IPad Therefore I Am - <AUTHOR> http://www.cringely.com/2010/01/ipad-therefore-i-am/

<comment><USER2> Wow. Just wow. Is this guy stupid or what? He first posts baseless rumors and instead of admitting that he was wrong and his source was not credible he defends them. Because there were some near hits among the many misses. You are bound to get some hits just by chance. Current hardware only allows so many possiblities. But predicting OLED? Solar panel? Verizon? 2 to 3 hrs battery life? Camera? You call that credible?

I'm speechless.

<comment><USER3> A camera makes a lot of sense, actually. A lot of the augmented reality stuff that showed up for the iPhone would work even better on an iPad.

<comment><USER2> I would have predicted one, too. But if that prediction turns out wrong I would start to doubt what I quoted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> _There's simply no way that iPad, no matter what the processor, is good for a real 10 hours of continuous use._

If Apple (or anyone else) can pull off the tricks developed for the OLPC, then 10 hours would be doable. (The ability to put the main part of the motherboard to sleep in under 0.1 seconds, while separate systems for the screen and the networking keep going on a trickle of power, combined with the ability to come back just as quickly and invisibly to the user.)

<comment><USER4> The quoted 10 hours is for playing video. How can you put the motherboard to sleep while playing video?

<comment><USER3> 10 hours of video. Oh yeah, that bit about getting on a flight across the Pacific, watching video all the way.</comment></comment></comment>


That Developer Life - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/davidwalshblog/status/1118526853948612608 <comment><USER2> Seems like a trivial thing to debug by simply looking at your console. If it repeatedly errors you just have to inspect the letters. Half of programming for me is performed quickly by linting away errors</comment>


YikeBike - The world's first super light electric folding bike. | Urban Freedom - <AUTHOR> http://www.yikebike.com/site/gallery/video/yikebike-discovery-channel <comment><USER2> I remember seeing YikeBike on here about half a year ago (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=810787>) to fairly mixed thoughts, particularly in terms of style (kinda uncool) and safety. Honestly I wouldn't want to drive through any part of Manhattan on it; hitting any sort of pothole or crack in the street would seem to be painful.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interestingly the gallery includes images in which the rider is breaking UK law, eg [http://yikebike.cachefly.net/yikebike/images/europe/europe-p...](http://yikebike.cachefly.net/yikebike/images/europe/europe- pic03.jpg). Riding a bike on the pavement is not allowed here.

Plus that JW flash video player crashes my FF.

<comment><USER4> It'd be illegal on the road too - it needs license plates, lights and a tax disc, and the rider should have a motorcycle license and a helmet. An electrically-assisted bicycle is still a bicycle, but take the pedals off and add a throttle and it becomes a motorcycle. I believe the laws are similar in the rest of the EU, although some states have a 'light motorcycle' vehicle class which would ease (though not entirely obviate) homologation as a motor vehicle.

I expect the machine to fall into the same regulatory and marketing abyss as the Segway - too expensive, not enough speed or range and illegal in most jurisdictions.

I don't see what's wrong with pedalling, especially over the meagre 9-10km range advertised for the yikebike. If you're not fit enough to comfortably ride three miles each way to work, you really need the exercise.</comment></comment>


Formly: the form glamorizer for jQuery - <AUTHOR> http://thrivingkings.com/formly/

<comment><USER2> Dear fellow developers, forget that type="reset" exists.

</comment><comment><USER3> The e-mail regex needs some work - email@example.com, which is a valid e-mail address, doesn't validate to true.

<comment><USER4> Sometimes it's best just not to bother with a regular expression. Email addresses are a prime example of where this is true.

<comment><USER5> This has been discussed to death all over the place, but I think the take home is not to be too clever rather than not to use regexes. I tend to look for 'something at something dot something':

        .+@.+\..+

I believe this allows all valid addresses (as well as lots of invalid ones, obviously). But I'm sure someone will let us know if not. :)

<comment><USER6> If you REALLY need to validate en email address:

<http://www.ex-parrot.com/pdw/Mail-RFC822-Address.html>

but again, only if you REALLY, REALLY , REALLY want to.

<comment><USER7> That's ridiculous and awesome. I'm glad regular expressions exist so we can make garbage/magic like that

<comment><USER8> For a second, I thought it was a perl script.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Shouldn't the placeholder text use the standard "placeholder" attribute of HTML5 instead of the "place" I'm seeing in the examples?

<comment><USER10> Yes. And the other commands that do not map to an HTML5 construct should be "data-" attributes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nitpick: clicking on the text related to a checkbox or radio button should activate that form element (via the `label` element).

<comment><USER12> That's not a nitpick, that's a big fucking deal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Please please don't put labels inside text fields. Once you've entered information you don't know which field it is, especially after you've filled out the entire form.

<comment><USER14> Title attribute, or a custom tooltip, resolves that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't think filling in a form online will ever be glamorous. The thing I strive for when designing a form is that it is usable by anyone and instantly recognizable as a form.

This is a great plugin, but consider the consequences of using non-browser- default form elements and the potential to confuse your less technical customers.

</comment><comment><USER16> OT: What's with the recent prevalence of ginormous favicons? (In this case, 300 x 300?) Is there a context where the large size is a benefit? (Tablets?)

<comment><USER8> I believe that when you bookmark something to an iOS device's desktop, the favicon is the default application icon, so it makes sense to make it big and fancy in that context.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Not-so-rich not-so-poor folks on HN, how do you spend your money? - <AUTHOR> I want to know where your money goes every month. Percentage would be more relevant than the actual numbers. I am interested in people who can go a year or two without working and cannot afford to buy a luxury yacht. My major expenses seem to be almost always without any prior planning. Is there anyone out there who knows what they're going to spend in the next 6 months +-20%? <comment><USER2> I don't have any answer for the first half but yes, I know what I am going to spend for the next 6 months.

I plan it out depending on the trends. Usual expenses for personal hygiene, cooking, daily wear etc are subscriptions I make on Amazon and other places at a discount. Dad save a lot on time that way.

I buy clothes 3 times a year and in a burst. Early enough before people start buying clothes for the season and later enough to not have to get from the old stock. That way, price is cheaper and I have more freedom in selection. Sometimes old stock can have good stuff too that never gets out of fashion.

Electronics I go for a generation behind just before the launch and sale days when students are going to college/school. I have a few places I ask for opinions so I don't have to do the research myself. There are communities for that such as suggest a laptop, build pc, etc on many major platforms. Upgrade cycle is 4 years - near august or december.

I have booked flight tickets already for 2 upcoming trips at a really reasonable price. I try to book them months before with an additional payment for a zero cancellation upto 24 hours before. Even if I have to pay for that feature, it's not much of a cost compared to the cheap tickets I get.

Electricity, phone, internet, water etc bills are automated via local payment apps. I get points on payments made via the app as well as for using the credit card.

I use emi/credit wherever possible to avoid paying upfront. I had dad set those up on autodebt as well. Building that credit history.

I wish I lived in less remote area, I could have subscription based groceries too.

The biggest benefit I guess doing it like that is I can easily download reports, transactions and put them up for tax returns. I can also set expenditure on different cards and family members by default this way. Green those cards equally, haha.

As for the percentages, I would say food and daily essentials are the biggest, medical costs/insurance premiums/investments, electricity/internet/mobile/water bills, transportation and rent. The rest as I said before is preplanned and happens in burst on set months.

</comment><comment><USER3> 4 parts rent to one part food to one part everything else (transit, utilities, laundry, etc), for recurring monthly expenses and small luxuries (a beer, a coffee, a movie ticket, etc).

One rent equivalent each to clothing and health care (includes dental and eye care) annually.

One rent equivalent per year to gifts; 3 to charitable donations; 1-2 for vacations; 2 for misc expenses and larger luxuries.

For every dollar spent, roughly a dollar goes to savings and a dollar to taxes (high tax locale by US standards, low by broader developed country standards).

</comment><comment><USER4> it used to go to my "fuck you" pile of cash but now i put it all into stock market. cash is just dead value that depreciates with inflation. i keep some for bad times but the rest is in equities.

<comment><USER5> Oddly enough, I too call my investments/savings my "fuck you pile of cash"!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Every month? Food, mortgage, cat food. Savings. Other stuff tends to less frequent. I recently bought a new banjo, and a new guitar.</comment>


Changing the Web- Age and attitude (from digg) - <AUTHOR> http://natewhitehill.com/2007/03/04/changing-the-web-at-21/ <comment><AUTHOR> These types of stories are starting to be pretty common, but this post does interest me from a business standpoint. How often does "no business plan" work out in the long run?</comment>


Solar Impulse – Around the world in a solar airplane - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/landing/solarimpulse/

<comment><USER2> Please note that this is not a Google project. The title misleadingly seems to state that. [1]

Google seems to be doing these campaigns more often recently, to promote Google+, Hangouts, YouTube livestreams and other products of theirs. (Also see RSC's "A Midsummer Night's Dream2 [2] for another project to showcase Google+.)

