolf.io/ESB-blog/microservice-architecture-warewolf-esb/ <comment><USER2> You should warn that your product is .NET-only.</comment>


Challenging Programming Exercises Published Weekly - <AUTHOR> http://programmingpraxis.com

<comment><USER2> Obligatory link to a nice and long-running initiative: Project Euler: <http://projecteuler.net/>.

"Project Euler is a series of challenging mathematical/computer programming problems that will require more than just mathematical insights to solve. Although mathematics will help you arrive at elegant and efficient methods, the use of a computer and programming skills will be required to solve most problems."

<comment><USER3> its interesting that all of these are programming "in the small" problems.

Is there a site that gives you common/difficult programming "in the large" problems?

<comment><USER4> Here are several "real-world" projects in order of increasing difficulty: [http://shawnpresser.blogspot.com/2010/10/how-to-become- game-...](http://shawnpresser.blogspot.com/2010/10/how-to-become-game- programmer.html)

I've thought about making this into a series.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Complete solution to today's problem in one line of python

def gen(univ, n=5): return univ if n == 1 else [x+y for y in gen(univ,n-1) for x in univ if all([(x+y)[start:start+upto] != (x+y)[start+upto:start+upto*2] for start in range(len(x+y)) for upto in range(1,(len(x+y)-start+2)/2)])]

... god that looks ugly. Call it with

>>> gen(["1", "2", "3"], 5) ['13121', '23121', '21321', '31321', '12321', '12131', '32131', '21231', '31231', '13231', '13212', '23212', '21312', '12312', '32312', '12132', '32132', '23132', '21232', '31232', '31213', '13213', '23213', '12313', '32313', '32123', '13123', '23123', '21323', '31323']

<comment><USER6> And in some rather nicer Perl:

        sub solutions {
        	my ( $target_length, $alphabet, $head ) = @_;
        	$head //= '';

        	# Base Case our head is the right length
        	return $head if (length $head) == $target_length;

        	# General Case
        	return
        		map  { generate( $target_length, $alphabet, $_ ) }
        		grep { ! /(.{2})\1/ }
        		map  { $head . $_ }
        		@$alphabet;
        }

eg:

        my @solutions = solutions( 5, [1..3] );

<comment><USER7> That's quite pretty Perl. You've lessened my prejudice against the language by writing code that can be read.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great resource, I just added this to my list of programming puzzle resources -- [http://joshbranchaud.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/my-somewhat- co...](http://joshbranchaud.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/my-somewhat- comprehensive-list-of-programming-problems/)

<comment><USER9> You might also want to check out SPOJ, an enormous collection of problems from programming contests, with an online solution evaluator:

<http://www.spoj.com/problems/classical/>

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the pointer, that is jam packed!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Another similar excellent resource: <http://www.reddit.com/r/dailyprogrammer/>

<comment><USER8> Any idea where so many daily programming problems come from?

<comment><USER10> <http://www.reddit.com/r/dailyprogrammer_ideas>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For more math oriented challenges (more project euler like), check out the monthly IBM 'I ponder this'. These are usually quite challenging, but the problems are interesting and solutions are posted at the end of the month. [http://domino.research.ibm.com/Comm/wwwr_ponder.nsf/pages/in...](http://domino.research.ibm.com/Comm/wwwr_ponder.nsf/pages/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> I used Mathematica to give the solution to Wirth's Problem (<http://programmingpraxis.com/2012/12/07/wirth-problem-15-12/>).

Screenshot: <https://dl.dropbox.com/u/315/math/problems/wirth/wirth.png>

Output: [https://dl.dropbox.com/u/315/math/problems/wirth/wirth_outpu...](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/315/math/problems/wirth/wirth_output.png)

Notebook: <https://dl.dropbox.com/u/315/math/problems/wirth/wirth.nb>

Mathematica code turns out to be surprisingly readable.

</comment><comment><USER12> Looks interesting.