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Impulse](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Impulse)

[2] [http://dreaming.dream40.org/](http://dreaming.dream40.org/)

<comment><USER3> Check as well their official website: [http://live.solarimpulse.com/](http://live.solarimpulse.com/)

And their list of partners: [http://www.solarimpulse.com/en/team/partners/](http://www.solarimpulse.com/en/team/partners/)

Google is not listed as a partner neither as investor!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Actually this is not a google project, Google's just doing the live coverage for the cross-US flight. I learned about solar impulse in 2009 because my former employer is one the partners.

This project was initiated by Bertrand Piccard in 2003. He is better know for the first balloon flight around the world in 1999. cf. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Impulse](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Impulse)

</comment><comment><USER5> Seems to me to be a partnership for the streaming of the Solar Impulse guys' flight, not Google (substantially) financing it. Their website doesn't seem to mention Google: [http://www.solarimpulse.com](http://www.solarimpulse.com)

</comment><comment> lost-theory There's an easter egg video if you hover over the 4-color bar in the bottom right of the page. Direct link:

[http://www.youtube.com/embed/Ap2yUubnw4c?rel=0&fs=1&showinfo...](http://www.youtube.com/embed/Ap2yUubnw4c?rel=0&fs=1&showinfo=0&autoplay=1)

</comment><comment><USER6> I saw the plane when they came through St Louis last month, and snapped a few pictures. It's really impressive how big it was; at 208 feet the wingspan is a few feet shy of a 747-400.

[http://imgur.com/a/wXLUI](http://imgur.com/a/wXLUI)

</comment><comment><USER7> Relatively amazing. Relatively because when I read the title I thought it was some kind of solar sailing spaceship. That would have been way too cool, though.

By the way, the page ends with "Here's to the explorers". That phrase kind of reminds me of something different.

<comment><USER8> "Here's to the *" reminds me of Google Zeitgeist videos.

</comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady The title needs changed. As has been mentioned in other comments Google is just streaming the live coverage of this and doesn't have much (if anything) to do with the project.

</comment><comment><USER9> "This video is not available"

<comment><USER10> Same here. Just record the damn thing and upload to youtube.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I didn't know about this google project. This seems really awesome.

Can someone more knowledgeable please comment on how big is this? Is this something revolutionary, or is there some catch?

<comment><USER3> This is not at all a Google project. Check out their website: Google is even not listed as one of their partners!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is it just me or Google is "focusing" on software projects but going even wilder on grand sci-fi like projects that seem to demand a lot more budget?

<comment><USER13> Google has nothing to do with this project - it's just on a PR push to associate it's name with futuristic projects.

[edit: like a cigarette company sponsoring sports events]</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is it like being CTO? - <AUTHOR>

Hello there,
  in general I'm software engineer (started when I was 7), now I'm 26, currently I resigned from a huge corporation (where I was lead developer and practically sold my soul to them) and I'm going to be a CTO at small startup, we'll develop web based product (kind of social network).
I'm a little bit concerned about CTO position, since I've never did anything like that before, I used to have a small team where I was giving tasks for others and etc. Also I know what's agile (scrum) development and will try to do that practice there. Also Im huge news fan and trying to work/suggest/research/play on very top of the technology wave (hot).
So my questions is: - How to make this transition for me as easy as possible ?
- How can I prepare for it ? - What I should know and which ares I should learn more ?
All suggestions and references will be help for me! <comment><USER2> I've been a "CTO". I've known lots of "CTOs".

First bit of advice: change your title to something else.

Among tech entrepreneurs the term "CTO" carries some of the same connotations as "architect" does among enterprise developers: people paid extra to do nothing.

Second: figure out where on the org chart you've just been placed.

Are you the kind of CTO that's intended to do nothing at the top of the engineering organization? That's what you're expect, right? But more CTOs that I've known were instead expected to do nothing at the top of the marketing organization; in particular, to serve as the "spiritual head" of the product management team. The reason for this: the "CTO" is inherently customer-facing (impressing customers with pronouncements from the CTO is one of only two benefits obtainable by your company by naming a "CTO", the other being "retaining you even after your coworkers decide they want to remove your commit privileges").

Third: is your company big enough to have a C-anything?

Even if you (smartly) rechristen yourself "director/research" or "director/product" or "director/engineering", if you're working at a 4 person company, you can make yourself look dumb --- not just at your company, which is like all companies likely doomed, but on _your resume_ , where you'll flip the bozo bit on people evaluating you for their team by allowing yourself to be labeled with a grandiose title.

The reality is that in small startups, particularly pre-revenue startups, and _particularly_ when your employers have conceded to you a title ostensibly meant to communicate some authority, you can probably do anything you want. Pick one thing, do it extraordinarily well (clue: you are not doing it extraordinarily well until it hurts to keep doing it that well), and keep doing it. Things a "CTO" (please don't call yourself that) can do:

* While maintaining a role in the peloton of committers on your team†, become the arbitrator of all tech controversies (not the decider, the _arbitrator_ ).

* While maintaining that committer role, build the engineering team by recruiting talent (note: this only works if you recruit people who turn out to be awesome _for the business_ ) and retaining it.

* Become the marketing face of the company, which can work if your company's audience is nerds (or if you sell direct to other companies, but you don't appear to be doing that).

* Become the head of product management, which means you spend virtually all your time engaged with customers (either directly or by measurement and testing) and almost zero time building.

† _DO NOT GIVE UP COMMIT. Corrollary: you must keep committing, meaningfully, or it will become easy to take commit from you._

<comment><USER3> While I understand the sentiment, the reality is your company will deal with outside decision makers whether it is venture capital, vendors, or business partners, adoption a non-executive title when you are indeed the executive will set you at a distinct disadvantage when you enter a room of executives. Like it or not, many of these people are highly competitive and judgmental, they will form an immediate impression based on the fact that you are not a "C" and dismiss you. Others will follow suit, management is full of the incompetent and therefore pack mentality is rampant, any variation from the norm will give them justification to rank you in a submissive position under them. You then have to deal with all kinds of issues like external influences trying to undermine your decision making authority with your business partners. We all like to consider ourselves different and trend setters but make sure you are prepared to fight the battles for doing so. If you are not, then don't worry about the title, use it, move on and keep on doing what a start-up CTO does and that is design and build the technical products of the company.

<comment><USER4> I completely agree, except in the case of VCs.

When you're dealing with partners or customers, "bringing the CTO" in to a conversation sends a message to them that you are serious about the partnership. You may be the only person on the tech team, or maybe one of 2 or 3, but it doesn't matter, because the partner or customer may not know that.

In the case of VCs, however, one of their first questions will be "who is your team?". This means that even if you name yourself "CTO, Research Architect, and Head of Product" they'll see you as "member of the technical team".

<comment><USER3> I have dealt with a lot of VC's and my point was that the title CTO does not help you, but the lack of it can hurt you with certain people, even VC's. There are very few people that are going to go oh he's a CTO, let me listen up. But there are a lot of people that will go, he is not an executive let me take a nap until the executives start talking again. Even VC's are not immune to this, there are a lot of people that for whatever reason dismiss people that they view as a lower cast. If anyone is set up to look at people as a lower cast it is VC's. I know there is a lot of VC bias on this site, but believe me there are just as many idiot VC's by percentage as their are middle managers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It sounds like you're a talented engineer who's comfortable working on the technical side of the house. If that's true, the biggest challenge you're likely to face is managerial.

Being CTO in an agile environment is about managing the technology roadmap and making sure the technical team is shipping code as efficiently as possible.

Your first goal should be fostering the creation of lightweight engineering processes that allow your team to operate without procedural roadblocks.

Resist the temptation to "superman" your way through technical problems that could be delegated to slower team members. The CTO needs to remain focused on the big picture.

I'd recommend 2 books:

The E-Myth - which talks about how most small business (especially true of software companies) are started by "technicians" who must balance that trait with being an entrepreneur and a manager. I found it helpful for my transition.

Now, Discovery Your Strengths - discusses how important it is to identify and play to the strengths in your employees and co-workers -- rather than trying to fix their weaknesses, which is a losing battle.

Best of luck. With the open and humble attitude you're displaying, I'm sure you'll do great!

</comment><comment><USER6> Here are some helpful links: <http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/10/vp-engineering- vs-cto.html> [http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2007/07/the_different_ct...](http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2007/07/the_different_cto_roles.html) [http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2007/10/cto-vs-vp- engineerin...](http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2007/10/cto-vs-vp- engineering.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> There are no titles at a small startup. You are all founders. And being a CTO of a small startup is absolutely nothing like being a CTO of a midsize company.

You should focus on what your current at hand skills are and how to get the company to succeed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes I know, but we're planning to grow fast, hire more and more engineers, so I need to prepare for that somehow, learn to be more than best.

<comment><USER2> It really sounds like what you really are is the VP/Engineering (don't call yourself a VP until you have 40+ people in the company).

People on HN, many of whom have been conditioned to aspire to a "CTO" role, won't agree with me when I say this, but VP/Eng is probably the better of the two roles. Unlike CTO, the head of engineering actually controls stuff and routinely makes key decisions in the company.</comment></comment></comment>


Use SVG to Handle Retina Image Serving - <AUTHOR> http://thepenzone.com/svg-image/

<comment><USER2> I came across a similar technique: SVG Clowncar - whose README goes into some more of the details of the technique and browser limitations:

<https://github.com/estelle/clowncar>

<comment><AUTHOR> That was actually my inspiration for this. Added support for stuffing multiple different assets in a single svg file, and did it with JS to avoid redundant image requests and keep it easy to use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sorry, I'm missing something. How come a regular SVG image, without any JS wouldn't work on retina displays? They're already vector images, and would rasterize on a machine that knows its own DPI.

<comment><AUTHOR> Vector SVG graphics absolutely do work great on retina displays. This is for serving raster retina images, and the JavaScript enables you to request only the resolution appropriate for each client.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The only problem I've got with this is that the JS image generator is run for every image on every svg load. If anyone can think of a way to only run it for the target image, I'm all ears; still struggling with it for now.

</comment><comment><USER4> Can we just add something to the IMG tag and be done with it? Here's a list of other versions of this image with their dimensions and let the browser figure it out and request the correct one?

</comment><comment><USER5> Wasn't the same technique posted last week?

<https://github.com/estelle/clowncar></comment>


Music mixes, crowdsourcing and a free iTunes :) - <AUTHOR> http://youmixer.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought this would be a nice experiment. I use it for all my parties. It would go great with guitar hero though :)

And yes the IE6 support could be better :P</comment>


Trump won because of Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/11/donald-trump-won-because-of-facebook.html?mid=twitter_nymag <comment><USER2> Trump won because the mainstream media was calling Trump voters racists.

Cry harder, NYMag. It seems you've realized that "new media" is your downfall. But you haven't realized that people stopped reading the old media because it's garbage. Because people didn't want to read articles in which they were demonized for what they believed.

The way you change people's minds is by leveling with them, finding common ground, and explaining why you think they're wrong. Not by mounting your high horse and riding off into insanity.

<comment><AUTHOR> New media seems to be garbage, since it's all fake/made-up stories.

How do we get people to see the truth from traditional media, instead of the made-up garbage they see in new media?

We really need to work together to solve the problem of Facebook/Twitter/etc..</comment></comment>


As Uber Stumbles, German Rivals Prosper - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/01/04/as-uber-stumbles-german-rivals-prosper/ <comment><USER2> Somehow I'm not surprised. Is there not some strangeness in the fact that each of their branding borrow from respective national languages?</comment>


Ask HN: What are some clever Slack hacks/integrations? - <AUTHOR>

The Slack API seems ripe for create cool feedback loops with other services. Know any good examples?<p>On a sidenote, I'm looking for a way to control Spotify via Slack :) <comment><USER2> I think Spotify over Slack would be awesome in a work place... Anyone could add a track to the playlist that is going in the office.

<comment><USER2> Or the play que, I should say.

<comment><AUTHOR> Or skip ('veto') a track

<comment><USER2> Having had a look, I couldn't see any easy way to do that with the Web API. But I think it would be awesome to allow voting for adding or removing songs to the que.

<comment><AUTHOR> What about some Applescript to trigger key presses on the machine on the network running Spotify: mute, play/pause, next/prev etc

<comment><USER2> Yea, actually... That could work. Or using the (Albeit buggy) Spotify web client, to trigger button presses. That would then work really well with the other APIs.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Larry Page Deposition in Uber vs. Waymo - <AUTHOR> https://www.scribd.com/document/355385613/Larry-Page-deposition-Uber-vs-Waymo#from_embed <comment><USER2> Please take a moment to notice how horribly unfriendly a deposition transcript is. Thousands of these documents are produced every day, in a proprietary format that is antiquated and near impossible to work with. The PDF is unusable given the line numbers, headers, footers, etc. The simple act of copying and pasting - for example, writing a brief, a blog, etc. - is painful.

I know developers could create an amazing solution, but the legal community hasn't asked yet, unfortunately.

<comment><USER3> There is nothing antiquated about PDF. It's an incredibly widely supported standardized format that can cleanly handle everything from a Word document to a scan of a prisoner's hand written pro se brief to a printed document that someone has scribbled on. It preserves formatting information, which is incredibly important because court filings are regularly printed on paper. Not because there is no electronic workflow (the entire workflow is electronic at least in federal court), but because it's a pain in the ass to read and annotate things on a computer versus putting tabs in a binder.

As to the line/page format, it's used because sentences or even words within depositions are quoted in briefs with citations to exactly where they appear. And frankly, if your software can't even grok a simple 2D format it's probably not intelligent enough to do any useful processing of the document.

I'm always on the lookout for good legal technology. But legal technology purveyors are like those people who think programming IDEs should all be visual environments where you program by dragging and dropping connectors between blocks. It's like, no.

<comment><USER4> I think you misunderstand the original comment. It isn't criticising the PDF format. It is crticising the format of the PDF

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> While we wait for someone with legal training to parse this out for us, here's my favorite deposition related thing on the internet:

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

<comment><USER6> Here's another good one, featuring Bill Gates: [https://youtu.be/HhdDZk45HDI](https://youtu.be/HhdDZk45HDI)

<comment><USER7> Wow I forgot how painful this was to watch.

<comment><USER8> Now I know why Microsoft employees all have private offices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I found this part snarky and humorous, though I imagine truthful:

> Questioner: Do you recall that a year or so before Mr. Levandowski left, he > announced that he was going to leave?

> Page: I mean, I wish I had a penny for every time employees do that and > don't go. It happens pretty often.

<comment><USER10> Quite truthful. When I left Google at the end of March to start my own thing a lot of folks came out of the woodwork telling me about their plans, how they've saved up $xxx,xxx to start their app and leave the company, etc. I visit friends back there for lunch every month or so and I still see the same faces at the same desks. When I ask them about pulling the trigger it's always "you know . . ."

It's really a testament to the HR and REWS departments that they've constructed a workspace and a compensation package that keeps so many people there despite their own intentions! Masterful really.

<comment><USER11> Or maybe they just don't hire people they can't trap there...

<comment><USER12> You can't possible believe this, right? Many of them have "fuck you" money that would permit them to never work a day again in their lives were that to be their choice.

Please refrain from insulting every employee of a company as an idiot sheep simply because you don't like the company.

<comment><USER13> I've always wondered what percentage of employees at Google or Facebook are like this? Do you know?

<comment><USER14> One of my coworkers on a previous team has been at Google for 17.5 years, has employee ID #7X, almost certainly has enough money to never work again, and is _still_ an SRE carrying a pager with a 3-minute hands-on-keyboard response SLA.

Some people just love what they do.

<comment><USER15> Wow. How can you even have that kind of an SLA? Like what if you happen to be in the shower or in the middle of traffic or if your Internet drops out or something? How do these SLAs work?

<comment><USER16> You're usually on-call for a fairly humane shift, not 24h a day.

<comment><USER15> Ah I see, thanks. Hopefully you don't need to use the bathroom too badly during that shift I guess :)

<comment><USER17> Then you transfer to secondary or nack the page for the secondary to handle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> -The CEO of Alphabet did not take part in approving a $120m bonus to an employee.

-He does not remember how Project Chauffeur was started.

-He does not know whether due diligence was done when Google made its investment in Uber.

-He does not know whether Waymo is allowed to file a lawsuit against Uber without notifying him.

What is he responsible for in Alphabet then?

<comment><USER19> He runs a $100B a year business.

You think he has time for every little detail?

If you read page 24, he said it's not unusual for people to be paid $100M. Do you expect him to remember all the people and amounts paid?