Some suggestions:

* The font needs to be larger

* The color scheme could use a little more contrast

* Pasting source code needs to be easier

<comment><USER13> Agree with OP on all three points. Please look into this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is awesome.</comment>


Show HN: A web-browser to web-browser file sharing app (uses WebSockets, no DB) - <AUTHOR> https://easy-file-share.herokuapp.com/ <comment><USER2> I just received a file seemingly from another user. Maybe there is a bug in the app.</comment>


Ask YC: Dubai - future Startup Hub - <AUTHOR>

In paul's book hackers and painters he talks about wanting to be where the greatest wealth is.  Paul, and others what do you think about the potential of starting a company in dubai?
for nationals?
for foreigners? <comment><USER2> lol. No way. I am european, and moved to usa, (now in SF), and I just can't see people wanting to move to Dubai;

Unless a lot of cash is flashed (but this will make startups too expensive) or Dubai becomes a multi-cultural liberal place, where you can go to clubs, drink alcohol freely, get laid, and all that without ending up in jail.

The place that is able to attract young folks, will be the startup. Money is just one part of the equation.

</comment><comment><USER3> You need more than money. Where the money came from also matters. So Miami, for example, has a lot of money, but few startups. I'd expect the same pattern in Dubai.

<comment><USER4> Channeling Richard Florida's "The Creative Class"?

<comment><USER5> Channeling Paul Graham - <http://www.paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Disclaimer: I have never been to dubai or silicon valley

BUT, I have a feeling that the wealthy people in dubai are not very accessible to the average american guy. You aren't going to meet them at parties and they probably won't take meetings with you just cause you have a cool webapp.

Whereas in silicon valley, you could run into some random guy at a barcamp or lecture with a couple mil in google options.

</comment><comment><USER7> While by no means is Dubai going to be Silicon Valley, there are very encouraging signs for business in Dubai. I have spent about a month or two there over the past two years.

As it has already been eluded to, there's tons of money there. In the last five years, every major consulting firm has an office in Dubai. Every major tech company has an office in Dubai Internet City. The city is organized into economic industrial units - Festival City, Healthcare, International Financial, Sports, Media, etc.

From the tech startup side, if you have a financial, native backer, you're fine to startup a company. There is a booming business for networking, like Cisco and Cisco partners. The market exists there for tech startups, but probably not for web startups as censorship of the Web varies.

As for lifestyle, it doesn't get much better than Dubai. It's a fantastic place to live. When you think about falseprophet's post, a lot of the same applies to LA, yet millions call it home.

As for local skilled labor, there are many people out there seeking jobs in Dubai from neighboring Gulf countries, and the growth of the Doha campuses are contributing to a young tech talent pool in the area.

<comment><USER8> Lifestyle? Really? Culturally, it seems incredibly restrictive compared to the Western democracies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Dubai? HAH!

Wash your shoes before you go: [http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23436226-details/...](http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23436226-details/Briton+jailed+in+Dubai+after+officials+find+cannabis+weighing+less+than+a+grain+of+sugar+under+his+shoe/article.do)

And good luck... you're gonna need a lot of it!

<comment><USER8> Yeah, seriously, Dubai wants you to think they're cool and progressive but they pull shit like the above link to make the other Middle Eastern states think they aren't too progressive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I was in Dubai about 6 weeks ago, visiting some old college roommates.

While there, I met a guy who had started a tech company in Bahrain, and does work in Qatar and Dubai.

Pros: Lots of money down there, probably too much (they're often desperate to spend it and want "the best" regardless of price), low (or no) tax rates.

Cons: The obvious friction of being a foreigner, frequent need for bribes, incompetence due to lack of economic pressure (easy to fuck up if you have tons of oil money, and don't need to worry about it), lack of local skilled labor (you have to bring them in).

I also stopped by the CMU campus in Doha (I'm an alum of the Pittsburgh campus). They're doing some good stuff there, and there is potential. One big surprise was the high percentage of women in the program (above 50%).

</comment><comment><USER11> Money is the only thing Dubai has going for it and, clearly, money isn't enough.