<comment><USER20> I call bullshit. I don't care how big your company is. If some employee is getting $100M, the CEO is going to know about it. There couldn't be more than a handful of people at that company making that much.

<comment><USER21> I got the impression that he was aware of it, but had no reason to remember the specifics of it. He knew it sounded about right, which is what I'd expect from a CEO months (or years) after the fact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I found some of the answers humorous because they sound like "billionaire problems," like hardly remembering a $100M bonus, and this:

> Q Do you also have a ranch property?

> A Yes.

> Q What is it called?

> A I'm not sure which one you mean...

Edit: Also, this gem:

> Q I -- I appreciate that. And again, this can be designated attorneys' eyes > only. It's not going to be released publicly...

Oops.

<comment><USER22> What does that have to do with the case? Are they just asking him personal questions to invade his privacy?

<comment><USER6> Apparently some tests of the autonomous vehicles took place at one of Larry's ranches, along with possible meetings with Levandowski. I'm not sure why they start with such basic questions, though.

<comment><USER3> Depositions aren't free form. The rules applying to courtroom testimony mostly apply. One of those rules is that there has to be a foundation for everything. You can't ask about what happened at Page's ranch until you establish for the record that he owns a ranch and what ranch you're talking about.

The other part of asking basic questions is that the deponent's statement under oath that he started as CEO on such and such date is evidence that's directly usable. A print out from a web page with his basic bio can be evidence but it requires more hurdles. When you need that information for color down the line, it's helpful to have it in the deposition transcript.

<comment><USER23> Are depositions ever really useful?

I probably have a skewed view based on what gets posted on the internet, but it seems like it's a lot of "I don't recall" from everyone.

<comment><USER24> > Are depositions ever really useful?

Absolutely. Many depositions (and in significant cases, nearly all of them) are videotaped; then for trial, each side creates a "documentary" consisting of selected excerpts — think of it as being like a segment of a news show such as _60 Minutes_. A string of "I don't know" or "I don't recall" answers, or even unduly-long pauses before answering, can seriously hurt a witness's credibility.

And if a witness testifies differently at trial than s/he did at the deposition, on cross-examination the opposing counsel will pounce and play back the relevant portion(s) of the video recording to impeach the witness's credibility that way as well.

Finally, depositions are very often used to "prove up" basic facts, as 'rayiner said in the GP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> TIL Google gives upwards of $100 million bonuses and Larry Page calls it "start-up-like compensation"!

> Q: You would not have approved of a bonus of over $100 million if he hadn't > made a significant. Can we agree on that?

> A: I guess I'm questioning -- what is the purpose of that question? No one > decided to pay me billions of dollars.

[...]

>Q: Did you ever express concern to anyone that the bonus was too high that was being paid to Mr. Levandowski?

>A: Well, as I kind of just stated, I think that's -- I've stated we were focused on getting a start-up-like compensation system. And start-ups pay people a lot of money if they do something significant -- if the start-up does something significant.

<comment><USER26> Not sure why you found that so noteworthy (or scandalous?).

I know that there is a lot of general waffling on Larry's part there (for obv reasons) but the reasoning he offered sounds reasonable—Google is trying to run mini-startups within its orgs, and to attract talent, is offering those people 'bonuses' (or whatever you want to call it) of the order of magnitude that the co-founders of a successful startup would get.

That provides them incentive to work within Google instead of on their own.

<comment><USER27> I guess it's strange because the founders of successful startups have generally founded a successful startup.

Paying $100,000,000 up-front to someone who hasn't yet delivered the same success seems to be putting the cart before the horse.

<comment><USER28> Success is defined by Google. Clearly Google thought he delivered or they wouldn't have paid him.

I'm guessing it was tied to shipping that autonomous car with no steering wheel that they made awhile back.

<comment><USER29> page's argument is that waymo as a whole was successful, so waymo as a whole got paid a lot. because levandowski was an early waymo employee and pretty senior, he had a large 'stake' in waymo's bonus payout.

however - and this is page's big point - that payout has little to do with his overall contributions to the project, and rather that he had early responsibilties and stuck around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> >Q: You're saying it's not unusual to pay somebody a bonus of over $100 million?

>A: I don't -- I don't think characterizing it as a bonus is correct. I think it's more like a start-up compensation, which would be more like equity. We have executives that are well compensated and certainly make a lot of money and so on.

> So anyway, _I don 't think that it's so far outside of the norm for Silicon > Valley compensation._

(emphasis mine)

Even in context, this seems crazy! Is $100M+ really not far from the norm for non C-level non unicorn execs here?

Am I unknowingly on a forum of 8-9 digit zillionaires?

<comment><USER31> Haha you see some of the salary conversations around here and you begin to wonder where you went wrong in life...

<comment><USER20> If you believe them, then I'd say "gullibility" is where you went wrong in life.

Everyone on HN drives a ferrari and has a supermodel partner too, you know!

<comment><USER31> My wife is pretty hot, but unfortunately I only drive an A4 :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Lawyer: So, in December of 2015, before he left Google's employment, did you believe at that time that he had made significant contributions to Project Chauffeur?

Larry: I mean, I think he's definitely been a significant person in the history of the project.

Lawyer: And tell me why you believe that. If you can elaborate. What is it that he did that, in your mind, makes his contribution significant?

Larry: Well, I didn't say that. I said he's been a significant person. I think it has yet to be determined whether it's a positive or negative.

<comment><USER33> Translation: I know he was on the project, but I didn't pay attention to the contributions of specific developers so I don't know whether he was the lodestone of the project or useless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Larry Page did not want to answer anything.

I guess this is why they're seeking a 'round 2'.

> Uber: Google invested in Uber; correct?

> Page: Yes.

> Uber: Do you recall when?

> Page: My answer is yes.

I'm definitely interested in some folks from Google chiming with respect to Larry's comments regarded starting side businesses at Google. Does anyone have any experience doing that? Is that allowed? I would imagine not, but I'm interested.

<comment><USER35> It's likely that Larry didn't want to be there but I wouldn't infer that from answers like this. This is _exactly_ what you are taught to do before giving a deposition. You can't win in a deposition, you can only lose. The more information you give the other party the more you lose. So when they ask a question you are taught to answer precisely what they asked and no more.

This is pretty unlike regular life. As an engineer if someone asked me "Hey, in order to get the widget-spinner to go clockwise do I call function X?" I might answer "No, what you need to do is set variable X to true." (or whatever). In a deposition the correct answer would just be "no."

I was in a patent troll deposition once and the opposing attorney kept dancing around moderately close to the interesting stuff but never really got there due to the fact that he didn't really know what he was doing. It was kind of fun just saying "no" over and over again without giving him any additional context or help. Weird though. It's not how humans normally communicate.

<comment><USER36> I was deposed in a case; after referencing one-way hashing in an answer, opposing counsel attempted to get me to ramble by saying, "I don't think I understand." I replied, "I agree."

<comment><USER26> I just tried to picture it and burst out laughing. Would you be able to provide any more details about this deposition? In what context did one-way hashing come up?

<comment><USER36> One way hashing came up in the context of sharing email opt-outs without sharing the actual email addresses. (Send a list of hashes of email addresses and the hash function and require that no one whose email hashes to a value on that list may be emailed marketing material.)

It's been many years now, but we did some canonicalization of email addresses before hashing [downcasing, stripping whitespace, stripping periods (gmail), stripping any local tags (plus-sign), and maybe a few others I'm forgetting] since false positives were "safe".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Does anyone have insight into what the opposing lawyers are trying to get at by asking about the $120M bonus? It feels like they are establishing Levandowski's importance to Waymo maybe? But it isn't clear to me how/if this helps their case.

> I'd like to start by asking you some questions about the bonus that was paid > to Anthony Levandowski. He received a bonus that was in excess of $120 > million; is that right?

> was there any other occasion where any employee received more than $100 > million for what you described as "start-up-like compensation"?

> Sitting here today, can you recall of any other employee who received more > than $100 million in what you've described as start-up compensation at > Google?

<comment><USER38> My guess is that if they viewed him as important they can try to establish that they should have known he was doing what he was doing, instead of going behind Google's back and doing this without their knowledge. If he was that important to the company (by virtue of his pay), then it's easier to try to establish that Google was somewhat negligently not paying attention to a "top employee"

<comment><USER33> An obvious response to that is "we also gave him lots of autonomy, because not having to deal with bureaucracy is a perk".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I love the part where the lawyer for one of the defendants gets his questioning off to such a start:

> BY MR. CHATTERJEE:

>

> Q Hi, Mr. Brin. We haven't met before. My name is Neel Chatterjee. I > represent an entity called Otto Trucking.

> MR. VAN NEST: Mr. Page.

> MR. CHATTERJEE: Mr. Page. It's -- the names are used so interchangeably in > the market. Mr. Page.

<comment><USER40> Possibly a tactic to make himself look dumb so Page underestimates him.

<comment><USER41> Wow - that is interesting.

Looked him up - well accomplished and seemingly in the know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> That sounded pretty painful for Larry. It sounded to me like Levandowski's lawyers were trying to get on the record that everything he got compensation wise was in exchange for past accomplishments. I don't know if anyone is seeking to claw that back or not.

<comment><USER43> This is not Larry's first encounter with the witness stand and it won't be his last. He sounded the same as during the Oracle trial. He's a bright guy and is well coached. To a certain degree, you wonder why he was called.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> This is a bit strange. Remember, Waymo is the plaintiff, and Uber's lawyer is asking the questions.

There's a long series of questions about Levandowski's $120 million bonus. Uber is establishing that Levandowski's contribution was valuable, which is the opposite of what they want to prove. There's a big censored section which may have to do with Levandowski's compensation agreement.

There's a censored discussion of Sebastian Thrun ("He was CEO of Udacity").

Uber's lawyer asks Page how much Google invested in Uber. Page evades.

There's discussion of conflict between Levandowski and Chris Urmson. Levandowski wanted to be in charge. Page says Levandowski's contribution may have been negative.

There's more, but if there's anything exciting in there, it's in the censored sections.

<comment><USER45> maybe Uber wants to show that Levandowski is the prized asset -- not any documents he might have taken with him

if the documents are known to have been taken, all they can do is downplay their significance

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I couldn't make it through the whole thing. I understand Larry wanted to be specific but he seemed to be purposely obtuse on straight forward questions. Is this the way all depositions go?

<comment><USER47> From what I understand, depositions by design are a place for opposition lawyers to try and trip you up. LP is being cautious with his words and trying to be as vague as he can because of that.

<comment><USER48> No one is trying to trip you up. Quite the contrary. They're trying to figure out what you know, a so-called "fishing expedition."

<comment><USER47> Of course in a perfect world that's what its supposed to be but as some other comments in the thread have pointed out, opp. lawyers are hoping to press on issues and hope you say something that can be misinterpreted as malicious or incompetent later in front of a jury.

<comment><USER48> Sure, but looking for or even trying to force an admission which may be useful down the line is different than actively trying to trip someone up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49>
      MR. GONZALEZ: Are you generally aware of the policies of Google?
      MR. PAGE: I mean, there's a lot of policies.

</comment><comment><USER50> That was </comment><comment>---- when reading through the </comment><comment>----, because ---- the -----. So, the real reason was yes.

</comment><comment><USER51> > Page: I think they had a really hard time getting along [Levandowski and > another employee], and yet they worked together for a long time. And it was > a constant -- yeah, constant management headache to help them get through > that.

> Questioner: Do you recall that Anthony Levandowski was put on a personal > improvement plan before he left?

> Page: I don't recall that.

> Questioner: Do you recall that Mr. Levandowski wanted to be head of the > Project Chauffeur team?

> Page: I mean, that does not surprise me.

> Questioner: Do you recall having conversations with him, where he said to > you that he wanted to be head of the team?

> Page: I don't recall, but it wouldn't be surprising, you know. I think he > clearly felt things could be done better.

</comment><comment><USER52> Well, I guess that I've learned that Larry Page has a ranch where they test self driving automobiles.

<comment><USER53> And the whereabouts of the ranch depend on the time of day... does Larry Page have a secret lair in _space_?

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> IANAL, and I'm reading between the (redacted) lines. Did anyone get the sense that Uber's lawyers line of questioning was leading towards the possibility that Alphabet let this theft of their IP happen to catch Uber with their pants down?

There are questions about how Larry felt about Mr. Levandowski real contribution to Waymo/Chauffeur(p21 Line 15). They are asking about David Drummond's position on Uber's Board(p40 line 13). This leads to questions about when Larry knew Mr Levandowski was leaving the company(p45 Line 14). These lead to questions about Mr. Levandowski's attempt to spin off a team from Google/Alphabet (p64 Line 2). ... Setting up the dates on a redacted email, they to be talking about Larry's knowledge of IP and people taken by Uber for autonomous cars (p181 line 10).

Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but what are the implications of Google getting sloppy with protecting itself at the risk of catching a competitor steal your work?

</comment><comment><USER55> The disposition makes it look like Levandowski was very difficult to work with:

Q. "Anthony threatens to leave the team if he isn't the single leader." Do you see that.

A. Yeah

...

Q. Sebastian says:

"If he is the single leader, a good number of team members will leave." Do you see that?

...

There is more but copying and pasting from the source is really hard.

</comment><comment><USER56> The amount of information which must live in the blocked out text is insane. Questions like "Why was it (Waymo) created as a separate company under the umbrella of Alphabet?" have had their answers blocked out. I'm sure beyond the PR, a lot of people would love to see candid answers like that.

The Otto lawyer suggests "Otto" and "Otto Trucking" are two separate entities, but if anyone explains to Larry the difference, it's not visible in this version. I hadn't heard anything about that before and am curious.

<comment><USER57> You assume there are candid answers in there, though - in a deposition you answer as little as humanly possible. Your side of lawyers will ask a few key questions, any everything else is from your opposition trying to trip you up.

<comment><USER58> Well, candid means "truthful and straightforward", doesn't necessarily mean exhaustive. Sure, they are going to give away as little as possible, but considering it is a legal deposition and perjury is a thing, they aren't going to lie or actively dissemble like they might otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> "I don't recall" seems to be an unusual statement here. It seems like he's using it more like, "I don't recall it outside of certain things I don't have to/won't answer." Am I reading that right?

<comment><USER48> You're only supposed to testify as to things about which you have first hand knowledge, and you aren't supposed to speculate. So if you don't remember something clearly you should not say it.

<comment><USER30> How does that relate to the privileged communication stuff? It seems like there's a lot he recalls, but not outside privileged communication, so he says "I don't recall?"

<comment><USER48> I take it to mean he doesn't recall learning anything about the topic aside from what his lawyers told him.

<comment><USER30> Cool thanks for confirming/clarifying :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Do you have a PDF link?

</comment><comment> br-g "beginning 12:06 a.m., and commencing at 4:54 p.m."

Wow..

<comment><USER60> They meant 12:06 PM, actually, but still

<comment><USER43> I had an EE20N HW set due at 12am when I was at Berkeley. I was the only person to get that wrong. The prof laughed and let it slide.

<comment><USER61> This is why the 12-hour clock system, with its inherent ambiguities mustn't be used when noting the time actually matters. If someone's going to use the 12-hour notation they should use the verbose "noon" and "midnight" terms instead of "12".

<comment><USER62> Even worse, this is ambiguous as well. When is "midnight" on a given day, is that the earlier or the later time?

Best-practice is to specify a non-midnight time, i.e. "must be turned in by 23:59 Friday evening"

<comment><USER63> I get your point, but your example should have been "must be turned in by 23:59" or "must be turned in by 11:59 Friday evening".

If you're going to use both, I might as well say "midnight Friday evening," or even the worse "12:00 Friday evening" as both of those are still straightforward.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> It tagged as 'HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL' and published on HN. It was really secret(!) meh.

</comment><comment><USER65> I would not have expected Larry Page to have such a severe "I mean" verbal crutch.

<comment><USER66> From what I can gather, Brin and Page have never been polished image-centric executives like their peers who lead other public companies. There's a reason they don't come out much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> >If you're going to buy a company or something, you would do more thorough diligence. >When you say "more thorough diligence" what do you mean by that? >I don't know.

</comment><comment><USER68> I wonder if someone could write an RNN to fill in the black boxes?

<comment><USER45> hah I thought the same thing. I think that's possible in the future but doubt anyone's attacking it now.

Plus, who would fund it, a rogue state? Not so interested in being treasonous myself. Interesting problem though. Getting any level of accuracy above repeating "the" would be impressive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Just a life tip. If doing a deposition, take a 1/2 a Xanax. Stare at the opposing lawyer, long and hard. And answer in a very slow tone. Like slooooowwwwwwww.

Bonus points, spell out the names, VERY SLOW, of everyone involved. Watch lawyer meltdown.

Enjoy. :-)</comment>


A First Reason React App for JavaScript Developers - <AUTHOR> https://jamesfriend.com.au/a-first-reason-react-app-for-js-developers <comment><USER2> I tried Reason out maybe half a year ago. To me, the exceptional thing which the Reason project lacks is a polished developer experience. It feels very much like a hacked together combination of technologies which requires the developer to install several things just to get a working compiler.