Dubai also has a lot working against it: <http://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=129848> .

</comment><comment><USER12> pg talks about the difference between wealth and money. An analogy may apply here; Dubai has a lot of money but is not wealthy.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've never been to Dubai, but it seems to me to be much closer to Orange County than Silicon Valley.</comment>


Ask HN: Non-Business Books for Business? - <AUTHOR> I've read many of the popular business books. No doubt, there is a lot of great information in there. But sometimes I like to get a broader perspective since business isn't everything.
Things like Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and even Fight Club have helped shape my world view and probably my view of running a startup.
Are there any books you would recommend? Looking for "not business" books that you find yourself referring back to a lot in your day to day. Movies/blogs/etc might be acceptable too, but that's kind of cheating. <comment><USER2> A recent work challenge for me is my decreased productivity and that of my coworkers during COVID. I'm experiencing a lot of frustration with myself for not being inured to the general weight of this time and being able to focus better (a frustration I don't apply to coworkers, for whom I have a lot more compassion than myself).

I've found myself referring back to The Plague fairly frequently and reread it last month. It may sound dark, but I find the sameness Camus describes in humans' reaction to difficult, at-scale problems comforting. It improves my ability to take it easy on myself (I'm not unique in feeling ennui/despair), which in turn has dramatically improved my focus. I also feel like it's given me a bit more context on and empathy for the widely varied reactions I experience with different folks in my business sphere - investors, customers, etc.

Business books for unique times :)</comment>


Another Linux distribution shuts down, Open Source community should be worried - <AUTHOR> https://betanews.com/2019/05/22/antergos-linux-dead/ <comment><USER2> I am not worried. This should be expected and seen as a good thing. I believe there are far too many distros because people want to create their own garden with their own favorite flowers. Very rarely is there a reason to fork a distro and even less common are there enough people to maintain an entire distro. Rather, people should be focusing on and contributing to one of the popular distros so that more people benefit over all. If people are ignoring your merge requests that is a different problem.

A simple analogy would be television channels. 400 channels of crud, including 15 different versions of C-SPAN or 40 channels of great shows, which do you want?</comment>


Breaking Glass in Infinite Dimensions - <AUTHOR> https://today.duke.edu/2017/05/breaking-glass-infinite-dimensions <comment><USER2> Does anyone have more information about the finding itself? This article seems to be mostly a story about how "there was this mystery, and this scientist solved it with math".

<comment><USER3> Not for that particular finding, but this seems to be a somewhat readable summary of the glass phase transitions, including the one in question:

[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1605.03008.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1605.03008.pdf)

<comment> semi-extrinsic "Annual Review of $TOPIC"-journal papers are usually very good. Note also that the lead author on the review you linked is the advisor of the postdoc that did the work described in TFA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Could this be the transition point they talk about? [https://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2011/02...](https://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2011/02/glass- melts-near-absolute-zero.html)

<comment> semi-extrinsic No, that's a different type of transition, due to quantum effects (which are not dominant here).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Worth reading the first paragraph just for the link to Frank Gehry's buildings.</comment>


Listen to your engineers - <AUTHOR> http://listentoyourengineers.com

<comment><USER2> Article was long in breadth, but It definitely brought up some bad feelings with past experiences. Sometimes the fault of not 'listening to engineers' come from the horrible politics and culture that exist within the corporation anyways. Point being:

I was once told by the CIO of a company that he should 'just fire the developers (4 including myself), buy a book on .Net and do it himself'.</comment>


I Can't Find My Phone - <AUTHOR> http://icantfindmyphone.com/ <comment><USER2> Nice idea. I wonder what they do with the phone numbers you enter. The site has no privacy policy, which makes me reluctant to use it.</comment>


Show HN: Django-places store places with autocomplete and a related map - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/oscarmcm/django-places <comment><USER2> I've read the Readme, and I don't quite get what this does?

<comment><USER3> Its a widget to store the location based on a data point on google maps.