I think before I would try Reason again there would need to be some effort put into streamlining setup and managing of the developer environment.

EDIT: Downvoted? Let's hear some feedback and other opinions maybe?

<comment><USER3> There has been a lot of work in making the developer experience as awesome as possible. I know that, for the core team, it is one of the highest priorities.

While this tutorial doesn't use the official bootstrap, you can see it here: [https://facebook.github.io/reason/gettingStarted.html](https://facebook.github.io/reason/gettingStarted.html) \-- It's only a few lines in your terminal!

The integration with VSCode is pretty amazing, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This, not unlike Elm, looks pristine, ivory-tower-ish to me. The examples are always neatly self-contained or consuming a real simple json API. They're fiddles. Fiddles always look neat.

I think it would do these types of projects a lot of good to do something real using third party libraries. Convince developers and companies they're real, not toys. I still haven't seen a blog post explaining Elm along with a masonry library, socket.io, bootstrap, shopify, etc.

Probably I'm not getting what's the real use case for these things. It can't be writing web apps.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think Reason is like Elm in this way. Whereas Elm requires you to wholly buy in to the Elm world, Reason can easily be brought into a large existing codebase.

Large chunks of messenger.com are written in Reason. I'm pretty sure that qualifies as a 'web app'.

<comment><USER4> Hey, thanks for the reply. What would you say is a good opportunity in a project to sneak some Reason in?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why does it exist at all?

<comment><USER6> Static typing and compile-time checking are two very good reasons, same reasons you'd use Elm.

I am not a react developer but I have heard that one of the common complaints about React is ... that it's not Elm, or in more explicit terms, in case you don't know anything about Elm, ... that it's very easy to write code that will break if you poke it the wrong way.

In a static typed language such as Elm (or Reason, based on skimming briefly)... when you get input that can mutate the state of the program, it comes in the form of a message. The messages are typed, so you know what values to expect.

If you write a switch/case statement that handles a message type, the compiler will balk at you if you change the values that the message type can have, without updating the case statements that operate on that type to cover them all.

tl;dr: because runtime errors are a b _

<comment><USER7> Another Facebook project Flow gives similar if not as comprehensive benefits whilst staying in JavaScript.

<comment><USER6> Does it really stay in JavaScript though?

I'm not familiar with the latest ECMA and standards updates and I suppose I don't really know what modern JS actually looks like, but the example on this page[1] doesn't look like syntactically valid JavaScript to me.

If you write code that has to be compiled before it turns into JavaScript, there's another benefit though... it's that you can never accidentally promote code to a server that hasn't already been vetted by the type-checker!

Or, even run it locally! You are guaranteed that the type checker has been run before the code hits a runtime environment.

Looking at Flow, I'm seeing there's a tool `flow` that you run any time you want to check the types. I think there's a background process way to run flow, that mitigates this issue somewhat... but if Flow is in fact implemented to always be syntactically valid JavaScript, that could be a bad thing.

[1]: [https://flow.org/en/docs/usage/](https://flow.org/en/docs/usage/)

<comment><USER8> Babel has a bunch of extensions to JavaScript that are widely used. Sounds like it just finds and strips out type annotations.

[https://babeljs.io/docs/plugins/syntax- flow/](https://babeljs.io/docs/plugins/syntax-flow/)

[https://babeljs.io/docs/plugins/transform-flow-strip- types/](https://babeljs.io/docs/plugins/transform-flow-strip-types/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is an online ocaml to js converter here: [http://bucklescript.github.io/bucklescript/js- demo/index.htm...](http://bucklescript.github.io/bucklescript/js- demo/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> For what reason do we need yet another dialect of JavaScript?

<comment><USER11> It's a "dialect" (sort of) of Ocaml, with all of the beauty that is its type system and Functor (not thing.map, parameterized modules!) that can compile to JavaScript via Bucklescript.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> this might be the tipping point of js fatigue for most React/JS developers. we can only hope this doesn't catch on, fingers crossed.

<comment><USER13> If it's ends up being notably superior in multiple ways, and you already have a properly configured and flexible build toolchain in place (i.e. Webpack), adding support should be trivial. I haven't personally used it, but a quick search landed me on the bs-loader [0] repo, which claims to work with both OCaml and Reason files.

As I understand it, and I'm not very familiarized with Reason, the team behind the project is working hard to have a good interop story. We've seen the same thing with React's versioning scheme [1]! Going forward there shouldn't be horrible breaking changes, and in the cases where stuff must be broken, they appear to commit to providing a clear migration path that can be adopted gradually.

There's probably plenty of good use-cases for using something like Reason. Should it be used everywhere? No, certainly not. But having worked on a reasonably sized JavaScript web app, my experience has been that it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain as it grows. Even with something like Flow or TypeScript, you have to think very carefully any changes. Luckily, the JavaScript ecosystem has modularized everything quite heavily, so you can usually contain things that end up being "bad ideas" and gradually chip away at em.

The app I worked on wasn't even that large or complicated, so I have a very hard time wrapping my head around the challenges faced by engineers working on Facebook's scale.

[0] [https://github.com/rrdelaney/bs-loader](https://github.com/rrdelaney/bs- loader)

[1] [https://facebook.github.io/react/blog/2016/02/19/new- version...](https://facebook.github.io/react/blog/2016/02/19/new-versioning- scheme.html)</comment></comment>


How to Turn Your Bathtub Into a Giant iPad - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/consumer-electronics/audiovideo/how-to-turn-your-bathtub-into-a-giant-ipad

<comment><AUTHOR> My favorite part: "The elements are all conducted by a master control computer, which you should be careful not to splash."</comment>


Show HN: Deployed neo.mjs v1.1.56 to the online examples - <AUTHOR> https://neomjs.github.io/pages/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is a pretty big release, since the new main thread addons are now deployed into the online examples.

Open e.g. the covid & real world apps and type Neo.main.addon into the console. You will see different results => the main thread is as small as possible now and will only import the required files. This does work directly inside the browser without any JS builds at all as well as the webpack based dist dev & prod versions.

For more background infos, please take a look at: [https://medium.com/@tobiasuhlig/using-js-libraries- inside-a-...](https://medium.com/@tobiasuhlig/using-js-libraries-inside-a- multithreading-environment-835cd8cbc30b)</comment>


The story of the fake bomb detectors (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-29459896 <comment> pure-awesome "It does exactly what it's designed to - it makes money," McCormick is said to have responded to concerns about his useless ADE-651.

Wow. Did he legitimately say this? That seems likely to be a bad move if you plan on continuing to scam people successfully.

<comment><USER2> Could be interpreted as "Of course it works, would people buy it if it didn't?".

<comment><USER3> "There's a sucker born every minute."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We still use this crap every day in Syria, by all branches of the army.

Supposedly it costs tens of thousands of dollars, and everyone swears by it. I just giggle whenever I walk past one.

Oh and it gets a TON of false positives, annoyingly.

<comment><USER5> Well, if the bombers also believe it's working, that might actually be of some benefit. They'll keep away from them.

<comment><USER6> Good thing ISIS aren't known for having internet access...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It would be interesting if security forces were all aware of this and used it anyway... You'd have an effect on criminals who assumed it worked, plus it makes for great security theater.

<comment><USER8> Just like they already do with "lie detectors", then?

<comment><USER7> Yep. Plus pretty much everything at the airport.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Good account of a scam. Notable points for me were (1) exploiting the fact that the military are trained not to question authority (2) officials still refusing to admit they were conned.

</comment><comment><USER10> And during all this time none of the buyers did verify the applied method and operation of the detector by taking it apart or at least by doing a positive check with known substances and materials that should've "made the thing beep"?

<comment><USER11> That my thought, how the fuck did this even get past a preliminary test?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> And a placebo effect, perhaps? Not for the person using it, but for those who were tested. I imagine that some would not carry explosives anymore, afraid of being detected. Some would change their behaviour and the soldier would also change, moving the magic-wand and "detecting" because both behaved inconciously different?

Until it's known not to work, it might have really helped in some cases.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm fascinated by its first use as a golf ball finder. I frequently have the idea that my subconscious has a much better idea where my ball went than my conscious mind does when my central vision loses the ball (or never had it).

You need to at least partially believe or suspend disbelief regarding such a mechanism for it work.

I similarly wonder if the micro facial ticks or subconscious "gives" from an attacker could be read by the user of the fake bomb detector. Essentially the device let's people make judgment calls using their "gut" feeling instead of being distracted by conscious false assurances.