I cant figure out if it stores the lat/long data point though

Also its current status is build failed on github.

Otherwise a nice project

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Demo page would be nice, or did I just miss the link?</comment>


Ask YC:  Why not show internet traffic in a user friendly way to alleviate security fears? - <AUTHOR>

There are probably a huge number of people who are terrified to be online due to security risks.<p>So why not show incoming and outgoing internet traffic in a friendly way (e.g., using program names, highlighting sensitive data, etc.)? <comment><USER2> Because:

(1) doing that would pose its own security risks

(2) much of the most sensitive information you send out is unintelligible to laypeople

(3) it's just as likely that calling attention to the risk will increase fear as decrease it

(4) many common security threats are adept at covering their tracks in system APIs.

<comment><AUTHOR> For (2), you could make it so that it is the responsibility of the app developer to make sure that any data transfered is done in a highly readable form. If there's encryption, then that could be done using the tool so it would see the unencrypted data.

Of course, it's possible to hide data (e.g., using spaces say). So maybe one would require that the protocol be validated by security experts.

<comment><USER2> Good luck handling Google Mail cookies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've thought about this before, and it's on my table-o-things-to-develop. The way to do it is with an inexpensive external piece of hardware that users will insert into their internet connection. It would have two ethernet interfaces, a clearly-labeled "in" and "out".

With OpenBSD and pf, you can set it up to act as a "bump in the wire", a bridging firewall that can't be hit from the outside but can still do traffic filtering.

Then, you set up a light http server that's only accessible from the local net, and patch in a variety of shell and python scripts to make the glue between pf and the http server.

The user can open a webpage and get a nice little graph of traffic with some simplified explanations, and can shape or filter traffic with a bit of clicking around.

I've built a couple of OpenBSD firewalls for a couple of local businesses (one of them is an ISP), as well as some of the sorts of shell scripts that would be needed. I've got a few other ideas for it that would make it an even more killer device, but don't wanna give away everything. :-)

The nice thing is, the hardware doesn't have to be very powerful at all. You could hit a pretty modest price point on the things and still be able to kick a fair bit of money back to the OpenBSD project. Everyone would be happy.

</comment><comment><USER4> Good idea. It'll be pretty tricky to get the graphics just right, so that they both show the right information and are not intrusive.

Sounds like a good weekend barinstorming session though :-)

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't understand why showing internet traffic would alleviate security fears.

Is the idea that since a lot of people are using a website it can't be that secure?

<comment><USER3> No, the idea is that it's easy these days for a program to be resident on your computer, doing something behind your back that you don't know about.

It would be nice to have a foolproof way to see network traffic clearly.

<comment><USER5> I see! I knew I was missing something. That makes sense</comment></comment></comment>


Kids are startups - <AUTHOR> http://rondam.blogspot.com/2008/07/kids-are-startups.html

<comment><USER2> James Hong from "Founders at Work":

"And nothing ever goes according to plan. You can't dwell on the fact that your plan didn't work. In our case, we didn't even have a plan, but it would have been worthless to have one anyway, since we just kept moving as fast as we could. You have to hustle; you can't just have a plan and cakewalk it. You just have to know what direction you're going in and run around like a rat in a maze trying to get out."

Had James posted a question in a forum like this seeking advice at that early, clueless stage in his company's history, you probably would have chided him for his lack of sufficient up-front planning. Yet his story is indicative of many of the other founders profiled in the book, and many other founders that I admire. The reason these founders are successful is not because they are master planners, it's because they are master improvisers, a quality shared, I believe, by good parents.

Yes, kids are like startups, but pre-birth plans will change, and they are not what will make you successful as a founder or a parent. And if you haven't had kids or started a company, then your advice in those realms doesn't carry much weight.

</comment><comment><USER3> >> I am in my mid-forties, married, with no kids. But that does not mean that I do not know how hard it is to raise kids.

You _really_ don't know how hard it is to raise kids. And with all due respect, just so you know, kids _are not_ startups.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nreece's corollary to Hofstadter's law: raising kids is harder than you think even when you take into account nreece's corollary to Hofstadter's law. :-)

> Kids are not startups.

Of course they are. They aren't startup _companies_ , they are startup _humans_ , but they are definitely startups.

<comment><USER4> I hope you're not implying that kids have the same failure rates as startup companies. It really seems like you're trying to force the analogy here.

+1 for the corollary though :-)

<comment><USER5> The most important thing to tell your kids is, "Just don't die."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 1) Everyone is a good parent until they become one.

2) You can't sell your equity stake

3) Firing your cofounder is expensive

4) You have negative cashflow for 20+ years with no realized return (if you can quantify love and affection into cash or equity, I'd like to hear the rationale)

</comment><comment><USER7> I enjoyed this post. For what it's worth, I often think of my startup as a kid (the analogy works both ways). Once the startup website went "live", it reminded me a lot of dealing with an infant. Site goes down any hour of the night, needs constant attention and tlc and doesn't give you much satisfaction for the first few months of its existence.

And I have 2 kids along with the startup, so I'd like to think I speak from experience. My personal feeling is that if you can handle raising a kid, you may be surprised at how prepared you are to handle a startup!

</comment><comment><USER8> Someone is wrong on the internet?

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't think you read the answer properly. The response was "it's impossible to plan for" and your answer again is "you should plan ahead".

And I actually do think the fact that you don't have kids does mean you don't know how hard it is. (It's like me saying I know the physical act of childbirth is hard, but I think it's certainly not the same as me going through it.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Dwight Eisenhower famously said, "Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."

My point is that it is NOT impossible to plan for. Many aspects of having kids are quite predictable, including all the issues that the OP was asking about. I've tweaked the blog post a bit to hopefully make this clearer.

P.S. And maybe I don't really know how hard it is to raise kids. It may well be even harder than I imagine. But that doesn't change the fact that anyone who waits until two months after the kid is born to figure out who is going to take care of it has not planned ahead adequately.

<comment><USER4> He never said he _waited_ two months to plan. He just said that he was still facing those issues two months after the kid was born.

He seems like a smart and responsible guy. The logical conclusion that most of us would come to is that raising kids is almost always harder than one expects. Instead you somehow are convinced he should've rationally planned more. And you are so confident of this without knowing anything about how he planned.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Startups are kids because I've heard that once the your startup company is grown up and self sufficient (e.g. stable and profitable), the founding parents of the startup may tend to romanticize, overgeneralize, and/or forget (amnesia) how hard it was to raise their child during infancy and early years and beyond (when talking to other prospective parents)

</comment><comment><USER11> Startups are kids.</comment>


Mr Ellison helps himself - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13527430

<comment><USER2> With my low karma count, I hesitate to ask this - but what benefit is there to being the "Apple" of enterprise software? The benefits of Apple to the consumer market is that you don't have to know much about the insiders of the device in order to use it. Is that really a benefit to a mega corporation(like a bank or an insurance company), where the "insides" of the software are going to be manipulating the most valuable part of their business?

Unless Oracle is going to be targeting very small companies, I can't see how they get past that.

<comment><USER3> Many companies have a big expensive oracle-dependant app running, and would rather not have to bother too much. Today they have to get machines from one vendor, OS'es from another, storage from a third, networking from (you get the picture...) - or, get it all from an expensive third party consultant.

With this setup, Oracle can send a salesman with a spreadsheet to those companies and plot in how much computing power is needed and how much storage is needed, and have it spit out an integrated, supportable solution, build completely from Sun/Oracle components. When they run out of capacity, one way or the other, it's more-or-less instantly pluggable.

Oracle is no longer a software application, it's an appliance.

<comment><USER4> I see your point, but there have been hoards of VARs (which often miss the VA of their acronym) doing exactly that for years, and in many cases the companies are very comfortable with "their" VAR and Oracle trying to cut out that middleman step will not be undertaken lightly (by Oracle).