Don't read this as justifying the fraud, just that the device may have a slightly greater than zero value. In a very different way than intended. If the choice was this security theater plus subconscious unlocker or nothing, maybe it was the right call. The problem with eliminating the fraud is that the slight value vanishes if no one believes in it.</comment>


Don DeLillo, The Art of Fiction No. 135 (1993) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1887/don-delillo-the-art-of-fiction-no-135-don-delillo <comment><USER2> To pay it forward: this excerpt was posted at some point on HN. I thought it was funny so I got the book. I wasn't disappointed. Maybe you won't be either.

"Several days later Murray asked me about a tourist attraction known as the most photographed barn in America. We drove twenty-two miles into the country around Farmington. There were meadows and apple orchards. White fences trailed through the rolling fields. Soon the signs started appearing. THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED BARN IN AMERICA. We counted five signs before we reached the site. There were forty cars and a tour bus in the makeshift lot. We walked along a cowpath to the slightly elevated spot set aside for viewing and photographing. All the people had cameras; some had tripods, telephoto lenses, filter kits. A man in a booth sold postcards and slides-pictures of the barn taken from the elevated spot. We stood near a grove of trees and watched the photographers. Murray maintained a prolonged silence, occasionally scrawling some notes in a little book. "No one sees the barn," he said finally. A long silence followed. "Once you've seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn." He fell silent once more. People with cameras left the elevated site, replaced at once by others. "We're not here to capture an image, we're here to maintain one. Every photograph reinforces the aura. Can you feel it, Jack? An accumulation of nameless energies."

Excerpt From: Don DeLillo. "White Noise."

<comment><USER3> That book brought me to laughter so many times. It's definitely one of my favorite reads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> DeLillo may not believe it, but I do. From the start of the interview:

"INTERVIEWER: Do you have any idea what made you a writer?

DON DeLillo: I have an idea but I'm not sure I believe it. Maybe I wanted to learn how to think. Writing is a concentrated form of thinking. I don't know what I think about certain subjects, even today, until I sit down and try to write about them."

</comment><comment><USER5> Pretty much all of his work is highly recommended! He's famous for White Noise and Cosmopolis (there was a movie with the guy from Twilight), but Mao and Falling Man are probably my favorites.

Delillo and Cormac McCarthy are two current authors I would expect to be read 100 years from now.

<comment><USER6> +1 McCarthy. Blood Meridian is a true work of art.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > A character is part of the pleasure a writer wants to give his readers. A > character who lives, who says interesting things. I want to give pleasure > through language, through the architecture of a book or a sentence and > through characters who may be funny, nasty, violent, or all of these. But > I'm not the kind of writer who dotes on certain characters and wants readers > to do the same. The fact is every writer likes his characters to the degree > that he's able to work out their existence.

This is exactly how I feel about characters in novels. It reminds me of Nabakov, who famously ended a lecture with:

> In this course I have tried to reveal the mechanism of those wonderful toys > — literary masterpieces. I have tried to make of you good readers who read > books not for the infantile purpose of identifying oneself with the > characters, and not for the adolescent purpose of learning to live, and not > for the academic purpose of indulging in generalizations. I have tried to > teach you to read books for the sake of their form, their visions, their > art. I have tried to teach you to feel a shiver of artistic satisfaction, to > share not the emotions of the people in the book but the emotions of its > author — the joys and difficulties of creation. We did not talk around > books, about books; we went to the center of this or that masterpiece, to > the live heart of the matter

I think that's basically right: the best way to read a novel is as a dialogue with the author.

DeLillo is the only example of an American who has written about recent history and contemporary American life in a way that resonants with me: unmistakably American, involved, but also detached. He's written about everything from foreign policy (The Names), to academia (White Noise, Ratner's Star), to JFK's assassination (Libra), to the Cold War (Underworld), to finance (Cosmopolis), to 9/11 (Falling Man), to the Iraq War (Point Omega), to start-up culture and worship of technology (Zero K).

<comment><USER8> I absolutely love Delillo and agree with you, though Pynchon too still resonates for me. That said, I'm allergic to absolutes. I do not agree with Nabakov. Stylized prose and dialogue should be read as a dialogue with the author because his/her voice saturates the page. Other authors strive for invisibility, for the reader to merge with their characters. I doubt, say, Nabakov could write an uneducated character that we could live vicariously through. His alliteration and punctilious prose would diminish the effect. He would also avoid clichés like the plague, though these are often expressed in natural dialogue.</comment></comment>


The perfect password manager - <AUTHOR> https://www.palkeo.com/sys/perfect-password-manager.html <comment><USER2> This setup has become much easier since gpg-agent is auto-starting now and basically all you have to do is add "enable-ssh-support" to the config.

There's a description on how to get it to work with SSH on MacOS: [https://mysteriouscode.io/blog/using-pgp-keys-from- yubikey-a...](https://mysteriouscode.io/blog/using-pgp-keys-from-yubikey-as- ssh-rsa-keys-on-macos/)</comment>


How phone batteries measure the weather - <AUTHOR> http://opensignal.com/reports/battery-temperature-weather/ <comment><USER2> As with many data analysis posts: Give me more information about the data. In this case it could be particularly interesting. You have correlation and you estimate the temperature through indirect measurements. The important word here: _estimate_

As with all estimates I care about the error and not much else. The only error measure provided is _mean absolute error_ which I find a little bit unsatisfying. It gives only very little information about the behavior of the error.

The easiest is to compute the error for every sample and then show a histogram of it.

Why you might wonder? In this case we deal with varying -though often over time stabalizing- data. This means that sometimes the error is actually greater and then very little. If you take the absoluate value of it and take the average (MAE), you _might_ underestimate (resp overestimate) the error at times. In this case I might expect a tri-modal error distribution if we consider positive & negative errors.

A histogram is much more expressive (and oh so simple to generate) than a simple MEAN, STD DEV, MAE or MSE.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice points,

We were told the paper would be published (and open access today) but doesn't quite seem to be up yet: [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50786/abstrac...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50786/abstract)

The paper does have more detail, and I believe supporting materials will be released. You can also download the data and do some of your own digging (either from the big file at the bottom, or just view source and grab the js values that feed the graphs)

<comment><USER2> James,

did you guys consider (or try out) Eureqa [1] to get a good model for the estimate? It works very well with such kind of data.

[1] [http://creativemachines.cornell.edu/eureqa](http://creativemachines.cornell.edu/eureqa)

<comment><AUTHOR> We actually used R, but this looks very neat, thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> TL;DR: "If it's cold outside, chances are temperature sensors sometimes outside are colder than usual."

By itself, I have to admit I don't find this particularly surprising, especially since they both averaged over space (whole cities) as well over time: There is no data presented on how well the correlation between battery temperature and outside temperature works out within a single 24-hours-period – given that most people are asleep at 2am, this would be another factor all/most batteries have in common apart from the outside temperature.

<comment><AUTHOR> For some of the cities in the study we had only about 600 readings from 300 users per day. At this level of data the averages work well across 24 hours, but are messy when you start trying to get hourly figures. Even a couple of thousand users does not give great hourly correlations.

However OpenSignal was not built for weather crowdsourcing, and battery temperature readings are only taken when the phone is plugged in, unplugged, turned on, or turned off (since we wanted to calculate average battery drain). So clearly we could more regularly poll the battery temperature. This is what WeatherSignal does.

In this case we would get better spatial and temporal resolution.

It's also well worth pointing out that we tested this in cities where there were already trusted, online data sources (i.e. weather stations), there are population centres where this won't be the case, or where the data is not shared.

Also the case is that for dispersed populations (e.g. North of Sweden or Siberia) while we might not manage to resolve temperature to city level (until we have many more users) we could get temperature estimates across larger ares.

So I guess what I'm saying is: this is the start of the story, already we're getting data that is good, more filters could make it better, but more users and faster polling is the real key.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't think this really means anything. If you track the indoor temperature and outdoor temperature at my apartment, they correlate. But it's because I come home as it's getting cool and turn on the AC, and I leave for work before it gets too hot out. So the shape of the graph looks the same, but the relationship is that I come home from work at the same time of day when the sun sets, not that the outdoor temperature affects the indoor temperature. (Weekends are proof, it's cold all day indoors then :)

</comment><comment><USER5> Do you think it possible to make smartphones into body temperature thermometers?

I currently have an iOS app that measures heart rate with the light/flash while you put your finger over the camera. The camera measures your pulse by reading the difference in "color" or "density" of your blood reflecting into the camera as your Harry beats.

It's not medical grade in accuracy but holds up well in comparison with the heart rate testers at the local grocery store or manual pulse counting.