<comment><USER5> "Oracle trying to cut out that middleman step will not be undertaken lightly (by Oracle)."

Why not? That's like saying Oracle would not take lightly alienating someone like SAP, whose software ran on Oracle (does it still?), by directly competing with them. I think anywhere that Larry Ellison sees a revenue stream related to one of his products, he wants it for himself.

<comment><USER4> It's called avoiding channel conflict. If I'm buying Oracle from VAR V1, it is in Oracle's best interest to ensure that V1 continues to sell me Oracle, even if it's Oracle on IBM, HP, EMC or other gear.

If all of the sudden they stick a knife in V1's back, V1 will ensure that some substantial number of V1's new and where possible, existing, customers will seriously look at Oracle competitors.

It's not the same as NewEgg competing against mWave by deciding to add computer cases to their product line to make them a one-stop shop.

By all means Oracle may transition over to being a one-stop shop, but it's more likely in the short-term to work with their VARs rather than pit themselves against their resellers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The risk seems to be separation of the staff from the IP. How many people are mission-critical to things like Java or the server/storage hardware lines (or Solaris)? How many people can be viewed as "opportunities for outsourcing/offshoring"? If these jewels aren't dependent on Sun-specific employees, it might be a bloodbath.</comment>


A mini game to learn to type fast built with core.async - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/teawaterwire/type-letter <comment> matthieu-b Not bad I am a big fan of core.async, you definitely need to add a leaderboard though...

<comment><AUTHOR> Didn't think of adding a leaderboard before. Will do it then :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Love that it's built in core.async! It definitely needs a leaderboard though

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess that needs to be prioritized on my roadmap then!</comment></comment>


German scientists harvest their first Antarctic salad - <AUTHOR> https://www.livescience.com/62241-antarctica-veggie-harvest.html <comment><USER2> Finally, someone made an Eisbergsalat that stays true to it's name.

[https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisbergsalat](https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisbergsalat)

<comment><USER3> Please keep using your account so that smiling every time I see that nickname will be a regular occurance ;)

<comment><USER4> Yours is not so funny...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Couldn't they have tested this indoors anywhere?

<comment><USER6> PR stunts also produce value, indirectly

<comment><AUTHOR> How is it a PR stunt? They are doing the research so they can supply their German Antarctic research station.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yet another website asking my browser to allow push notifications. I respond to this request as so:

        echo "127.0.0.1 livescience.com www.livescience.com" >> /etc/hosts

(Apart from being annoying, it's a pretty good indicator that the website isn't worth bothering with.)

</comment><comment><USER8> What is the energy source for this- is it running off a diesel generator?

lettuce is the ultimate waste of resources. if you're running your grow lights on generators, spend it on something better than lettuce.

<comment><USER9> I'd like to know about energy too.

Whilst I agree in an absolute and technical sense that lettuce is nutritionally and productively irrelevant as a food source, I don't think you can underestimate the value of fresh produce alongside whatever it is they normally eat all the way down there. You can also include [micro-]herbs and other tasty leaves and then use that experience to one day grow even more useful things.

Small steps!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> also known as the Garden of Eden Creation Kit (GECK)

<comment><USER11> Are you a water chip?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What? Romaine? No Iceberg lettuce in the salad?

Boy, this left me cold. How iceappointed.

<comment><USER12> The fact is that this is not a big deal. Is a pretty uncomplicated thing as long as you have electricity (can have light, heat and liquid water from snow). Then, all that you need is some minute seeds cheap to travel, and 2-the secret weapon in this master plan: a few humans, or as cucumbers would say, the automatic urea's dispenser of mother nature.

Lettuce and its green cousins have a mission, they are the members of the team in charge of regenerating fast and cheaply the closed circuit of water. You put urea in the "no-soil" circuit and it magically vanishes. As a nice subproduct, you can have a salad too (if you want to order a dish low in calories in one of the coldest places in earth) and also a lot of fun growing it.</comment></comment>