My rough estimate is this method is accurate to a few percentage points of a real medical device.

For those iOS and Android developers — would it be possible to detect body temperature to accuracy levels of that of a thermometer ( +/\- 0.1 degrees ) using this battery method they are using for the weather?

It would be nice to check your temperature without the need for external hardware. Though even external hardware could be a great device, checking pulse, pressure, temp, and storing all data for historical analytics. Add in that you could compare that data worldwide and flu estimations may become possible. At least outbreak areas should be able to be narrowed somewhat. There's a ton of other data that could be gathered too. Just mapping outbreaks would be interesting to see how seasonal ailments migrate. Even allergies could be mapped.

Thoughts?

</comment><comment><USER6> This is cool. Possible use cases for those who are not grasping it: * Under developed countries who do not have a national weather service begin to start tracking historical temperatures.

* People at risk of heat stroke could have an app on there phones that alert them when the temperature is too high. (Most phones do not have a thermometer, and the temperature reading of a room with no A/C is different than the outside temperature)

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting, but the temperature reading is unusably inaccurate from my location. 3 degrees C can matter a lot when it's around the 20 C mark.

Cool graphs though.

</comment><comment><USER8> Possible to track average change in battery life from temperature difference? That'll interest me more.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's something we will look at for sure. In general, it's slightly harder to get good results from looking at energy drain (as obviously a single reading means nothing, only pairs of readings from the same device)

As an aside, I used to live on a boat, installed a quarter tonne of batteries and got rather obsessed with making the energy last.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> 1) there is so much room for error that it makes improving it not worth it 2) there are already many other devices with better readings and already in place

I guess I'm missing something? ...or is it just a proof of concept (when it's cold things get cold)?

</comment><comment><USER10> TL;DR: a phone's ambient temperature and a phone's temperature correlate.

</comment><comment><USER11> It is surprising that a temperature sensor is reading the temperature?

</comment><comment><USER12> Battery temperature rises with bad roms and excessive gaming and apps , did you consider all these conditions. It's really complicated.

<comment><USER13> knowing what the change in battery level is would allow for a pretty good estimate.

They've taken a very different approach to the problem though, and are filtering heavily such that they can ignore most transient phenomena as it gets filtered away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> All of the readings are skewed by air conditioned buildings.

<comment><USER15> I'm surprised (or overlooked) there wasn't a check for clustering of data. One set should clump close (with 24/7 consistency) to normal indoor temperature, while another should clump (with greater spread and time-of-day variation) around actual outdoor temperature. Split the discernibly HVAC-skewed values out, and you'll get a better grasp on the actual outdoor temperature. You could then sub-split the latter into warm-body proximity clustering (phones in pocket vs. otherwise).

<comment><USER16> The ratio of the two clusters answers questions like "how much more popular is baseball opening day this year" or whatever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I started to lose respect for people commenting on this board...I don't see what is the big deal with this, and why would you even publish a paper on it.

Here is the thing: Temperature reading of battery may not even be the actual temperature value of the battery. Even the circuits itself that read temperature is sensitive to temperature (they have the same correlation with temp. as battery..Higher the temp. is, higher the leakage current, and hotter your device will be). So temperature reading itself will be combination of things, most of which have similar correlation against temperature of the environment. This is a well-known fact to all people working in semiconductor industry and we simulate things against temp. all the time.

And when you average out thousands of reading from different cell-phones, you will get rid of all those noise coming from phone-usage, whether person holds the phone or keep in in his pocket ..etc.

As a side node, if the batteries in each cell-phone made by different manufacturers, their temp. reading will also be different and will add a noise as well.

You built an app to read temp., OK fine. But, it just annoys me the fact that they talk about it as if this was a new discovery, and publish a scientific paper about it :)

<comment><USER18> > _I don 't see what is the big deal with this, and why would you even publish > a paper on it._

The fact that we suddenly have a boatload of free weather data? Nobody installed any weather stations - this is information fallout being put to good use. That's pretty awesome.

> _This is a well-known fact to all people working in semiconductor industry > and we simulate things against temp. all the time._

Simulating how an electronic circuit works under different temperatures is one ting, but do you do actual measurements to see what factor the ambient temperature has on the measured temperature of a phone battery? How about having the phone touch a 37 degrees centigrade heat bath on one side (in other words: a human body) and ambient air on the other? Before this paper, could you have made any reliable prediction on how big an influence ambient temperatures were on the sensors in the battery?

Knowing how much of that temperature is body heat, ambient heat and heat produced by the phone/battery requires analysing the data - for all we know the ambient temperature could have been completely insignificant compared to body heat and heat produced by the phone. Maybe you could model it and predict it, but even then the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

You and others here can complain that it's no surprise that thermometers measure temperature, but actually analyzing the data, discovering that ambient temperature is a significant factor, and figuring out the Pearson coefficient required to put it to use _is_ a discovery, and certainly worth publishing about.

<comment><USER13> you do actual measurements to see what factor the ambient temperature has on the measured temperature of a phone battery? How about having the phone touch a 37 degrees centigrade heat bath on one side (in other words: a human body) and ambient air on the other? Before this paper, could you have made any reliable prediction on how big an influence ambient temperatures were on the sensors in the battery?

There are mechanical engineering textbooks on the subject, such as [http://books.google.ca/books?id=vvyIoXEywMoC&hl=en](http://books.google.ca/books?id=vvyIoXEywMoC&hl=en). Reliable heat transfer analysis has existed long before this paper was released.

<comment><AUTHOR> Even under lab conditions, I doubt you'd get a good correlation between battery temperature and lab temperature if the phone were being used. Across an ensemble of phones and aggregating battery temperatures, you might expect to do better, but that would only prove this works in lab conditions.

These phones were sometimes indoors, sometimes outdoors, sometimes in bags, in conditions that are hard to replicate unless you have a very good model of average user behaviour.

We're working on ways to better detect the situation of the phone at the point of a reading, but even then it takes about 30minutes for battery temperature changes to take effect. If a phone was outside 15 minutes a go, the outdoors temperature will still have a large impact.

Modelling this or testing in lab conditions is not trivial!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Amazing Power of Deflationary Economics for Startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2011/12/22/the-amazing-power-of-deflationary-economics-for-startups/ <comment><USER2> This is a fantastic article, and really hit home with our project. The rules of deflationary economics has become common knowledge in most product and service industries, but in my industry (higher education), the opposite seems to be true. Every single legitimate competitor raises prices year after year, much faster than the rate of inflation. The few that don't (Khan, MITx, Stanford, Udemy, etc...) do so by scaling back the user experience, reducing difficulty and removing credentialing. This means the value proposition to the student, even at no cost, will not match the entrenched system. There is a market for this new class of product, but it is defining a new market rather than competing in the existing one.

I actually think the reason more companies don't follow the strategy he outlines is that it is just too damn tempting to take the quick cash. For example, the current market value of our product is in the $500-$2500 per credit hour ($2,000-$10,000 per class) range. We could charge in this range and be extremely profitable. Instead, we price our classes at $100 per credit hour, pay our professors a much higher percentage and choose to take a slimmer margin. In classical "next quarter" business terms, this is a very bad business decision. Doing so, however, opens up a number of opportunities that our competitors can't exploit. For instance:

We had to develop technology and workflow that dropped the cost of high quality interactive content down from $10,000 per hour (or more) to around $120 per hour. Now that we have that option, we can scale our course offerings extremely rapidly while keeping costs at a minimum.

Being able to offer a bachelors degree for less than $10k (masters less than half that) gives us options for creative financing of education that again, our much higher priced competition just don't have. Student loans no longer become necessary, even without subsidies. State and federal subsidies could easily cover the entire cost of tuition (California currently spends more than $12,000 per student per year just at the community college level). Also, as our first program is CS/SE, there are many companies with a vested interest in increasing the number of graduates and having access after they graduate. The point is, we expect to be able to offer most of our programs at no cost to the student within a few years.

Since our largest cost saving was in not having any buildings, we are not limited by a physical infrastructure when it comes to scaling. We also designed our system to benefit from having more students, which means the quality of our program will increase as we grow...something that can't be said about many physical campuses.

TL:DR; Higher education is about to enter the tornado.</comment>


Proposal to add ACME (LetsEncrypt, etc) support to Go stdlib - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/golang/go/issues/17053 <comment><USER2> I believe the right call was made by opting to not include it in stdlib (at this time). As of writing, ACME is an IETF draft. In the near term, the correct way to 'solve' its lack from stdlib is by documentation and/or education, by pointing people to a suitable implementation in contexts where it's appropriate.</comment>